OCEAN-GOING ESTATES : Luxury Reigns and Dollars Don’t Count for Owners of 2 Newport Harbor Yachts

Cruising along Newport Harbor in a 14-foot sailboat, a woman cranes her neck to gawk at a gleaming white yacht berthed in front of a luxury waterfront home. “What’s a boat like that cost? About $300,000?” she wonders aloud to her companion as the small sailboat skims by, dwarfed by the 127-foot, 200-ton vessel.

Try $10 million. And another $1 million a year for maintenance, insurance, fuel and crew salaries.

In the world of yachting, the P’zazz--owned by Robert Cohen and his wife, Beverly--is a mega-yacht. A yacht so big, so opulent, so grand that when you enter it, you feel as if you have stepped into an episode of “Life-styles of the Rich and Famous.” Into a world of plush Oriental carpets, silk-covered walls, gold leaf ceilings, polished woods and smooth, supple leathers. A world overseen by a staff of servants, including a cordon bleu chef and a full-time captain.

Orange County has roughly 60,000 boats registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles. The average boater owns a 16-footer and parks it in the driveway. The average boat in California costs $4,000. Only about 450 of the 734,000 boats registered in California are longer than 65 feet.

In Orange County, only a handful of privately owned boats measure more than 100 feet and qualify as mega-yachts, a term increasingly used in the boating community to describe the giant, multimillion-dollar vessels. A few years ago, there weren’t even that many.

“Ten years ago, there weren’t many boats over 70 or 75 feet out here,” says Newport Beach yacht broker Tom Corkett. But in the past three to five years, the county has seen “more and more big boats,” he says.

Among those with megabucks, the trend is toward mega-yachts, according to Jim Gilbert, editor of Showboats International, a Florida-based magazine that specializes in covering the world’s most luxurious and expensive yachts. “For big boats, it is boom town around the world,” Gilbert says. “No one keeps any sort of accurate documentation, but there are probably more boats under construction over 100 feet now than existed 10 years ago.”

The increase in mega-yachts is the result of a healthy economy and the willingness of buyers to spend big money, according to the marketing director of the Seattle company that built P’zazz, the $10-million showstopper that sailed into Newport Harbor this summer. At 127 feet, the boat is believed to be the county’s largest privately owned yacht.

For Robert and Beverly Cohen, the yacht is the culmination of a lifelong dream that began 37 years ago when the couple were newlyweds. Back then, the Cohens, like more typical California boaters, owned a 17-foot trailer boat. “We didn’t even have any furniture then, but we owned a boat,” Beverly Cohen recalls. Like most boat owners, the Cohens kept trading up as they kept moving up in the world. Over the years, they have owned a dozen different boats ranging in length from 17 to 72 feet.

P’zazz, which took three years to build, incorporates all the best of their previous boats, says Robert Cohen, co-owner of the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel. The new boat is berthed in a custom-built slip in front of the Cohens’ Bayshores home--the former residence of John Wayne.

By almost any standard, P’zazz, featured recently in a 13-page article in Showboats International, is first-rate, from its stylishly sleek hull to its 65-foot-tall upper deck, complete with eight-person spa, sauna, treadmill and exercise bike.

The boat, built by Delta Marine in Seattle, cost more than $6 million to build and--because mega-yachts increase in value--is estimated to be worth about $10 million today. The interior of the vessel was designed by Los Angeles-based Intra-Design, the firm that also did the interior of the Four Seasons and the Century Towers hotels. The boat’s French Art Deco interior looks like something out of the pages of Architectural Digest. When you step inside the vessel, you have to keep reminding yourself that you are on a boat, not inside an exquisitely decorated home.

The illusion begins as soon as you enter the granite-floored foyer, where a bronze sculpture stands balanced on its pedestal, recessed under spotlights. And the illusion continues into the main salon with its plush, hand-dyed, hand-tufted Oriental carpet and walls of elaborate wood veneers. The carpet and fabrics used on the boat each have a similar pattern taken from an antique applique of leaves. At one end of the room is a bar and an informal area with a game table that seats four. The table centerpiece is a bowl of delicate ostrich eggs, one of the many fragile items that have to be stowed when the boat is under way. “The crew has a chart so they know where to stow everything,” says Al Becker, the boat’s full-time captain. “Much of what you see sitting out has to be stowed; then, when we get where we are going, the crew sets everything up again. Otherwise, we’d get hit with 10- or 12-foot waves and you’d have trouble with these pretty things. What isn’t stowed is tied or epoxied down so it won’t go flying.”

