At 452 feet, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s
Rising Sun
is the largest American-owned yacht and the world’s fifth-largest. (The top four call the Middle East home.) Ellison has complained that he finds his boat too big—only a few marinas can accommodate it—and is awaiting delivery of something smaller. Meanwhile, he’s sold a $125 million half-share interest in
Rising Sun
to entertainment tycoon David Geffen.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s 420-foot
Octopus
motor yacht has a helicopter pad and space for a second, which is kind of
ho-hum these days. More impressive, the boat also has an internal dock big enough to house the 66-foot submarine that
Boat International
says the supersecretive Allen also owns, as well as a similar-size standard tender.
Venture capitalist Tom Perkins, who famously resigned from Hewlett-Packard’s board during its spying scandal, custom-ordered his 289-foot
Maltese Falcon
, the world’s largest privately owned sailboat. It’s a modern incarnation of a square-rigged clipper ship, albeit one with unstayed carbon-fiber masts (that means masts that take some of the shock out of wind gusts) and push-button controls for the sails.
Real estate developer and publisher Duane Hagadone found that things were too cramped aboard his 205-foot
Lady Lola
.
So he bought a 186-foot support vessel,
Shadow
, to bring up the rear and accommodate such essentials as a helipad for his chopper, cars, a 32-foot Stan-Craft shuttle boat, a speedboat, several sailboats and kayaks, and a 21-foot submarine—with room left over for hundreds of pounds of flour so his chef can bake fresh bread daily for the family and crew.
Shadow
and its toys and tenders are not part of
Lady Lola
’s standard $330,000-per-week charter package, but you do get the 18-hole golf course. With the push of a button, a section of the aft sundeck retracts and an artificial-grass teeing-off area appears. The crew sets a course in the water with floating flagsticks; computers and laser rangefinders track the floating balls (which are collected later by remote control) and keep score as the players, still safely aboard
Lady Lola
, drive and putt their way around the course by means of a virtual-reality computer system. “I’ll say to my guests, ‘Do you want to play golf?’” Hagadone told
BusinessWeek
. “They’ll look at me strangely. I hit the button, and you should see their faces. It’s the only one in the world.”
