The Ugliest Yacht in the World?

January 23, 2008 3:52 PM

The Ugliest Yacht in the World? "Frankly, Sigma is a bit scary. With its razor-sharp hull and Northrup Grumman aesthetics, Sigma looks more like a cruiser for Darth Vader’s navy." Contenders include Asean Lady, "an office tower plunked down on an outrigger canoe", and Wallypower 118, "with all the elegance and charm of a WWII torpedo".
posted by stbalbach (62 comments total)

I dunno. The Wallypower 118 looks pretty fucking cool to me. Of course, I am currently in my secret underground lair plotting world domination.

But the Asean Lady? Hideous.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:57 PM on January 23, 2008

Those grapes were probably sour look really ugly anyway.
posted by mullingitover at 3:59 PM on January 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

Hold on.

There's a megayacht boom? Why does that make me sick?
posted by papakwanz at 4:00 PM on January 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

I like the Asean Lady. That's really cool!
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:01 PM on January 23, 2008

Asean Lady: built by Homer Simpson.
posted by bwg at 4:03 PM on January 23, 2008

Feh, you all wish you were entitled to being able to behold the pic of MY yacht , but that would require you be a member of The Club and have some taste ! Ahah, plebs with tastes is like cow with testes, an oxymoron ! Ohohoho I said moron !

You will excuse me while I go poop my Chez Maxime on my designer loo !
posted by elpapacito at 4:05 PM on January 23, 2008

Ugly yachts? Is that one of those rich people things I'll never understand, like pin the tail on the orphan?
posted by aftermarketradio at 4:06 PM on January 23, 2008

The Sigma is actually not that bad. Looks like an Audi, sort of.

The Wallypower is the first boat I've actually felt lust for. Ever. Damn that is a fine ship.
posted by krilli at 4:07 PM on January 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

The Wallypower looks like something I'd have made out of legos when I was a kid.
posted by Citizen Premier at 4:09 PM on January 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

The Wallypower looks like something I'd have made out of legos when I was a kid.

Whereas the Asean Lady looks like something I would have made out of legos.

I sucked at legos.
posted by dersins at 4:11 PM on January 23, 2008 [5 favorites]

The Ugliest Yacht in the World?

Ha ha! Your yacht is really ugly! Also, those eight supermodels you took to bed last week weren't very bright, and that I've got it on good authority that a large percentage of the bills making up your vast fortune aren't very crisp! Man, I'd hate to be you. Your life must suck!
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:15 PM on January 23, 2008 [6 favorites]

My yacht looks way better than any of those.
posted by puke & cry at 4:16 PM on January 23, 2008

The Wallypower has a top speed of 60 knots (~110km/h). At that speed, it will burn through 22,000 liters of gasoline in about 4.25 hours after traveling about 480km. Put another way, at US gas prices, that's about $70 per minute in fuel.
posted by jedicus at 4:17 PM on January 23, 2008 [3 favorites]

It's easy to grin
When your ship comes in
And you've got the stock market beat.
But the man worthwhile,
Is the man who can smile,
When his shorts are too tight in the seat.
posted by mosk at 4:18 PM on January 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

I like the Asean Lady. That's really cool!

There really is no accounting for taste. Asean lady is the ugliest thing I've seen in quite some time.

James Packer's Arctic P is well up there, but she is a converted ice breaker tug.
posted by wilful at 4:20 PM on January 23, 2008

Tom Perkin's Maltese Falcon is the one to top. Simply beautiful.
posted by junesix at 4:24 PM on January 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

in soviet russia, ugly yachts you!

sorry.
posted by CitizenD at 4:25 PM on January 23, 2008

Jedicus, if you can afford a boat like the Wallypower you aren't going to be concerned about its relatively trivial fuel costs.
posted by localroger at 4:25 PM on January 23, 2008

Those are very ugly. I wish I could afford to buy one of those, so I could use the money for something else instead.

Now THIS is a yacht. Or a sailboat, or a proper vessel of the sea. (that was my father's and grandfathers boat).
posted by mrzarquon at 4:27 PM on January 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

If it was my money, I'd have built John Berkey's hydrofoil.
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:27 PM on January 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

My father has made a specialty of laying carpet in these (at least the megayachts made by Auckland boatbuilders, or that come in for a refit). Exacting work, as there are few straight edges or 90° corners anywhere. The carpet also needs to be replaced on a fairly regular basis - wool and salt air were meant to mix only in moderation.

