Justin Ratcliffe and Jill Bobrow
12/01/2006
Yachting journalists experience a powerful temptation to drift
into hyperbole when writing about The Maltese Falcon. The radical
88-meter (289-foot) sailing machine with its revolutionary DynaRig was launched
from Perini Navi’s Yildiz Gemi shipyard in Turkey early last summer. After
tantalizing reports of her first sea trials in June, the press waited
impatiently for the yacht’s official presentation in La Spezia, Italy, one month
later. The Maltese Falcon did not disappoint. A glance at her
freestanding, rotating, 58-meter carbon-fiber masts convinced us we were looking
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The dining room showing the overhead skylight above the table. Photograph by Giuliano Sargentini and Emilio Bianchi. (Click image to enlarge)
Stepping into the yacht’s high-tech yet luxurious interior
confirmed this initial impression. She is, at heart, the reincarnation of a
square-rigged clipper ship, but any connection to yachts past or present stops
there. She joins Jim Clark’s 90-meter, three-masted schooner Athena and
Joe Vittoria’s 75-meter sloop Mirabella V as one of the three largest
privately owned sailing yachts in the world. But whereas Athena and
Mirabella are innovative in their
own right, they both rely on
proven technology for their wind propulsion.
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Owner Tom Perkins, a self-professed "tech nerd," was determined to go one step further. As he said to Fabio Perini when discussing how to develop the existing 88-meter hull upon which the Falcon rose, "I need a project, not just another yacht."
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A magazine feature story cannot hope to do full justice to The Maltese Falcon’s many innovative design features. Instead, ShowBoats International chose to focus on the four key protagonists behind the project: owner Tom Perkins, fellow innovator-businessman Fabio Perini, naval architect Gerard Dijkstra and designer Ken Freivokh. This is their story as it relates to this unique vessel. -Justin Ratcliffe
TOM PERKINS, owner of The Maltese Falcon
There are only two people in this world who could have conceived The Maltese Falcon—visionaries Fabio Perini and Tom Perkins. I chatted with Tom on the upper deck of his 88-meter yacht while we were sailing off the coast of Italy. The following reflects his musings on his relationship with Fabio Perini and the series of events that led him to build his extraordinary vessel. -Jill Bobrow
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My friendship with Fabio Perini dates way back to when he built his innovative first sailing yacht Felicitá in the mid-eighties. Impressed with Perini Navi, my wife and I flew to Rome to meet Fabio and discuss what we wanted in a sailboat. (Fabio, as you know, designed and invented paper processing machines, and a lot of his expertise in that field segued to roller furling systems.)
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An image of the clipper ship under way. Photograph by Giuliano Sargentini and Emilio Bianchi. (Click image to
enlarge)Given my personal engineering proclivity and MIT background, I asked a lot of technical questions. To my delight, all the answers I received were satisfactory. Our relationship began to grow. I took delivery of my first Perini—the 141-foot Andromeda—in 1985. Fabio joined me on board for a cruise in the Med, and in his shy, inimitable manner, he quietly asked for my attention: "Cinque minuti, cinque minuti (five minutes, five minutes)." Tucked under his arm were plans for a bigger boat—154 feet—and a new design. We pored over the plans together, and I immediately decided to go with it. So off we went on a voyage of discovery together. Fabio always listened to my ideas. I lowered the profile of the boat for aesthetic reasons, and we worked to keep the weight to a minimum. Together we invented a fisherman staysail. We also kept refining the sail plan, so that we would be able to go to windward more easily. We had a rolling backstay track at the top of the mast to permit the sheet and the sail to be led outboard. We changed various other details, such as the position of the controls. I had complete faith in him. In fact, the yacht was nearly two-thirds completed when it dawned on me that I never even signed a contract. I called Giancarlo, his managing director, and we finally drew up a contract. That is the kind of man Fabio is, and that is the kind of relationship we have. I sailed Andromeda la Dea around the world for nearly a decade, and she was the fastest Perini Navi until The Maltese Falcon was built.
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Tom Perkins. Photograph by Justin Ratcliffe. (Click image to enlarge)I have always had a passion for sailing. Simultaneous with Andromeda la Dea, I owned a 1915-built Herreshoff schooner called Mariette, which I raced at many classic regattas. In 1995, during the Nioulargue regatta in Saint-Tropez, there was a tragic accident, and a man racing a small boat was killed. I was completely devastated. I received a call from Fabio wanting to see me to offer support. I told him it was not necessary to come, and that there was nothing he could do. He caught me completely by surprise by announcing he had driven from Viareggio and was in Saint-Tropez. He said, "If I asked you, you would have said don’t make that seven-hour drive, don’t come." That is the kind of friendship we have.
