Opinion

Going down with the ship

Grand Ambition

An Extraordinary Yacht,
the People Who Built It,
and the Millionaire Who Can’t Really Afford It

by G. Bruce Knecht

Simon & Schuster

Yacht. The word elicits images of tanned billionaries, clinking flutes of Cristal champagne, smiling models in G-strings and maybe a Greek shipping magnate or two — but there’s a dark side, even what’s been called a “yacht curse,” attached to these monster vessels.

Along with the constant upkeep, the soul-crushing taxes, the crew of people who depend on you and your boat for their livelihood and the unpredictability of the sea — there’s also the fact that almost everyone else in the world would like to see you fail, too.

There’s even a saying that goes along with first-time boat and yacht buyers: “The best two days of a boat owner’s life is the day he buys his first boat and the day he sells it.”

Still, how tough is it for someone who plunks down millions for what is ostensibly a silly toy?

Though he won’t likely be getting any sympathy points from any of the 99%, Doug Von Allmen, a multimillionaire private-equity investor, knows all too well the curse that is yacht ownership. His experience was so trying that the story of his prized Lady Linda, a $40 million, 187-foot yacht, and its construction is the subject of a new book “Grand Ambition” by Wall Street Journal senior writer G. Bruce Knecht.

Before losing substantial capital in the recession and then investing $100 million in a Ponzi scheme, Von Allmen envisioned Lady Linda, his fourth multimillion-dollar yacht, the “ultimate embodiment of his success.”

This entailed $6.8 million in rare wood paneling and bespoke furniture, $800,000 in marble and onyx floors and tabletops and many other over-the-top niceties.

Yet dreams would be a source for nightmares as hurdles, delays, and a financial disasters made Von Allmen “question whether he could actually afford to be the yacht’s owner.”

As the son of a milkman, Von Allmen, now 71, came from humble beginnings, a “very common” attribute in yacht owners, author Knecht tells The Post.

He was a sickly and frail child in the landlocked state of Kentucky. When his family moved to Miami, he dropped out of high school and took up various blue-collar jobs, including selling reconditioned tires, window washing and working in a box-making factory. After a near-death car accident, Von Allmen returned to high school and made the decision to become an accountant.

“Why an accountant?” his mother asked.

“Someone came to school last year and said that people who made the most money are lawyers, engineers and accountants. I am not good enough at English to be a lawyer, and I’m not good enough at math to be an engineer, so I’m going to be an accountant,” he replied.

That was Von Allmen in a nutshell: straight-shooting, reticent and unwavering when he had a goal in mind.

He graduated at the top of his class in business school and then, after a short stint at a midsized insurance company, began buying up businesses that he found in the directories at his local library. By 1980, he owned six.

But then the recession of the early ’80s hit, and he nearly lost everything. His worth fell to $200,000. His marriage dissolved. Von Allmen was severely depressed and would hardly leave the house, until he met Linda.

She was a few years younger than Von Allmen, a “spirited woman who was always quick to voice her thoughts,” Knecht writes. Von Allmen was head over heels.

He began buying businesses again. One big hit was a chain of sunglass stores that was purchased by Sunglass Hut for $120 million in 1995.

After that sale, he wanted to celebrate. He started with a 55-foot motor cruiser and then like all those with “footitis,” or the urge to buy boats with more and more square footage, he followed up with a 76-foot cruiser and then with a $12 million yacht.

A $12 million yacht? Too small.

In 2003, he rectified this problem in the most over-the-top way possible: He began construction on two yachts — one 157-foot $22 million “small” boat and a 197-foot $50 million German-made one called Linda Lou. Both yachts were delivered to him a month after his 65th birthday in 2006.

But those two yachts didn’t seem to cut it. Von Allmen wanted to make his name as having the best. So that same year, he commissioned a third yacht from American company Trinity Yachts.

His goal was to make it “the best-ever American yacht.”

For as long as mankind has sailed, the rich and powerful have engaged in a one-upmanship battle on the high seas.