A lot of it is floating representations of male potency. For my money, a traditional wooden sloop - brightwork, teak on the deck, canvas for the sails, a fine line - ah, that be yar.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 4:32 PM on January 23, 2008

Was the Asean Lady designed by Karl Stromberg or what?
posted by katillathehun at 4:33 PM on January 23, 2008

puke & cry writes "My yacht looks way better than any of those"

My girlfriend's milkshake looks much better than yours ! I win !
posted by elpapacito at 4:33 PM on January 23, 2008

Proof
posted by elpapacito at 4:41 PM on January 23, 2008

If the second ship has to have a stupid name he might as well have just called it the AZN Lady.

The Sigma would look good if it were painted jet black except for the laser cannons.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 4:46 PM on January 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

localroger: Oh, I know that. I was more just astonished that even with all of the modern engine design and materials available that it costs $70/minute in fuel to do on water what a double trailer semi can do on land at about 1/60th the cost.

It's also interesting to compare the operating costs to that of a jet. The Wallypower's fuel consumption rate is 83% as much as a fully loaded 777. Admittedly the 777 costs ten times as much as the Wallypower, but you get the idea.
posted by jedicus at 4:47 PM on January 23, 2008

My Dad used to subscribe to Forbes magazine and I was always fascinated, like a bystander at a car wreck, by the tacky the cover art. It was like visiting someone from work and finding dogs-playing-poker tapestries all over the house.
posted by Huplescat at 4:47 PM on January 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

I was more just astonished that even with all of the modern engine design and materials available that it costs $70/minute in fuel to do on water what a double trailer semi can do on land at about 1/60th the cost.

Something about water being 1000 times denser than air, I'm sure.

But it makes me also wonder what kind of mileage the Asean Lady gets with a smaller hull profile.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:04 PM on January 23, 2008

The only thing worse than an ugly yacht is a loud sportscar.
posted by Astro Zombie at 5:05 PM on January 23, 2008

Hey, wasn't that Wallypower 118 thing in that Ewan Mcgregor movie, The Island?
posted by Relay at 5:13 PM on January 23, 2008

The WallyIsland is pretty sweet also.
posted by Mr_Zero at 5:24 PM on January 23, 2008

The Wallypower? Why am I picturing its "captain" as a short little nerdy bald guy with black plastic-rimmed glasses, a cravat, white pants and a couple of models at his side?
posted by MrFongGoesToLunch at 5:24 PM on January 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

Which is hotter:
1) Mon Calamari Frigate,
or
2) Nebulon-B Frigate?
You may open your Blue Books NOW.
posted by Dizzy at 5:31 PM on January 23, 2008 [3 favorites]

There's a megayacht boom? Why does that make me sick?

don't worry papakwanz, there's a big fuck-off recession just around the corner which will be wiping a few smiles... oh yeah, dang.
posted by mattoxic at 5:35 PM on January 23, 2008

Let's give these people a tax cut.
posted by TrialByMedia at 5:41 PM on January 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

Just what kind of person would you have to be to commission something like the Wallypower?

"Hi, is this Wally megayachts and gigayachts? Fuck that shit. I want a petayacht. Give me something that can accomodate me, my trophy wife and 7 trophy concubines, plus the 50 servants that travel with us at all times. I want something that can cruise faster than 100km/h. It should look like it can cut through the Queen Mary at speed without me spilling my brandy alexander. Also, I want it to actually be capable of doing that. I want it Monday."
posted by [expletive deleted] at 5:45 PM on January 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

The picture of the Asean Lady says it was taken in Saigon.

Hang in there, Iraqis.
posted by dglynn at 5:51 PM on January 23, 2008

Let's give these people a tax cut.

Why not? It's not like they'll hide the money in a mattress. I'd be happy to sell them yacht accessories to separate that tax cut from their wallets.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:52 PM on January 23, 2008

Boats are more efficient than just about anything in terms of the weight they can move for how much fuel they take. There is a reason that most of the world's shipping is still by sea. The water isn't a barrier - it's a highway.
posted by jb at 5:57 PM on January 23, 2008

The Asean Lady does look like someone's nicked the hull off a proper ship and left the bridge up on bricks.
posted by Abiezer at 6:15 PM on January 23, 2008

Mad, mad props to the ever-vigilant muckrakers at the Wall Street Journal for pictorially reinforcing my long-held conviction that the problem with the exorbitantly, earth-alteringly wealthy is that a small handful of them have questionable taste in ocean-going vessels.
posted by dyoneo at 6:24 PM on January 23, 2008 [3 favorites]

The current megayacht boom has produced some of the largest boats in history.