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Fabio and I have maintained a perfect understanding throughout the build of The Maltese Falcon. The hull of the boat was originally conceived for another customer, but the deal fell though. It languished for a while at the Perini yard in Turkey. I went to investigate and discovered that the hull was quite beautiful, with the same freeboard-to-length ratio as Mariette. It was originally conceived to break the transatlantic record. I didn’t want the superstructure or the original rig. I didn’t want winches everywhere or a bowsprit. However, I knew I was on to something incredible. I wanted to work with Perini Navi, but I also wanted to do things my way. Fabio was completely open to my ideas.
I flew to Amsterdam to meet with naval architect Gerry Dijkstra and his partners, as I think they are the best for very large, fast sailing yachts. We talked about what I wanted, and Gerry pulled out this old 1960s German government data on a DynaRig. We ruminated over keeping the existing hull or building a new one. Eventually, when I was committed to this crazy project, we made a model, we toyed with a bulbous bow, we tank tested it and combined that test with a wind tunnel. The bulb slowed down the tacking. We doubled the sail area and added 100 tons of lead to compensate, then had to get rid of weight elsewhere, then increased the draft by 1.8 meters to accommodate lateral resistance, then we moved the rudder aft 2.5 meters and changed the shape of the skeg.
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The owner’s suite on the lower deck. Photograph by Giuliano Sargentini and Emilio Bianchi. (Click image to enlarge) I was involved in all technical aspects of the boat. I even decided to be the vendor myself for the carbon-fiber spars. I hired Damon Roberts and Mark Jones from Insensys and made a deal to subcontract the spars to them. I ordered the carbon fiber in Japan, shipped it to England and made it into woven cloth, then shipped it to Turkey. No doubt the U.S. State Department was wondering why such large quantities of military-grade carbon fiber were being shipped to such a country. I asked Perini to build a shed in Turkey for spar fabrication and not to charge me rent. When I was finished, they would have a facility to build masts. The deal had to be good for all parties. In fact, the whole boat was a major team effort.
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The yard in Turkey was fantastic. The shipyard’s owner, Baki Gökbayrak, is a terrific businessman, well connected and excellent at everything he does. We all agreed to finish the entire boat in Turkey. I am very impressed with the Turks. They tell you they will do something, and they will do it. All was done well—the filling, the painting, the polishing—they have the highest grade of technological equipment. I would put the Turkish quality up against anything built in Holland or Germany. The whole project took 1,200,000 man-hours. I rented three houses in Turkey for all my support crew; it was called the Perkins neighborhood. My captain, Chris Gartner, has been with me for 16 years. I couldn’t have done it without him.
With builder and naval architect in place, I focused on the interior design. I read a lot of magazines, including yours (ShowBoats International), to know who all the designers were. I appreciated how diverse Ken Freivokh was. Some designers have a signature style. I wanted my own style. Ken did a superb job designing my classic motor yacht Atlantide, so I knew we worked well together. I drove down to his place in the south of England in my McLaren. Ken is as much of a car nut as I am. Ken and his partner Liz Windsor have dedicated the last five years of their lives to the Falcon. Ken is responsible for exterior styling, the atrium’s circular staircase, the skylight glass floor, as well as all the interior and deck spaces.I hate corridors on boats, and Ken worked it so that there is only one—mostly open spaces with sliding doors as partitions. He also worked around my art collection, conceiving spaces to showcase my paintings and sculptures. I am extremely satisfied with all the living spaces. I love the ease and way she sails, and I am completely at home aboard. In fact, I am thrilled with the entire boat. I couldn’t have done it without such an extraordinary team.
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FABIO PERINI, owner of Perini Navi
Tom [Perkins] is a hands-on owner who has invented groundbreaking technologies. With his technical background, he knew exactly what he was getting himself into (with The Maltese Falcon), but you have to be a little crazy to build what is effectively an 88-meter concept project. Some people told him as much, but he has always pursued his own goals rather than those of others.
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Fabio Perini. (Click image to enlarge)To tell the truth, I was skeptical at the beginning. Building a radical carbon rig in Turkey was a first for Perini Navi, but Tom had complete faith in us, and in the Yildiz yard. My other concern was that when you put together a team of outside specialists, there is a danger that everyone wants to play the lead role. For our part, I knew that by evolving the electric winches already employed in our traditionally rigged yachts, we could come up with a system that worked. The problem was not so much making sure the hardware did its job as ensuring that it all worked together in sequence and functioned reliably.