In the center of the main salon is a shiny, floor-to-ceiling, stainless-steel fireplace that dominates the lavish room, which is done in blacks and grays with a touch of red. A bronze railing, covered with 24-karat gold leaf, marks the entry to the winding stairs, leading to the three staterooms below.

At the foot of the stairs is a circular, granite-floored foyer. Overhead is a gold-leaf ceiling and opening out from the foyer are two guest rooms and a master suite.

The walls in both guest rooms are covered in silk. One room is done all in black, the other in white. Each guest room has its own television and private bath.

The master suite, its walls covered in burl ash wood, features a built-in entertainment center and spacious sitting area. Above the king-size bed, framed by ash wood, is a rectangular piece of etched glass, which serves as a headboard and also as the wall, which separates bedroom from bathroom. In the bath is a built-in TV that can be viewed from the onyx hot tub. There is also a separate, full-size onyx shower, plus double sinks and two walk-in closets.

On the main level of the vessel, near the entry, a formal dining room features a six-person glass-top table and a built-in curio cabinet filled with art objects. A concealed, sliding door that opens at the push of a button leads from the dining room into the restaurant-quality galley staffed by chef Kurt Ryan, one of six full-time crew members.

Even the servants’ quarters on the vessel are roomy and luxurious. And the spotless engine room, sealed off by a heavy, soundproof door, is as large as a two-car garage.

On an extended cruise, the boat can accommodate six guests and six crew members. For short harbor cruises and parties, Becker says, 100 people can mingle comfortably. “It is really a floating city,” Becker says. “You’ve got a small crew running a mini-city, complete with its own electricity, water system and sewage system.”

The vessel holds 12,500 gallons of diesel fuel--which even at a quantity discount of 60 cents a gallon would cost $7,500 for a fill-up. Cruising range between fill-ups is 4,000 miles. The yacht carries an additional 300 gallons of gas, as fuel for the two or three smaller boats, which serve as tenders for the mother ship. The vessel has its own water maker and can produce 110 gallons of fresh water an hour--plenty to refill the 100-gallon hot tub in the master suite.

The Cohens, who say they plan to use the boat for “fun and laughs,” will make their first extended cruise in P’zazz in late December. “We’re going to Mexico,” says Robert Cohen. “Cabo San Lucas, Puerta Vallarta. And we’ll end up in the Galapagos Islands in March. My hero is Malcolm Forbes,” Cohen says. “He sends his boat to exotic places and then flies in to use it.”

With P’zazz’s full-time crew and licensed captain, that is exactly what the Cohens intend to do as they eventually work their way around the world in the vessel, Cohen says. “We wanted a boat that could make a world cruise and weather any condition,” he says. “This boat can.”

Across the harbor from P’zazz sits the county’s second-largest mega-yacht, the 123-foot Crystal, which is also intended for an around-the-world cruise. But while P’zazz was built for “fun and laughs,” Crystal, which carries a price tag of $6.5 million, was built with only one thing in mind--fishing.

The owner, Bobby Cornelius, a Newport Beach land developer, believes that the boat is the largest private sportfishing yacht in the world. Last year, shortly after Crystal was launched, Cornelius took the boat to Alaska, where he fished for three months. Next May, he plans to begin an around-the-world fishing cruise that he expects will last more than three years. “We’ll go from here to Hawaii, then the Christmas Islands and Tahiti. We’ll fish all those islands and then go on to American Samoa, Fiji and then south to Zealand,” Cornelius says. “I want to fish everywhere in the world that has big fish. That’s what this boat was built for.”

The boat will carry a full-time crew of eight, including a licensed captain.

Cornelius intends to fly back and forth between the boat and Orange County.

