Published: April 15, 2004
A SPEZIA, Italy - Over the course of many decades and countless
deprived tycoons, it has been one of humankind's most vexing
challenges: how to get, quickly and comfortably, from Portofino for
breakfast to Sardinia for lunch and then, should the whim strike,
St.-Tropez for dinner.
A fast car won't do; up to now, at least, Ferraris don't float.
A helicopter, perhaps?
"Then you have to drive to the helicopter pad," said Luca Bassani,
waving that horrid notion away. A traveler can be expected to endure
only so much inconvenience.
Besides, Mr. Bassani was on the deck of his own streamlined solution: a
118-foot-long water-jet-propelled yacht, tapered to the sharpness of a
knife's blade at the bow, that looks like the buoyant love child of a
Batmobile, a Concorde and a space shuttle.
It is designed to hit a speed of roughly 75 miles per hour and to sustain
that for jaunts between the gilded Mediterranean harbors of the
inaccurately christened jet set.
"People want more and more the possibility to move fast, to be in Ibiza
and St.-Tropez and the Costa Smeralda at the same time," said Mr.
Bassani, nailing a nearly universal yearning in this time-pressed age.
Mr. Bassani, for his part, wanted to satisfy that longing, so his
yacht-making company, Wally, built the WallyPower 118. On a recent
afternoon, it and he sat in a boatyard here, just a bit down the western
Italian coast from Portofino and Le Cinque Terre.
Not yet a year old, the boat was receiving fresh coats of paint, new
fiberglass floors and other grace notes. It is on the market, for a
bargain-basement price of about $25 million.
That sum, incredibly, doesn't even put it in the vicinity of the most
expensive yachts on the high-end seas.
According to yachting experts, the most opulent private boats, which
stretch well beyond 300 feet, are worth hundreds of millions. Regular
folks like Paul Allen, one of the founders of Microsoft, and the Sultan of
Brunei own them.
But the WallyPower provides an especially interesting window onto the
world of aquatic one-upmanship, in which yachting mavens aim for
vessels quirkier and cooler than anything that floated before.
Mr. Bassani built it on spec, which is unusual, and bet that a buyer would
forgive a somewhat cramped master bedroom and aggregate sleeping
quarters for only 12 people, including crew.
Anything much larger might have been slower, he said, and the
WallyPower is all about the wager that on the open ocean, as on the
open road, speed thrills.
It splits the difference between a lightning-quick motorboat with no room
for a pizza oven (which the WallyPower has) and an individually tailored
Titanic that can do a party of 500 people but just 20 miles per hour.
The yachting press has strained to find the right metaphors and
adjectives for Mr. Bassani's boat, which has been referred to as "origami
on steroids'' and a "cruise missile."
A recent article in the magazine Yachting described it as "a futuristic
craft that makes boys shout 'wow' and turns old men into boys who
whisper 'wow' right along with them."
Mr. Bassani, 47, is a native of Milan whose family made a fortune in
electric switches and circuit breakers.
Wally, which he started in 1994, is based in Monte Carlo, but its premier
boats are built in Italy, a country obsessed, like Mr. Bassani, with fast
vehicles and sleek design.
The WallyPower had distinguished company on Sunday. It sat in La
Spezia next to a larger vessel that apparently once belonged to the late
Gianni Agnelli, of Fiat fame and riches, and began its maritime life as a
tugboat.
"Agnelli was one of the first to start converting working boats into
yachts," said Monica Paolazzi, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bassani's
company, as she appraised it. "Now, everybody has one."
The WallyPower was covered by an enormous plastic tarp while it was
undergoing the renovations. Mr. Bassani parted the tarp like a curtain
and led a journalist to the underbelly of the boat, which was raised
slightly above a patch of pavement near the water's edge.
He then explained how aerodynamic design, water-jet propulsion and a
special polycarbonate material worked to make the WallyPower so fleet.
He apparently did not think it worth mentioning that the boat's three
5,600 horsepower engines chug down about 1,000 gallons of fuel an
hour at maximum cruising speed. He talked instead about applications of
military technology and sophisticated wind-tunnel tests.
That exegesis was at once utterly incomprehensible and very, very
exciting.
He climbed on deck, an expanse of teak planks, minimalist black
furniture, sharply angled walls and glass as heavily tinted as the windows
of a limousine bound for the Academy Awards.
Two new-generation flat-screen televisions in a living room near the
stern played a promotional video that featured wide-angle shots of the
boat slicing through the sea.
Other shots showed the way the boat's quasi-reflective surface can
make it seem gray one moment, orange the next. The soundtrack
included bars of music from James Bond movies.
The WallyPower went unsold last summer, after its debut in August, but
Mr. Bassani said he was not worried. He had just signed a contract, he
said to build a nearly identical boat for a buyer who wanted a few
modifications.
"People need time to digest all the innovation," he said. "Everyone is
saying, 'It's beautiful, it's beautiful, but we are not ready yet.' "
Soon, he predicted, they would be. The WallyPower would be waiting in
the waves.
The engines devour 1,000 gallons
of fuel an hour at top speed.
Luca Bassani's company built the
boat, which sleeps 12 people,
including crew, on spec. Anything
larger might have been slower, he
said.