On Sunday 23rd July, 2017, Steve Jobs’ €100 million Super Yacht – Venus, was spotted in Brijuni National Park, Croatia.
The late and great Steve Jobs’ Super Yacht Venus, was recently spotted in Brijuni, Croatia. The Brijuni islands lie in the Northern part of the Adriatic and are a beautiful collection of fourteen smaller islands which make up a protected National Park.
Photo Credit: Davorin Stetner
The yacht Venus, rumoured to be worth between €100 – €120 million is now owned by his widow Laurene Powell Jobs. Venus was designed in collaboration with Philippe Starck and built in the Netherlands by the Feadship shipyard in Aalsmeer.
Like everything in Jobs’ life, the yacht build was shrouded in a veil of secrecy from its inception. He commissioned the yacht in 2008, not long after his first cancer diagnosis; he enlisted Philippe Starck to ‘help’ create his vision. Jobs’ Biography reads “to outfit the interior, he hired Philippe Starck, the French designer, who would come to Palo Alto to work on the plan”. In an interview with Vanity Fair in 2015, Starck doesn’t hide his resenting the fact that Jobs, even while close to death, didn’t credit Starck accordingly – “How could he still want to lie to serve his own glory? So powerful was his own ego, such was the distortion of reality within him that he was incapable of recognising the work of another person.” (source: Vanity Fair)
If you close your eyes and imagine any of the trademark Apple features, style and design – then put them on the water, you would have the Venus yacht – unmistakable, sleek, clean lines, a beauty of metal and glass; it may be a Super Yacht worth €100 mil, but it still has the minimalistic feel (I never thought I would use the words minimalist and Super Yacht in the same sentence).
The design and build was a five-year process, completed in 2012; so, unfortunately, Jobs never got to sail the seas on his nautical creation.
In his biography, Isaacson writes “As expected, the planned yacht was sleek and minimalist. The teak decks were perfectly flat and unblemished by any accoutrements. Like an Apple store, the cabin windows were large panes, almost floor to ceiling, and the main living area was designed to have walls of glass that were 40-feet long and 10-feet high.”
There have been very few details released of the interior, though one detail, which isn’t surprising, is that the control panel contains 27” iMac screens. Another of Jobs’ requirements was ‘silence’, an interior designed to allow everyone to enjoy each space, yet not impede on the other.
The true worth of the Venus yacht and scope of Jobs and Starck’s creativity and design will never be completely understood until perhaps the yacht is sold one day.
While it seems a shame that Jobs never got to enjoy the fruits of his labour, in the same breath, it seems somehow fitting that one of his last projects was as grand as the Venus, something for his family to enjoy, walking through the decks and the cabins, seeing Jobs’ influence everywhere. And, while the world of iMacs, iPads and iPhones is perhaps something we all take for granted these days; Venus is a yacht that cannot help but make us stop and take in her beauty and the genius that was Steve Jobs (and in this case, Philippe Starck of course).
Are you mad about everything nautical? Why not visit Total Croatia Sailing or check out their Facebook page for more stories like this.
Source credit: Vanity Fair, Wikipedia, Steve Jobs Biography, by Walter Isaacson.
