The World's Largest Wooden Yacht

When the celebrated tea clipper Cutty Sark slid into the water at Dumbarton in Scotland in 1869, onlookers couldn't believe the size of the ship. At just over 212ft long, with a beam of 30ft and a draft of 21ft, Cutty Sark was considered the wonder of the day.

Over the next 25 years the ship hauled cargos of tea from China to England and then wool from Australia to England at speeds that often surpassed those of the fastest steamships then afloat.

But imagine what the dour Scottish shipwrights who built the Cutty Sark would say if they saw the private yacht Dream Symphony now taking shape at the Dream Ship Victory yards in Turkey. This giant schooner, which will be the largest sailing yacht in the world when she is launched in 2013, is a staggering 462 ft long,

Dream Symphony is being constructed entirely of wood for her private owner. The hull and deck plans were drawn up by Dykstra & Partners and Ken Freivokh Design is handling the interior. The construction contract was signed last month with Dream Ship Victory (DSV), the Turkish boatbuilder established in 2005 to build classic sailing yachts made of traditional materials.

Dykstra and Freivokh have worked with DSV before. Their 213ft schooner Mikhail Vorontsov is currently in a Dutch yard undergoing final fitting out. The naval architects and designers also worked previously on the 289ft Maltese Falcon, which was the world’s largest sailing yacht for much of the first decade of this century.

The launch of Dream Symphony will downgrade the 305ft Eos, which was launched in 2006, to second place in the billionaires’ bragging race.

Work is due to begin on Dream Symphony early next year. Drawings released by the shipyard show a four-masted schooner with a long coach house and contrasting varnished woods.