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Yacht owner, naval architect, shipyard founder and designer join forces for The Maltese Falcon.
by Justin Ratcliffe and Jill Bobrow
photography by Giuliano Sargentini and Emilio Bianchi
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12/01/2006
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| Perini Navi 289 |  |
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
at something utterly new.
 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."
A series of images of the clipper ship under way. Photography by Carlo Borlenghi. (Click images to enlarge)
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
A series of images of the clipper ship under way. Photography by Carlo Borlenghi. (Click images to
enlarge)
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.)
 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.
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