We were doing some work at Ft. Mason in San Francisco yesterday. A colleague of mine pointed out a white blob way on the opposite side of the bay - near Sausalito. He told me the blob was a yatch. It was hard to tell.. but I took this picture at full zoom... then kept blowing it up on my computer until this is what I saw!
This is a $300 million yacht owned by Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko which was parked off Sausalito in Richardson Bay on Wednesday.
The 394-foot yacht, called the "A," apparently arrived Tuesday night or Wednesday morning after a trip up the coast from San Diego. It has over 29,000 square-feet of living space; including a 2,500-square-foot master suite, three swimming pools and doors accessible by a fingerprint security system.
The boat attracted onlookers onshore as well as boaters in the bay.
"It looks like something from a James Bond movie," said Sausalito resident Bart Dzivi as he marveled at the craft from shore Wednesday. "I went jogging last night and didn't see it, so it must have come in this morning or late last night."
Melnichenko, 38, who resides in Moscow and is married to model Aleksandra Nikolic Melnichenko, made his money in the fertilizer, energy and banking businesses. With a net worth of $4.4 billion, Melnichenko is No. 189 on the Forbes list of wealthiest people in the world.
The U.S. Coast Guard wasn't sure how long Melnichenko's boat would be in the bay. "We just know it's a private yacht," said Levi Reed, a Coast Guard spokesman.
And what a yacht.
The vessel is named after the initials of the couple's first names. It's 62 feet wide at its beam; has an owner's suite and six cabins; has a crew of 37 and a staff of five; has twin 6,000-horsepower engines; carries 12 tons of water for its hot tubs, pools and spas; and can hit speeds of 24 knots, although its cruising speed is around 19.5 knots, which can take it more than 6,500 nautical miles nonstop.
An all-white, 2,583-square-foot master suite is wrapped in bombproof, 44-millimeter glass, according to The Wall Street Journal. There, a king-size bed sits on a giant platter that rotates with the press of a silver button. Another set of buttons rotates the bed itself. The combination of the rotating bed and the rotating platter allows limitless angles for watching the sunset, sunrise or the 60-inch plasma television, which retracts from the ceiling.
The walls of one room are covered in white stingray hides, while another is covered in hand-stitched calf's leather. The main deck features chairs made from alligator hides and Kudo horns. One suite onboard has been dubbed the "nookie room" by the crew, with its white circular bed with padded walls and a ceiling-mounted television, according to the Journal.
The ship's two main landing boats are mini-yachts themselves, stretching to 36 feet, boasting plush interiors and costing more than $1 million each, the Journal reported.