Aren't all these ugly yachts dwarfed by any cruise ship (or ferry, or military vessel)?
posted by unmake at 6:47 PM on January 23, 2008

Ugh, they picked out the one ugly Wally. Wallys are beautiful works of art.
posted by Jay Reimenschneider at 6:54 PM on January 23, 2008

Asean Lady looks pretty seaworthy due to the multi-hull catamaran design. But I wonder how either of the other two would do taking waves on the beam ends in a heavy sea. Sigma's superstructure and high hull are a lot of sail area, which can be trouble in high winds and seas. Wally looks basically like a speedboat with more creature features, but I bet you'd pound it to pieces trying to run it through any kind of less-than-calm sea state, and in a beam sea she'd roll like a drunken Tri Delt.

I'd rather spend an equivalent amount of $ to refurbish one of these. Even if it doesn't have the sexy cachet of the others, it'd do okay on the open ocean where it belongs.
posted by pax digita at 7:08 PM on January 23, 2008

These would all look pretty while burning to the waterline.

Then again, I've been feeling a little more bitter than usual about megaconspicuous consumption over the last couple of days.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:15 PM on January 23, 2008

The Wally looks like an overgrown cigarette boat. Bollocks to all of that -- give me sails to set and lines to work and the wind at my back, and I'm a happy lady.
posted by kalimac at 7:21 PM on January 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

Kalimac -- the Wally isn't a cigarette boat because it can't plane. Which is why...

Jedicus -- the reason the Wally gets such crappy performance is that it can't plane. And the only way to get 60 mph at hull speed is to rip the water apart with raw power. If jet aircraft had to plow through water instead of air, they'd perform about the same.

The Wally really is a floating penis replacement, a great big third finger to every notion of common sense and resource management. It's saying "I'm gonna take my great big friggen yacht wherever I want whenever I want and I ain't cutting any corners to do it because I don't have to care how much it costs."

It's not a bug, it's a feature.
posted by localroger at 7:32 PM on January 23, 2008

I'd rather spend an equivalent amount of $ to refurbish one of these

I was puttering around the piers of Baltimore harbor around 1998 and came on someone re-furbing an old warship, it was a beautiful ex-Soviet, maybe around 100'. I asked the owner how it was and he said the old ships were designed for large crews and everything is manual, so even small ships can need dozens or hundreds of people to operate. The trick is to automate everything which is a huge expense. It sounded like for the moment it would remain in dock as a sort of party-boat but he wanted someday to take it to sea.

The picture Jay Reimenschneider posted above of the Wally (note the laptops, center) captures the essence of modern boats - bigger and fewer crew. Presumably the trend of up sizing scale and downsizing crew through automation will continue.
posted by stbalbach at 7:34 PM on January 23, 2008

It's probably just personal taste, here, but if I had enough money to buy (and refurbish) something like that, I'd be a lot more inclined to refurbish and automate something like this instead. It can't be cheap to operate those military boats especially fuelling them. I doubt they're exceedingly comfortable, either. And no one can argue that a big Schooner isn't seaworthy, provided you don't do anything stupid with the sails.
posted by cecilkorik at 8:06 PM on January 23, 2008

Aye, cecilkorik, and I would fill it up with NCAA Division 1 college sailing teams from elite East Coast universities on the cheap, and sail around the world making them run up and down the ratlines as I hobble along with my peg leg and cutlass yelling "Away aloft!" and "Mr. Wodsworth, start that man!" and then we'd go to Tahiti for breadfruit and they'd mutiny for the fine ladies.
posted by OldReliable at 8:24 PM on January 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

Put another way, at US gas prices, that's about $70 per minute in fuel.

You're not using marina gas prices there. If you were it'd be in the $100-$150 range.
posted by Tacos Are Pretty Great at 9:57 PM on January 23, 2008

cecilkorik: That's exactly what was designed into the Maltese Falcon. A 289-ft sailing yacht with fully adjustable masts and retractable sails controlled from this gamer's wet dream command center.