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In the event, my concerns were misplaced. I’ve never seen a yacht as well designed and executed as this one. The team Tom gathered around him, with Gerard Dijkstra and Ken Freivokh, plus Damon Roberts from Insensys for the carbon mast and Baki Gökbayrak, the general manager at Yildiz, proved to be a winning formula. The DynaRig—although I prefer to call it the "Falcon Rig"—is elegant and efficient, simple and safe. Moreover, the performance predictions were confirmed during the first sea trials last June and have since been exceeded. Despite her size, The Maltese Falcon also performs surprisingly well in light airs. She won the Perini Navi Cup in September, in wind speeds that never exceeded 12 knots.
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I still haven’t fully absorbed what The Maltese Falcon signifies for the future of Perini Navi, but there is no doubt that it has been tremendously positive for the company and for the yachtbuilding community in general. We have already received inquiries for similar projects, and I think it will attract more people back to sailing because of its simplicity. In fact, one of my favorite expressions is "stupido è meglio," or "foolproof is better," and Tom claims to be able to teach someone how to sail the yacht in 30 minutes. I prefer to describe The Maltese Falcon as a "barca che fa epoca" (a new class of yacht), as opposed to a "barca d’epoca" (classic yacht).
To bring a project such as this one to a successful conclusion, it’s not enough to have know-how and skill; you need character as well. And this is where Tom’s role as prime mover was all-important. If it weren’t for him, The Maltese Falcon would still be an experimental concept from the sixties, rather than setting a new benchmark for the marine industry into the next decade and beyond.
GERARD DIJKSTRA, naval architect
As well as being an innovator, Tom [Perkins] is a very competitive sailor, so his main reason for adopting the DynaRig was because our analysis showed that it had the best lift coefficients, which translates into more speed. But the other advantage is that it is a relatively compact and simple system that can be sailed with a small crew or even one person.I had already researched into the DynaRig in the early eighties, so when the Falcon project came along, we had quite a lot of documentation already on hand. Although the original concept was developed in the sixties to provide additional propulsion for oceangoing commercial ships, it wasn’t until the advent of composite rigs that the theory could be put into practice. The forces acting on the 2,400 square meters of sail are in line with conventional sail plans, but normal rigs don’t include freestanding masts that have to rotate with the sails deployed. Only carbon fiber can provide that sort of torsional stiffness combined with light weight.
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Gerard Dijkstra. Photograph by Justin Ratcliffe. (Click image to enlarge)Our first step was to build a one-sixth scale model of a single mast and sail, which we mounted on a small sloop to test the sail-handling system manually. Then we tank-tested a one-thirtieth scale model at the Delft University of Technology (in the Netherlands) and in the wind tunnel at the Wolfson Institute in England. Finally, a full-scale test rig was built at the Yildiz shipyard that we used to fine-tune all aspects of the design.
The main challenge was not the concept itself, but with the
detailing, such as how to wrap the foot and head of the sails around the rollers
without ripping them, and how to maintain equal tension on the clews. The
solutions to these problems were also thanks to Perini Navi’s experience with
sail handling and control systems. The other issue was that we were working with
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The relaxation area on the main deck aft of the mizzenmast. Photograph by Simon Mcbride. (Click image to enlarge)
To spread the torque generated by each mast, the hydraulic
motors that rotate the masts had to be anchored to the hull structure and a
deeper keel added to improve the righting moment. The speed of this rotation was
recently increased so the yacht can now tack more quickly, in less than a
minute. We were surprised at how readily she tacks in light winds, perhaps even
more easily than in heavier airs because the wind force against the rigs, when
backed, increases with the square of the wind velocity.
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Every yacht is a compromise. You could improve some aspects of the Falcon’s design, but that would mean taking away others. I think Tom would agree that the compromises here work well and meet his requirements. The fact that we have optimized the centuries-old square rig shows how rarely naval architects come up with completely new ideas. I’m always conscious of following in my predecessors’ footsteps, and it’s only thanks to new design tools and materials that we can now go that one step further. As innovative as she is, The Maltese Falcon is primarily the result of this historical process of concept development.
KEN FREIVOKH, designer
In the same way that a Bentley Continental or Bugatti Veyron is more than just a car, The Maltese Falcon is more than just a yacht. It is a sailing machine—a very high-tech, comfortable and elegant one, but nonetheless a transportation machine. One of the guiding principles governing the interior design was to ensure that the revolutionary rig and sail mechanism were reflected internally.
