The picturesque harbor at Portland, Maine hosts a number of luxury cruise ships in the fall months, but rarely does a privately owned vessel of a similar stature grace its waters. Thus when the world’s 10th largest yacht, David Geffen’s 453-foot long Rising Sun docked there recently, it caused quite a sensation. The five-story, 82-room yacht took up enough space for several smaller boats at the city’s Ocean Gateway International Marine Terminal. Originally commissioned by Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison from Germany's Lürssen shipyard in 2004, the yacht cost about $250 million to build. The Rising Sun features luxe accommodations for 12 people, in addition to 30 crew members, and features a gymnasium, spa, sauna, wine cellar, private cinema and basketball court that converts to a helipad.
Geffen and Ellison were originally co-owners of the yacht before Geffen took full control of it in 2010. It it is the largest yacht in the world owned by a U.S. citizen. It is not known whether Geffen was on board the yacht when it arrived in Maine, but here’s where a few other billionaires docked their yachts recently:
- Russian Billionaire Andrey Melnichenko brought the world’s “coolest” megayacht — a 390-foot, $400 million vessel designed by Philippe Starck and dubbed the A — to Auckland, New Zealand.
- Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich brought the 536-foot Eclipse, the second largest yacht in the world which cost around $800 million, to the southern Croatian island of Mljet.
- Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen arrived in Iceland aboard the 414-foot Octopus, the 13th largest yacht and the largest expedition yacht in the world.
