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The Biggest Sailing Yacht, Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon is a sophisticated clipper luxury yacht, owned by Tom Perkins, and with its 289 feet length, it is currently the largest sailing yacht in the world. The distinctive, truely unique appearance and the innovative concept sails gives the Maltese Falcon its rightful place in extremely creative yacht designs.
Currently registered in George Town, USA, it is planned to be registered in Valletta, Malta as Grand Harbour. The huge sail area consists 5 sails on each of its 3 masts, and each sail is about fifteen square feet in area. The sails take only 6 minutes to open on its carbon fibre rotating masts, and the complete mechanical and electronic setup gives the Maltese Falcon its edge as a clipper ship that does not need many crews as a regular clipper ship requires. The Maltese Falcon is built on the DynaRig experimental concept and the designer has now called it a great success.
Apart from the powerful sail setup, it has onboard two 1800 hp Duetz engines and it gives a 20 knot cruise speed. The engines themselves are remarkable, as they are totally quiet and gives almost no vibration unlike the typical noisy marine diesel engines.
The interior was designed by Ken Freivokh and supplied by Sinnex.