Because of this, we looked to highlight the technological content and make a feature of the main- and mizzenmasts. With the latter, we designed the architectural "spider" support for the top bearing, whereas the mainmast running through the atriums of the main and lower decks is the single most striking interior feature.As a designer, working with such an adventurous thinker as Tom [Perkins] was a liberating experience. Unlike the majority of owners, he wasn’t looking to maximize accommodations on board, which meant we could free up the spaces, especially on the main deck, resulting in a simple, open-plan interior giving long sightlines and organic planes that follow the natural contours of the hull. I try to avoid doors and corridors, which tend to define interior boxes that have nothing to do with the fluid exterior lines of a sailboat.
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Ken Freivokh. Photograph by Justin Ratcliffe. (Click image to enlarge)In the Falcon, there are no traditional doors on the main deck. Instead, we’ve developed sliding partitions that remain closed for privacy, or disappear into the bulkheads to create a feeling of freedom and enhance circulation. In fact, you’re hard pushed to find any straight lines. Even the paintings from Tom’s modern art collection had to be reframed before being mounted on the curved bulkheads.
In order to achieve these open spaces aboard a yacht in excess of 50 meters and 500 gross tons, I insisted on early consultation with MCA and Cayman Islands Shipping Registry, to prove we were complying with the spirit, if not the letter, of the rules. On a yacht of this size, you would typically find thresholds on all external doors, storm shutters for windows and vertical fire zones. Our dialogue proved constructive because when we were able to show that safety issues weren’t being compromised, they were very supportive of what we were trying to achieve.
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Given the owner’s experience, he had some very precise ideas of what he wanted. The basic layout was established early on in the design process. After we had determined the GA, it was just a question of refining the original concept. Of course, we’d worked before with Tom on the interior of Atlantide. With its plush art deco theme, it’s difficult to imagine something more removed from The Maltese Falcon’s interior. But even Atlantide has the imaginative, forward-thinking elements that Tom appreciates, and so he came to us for The Maltese Falcon because he knew we wouldn’t just pull a design out of a drawer.
The design and build process was a very positive experience for us, and I don’t recall a single disagreement with Gerry Dijkstra or any members of the team. Indeed, it was a pleasure to work with them, as well as Perini Navi and Yildiz, who both carried out a first-class job, together with the excellent German outfitters Sinnex and the Turkish outfitters Ulutas.
| Yacht Name: | The Maltese Falcon |
| Yacht Year: | 2006 |
| Yacht Type: | Sail Yacht |
| Builder: | Perini Navi, Perini Istanbul–Yildiz Gemi |
| Interior Design: | Ken Freivokh |
| Draft: | 19' 10" (6.05m) |
| LOA (Actual length): | 289' 1" (88.11m) |
| Displacement: | 1,404 tons |
| Max Speed: | 19.5 kts |
| Cruise Speed: | 14 kts |
| Range: | 3,000 nm |
| Beam: | 40' 11" (12.47m) |
| Sail Area: | 25,790 sq ft (2,395.97 sq m) |
| Architecture: | Perini Navi/Gerard Dijkstra & Partners |
| Hull Material: | HTS steel |
| Superstructure Material: | Aluminum Alloy 5083 |
| Exterior Design: | Ken Freivokh |
| Rigging: | 3x self-standing rotating masts |
| Sail Maker: | Doyle |
| Fuel Capacity: | 26,417g (99,999.22L) |
| Water Capacity: | 7,925g (29,999.39L) |
| Hydraulics | Reva (Masts Rotation) |
| Classification: | ABS |
| Engines: | 2x Deutz TBD 620V12, 1,800 rpm, 2,010 hp |
| Generators: | Northern Lights 380V 50H2, 2x 280 kW, 1x 150 kW, 1x 80 kW |
| Air conditioning: | Heinen & Hopman |
| Watermarker: | Idromar |
| Bow thruster: | KaMeWa |
| Paint: | Boero/Dupont |
| Deck Windlass: | Nanni |
| Tenders: | 2x 32' (9.75 m) Pascoe tenders, 1x 14' (4.27 m) Castoldi rescue boat |
| Radar: | Raytheon, installed by Larry Smith Electronics |
| Autopilot: | Raytheon, installed by Larry Smith Electronics |
| GPS: | Leica, installed by Larry Smith Electronics |
| SSB: | Furuno, installed by Larry Smith Electronics |
| SatCom: | Nera, installed by Larry Smith Electronics |
| Wind Instruments: | B&G, installed by Larry Smith Electronics |
