Have you ever imagined yourself as a superyacht owner? Have you visualized how that first meeting to commission the superyacht would go? For mere mortals, or even the newly rich, that scene would be fairly formal, suits in place, assistants ready to haggle, and lawyers waiting in the wings. But not for Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison. The tech tycoon actually finalized his first megayacht, the 454-foot Rising Sun, in unheard-of casual flair with designer Jon Bannenberg in London over lattes. After having gone through a string of dissatisfying studies from several designers, all it took for the world’s fifth-richest man was lattes, a model, and an agreement sealed in two emails with no lawyer involved.
And that restraint is the surprising part, because Ellison is hardly a man who shies away from a legal fight. This is someone who once sued the city of San Jose just to keep landing his $38 million Gulfstream V after the local airport’s late-night noise curfew, a battle that ran through federal court for roughly two years before he won his exemption. A private jet’s bedtime was worth a lawsuit. A 454-foot floating palace was worth two emails.
Guess that was the magic of designer Jon Bannenberg’s drawing board. According to Boat International, he envisioned this superyacht in an office that was, at the time, still an almost CAD-free zone. Unfortunately, the iconic designer did not live to see the $490 million Rising Sun completed, but the quintessence of his vision remained untouched.
Among the very typical Bannenberg elements aboard Rising Sun that were later tweaked was a suspended, tube-like walkway through the main machinery spaces, designed for visitors to see exactly what drove her at speeds of 30 knots. Another was an exposed Z-frame structure separating the tender-launching areas. The exposed web frames were meant to be left in raw-finished aluminum, but during the posthumous planning stages, this was changed to a metallic paint finish.
Another major change was the size. The competitiveness of the owner seeped into Rising Sun, which went on to surpass Paul Allen’s Octopus, coming in 47 feet longer for the world’s most competitive man. As a result, the luxury vessel included spacious guest cabins with direct access to the exterior side decks, a double-height cinema, a basketball court for the sporty businessman, a wine cellar, a helipad, a pool, 45 crew members, and accommodation for 18 guests. Of course, Larry Ellison got an entire deck to himself on the mammoth 7,841 GT ship.
The Oracle billionaire took delivery of the vessel in 2004 and subsequently sold it in 2010 to media mogul David Geffen, who had previously been a co-owner of the yacht. The sheer scale and size of Rising Sun made Ellison pause, the same man who had splurged about $100 million chasing the America’s Cup decided to see minimalism as an option.
The perfectionist reevaluated his desires and accepted that Rising Sun might be too big, perhaps even regretting the sale of his previous 244-foot yacht Katana, which his friend Steve Jobs considered “just about perfect.” He sold Rising Sun to David Geffen after five years of using her, and went for the smaller 288-foot Musashi worth $130 million.
Still, the Rising Sun superyacht is in fact a perfect representative of the setting sun of an iconic designer’s final work, the rising of a billionaire’s humility, and a beautiful amalgamation of the two over something as simple as sipping coffee.
