I often stop at pigeon point on the way home when I'm driving the Cobra and yesterday we were treated to an unusual sight. Although megayachts are very common in this beautiful, sheltered anchorage which is also the entrance to the Rodney Bay Marina, the strikingly unusual profile of this yacht had many taking a second look and quite a few photographs.
It was a hazy day and I only had my phone, so the pics were not great, but the classic lines of the Cobra contrasted sharply with the radical, nuclear sub shape of the futuristic vessel.
Here's a clearer pic of "A" off the web. The master suite, replete with a huge rotating bed, is behind the top row of windows in the "coning tower" superstructure.
Owned by Russian Billionaire Andrei Melnichenko, the 394 foot "A" was created in part to one-up the 377 foot
Pelorus, which belongs to fellow Russian Roman Abramovich. Abramovich has now commissioned a new yacht dubbed
Eclipse.
Here's a look at Eclipse:
Talk about keeping up with the Jonseviches!
Eclipse, at 577 feet, is designed to be the largest private yacht and is also festooned with multiple helipads, mini-submarines and an anti-missile hull. Perhaps the most interesting feature though, is the
anti-paparazzi laser defence shield (no kidding!!
) which can detect the CCD's or focus lights on digital cameras and neutralize them with a fucused burst of laser light. The system deploys automatically, but the crew, which includes a handpicked team of former French Foreign Legionaires, can activate it manually if they see any photo hounds getting too close for comfort!