Although Crystal was built with fishing in mind, it was furnished for comfort and good living. The main salon is large enough to double as a dance floor and features a big-screen TV and baby grand piano. The boat has five separate staterooms, separate crew quarters, 10 bathrooms and a formal dining room that can seat 10.

The master stateroom has its own hot tub, complete with overhead chandelier, and there is another four-person hot tub on the bow. The boat’s built-in entertainment system includes seven televisions and two different movie channels to view videos.

The boat carries nearly twice as much fuel as P’zazz and has twice the cruising range. When at sea on extended fishing trips, Cornelius keeps in touch with his office through a sophisticated satellite communications system. Within the boat itself, guests and crew keep in touch via an internal switchboard and 26 telephones.

“When people first come aboard the boat, they are awed,” says Heather Landridge, Cornelius’ fiancee. “It is hard to take this all in at once.”

Locally, Cornelius and Landridge use the boat for harbor cruises and private parties, including a recent party for Landridge’s teen-age daughter and about 80 of her young friends.

Occasionally, when the boat is in the harbor and not being used, Cornelius charters it, a practice that is becoming increasingly popular among big boat owners, according to Jim Gilbert of Showboats International.

People who own luxury yachts are discovering that by chartering, they can often help cover the high expense of operating such a vessel, Gilbert says. One industry expert estimates that it costs about 10% of the value of a yacht just to maintain it on a yearly basis. Minimum maintenance on a 100-foot yacht would run about $300,000 a year, yacht broker Corkett says.

Part of that expense includes buying or renting a dock large enough to accommodate such a vessel. When Cornelius launched his boat a year ago, he had to buy a new house on Lido Isle in order to find a spot large enough to dock the Crystal, which was too big to fit underneath the bridge leading into Cornelius’ former Huntington Harbour home.

And, indeed, Corkett says that one of the biggest drawbacks to keeping mega-yachts in Orange County is the lack of places to put them. “About 99% of the (waterfront) houses here do not have that capacity,” he says.

As Capt. Harry Gage, Orange County harbor master, explains: “If you are tying a boat up in front of private property, the limiting factor (along the waterfront) would be the property line. You can’t extend beyond your property line.” The distance the slip can be built out into the channel is also limited, Gage says. “There are imaginary lines in the water that define the water area. Slips are limited by the pier head line. You can’t extend beyond that (imaginary) line. So the size of slips is limited.”

As for renting a 100-foot slip, the prospects are slim. There are only a few in the county, and they are already occupied. The 140-slip marina at the Balboa Bay Club, home to some of the biggest boats in the county, has only six 100-foot slips that rent for $13.50 a foot, but the marina is full and has a waiting list.

In Orange County, the larger the boat, the smaller your chances of finding a place to put it, according to Corkett, who has worked at Ardell Yacht & Ship Brokers in Newport Beach for 26 years. “We have one 150-foot slip here at Ardell’s,” he says. “But when we were selling a 179-foot boat--the largest Ardell has sold on the West Coast--it was too big to berth here. We had to take it to Los Angeles.”

But even more limiting than slip size is water depth in the harbor, Gage says. “The real constraint in Newport Beach is going to be the draft (the submerged portion) of the vessel,” he adds. Newport Harbor is 22 to 23 feet deep in the main channel, he says, but when you get outside that channel, much of the bay is only 10 to 14 feet deep.

Many mega-yachts have drafts greater than that. For instance, the palatial yacht owned by a member of the royal family in Saudi Arabia and featured in Showboats International is 134 feet long and has a draft of 14 feet, 6 inches. The yacht would go aground before it even got to the dock in most areas of Newport Harbor.

Even P’zazz, with a draft of 8 feet, sometimes sits on the bottom in its slip, according to Becker, who must plan his departures based on the tide charts.

Even when the tide is right, just getting out of the slip in a crowded harbor like Newport Beach can be difficult for a big boat, Becker says. “On the Fourth of July, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to back out of here it was so crowded.”

On the Waterfront appears each Saturday, covering boating life styles as well as ocean-related activities along the county’s 42-mile coastline. Send information about boating-related events to: On the Waterfront, Orange County Life, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626. Deadline is two weeks before publication. Story ideas are also welcome.