Billionaire Jeff Bezos 417-foot superyacht Koru left a shipyard in the Netherlands last Wednesday and anchored off the coast of Spain near Mallorca, where it’s undergoing tests.
The Koru’s excursion is part of the sea trials where an owner puts the boat through its paces to make sure everything is working properly, according to reports.
The three-masted superyacht is estimated to have cost the Amazon founder more than $500 million. Bezos, 59, is the world’s third-richest person with a fortune of $126.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Previously known as Y721, the yacht is now registered as Koru and is flying under a Cayman Islands flag.
It is the largest sailing yacht afloat, according to Boat International, and one of the biggest to be built by Alblasserdam, Netherlands-based Oceanco.
The superyacht’s size has caused a number of headaches for Bezos and its builders. The height of its masts was originally going to force the city of Rotterdam to dismantle a historic steel bridge, De Hef, for the boat to be able to make it to the ocean.
City officials initially agreed to temporarily take apart the bridge’s central section, but Oceanco ended up retracting the request amid public outcry. The shipbuilder eventually towed the vessel out to sea without its masts.
The size of the sails also meant that the yacht couldn’t have a helipad on board. Instead, Bezos and his helicopter pilot partner Lauren Sanchez will rely on a support boat.
Copyright Ships & Ports Ltd. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit given to www.shipsandports.com.ng as the source.
