Mega-Yacht Park, er Marina

The Pacific Eagle may look in the photo above like a fairly ordinary ketch-type sailboat cruiser. But appearances can be deceiving. Imagine you are at Jurassic World, seeing a brontosaurus at a distance. Seems rather ordinary. But then you get up close…

And that’s the same with this boat: this boat is a mega-yacht.

PACIFIC EAGLE

Builder: Alloy Yachts International
Year: 1989
Designer: Don Brooke
Flag of Registry: New Zealand

Dimensions
LOA: 102 ft.
Beam: 25 ft.
LWL: 88 ft. (guessing)
Draft: 8.5 ft.

She carries a whopping 3400 square feet (yowsah!) of sail. And if that’s not enough, it can get through 200 nautical miles per day on her dual 240 hp diesel engines.

Also, according to the description, she “holds 5000 litres of fresh water that produces 4 litres per minute. She has a massive storage on-board, including over 30 cubic feet of customised freezer space and can be self-contained for over 6 months.” Simply put, this girl was meant to circumnavigate — whether you stop and party at every port is up to you.

Current cost for this mega-yacht (and remember the Pacific Eagle is now almost 30 years old) is EUR 1,950,000.

It isn’t the biggest sailing yacht in the world. Since 1989 there have been even bigger boats. But the Pacific Eagle was one of the models that launched the limited yet very enthusiastic craze. Me, I’d feel pretty alone on that big ketch all by myself — guess I’d have to hire some friends. LOL

Well, I’ve got about $20. So I was thinking about buying the Titanic. $20 should be enough considering that particular mega-yacht is lying at the bottom of the ocean, broken in two big pieces.

 

 

The Wild Wind is Roaring

My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring,
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
For above, and around me, the wild wind is roaring
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.

The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.

I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray,
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing
And hear the wild roar of their thunder today!

— Anne Brontë

Sailing the Globe All Alone

The Guppy.

The youngest person to circumnavigate the globe single handedly in a sailboat is currently Dutch sailor Laura Dekker, who completed her 518-day trip at the age of 16. She was sailing the Guppy, an older style and slightly modified Jeanneau Gin Fizz ketch.

The oldest human to circumnavigate the globe is Minoru Saito of Japan, who completed his extremely difficult “wrong way around” (west to east) voyage at age 77. He did it in a custom 50’ sloop, the Shuten-dohji III.

This is what the nav station of a circumnavigator looks like (on the Guppy).

Rilke: from The Book of Hours

You are the future, the great sunrise red
above the broad plains of eternity.
You are the cock-crow when time’s night has fled,
You are the dew, the matins, and the maid,
the stranger and the mother, you are death.

You are the changeful shape that out of Fate
rears up in everlasting solitude,
the unlamented and the unacclaimed,
beyond describing as some savage wood.

You are the deep epitome of things
that keeps its being’s secret with locked lip,
and shows itself to others otherwise:
to the ship, a haven — to the land, a ship.

 

– Rainer Maria Rilke, Poems from the Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Translated by Babette Deutsch.