Mirabella V, Ltd. - Press Lounge

Press Lounge

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Owners: Mega-yacht offers towering allure

By STEPHANIE MURPHY, Daily News Business and Real Estate Writer

An elevator comes in handy to either a penthouse or the crow's nest of the Mirabella V - the world's longest and tallest single-mast yacht, which docked at the Port of Palm Beach last week.

For its owners, Luciana and Joseph Vittoria, Palm Beach is home and the 247-foot supersloop is a job - part of a luxury charter enterprise that operates outside the United States because it sails under a foreign flag.

At rates of $250,000 a week for the boat and crew - provisions are extra - customers are the rich or famous, from royalty to movie directors. And to make work manageable for the crew, the 740-ton sailing yacht has an express elevator that runs from the deck two-thirds of the way to the top of the 290-foot mast.

"This is a commercial charter vessel. And it's fully booked for next summer," said Joseph Vittoria, the former CEO of both Hertz and Avis. He commissioned the $50 million superyacht to complete a boyhood dream. Launched in May 2004, it was three years in the making at an English shipyard.

Last summer, the yacht was chartered five times, once for a month, and sailed along the Amalfi Coast, the Cote d'Azur, Tunisia, Malta and Greece. Docked locally for a round of private parties, Mirabella V will sail Tuesday for the Virgin Islands, where the Vittorias - married for 43 years - will vacation aboard with their four children and 10 grandchildren.

"We brought the boat here to show it to our friends who have been waiting these last three years," Luciana Vittoria said. "I'm an Italian momma. I want my children and grandchildren with me. But if one of them has one more child, he'll have to go to a hotel."

The port was "very specific about its docking. They said, 'You come. You go.' But no sailing while it's here," she said. That's partly because the Mirabella was sharing a berth with the Cloud X catamaran, and it arrived right before a statewide port security drill.

On the North Shore of Long Island, where her husband grew up working Saturdays at the yacht club, multi-mast ketches were a rarity. He also owns two smaller yachts, the Mirabella, 131 feet, and Mirabella III, 137 feet.

"A single-mast is more dramatic and has the ability to perform better upwind. My idea was not to have the largest yacht. I want to push the envelope to get people more comfortable with sailing, to say you can have the luxury of a motoryacht, with the glory and romance of sailing," while skimming the water at 20 knots without the noise and vibration of engines, he said.

He acknowledges that Mirabella V was an engineering nightmare, "but being the tallest vessel . . . that impresses people. It can't go under any fixed bridge in the world. The Queen Mary can, and the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier, can, but we can't."

Vittoria doesn't reveal the names of charter customers, but said they were largely "no names you'd recognize." He targets two market categories: the very wealthy - of which there are several hundred or a few thousand "who have no reason to measure the expense" - "and the other group, which is much larger, many thousands. It's a once-in-a-lifetime event, a 50th anniversary or an only daughter's wedding, and it's one big fling."

The yacht sleeps 12 guests in six cabins, "and that's the maximum because over that and you're technically a cruise ship." To qualify for that regulation, Mirabella V would have to carry a covered lifeboat, which would spoil its silhouette, he said.

The six guest cabins with matching guest robes were named by Luciana Vittoria for their palettes: Topaz, Tiger Eye, Sapphire, Aquamarine, Lapiz and Turquoise. She appointed the yacht with Oriental rugs and a blend of period pieces and contemporary furniture and accessories, from Christofle water pitchers to a 1920s desk, antique mirrors, photos from White Cube in London, and lacquered wood from Italy.

"My idea was that it would not be at all nautical. Anything here could be in a house," she said.

Quite a nice house, given that many of the specialty pieces were designed by David Albert Charles Armstrong-Jones, known as Viscount Linley, the nephew of Queen Elizabeth. His contributions include a wooden game table for chess, Mah-Jong and other board games; a binocular box with the Mirabella V replicated in inlaid woods; and sliding cabin-closet doors inlaid with wooden "maps" of various voyages.

"My wife really dressed the boat, and I disagreed with her at first. To me, Oriental carpets and antiques didn't belong on a boat. But she proved me wrong," Vittoria said.

"I'm a detail person. Nothing is acceptable until I say yes or no," said Luciana, who also designed the yacht's custom bath products and her own fragrance, all named Mirabella.

Palm Beach artist and consultant John Raimondi advised in her selections, which she described as "nothing too extravagant because, after all, it's a boat."

Guinness has given world-record status to the Mirabella V's length, mast height and sail size. The Jacuzzi holds 20 soakers, there's a wine cellar, a 21-foot swimming pool and spa, a gym and plasma televisions linked to a central computer - even a movie on a large projection screen under the stars. There's a 30-foot tender and watersports toys from lasers to jet skis, ski boats and kayaks.

The captain, Robert "Johno" Johnston of Sydney, Australia, and his crew of 13 brought Mirabella V from England to the seaport because neither the Town Docks nor other local marinas can accommodate it. The yacht draws 13 feet with the keel up and 33 feet when it's down.

Town Dockmaster John Luscomb, who followed the progress of the longest yacht and "the largest carbon-fiber spar ever built," was surprised it cruised here because its draft is too much for some areas of the Intracoastal Waterway.

"We could accommodate it at the end of Australian Dock, but there's only 15 feet of water. [That yacht] would not be able to get here because of the shallow water right off of [Good Samaritan]. At 'the hump,' there's about 8 feet at dead low tide," Luscomb said.

Running aground is something the new vessel has already endured, having hit some rocks off the French coast near Nice in mid-September, the day before it was to debut at the Monaco Yacht Show. After several weeks in dry-dock and refitting for a new keel, Mirabella made its first cruise to the United States.

"There wasn't much damage, and it was kinda neat because other mega-yachts went to her aid," Luscomb said.

"It's extremely light for its strength," because of the composite, or fiberglass, hull. The owner wanted "a high-performance sailboat. This is faster under sail than [on engines]," having reached 17 knots and aiming higher, Johnston said.

Like most visionaries, Joseph Vittoria already knows what he will build next - "a smaller boat. Over 500 tons and you fall into a whole new rule book," which complicates operations and expenses.

Because Mirabella V is 740 tons, "The captain and crew had to produce their own sailing manual, which had to be approved" by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. On the expense side, he had to install an extra 60 tons of insulation and fire protectants.

The concept was 190 feet long, "and the boat just grew," he said.

One tiny design issue continues to annoy Luciana every time she enters the outer door of the master suite and immediately has to turn around to close it before opening a second door. When open, the portal conceals an antique chest and mirror, she said.

"The second door is just in the way. One of these days, I'll throw it overboard."

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