Wake · Issue No. 01 · Summer 2026

Koru

Jeff Bezos — strictly private, never chartered; as of mid-2026 deep in the South Pacific, anchored off Fiji's Yasawa Islands in June for his first wedding anniversary with Lauren Sánchez, shadow vessel Abeona in attendance.

The richest men of every age build the same thing: the biggest sailing machine anyone has ever seen. Jeff Bezos, a man who sells everything and explains nothing, commissioned his from Oceanco under the code Y721 and named her Koru — the Māori spiral of the unfurling fern frond, symbol of new beginnings. At 127 metres and 3,493 gross tonnes, with three masts and a navy-blue hull drawn by Dykstra, she is the largest true sailing yacht ever launched. Not sail-assisted, not a motor yacht in fancy dress. A schooner. The bill is put at $500 million, and nobody close to the project has ever bothered to argue it down.

The new beginning began with eggs. In early 2022, word leaked that Oceanco had asked Rotterdam to temporarily unbolt the centre span of the Koningshaven bridge — De Hef, the 1927 lift bridge that survived the Luftwaffe and became the city's industrial totem — because Koru's masts were too tall to pass beneath it on her way to sea. Rotterdam does not do deference. A Facebook event, "Throwing eggs at superyacht Jeff Bezos," drew thousands of committed attendees and some 13,000 more expressing interest; its organiser cheerfully admitted the joke had got out of hand. The city hesitated, the shipyard read the room, and the dismantling plan died. In August 2022 the hull slipped past De Hef bare-decked, masts stepped downstream, unpelted. The Dutch kept their bridge, Bezos kept his boat, and every builder in Holland quietly noted the new rule: the public now has opinions about your client's air draught.

Delivered in April 2023, Koru is run like a small navy: eighteen guests, forty crew, interiors by Mlinaric, Henry & Zervudachi — the firm that does old money for new — and, famously, a carved figurehead widely reported to bear a certain resemblance to Lauren Sánchez. Because the masts leave nowhere to land a helicopter, Bezos did what serious owners do and bought the helipad separately: Abeona, a 75-metre Damen support vessel delivered the same year, roughly 1,900 GT of hangar, tenders, toys and spare crew, trailing the mothership across oceans like a valet with the luggage.

She has since become the most photographed transom in the world. When Bezos and Sánchez married in Venice in June 2025, Koru was too big to anchor near the festivities — a detail the couple absorbed without visible grief, the yacht holding station offshore while the lagoon filled with the fleet of their guests. A year on, the programme tells you everything about how the ship is actually used: not a Mediterranean status lap but a genuine circumnavigator's itinerary, thousands of Pacific miles to Fiji's Yasawa Islands, where owner and yacht marked the first anniversary in June 2026 among manta rays and empty beaches, Abeona anchored a discreet distance away.

That is the paradox worth savouring. The man who industrialised impatience built, of all things, a sailing boat — the slowest, most romantic, most operationally bloody-minded object his money could buy. Rotterdam threatened him with eggs. History will remember the fern.

The record

• At 127m and 3,493 GT, Koru is the largest true sailing yacht ever built — a three-masted schooner, not a sail-assisted compromise.
• Rotterdam refused to dismantle its 1927 De Hef bridge for her exit; thousands pledged to egg the yacht, and Oceanco moved her out mast-less in August 2022 instead.
• The reported bill: $500 million for Koru, plus a 75m Damen support vessel, Abeona, carrying the helicopter her masts make impossible.
• Her carved figurehead was widely reported to resemble Lauren Sánchez — whom Bezos married in Venice in June 2025, with Koru too big to anchor near the venue.
• By June 2026 she had crossed the Pacific to Fiji's Yasawa Islands, where Bezos and Sánchez marked their first anniversary aboard.