The genius — and risk — of the DynaRig is its use of freestanding masts that rotate to adjust sail trim and tack the boat. There are practically no external ropes or wires, no traditional rigging of any sort to brace the spars or control the nearly 26,000 square feet of sail. The 15 sails deploy at the push of a button, rolling out from inside each hollow mast along recessed tracks on stationary horizontal yardarms.

To measure the stress on the masts, a fiber-optic network is embedded in the layers of carbon-fiber laminate. These 0.01-inch-diameter cables contain sensors that relay real-time data about the structural health of the masts to a graphic display on the bridge. If the forces on them become too severe — masts can snap, and on a vessel this size, the results might be catastrophic — Perkins can dump wind out of the sails or reduce sail area.

Dozens of microprocessors, connected by 131,000 feet of hidden cable and wire, automate the operation, allowing Perkins and his crew to control the boat nearly effortlessly. Seventy-five sealed motors, 60 for unfurling and 15 for furling, are used to manage the sails. They are synchronized by computer, but the skipper still needs to implement each step.

From Sailing World's article on its engineering:

All this is done by placing a finger on an image of the sail in question on a control-panel touch screen. It takes about a minute to set a sail, and you can set one per mast at the same time, thus requiring about six minutes to "hoist" the entire sail plan.
posted by junesix at 12:11 AM on January 24, 2008 [2 favorites]

My yacht was actually shaped like a fist extending a thrusting middle finger. Christ, it was hideous; rococco interior design, fake palms everywhere, pastel and silver everything with great displays of antique nautical measuring tools in crystal vitrines, staffed with Sea Org kids in full costume and naked, classically trained dancers spray-painted to look like they were carved from Italian marble. I could barely believe it when the Cheneys and the Rumsfelds agreed to a cruise. Of course, I organized a Hieronymus Bosch inspired ball and had the whole travesty navigated via remote control straight into the Bermuda Triangle right at the height of kraken season. Oh, what laughs were had at port that night, chugging our 2 buck chucks as the signals faded......


And then I woke up next to Suzanne Pleshette. So. Awkward.
posted by maryh at 12:21 AM on January 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'd love a Wallypower, just so I could name it Knight Of Croydonia. The office block description is dead on.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:35 AM on January 24, 2008

There's a great saying about megayachts. They give you the two happiest days of your life: the day you buy it and the day you sell it.

I like the Wallypower: it breaks the rules about cruising speed, has a minimalist ethic and has dragged boat design into this century.

That Asean Lady is the AMC Pacer of the boat world, though: a design that owes more to a four year old's sketch than anything else.
posted by MuffinMan at 5:07 AM on January 24, 2008

The Sigma, Asean Lady, and Wallypower 118 are ugly boats.

I don't say that out of envy. If I were saying it out of envy, I'd also say the Maltese Falcon is an ugly boat. It's not. It's pure awesome.
posted by Bugbread at 6:19 AM on January 24, 2008

More Northrop Grumman aesthetics ...
posted by yqxnflld at 6:40 AM on January 24, 2008

But can it make the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs?
posted by geekyguy at 8:54 AM on January 24, 2008

junesix: That's fantastic, and a beautiful ship. That's pretty much exactly the idea. I can't say I'm a fan of the oval-shaped sails though. I'm sure they make perfect sense and probably simplify the whole automation of the sails, but aesthetically they just don't appeal to me. I'd still go with classic triangular sails, and you've still gotta have the staysails and jib even if materials have advanced to where they're not needed anymore. It's just how a ship like that is supposed to look! Even if it would make automating the rigging much more complex... and I'm sure it would.
posted by cecilkorik at 8:55 AM on January 24, 2008

Northrup Grumman aesthetics,
More Northrop Grumman aesthetics ...

Hey!! You're talking about about my plane! (Or at least, the plane I work on... Well, I suppose it's not very... Um, to be honest, it is fairly ugly. Nevermind.)
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 11:05 AM on January 24, 2008

Um, forgot the pic.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 11:11 AM on January 24, 2008

Actually I think that "Northrop Grumman Aesthetics" seems pretty accurate. Paint the sigma black and you've got something that looks remarkably like the stealth wing.
posted by Sam.Burdick at 8:30 PM on January 24, 2008