With this eye-catchingly designed masterpiece, the French designer Phillipe Starck clearly set out to shock the superyacht traditionalists. Said to have cost more than £200 million, the build took more than five years.
She was built by the German firm Blohm and Voss, makers of the Bismark, for the Russian self-made billionaire, the 38-year-old banking, steel and fertilizer czar Andrey Melnichenko and his wife, Aleksandra, whose initial inspired the shortest of all boat names.
Standout features: Paparazzi- and bombproof windows 44 millimetres thick made of heat-reflecting, tinted glass.
What we also like: More battleship than superyacht, the axe or reverse bow of the vessel harks back to battleships of the first world war and is said to slice through rough seas reducing pitching movements. Inside A's vast garage two speedboats, each 11 metres long and designed by Starck to mimic the mother ship in appearance, are housed.
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