Steve Jobs' Yacht Impounded In Amsterdam

SchrodingerZ writes "The Venus, Steve Jobs' custom-made mega yacht, (valued at 137.5 million dollars), has been impounded in Amsterdam. Philippe Starck, the boat's main designer, had The Venus impounded by debt collectors, after supposedly Starck and his company, Ubik, were paid only 6 million of the 9-million-euro commission. Roelant Klaassen, a lawyer for Ubik, released in a statement that 'These guys [Jobs and Starck] trusted each other, so there wasn't a very detailed contract.' 'The Venus is a floating ode to both Jobs and Starck's minimalist aesthetic. Made entirely out of aluminum, with 40-foot-long floor-to-ceiling windows lining the passenger compartment and seven 27-inch iMacs making up the command center.' The ship was unofficially unveiled in late October, a year after Jobs' death. It now sits dormant in the Port of Amsterdam, until the payment dispute is resolved."

Comments

"Valued"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Valued at 137.5 M$"?

Ahem...

I gather that's what Jobs paid for it, but if his heirs were to put that ugly-ass, unseaworthy monstrosity up for sale, something tells me it would fetch a lot less.

Re:"Valued"?

[Runaway1956]

It's all the windows, for me. That yacht is incapable of weathering a real storm. Twenty foot seas will cave those ridiculous windows in, flood, then capsize the stupid thing.

You sail on it - I don't even want to take a tour while tied to a pier.

Re:"Valued"?

[Plunky]

A ship? Fek - unless they run the damned thing aground first, it WILL have to weather a storm someday.

You speak of storms, sir, yet you also speak of destroyers.. note that the military ships you speak of will be standing on station, or going places that are a bit out of the way for various reasons (training perhaps, to ensure that the crew can take the worst of the weather when they need to)

But perhaps you don't have a grasp of the leisure aspect especially of the superyacht set? Those boats, like warships, can also travel at 40kts and have access to satellite images, wave height data and very good weather forecasting. They don't need to be anywhere near bad weather and indeed they usually run away when a violent storm approaches. They don't need to demonstrate how tough they are, and the people who own them really just like to lounge around in calm conditions in the sun. They can cross oceans in the calmest conditions, dodging around the worst weather and they usually do. The focus of design of such a yacht is not to endure terrible weather while carrying goods halfway around the world, nor to blockade a port in all weathers. The focus is that the owner is noticed, and envied for their wealth. That this boat is ugly is neither here nor there, it was custom built for 137 MILLION dollars and everybody knows it. The point was that people would look and say Oooh, that belongs to Steve Jobs, I can only dream I could be rich like him.

Re:"Valued"?

[sribe]

You mention windows withstanding wind stronger than a ship has to withstand at sea. Your ignorance is two fold. Winds at sea are every bit as strong as they are anywhere above land. But - the wind is not the big deal. IT'S THE WATER!!!

1) Windows can be built to withstand bomb blasts, but that kind of glass is extraordinarily expensive. Aluminum is orders of magnitude cheaper.

2) You went where your mission required, even if it meant sailing straight through a typhoon. Private yachts avoid large storms.

Re:"Valued"?

[Jawnn]

For anyone who's been on water tall enough to make one forever know his place in Nature's scale of things, you could have summed it up in one derisive word... "lubbers".

Strange

[Nerdfest]

Someone trusted Steve Jobs? Obviously they didn't know him that well.

Hehe, trust Steve Jobs

[SmallFurryCreature]

Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Steve Jobs was a nasty mean spirited jerk who always cheated everyone whenever he could. Even close friends. In fact, he has no close friends, just victims who like battered wives thought that THIS time he would change. It is quite sad really that the guy himself that he could never get over his past. Shows you that money doesn't really make people happy.

You got to wonder what made him this way, so obsessed about money and power that he would screw supposed friends over and not even see it as wrong. And continue to do that when any new money would just be a number on a bank account. Compared to Jobs, people like Gates, Branson and Buffet seem a lot happier. Not nicer perhaps in their past but at least with age they learned not to be total assholes all the time. It is not like Jobs did not do any charity but more people will remember him as a prick then as a benefactor. Despite the fact that those friends he did screw over ultimately didn't exactly walk away empty handed.

My epitaph will probably read something like "who?" but it is better then "well, he did give us the iPod but he was such a dick". It not even as if he will be remembered as all that evil. It is just the paranoid always looking out for number 1 that people finally were able to vent after he died.

The guy who made an American company actually produce cool gadgets is more remembered for even in death trying to cheat "friends" and all that over a boat whose ugliness shows that whatever Steve Jobs had for talent, an eye for design was not one of them.

And now for the final insult: This post written on a Samsung Android Phone.

Cry havoc and release the Apple fans!

Steve doesn't miss it at all...

[AliasMarlowe]

Expect this dispute to drag out for a while. Steve is dead, and the market for mega-yachts is never brisk. If the contract had a high content of handshakes and winks instead of numbers with signatures, the dispute could get uglier than the yacht, and that's saying something.

That's one ugly yacht

[DrXym]

I'm sure it's decked out with all sorts of cool innovations but god does it look ugly. I can't put my finger on the wrongness except to say the boat looks like the bastard offspring of some 7 year old's first experiments designing a boat with only straight lines and a 1970's prefab building.