Centibillionaire Bill Gates is selling his fleet of superyachts. For those unaware, the businessman worth $149 billion allegedly owns a massive Feadship beauty, Project 821, that was set to be their flagship vessel but was left incomplete. The world’s 6th richest man already owns a much humbler 224-feet, $25 million Wayfinder’ motor yacht built by shipyard Astilleros Armon.
The yacht spanning 390 feet although incomplete is now listed for sale. Project 821 was launched in April 2022 at the NMC shipyard in the Netherlands. The mammoth with a volume of 7,000 GT mark, was touted to be the largest superyacht built at the Dutch yard.
Nearly complete, the luxury vessel that boasts an ample beach club and a swimming pool aft is set to be sold but for an insane $650 million. Is the Gates name enough for an unfinished motoryacht to sell for over half-a-billion dollars? Or is there more to it? Esysman Superyacht was the first to break this news and followed it up with a perfectly reasonable explanation that a premium is charged perhaps to avoid long waiting time that is a given with a vessel that’s nearly 400-feet long. The luxurious vessel has undergone a four-year build period which means with some final touch-ups this goliath will be ready to impress.
The popular YouTube channel also compared it to the yacht of another tech tycoon Mark Zuckerberg (they also broke the news on motoryacht Launchpad). The ship though only 1 meter shorter than Project 821 sold for approximately $300 million, half of the unfinished Feadship beauty. The second yacht, called Wayfinder, was the shadow vessel of the mothership that never materialized. It sleeps up to 12 guests in 6 suites and includes a beach club and tender garage in addition to a welcoming interior.
Wayfinder Yacht is also being sold as without a mothership, the vessel becomes purposeless and is certainly not grand enough for the Gates family to be used as their main pleasure craft. If anything, one expects nothing less than the 376-Foot-Long, Hydrogen-Powered superyacht concept Aqua that was linked to Bill Gates. The world was nearly convinced that the philanthropist was the owner of the $644 million luxury boat displayed in Monaco in 2019.
A representative of Sinot Yacht Architecture & Design clarified that the concept yacht, called Aqua, was “not linked” to the Microsoft co-founder. “Aqua is a concept under development and has not been sold to Mr Gates,” a spokeswoman said. This also brings to mind the million-dollar question of why is the businessman getting rid of his fleet even before it is complete? The answer perhaps lies in his massive carbon footprint, that a superyacht, forget two, would only heavily contribute to.
The climate champion has been called out on multiple occasions for talking about the impotence of climate change while traveling by private jet. In an interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan, Gates addressed the accusation by saying he offsets his family’s carbon footprint and contributes to solutions. “I buy the gold standard of funding – Climeworks – to do direct air capture that far exceeds my family’s carbon footprint. And I spend billions of dollars on climate innovation.”
For someone who actively advocates climate change letting go off two superyachts is certainly a significant step in the right direction. According to reports a single superyacht can emit as much as 7000 tons of CO2 every year. Richard Wilke, professor of Anthropology at Indiana University called superyachts ‘by far the worst assets to own from an environmental standpoint.’ Guess Bill Gates paid attention and decided to save the expense of $55 million in annual maintenance cost with the added bonus of not being attacked by climate activists who would love to do to his floating mansion what they did to superyacht Kaos.
