What do you expect? Philippe Stark is a french designer. The sentence "Form follows function" does not exist in the french language. The last realistic french designer / engineer was Mr. Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower in Paris .
Apparently a rendering has leaked of her showing that this is just a section of her. She will be a 3 mast dyna rig vessel. Looks good.
She was launched now although there is much to done yet. That is why I still do not know what to think about her.
To me, with the exception of the stern, she does not look like a sailing yacht. Her bow in particular is far too high.
I was looking at it today and one of the young guys at work was looking over my shoulder and ask what that ugly boat was...? I call no joy - It's not looking pretty Far
What do expect from an owner that has bought "A" huge submarine before, which is unable to dive and a french designer in between genius or madness (Just joking). Honestly, I am looking forward to her sailing performance. I am pretty sceptic about that.
She's going to be a motorsailer ... a motoryacht that is somewhat sail assisted... not a true sail yacht.
Those areal pictures confirm to me, that only a designer like Philippe Stark can be the brain behind that design. Even my absolutely least liked designers (RL) could not give birth to such an design . As the forward radar / lighting mast forestalls any type of standing rigging, it is obvious, that White Pearl will have a dyna-rig sail system. Looking as futuristic, as the hull and superstructure, the 3 mast dyna-rig will even fit to the overall design and may have the final "boat" looking not so weird after all. The propulsion system seems to be diesel-electric, concisting of 6 (pretty big) gensets of equal size. But to my knowledge, bulbous bows and sailboats do not go together very well. When a sailboat is heeling, going upwind or while tacking, because of the asymmetrical flow around the hull and the change in waterline length, the bulbous bow becomes counterproductive. So, the boat is most likely designed for upride sailing only (which can be programmed into the sailing computer of the dyna-rig sail system) or it will be a pure downwind motor sailer for sail assisted cruising. Looking forward to her first sailing pictures. She will definately see Maltese Falcon only from behind . But at least one more milestone in mega yacht design. Wheather good or bad, like beauty, may lie in the eyes of the beholder. Just my 2 (Euro) cents
I think dyna-rig is certain at this point. What sticks out for me is just how high the freeboard is, especially at the stern. The internal volume must be huge. From a design perspective, she lacks the cleanliness of the two all-Starck boats delivered thus far. Both A and Venus are incredibly clean and in terms of layout (obviously not engineering) they are actually rather simple which gives them a wonderful minimalist look. White pearl, by contrast, looks a mess. The windows/portholes are all over the place and that bow looks like something from a bulk carrier. Obviously we need to see her completed with all the scaffolding removed and the masts installed but thus far I am not impressed.
Are these masts for White Pearl? Magma Structures built three very large fancy free-standing composite masts.
Magma Structures has also built the Dyna Rig for Maltese Falcon and they are THE number one adress for such a project. So, most likely these "bananas" are made for White Pearl. I doubt, any other carbon specialist in Europe would (or even could) volunteer for such project at the moment.
A yachting publication has an article up on its website and will apparently have a full price in a laetr addition. The owner and designer are confirmed as speculated.