Inside UK’s billionaires’ playground that’s packed with superyachts and is rivalling Monaco in glam stakes
A SEASIDE town in the UK is currently the playground for billionaires with its marina packed full of superyachts, putting the likes of Monaco in the shade.
An enormous 258ft luxury yacht has arrived in Falmouth making it the latest enviable boat currently docked in the Cornwall town.
The yacht, called Rocinante after Don Quixote’s horse, is owned by a games developer and managed to pretty much dwarf everything else tied up in the marina.
The enviable yacht was built in 2008 by the Lurssen shipyard in Germany and formerly known as TV and Madsummer before it was bought by the US billionaire Gabe Newell.
Rocinante is equipped with everything a billionaire would need: a beauty salon, sauna, elevator, satellite communications, on board gym, and a deck jacuzzi.
Newell, the president of the gaming company Valve, is the man behind the creation of the game Half-Life in 1998.
In 2021, Newell was said to have a net worth of £3.1billion.
It is not clear if Newell travelled with his yacht to Falmouth.
Moored next to Rocinante was the largest catamaran in the world ‘Hemisphere’, which was built by Pendennis shipyard.
However, Rocinante wasn’t the only superyacht in town.
Not far away was Game Changer, which is thought to be owned by the Hong Kong based billionaire heiress Karen Lo.
Lo is the heiress to the Vitasoy fortune, a Hong Kong-based beverage company set up in 1940 by Dr Lo Kwee-seong.
The £40million superyacht comes complete with a helicopter landing pad and was conducting sea trials as part of work being carried out at Pendennis shipyard.
Game Charger had started its life as a support vessel, allowing the owners of superyachts to carry more equipment but it was later adapted and upgraded to become a superyacht in its own right.
The Dutch-built vessel, which is 230ft long, is also fitted out with its own submarine and a custom dive centre.
If that wasn’t enough, Cornwall Live reports that six cruise ships have visited the town in the past five days.
Pendennis Shipyard emerged from a small boat builders into a global firm in just 30 years.
Pendennis is currently building Project Fox, a 35m yacht designed as a luxury exploration vessel. The vessel will be equipped with submersibles and launching cranes.
A spokesman said: “We previously built an explorer ice vessel called Steel, but Project Fox is much more contemporary.
“It’s an exciting project with new partners that’s helping us to enter a new pathway.”