Battle of the bling yachts: Infinity pools. Ice chambers full of real snow. Bond-style escape pods. Billionaires are building the biggest party palaces the world has ever seen

• Oligarch Andrey Melnichenko's new yacht - the world's largest sailing ship - launched in Germany this week
• The lavish vessel - twice as long as HMS Victory - is his second, after the huge Motor Yacht A
• Melnichenko’s newest creation is a symbol of new willingness among the mega-rich to splash their cash
• Mind-boggling levels of luxury - rooms bigger than houses, plunge pools, glass ceilings - are becoming the norm

By Tom Leonard In New York For The Daily Mail

Published: 17:58 EST, 23 September 2015 | Updated: 02:01 EST, 24 September 2015

His sinister-looking motor yacht was dubbed ‘the most loved and loathed ship on the sea’, the sort of vessel - sniped one critic - you’d expect to see if Darth Vader had a navy.

Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko’s spanking new sailing vessel - called simply A - which slipped out of its Kiel dockyard this week into the grey waters of the Baltic is more of the same, but on an even grander scale.

The world’s largest sailing boat, with a 300ft main mast, it is twice as long as HMS Victory. But it is arguably a victory only for monstrous bad taste and the obscene vanity of the world’s super-rich.

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Floating excess: Pictured is A - the world's new largest sailing boat, a floating pleasure palace which is twice as long as the HMS Victory

Enormous: The vessel, a plaything of Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko, was launched from the docks in Kiel, northern Germany earlier this week

At 468ft, it isn’t the biggest superyacht in the world, but under full sail it will no doubt look far more impressive and serious than the motor-driven gin palaces of Mr Melnichenko’s fellow ocean-going billionaires.

And creating a stir, to most of the men who buy these leviathans, is the point. Which is why Mr Melnichenko spent £260million having it built to an extraordinary specification by the avant garde French designer Phillippe Starck.

Battered but far from sunk by the recent global financial storm, superyachts are in demand again, back with a vengeance. Sales of the vessels - technically boats that are more than 24m (79ft) in length and boast a full-time crew - have bounced back.

And they’re bigger and even more luxurious than ever, as the world’s wealthiest regain their sea legs.

Yacht brokers say the boom has been caused by a healthier global economy, more realistic prices and a climate in which the super-rich are no longer wary about conspicuous consumption.

Superyacht sales have more than doubled in five years, up from 194 in 2010 to 412 at the end of last year. Some broker companies have been selling new yachts at the rate of one of a month, even in the traditional quiet season of summer.

The trend mirrors a doubling of the number of billionaires, with more than 1,700 in the world looking around for what to spend their riches on.

The other one: This is Melnichenko's second yacht, the 394ft Motor Yacht A, which has a crew of more than 35

Sleek: This so-called 'stealth yacht' leaves almost no wake as it glides through the water

Lavish: The boat, pictures illuminating the seas by night, has plush interiors and more than 24,000sq ft of interior space

The buyers are changing, however, brokers tell me. Mr Melnichenko excepted, the Russians are dwindling - anxious, industry insiders believe, to be less conspicuous now that their country has become a pariah state. Meanwhile, the Americans - particularly the West Coast techies from Silicon Valley - are back in a big way, and to a lesser extent so are the Europeans.

The Chinese are dipping their toes in the water, while brokers report they are even starting to do good business in Mexico and Indonesia.

The British are represented, with superyacht owners currently including retailer Sir Philip Green, the Barclay Brothers, James Dyson and property tycoon Christian Candy. U2 guitarist The Edge is also in the gang.

The yachts are also changing. Luxury has never been so refined: infinity pools, multi-million pound spas, cooling-off areas known as ‘snow rooms’ and state rooms bigger than many people’s homes are common.

And if a decade ago you couldn’t tell one apart from a glorified car ferry, now it will look more like a destroyer. Each year, the Monaco Yacht Show — the premier get-together for the multi-billion-pound superyacht industry — unveils ever-more radical designs.

At the same time, the vessels are getting larger — the current biggest, Abu Dhabi ruler Sheikh Khalifa’s £360 million Azzam, is a titanic 590ft long. But at least Azzam looks reasonably like a traditional boat.

From behind: Pictured is the rear of Motor Yacht A, which has compartments for smaller vessels to launch and return to the mothership

You can hardly say that of Mr Melnichenko’s £200million, 394ft motor yacht which looks more like a nuclear submarine.

Built for Mr Melnichenko and his wife, Aleksandra, a Serbian ex-model and pop singer, its interior was designed by Starck and British superyacht architect Martin Francis. It reportedly costs more than £12million a year to maintain.

Starck described it as a ‘stealth yacht’, with such an incredibly hydrodynamic shape that it leaves almost no wake even when it is moving at a speedy 25 knots (29mph).

Its ‘purity’, he added, reflects the fact that 43-year-old Melnichenko — who owns the £24 million Harewood Estate near Ascot, Berkshire - is a ‘young and brilliant mathematician’.

