Take a closer look at Russian oligarch's $700 million superyacht that is one of the largest in the world
Cork Gaines
- Roman Abramovich is seemingly scrambling to avoid sanctions from the UK by moving his superyachts.
- One of those is The Eclipse, which cost $700 million to build and was once the biggest in the world.
Like other Russian oligarchs, Roman Abramovich is seemingly scrambling to avoid sanctions and that included quickly moving his superyachts to more friendly waters.
While Abramovich can't move the Premier League football club Chelsea FC and must quickly sell the $3 billion club, his yachts are another matter.
Abramovich's 553-foot long flagship is The Eclipse, estimated to have cost $700 million when built. After sanctions were initially dropped by the UK against Abramovich following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, his second "smaller" $600 million superyacht, Solaris, left Barcelona, Spain, and moved to Montenegro. However, on March 13, the yacht then hastily left that port without refueling and moved on to Turkey.
Solaris was joined in Turkey by The Eclipse, which arrived from the Caribbean.
While the superyacht Eclipse is seemingly on the run from UK sanctions, it was once docked at Manhattan's Pier 90 and Robert Johnson was able to get some pictures. Take a tour of the superyacht below.
Robert Johnson contributed to this post.
Just south of this public parking lot on the roof of the Pier 90 terminal in New York City sat Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich's flagship yacht, the "Eclipse."
536-feet long and styled after military vessels.
The 2010 Eclipse cost $700 million and was the world's largest yacht when built.
The vessel has amenities to rival any ship on the sea — like its own mini submersible, perhaps similar to this— able to dive down 150-feet.
The Eclipse has two helipads.
Bulletproof glass and armor plates wrap the length of Roman's master suite and the bridge.
And a German-built missile defense system.
The ship's also supposed to have a laser defense against paparazzi trying to photograph the yacht's guests, but saw no evidence of the device when we were there.
The Eclipse has three launch boats.
That looked to be stocked with medical supplies and a variety of handheld radios.
From the cruise ship parking lot it felt like we were almost on the Eclipse itself.
But with little chance we'd be invited aboard through the ship's door here ...
... We hoped to find one of the 70 crew members required to sail the Eclipse and see if they'd tell us what ship life was like.
But we found no one interested in talking.
But we certainly didn't feel like paparazzi, or that we'd be lasered, when we were in the parking lot tourists use when they arrive to board their cruise.
From up here, the ship was simply stunning and the amount of work required to keep her that way apparent.
The Yacht Report says owning a superyacht costs about 20% of the ship's initial value every year.
But experts believe that Roman probably pays $75 million a year to run the private cruise ship with 24-guest suites.
Looking at the layout of the ship gets us talking about the two swimming pools inside, the disco, cinema, hair salon, and restaurant.
The billionaire's guests would use this door to enter any fore part of the deck.
Perhaps noting where the life rings were as they made their way about the ship.
At 13,000 gross tons, the Eclipse was, at the time, the largest vessel to use a special stabilization system to keep it calm in rough waters while anchored or moving slowly through the sea.
Roman faced a $150,000 tab for parking the Eclipse in New York City while possibly visiting his daughter and her new baby — about $2,000 a day.
A large yacht like the Eclipse can hold over 100,000 gallons of fuel.
Depending on the current price of fuel, a five-hour cruise each way could cost about $30,000.
None of those numbers are likely to concern Roman Abramovich, however, who has an estimated net worth of nearly $8 billion.
Source: Forbes
You can see interior photos of the luxury yacht at Boat International
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