Octopus (yacht)
 Octopus in Antibes, July 21, 2009 | |
| Career | |
|---|---|
| Owner: | Paul Allen |
| Port of registry: |
 Cayman Islands |
| Builder: | Lürssen |
| Yard number: | 13622 |
| Completed: | 2003 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | LR |
| Type: | Motor Yacht |
| Displacement: | TBC tonnes |
| Length: | 126.20 m (414.0 ft) |
| Beam: | 21.00 m (68.90 ft) |
| Draft: | 5.66 m (18.6 ft) |
| Installed power: | 8 diesel engines total 19,200 hp (14,300 kW) |
| Propulsion: | 2 propellers |
| Speed: | max: 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) cruise: 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph) |
| Capacity: | 26 guests |
| Crew: | 57 |
| Notes: | source used "Superyachts.com" website,[1] unless cited otherwise. |
Octopus is a 414 foot (126 m) megayacht owned by Paul Allen, of Microsoft. Bought in 2003, for a price of $200 million, she was believed to be the biggest such yacht at the time of her construction. She is currently the world's 15th largest superyacht, the fifth largest superyacht not owned by a head of state, and the largest expedition yacht.[2]
Description
Octopus sports two helicopter[3] pads on the top deck, a twin pad and hangars at the stern and a single pad on the bow; and a 63-foot (19 m) tender docked in the transom. There are a total of seven tenders aboard. The yacht also has a pool, located aft on one of her upper decks, and two submarines (one of them operated by remote control for studying the bottom of the ocean). Side hatches at the water line form a dock for jet skis.
The exterior was designed by Espen Øino Naval Architects and built by the German shipbuilders Lürssen in Bremen and HDW in Kiel. The interior was by designer Jonathan Quinn Barnett of Seattle.
Features
Some of Octopus main features are:
- an owner-exclusive deck (includes walk-in closet, study, outside bar with whirlpool)
- a glass bottom swimming pool
- a cinema
- a music recording studio
- a hangar for two helicopters
- a 10-person submarine
History
Octopus was built in 2003 and refitted in 2008. She is owned by Paul Allen, who also owns Tatoosh, another of the world's 100 largest yachts.
Allen has loaned Octopus, which is equipped with a submarine and ROV, for a variety of rescue and research operations, notably assisting in a hunt for an American pilot and two officers whose plane disappeared off Palau, and loaning his yacht to scientists to study a rare fish called a coelacanth.
In 2012, he loaned the ship to the Royal Navy in their attempt to retrieve the bell from HMS Hood, which sank in the Denmark Strait during World War II, as a national memorial. In March 2015, an Allen-led research team announced that it had found the Japanese battleship Musashi in the Sibuyan Sea off the coast of the Philippines. Armed with 46cm (18.1 inch) main guns and displacing 72,800 tonnes (74,000 tons) at full load, Musashi and her sister ship Yamato were the largest and most heavily-armed battleships in naval history.
References
Notes
- ↑ "Octopus Yacht Specification". Retrieved 8 January 2015.
- ↑ http://www.boatinternational.com/yachts/the-register/top-20-expedition-yachts/
- ↑ "The Wild World of Paul Allen". Daily News. 5 February 2006. Retrieved 12 August 2012.
Sources
- "Octopus Yacht". SuperYachts.com. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
Further reading
- "Super Yacht Octopus". superyachtfan.com. Retrieved 8 January 2015.
External links
Media related to Octopus (ship, 2003) at Wikimedia Commons