Cleopatra made her first introduction to Marc Antony aboard a ship with purple linen sails; her forbearer Ptolemy, ancient Egypt’s ruler 200 years before Christ, launched a 400-foot craft that was powered by several hundred oarsmen.

TheVanderbilt family owned several boats throughout the generations, each bigger than the next. J.P. Morgan traded up three times in total, ending up with a 304-foot yacht with so much room for guests that there were 177 pillowcases on board.

Today, in Manhattan, Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich has docked his yacht, the $1.5 billion Eclipse, the largest private vessel in the world, at an absurd 533 feet. Even still, the title of “world’s largest,” might be short-lived. Construction is currently underway on a yacht for a Middle Eastern billionaire that is expected to top off at 590 feet.

Perhaps not in the same league as Abramovich, Von Allmen still wanted his to be the best yacht ever built on American soil.

“He wanted to disprove the conventional wisdom that America did not know how to build things anymore, as well as the long-held orthodoxy that domestically built yachts are necessarily inferior to those from Europe,” Knecht writes.

In 2006, with the help of designer Evan Marshall, he began to map out the structure with its large dark windows in swooping, majestic curves.

With 5,655 square feet of interior space and three levels in total, the ship boasted five guest bedrooms, a 50-foot main salon with a bar and a dining area, and a master suite with his and her bathrooms and a massive walk-in closet.

But the yacht’s crowning glory was the sky lounge on the uppermost deck. A grand piano would be at its center and the Art Deco furnishings gave the impression that it was “an elegant cocktail lounge.”

Von Allmen wanted the yacht to be covered in extensive wood paneling fashioned out of rare, and exceedingly expensive, burl wood. The furniture, he decided, would be handcrafted and created from four different species of trees. Von Allmen even commissioned a $15,000 17-panel, hand-painted mural of “The Chariot of Aurora” that would hang in his grand salon.

The floors and tabletops would only be constructed out of marble and onyx (“no filler stone,” he commanded) for $800,000; the carpets would add another $200,000. The master bed’s headboard, crafted out of etched glass, equaled the cost of a year at an Ivy League college.

ThEN, 2008. Lehman Brothers toppled, and the Dow Jones average fell over 500 points in one day. Suddenly, Von Allmen was trying to unload two yachts to continue construction of the Lady Linda.

He wasn’t alone. At the time, almost everyone was trying to purge — nearly 40% of the world’s largest yachts, those over 120 feet, were up for sale.

“Excess was now undesirable,” writes Knecht. “Giant yachts might even be seen as symbols of what had gone wrong.”

Perhaps because of all of this unease, Von Allmen became an easy victim. Around this time, Von Allmen met lawyer Scott Rothstein, who offered him a quick-and-easy money-making scheme involving “structured settlements,” which happens when legal settlements are sold for lump sums of cash. Von Allmen invested $100 million, expecting to make a $35 million return on his investment.

Boy, was he wrong. There were no profits because there were no settlements. It was all fabricated. Von Allmen had been hoodwinked into taking part in a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

Von Allmen acted quickly. He first sold his apartment at 25 Columbus Circle for $15.95 million in an all-cash deal ($3 million below the asking price) to a Russian oligarch. Then he decided to put both the $50 million Linda Lou and his dream boat, Lady Linda, up for sale, even while it was still being built.

To entice buyers, he added additions at the expense of others. In went a $9,000 waterproof door for diving equipment (though the Von Allmens were not divers, most people who wanted yachts were) and out went the grand piano and plans to add a $2 million boat garage structure to the deck. It was too late to add a helipad, Von Allmen lamented.

Von Allmen managed to bounce back a bit financially, but when the Lady Linda finally was delivered, there was no party thrown at his Florida home. “There was not a flicker of actual excitement,” Knecht writes.

Perhaps it was because he knew it wouldn’t be his forever. That symbol of how far he’d come from Kentucky instead has become an anchor around his neck.

“At this point, Doug doesn’t see himself as Lady Linda’s longtime owner,” Knecht says. “I think the building process kind of wore him out. He’s actively trying to sell it, but there aren’t many buyers for very large yachts just now.”