Centibillionaire Bill Gates has been in the spotlight ever since he took Microsoft public, making him an instant millionaire at age 31. Since then, the billionaire businessman worth $128.5 billion has been a near constant on the top 10 richest people worldwide. The co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has lived a lavish life for more than half his life, and the one thing that was notably amiss was a superyacht. Then surfaced news of Gates commissioning a stunner worthy of his centibillionaire status, Feadship Project 821. Just as quickly came another round of rumors suggesting the Microsoft co-founder was selling the big boat (courtesy eSysman SuperYachts), that seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime asset.
It was accompanied by the sale of his $25 million shadow vessel Wayfinder. The perplexing element is that Gates left his first megayacht right in the middle of construction. The beauty, allegedly worth $640 million, is listed for sale, raising the question, why would the 68-year-old American businessman not go full steam ahead in acquiring a ship that’s clean, green, and setting a precedent of sailing sans emission in the yachting world?
Owning a super yacht is obviously an expensive hobby that costs approximately 10% of the initial value of the boat every year. Gates will need to splurge an annual cost of $60-$70 million along with an additional $2-$3 million for maintenance of his smaller boat, but that is pocket change for the philanthropist.
Moreover, it is a vessel touted to be the world’s first hydrogen fuel-cell megayacht. Project 821 sails on a zero-diesel approach to operate the yacht’s hotel load and amenities with emission-free power from green hydrogen. A boat measuring more than 71 meters guzzles over $2200 of fuel an hour. The benefit with owning a zero-emission ship is that this cost and the criticism that comes with it are thrown straight out of the window. Given Gates’s resilience to criticism, it’s difficult to imagine him giving up on the project due to fear of backlash.
Project 821 is in fact all about doing fun things, the right way and making an example of it. In comparison, Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos’s sailing yacht Koru, a wonder worth $500 million emits a whopping 7000 tons of CO2 annually. The cruising climate killer finds a match in the superyacht Rising Sun, a 454-footer owned by tycoon David Geffen. According to The New York Times, a 2021 analysis in the journal Sustainability revealed, the diesel fuel powering Mr. Geffen’s boat emits an estimated 16,320 tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent gases annually. It is almost 800 times what the average American generates in a year.
Bill Gates made the right choice with his eco-conscious Feadship beauty which strikes out environmental concerns along with financial for giving the pleasure craft up. The Gates family, in fact, have been known to enjoy luxury vessels and even spend a fortune in chartering them. Back in 2014, Bill Gates and his family chartered the Serene superyacht for an estimated $5 million per week. The family enjoyed a week together on the yacht just off the coast of Porto Cervo, Sardinia.
The father of three celebrated his 66th birthday by partying on the 351-feet, $200 million a week superyacht Lana with fellow centibillionaire Jeff Bezos. The investor was also spotted on the mammoth Koru yacht with girlfriend Paula Hurd for Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s glittering engagement party last year. Why, then, did he back out of a done deal that would have helped him realize his sea-faring dreams? One might guess that this mystery is as intriguing as the superyacht itself!