by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
In August, it was docked off the Croatian shoreline. This past Easter, it was spotted heading east through the Panama Canal. Thursday, it was docked downtown in front of the Hyatt Regency.
Dozens of people watched as the Princess Mariana, a 240-foot yacht, sidled up to the riverwalk. As several white-clad sailor types lashed the huge boat to its moorings on the Northbank, questions from awe struck bystanders quickly arose.
“Who owns that boat?”
“How big is that thing?”
“Hey, how much did that cost?”
Though the crew members were tight-lipped about delivering any details for the curious passers-by, a thorough Internet search uncovered several pages of information, rumors and facts about the gigantic world traveling vessel. There are even Web sites maintained by devoted fans of the ship that report in when ever the ship is spotted.
According to some of the Princess Mariana-enthusiast Web sites, the yacht is belongs to Carlos Peralta, a Mexican telecommunications mogul who became a billionaire when the international telecom company Vodafone paid him $973 million for his share of Mexican cell phone network Iusacell. He is one of Mexico’s 12 or so billionaires, according to Forbes magazine.
The ship, named after Peralta’s wife, Mariana, is reportedly worth $87.8 million. It has been spotted all over the world over the past year and has been seen sailing through the Caribbean over the past few weeks.
Though the ship sails under a British Virgin Islands flag, the helicopter affixed the the rear of the boat is registered to a importing company in Texas, according to a message board posting on the Internet.
Besides being impressive to look at from the outside, one Internet posting from a supposed former crew member says the ship is just as impressive on the inside. They say the ship has a fountain that runs from one level of the ship to another and very high-tech security system. As quickly as it came, it was gone, leaving Thursday night.