A mathematician protected on board by bomb-proof glass windows and an array of CCTV cameras, motion sensors and fingerprint entry systems (there is even rumoured to be a Bond villain-style escape pod).

The 24,000 sq ft interior space includes six guest suites, three swimming pools (one glass-bottomed and providing the ceiling of a disco) and a secret ‘nookie room’ hidden behind mirrored panels.

Happy owner: Pictured is Melnichenko with his Serbian model wife Aleksandra. He made his vast fortune in banking and coal

Mrs Melnichenko toned down some of the more bachelorish aspects of the decor after his marriage, but it still features furniture made with Baccarat fine crystal and crocodile skin, not to mention white stingray hides on the walls. Even the yacht’s three motor boats reportedly cost around $1 million each.

Few details are available yet about the interior of the new sailing yacht - described by Boat International magazine as ‘a monument to invention’ - but it is hardly going to be any less lavish.

It features the longest piece of curved glass ever made, 194 sq ft, which runs along one of the decks instead of railings. Heavily reinforced glass will also be used for an underwater observation pod.

The 54-man crew will be responsible, among other duties, for handling three sails that could cover a football field. The 50-ton masts were built by a British firm after years of research and testing.

One hopes they get the paint job right - Mr Melnichenko sued the owner of Dulux for £62million, claiming the paintwork on his motor yacht was flawed. The case is understood to have been settled. Mr Melnichenko, who made his fortune in banking and coal, may be an extreme example, but he epitomises one of the most noticeable trends in superyachts - billionaires letting their imagination run completely wild.

Conventional designs that look more like a scaled-down white cruise-liner are out now, says British yacht broker Chris Cecil-Wright, a 20-year veteran of the superyacht industry.

The competition: Pictured is the Serene, a more understated vessel on which Bill Gates holidays

iFloat: Pictured is Steve Jobs' minimalist floating creation, dubbed Venus. It is now used by his family

‘The drive is no longer just for straightforward ostentatiousness, but to be more considered in your approach. If you’ve got a billion tucked away, the only limits really are your imagination.’

Still, the Americans usually prefer less brash-looking yachts than the Russians and Arabs. (The sheikhs tend to have the biggest boats because they have huge entourages.)

And so the late Apple founder Steve Jobs’s £80 million yacht Venus - unveiled a year after he died in 2011, and now owned by his family - reflects a minimalism that everyone who admires his products will instantly recognise. Aside from aesthetics, there’s another reason why superyachts are looking increasingly sleek - the environment.

Owners are increasingly trying to make their fuel-guzzling beasts more energy-efficient.

Streamlining the hull may reduce the space inside, but the yacht cuts through the water more easily. Many boats boast solar panels or use diesel electric engines that use less fuel than traditional diesel ones.

But no one can really say they’re saving the planet in a super yacht, even a wind-powered one. Ultimately, nothing is allowed to get in the way of extreme self-indulgence.

Bling-off: Monaco port can be seen above as the 25th Monaco Yacht show got into full swing as hundreds of the vessels congregate

Rory Trahair, of Monaco yacht broker Edmiston, says: ‘Ten years ago, a 50 or 60-metre yacht would have been very unusual, but nowadays it is pretty average. Whether it reaches a limit of what’s regarded as yachting, we shall see.’

A helicopter pad used to be novel. Now it’s two, so your guests can arrive by chopper without yours having to take off to collect them. As for getting from deck to deck, most superyachts don’t weary passengers with stairs, but use lifts.

And where once a Jacuzzi was considered flash, now there has to be an infinity pool.And steam rooms where the glass walls go from clear to opaque at the touch of a button, 8ft-deep ice plunge pools and those freezing cold ‘snow rooms’, lined with faux rocks and real snowflakes in which you can roll around, Russian-style, after your sauna.

And if you really do overdo it on the high-tech weights machines, many yachts now boast their own mini-hospitals.

Some billionaires find they want so many ‘toys’ on board - speed boats, launches, giant water slides, submarines - that they need to house them in another boat following on behind.

My town: Prince Albert II of Monaco is pictured on board one of the throngs of vessels crowding his port for the annual display of excess

So why not have a fleet of boats? One superyacht still at the concept stage consists of a mother ship from which various smaller vessels - containing a garden, swimming pool, children’s quarters or guest suites - can be launched and motor off on their own. Nothing is impossible. The question remains, though: why do the mega-rich lavish such staggering amounts on their boats?

No one in the industry denies there’s an element of showing off involved. ‘You park your yacht in a bay and you immediately have status,’ says Mr Trahair.

‘It’s a fantastic way of doing business. Clients tell us all the time the yachts have paid back the investment ten times over in the deals that they struck on board.’

But it’s not just about the bottom line. As Chris Cecil-Wright says: ‘When everyone else is sweltering on the beach or in a noisy hotel, it’s a completely different world on a yacht. It’s addictive.’

And no one seems quite such an addict as Andrey Melnichenko.

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