Barbados TravelAdvisor

Now, THAT'S a Gin Palace if ever I saw one-------------------or should that be "Vodka Palace !

"Apparently there was more than usual to redistribute during the construction of Abramovich's Eclipse, even though this was built by Blohm & Voss, Lürssen's competitor. "Blohm & Voss must have paid dearly for that order," Breman says. Carpet expert Treutlein agrees. "Abramovich is a really nice guy, but Blohm & Voss got themselves a questionable deal with the Eclipse," he says.

The Hamburg-based shipyard landed the contract six years ago. It agreed to build the yacht for €340 million ($485 million) and have it ready for the 2010 soccer World Cup in South Africa. When the yacht set sail from Hamburg last December, one year late, the total cost of building it was estimated at about €800 million ($1.2 billion).

Abramovich probably paid something between the two figures. The shipyard will have to write off the remainder as a loss. Nevertheless, the Russian billionaire managed to make a mockery of the old rule of thumb that a yacht costs €1 million a meter.

Peter Hülsemann knows the Eclipse very well. He was the head of furnishings at Blohm & Voss during the boat's construction, though he subsequently moved to Abramovich's yacht management company, Blue Ocean, which looks after and charters the billionaire's flotilla. Today Hülsemann has a senior position at the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau in Dresden, an industrial furniture company that once supplied all of communist East Germany with uniform fitted cabinets. Nowadays it creates complete room concepts in luxury materials for the corporate headquarters of the likes of energy utility E.on as well as penthouse apartments in Moscow -- and yachts.

But even Hülsemann is occasionally amazed by his clients' bizarre requests. "I wouldn't be surprised if someone ordered furniture covered in hummingbird tongues one day," he jests. He doesn't find the Eclipse especially attractive either. "It's really no more than a blown-up 60-meter yacht," he adds.

The ship is 163.5 meters (536 feet) long. It has nine decks, a surface area of some 8,000 square meters (80,000 square feet), dozens of rooms and salons, and a crew of 70. Maintenance alone is estimated to cost €20,000 a day. Abramovich wanted to own the world's longest yacht. A generous spa area, movie theater, and disco are obligatory features for such orders. And should the Russian businessman decide he wants to leave his yacht less conspicuously than by helicopter, he can always used the ship's own mini-submarine.

Record Eclipsed

When it was launched, Abramovich's boat was half a meter (1'8") longer than the previous record-holder. But even when he placed his order, he must have known that someone else would immediately commission an even longer yacht simply to outdo him. "The desire to own the largest yacht will always be a sort of competition among a handful of the super-rich," says designer Kinder. "It's something of a natural law."

Abramovich only held the record for a short while before he too was eclipsed. While the Eclipse was still under construction, the Lürssen shipyard began work on a 180-meter (590-foot) yacht, the Topaz, for an Arab sheikh. The yard has also been asked to build a 200-meter (656-foot) yacht.

Abramovich was obsessed with his boat, constantly tinkering with the plans and trying to at least improve the features and fittings. At one point he decided he wanted one of the two helipads to be raised and lowered. And instead of normal flatscreen TVs he wanted 3D monitors in all the rooms instead. The order got even more expensive when he insisted on having RainSky showers fitted, each of which has a shower head about the size of a car hood. Supplied by the German company Dornbracht, these heads cost a staggering €18,000 a piece -- though for that you can program the color of the illumination and have scents mixed into the water.."

This has been fitted with 20 of our digital satellite tv systems only recently.