In his first appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman,” presidential candidate Donald Trump talks about his purchase of a superyacht from the Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, one of the Middle East’s most notorious men at the time.
The yacht in questions is the Trump Princess. Built in 1980 and christened the The Nabila , the 282-foot megayacht, was worth the equivalent of more than $250 million today. She was originally built for Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and was featured in the James Bond movie “Never Say Never Again” as the ship of super-villain Maximillian Largo. Khashoggi needed to liquidate his assets and sold the yacht to the sultan of Brunei, who sold it to Trump in 1987 for just $29 million.
During Khashoggi’s ownership, it was one of the largest yachts in the world but is now ranked down at 65th and continues to fall down the rankings, due to the trend of larger and larger personal yachts being built. In fact the largest yacht as of 2016 is 180 metres so Trump Princess falls short of even half that size.
Trump sold it when he ran into financial problems in 1991 to Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal for $20 million.
The Yacht has a beam of 13.25 metres (43.5 ft), draft of 4.72 metres (15.5 ft) and fuel capacity of 515,000 litres (136,000 US gallons).
When it was delivered to Trump it had five decks, a disco, a cinema with seats for 12 and 2 double beds, 11 opulent suites, a helipad on top (its funnels sloped outward to avoid interference with the helicopters), a pool with a water jet on top in front of the heliport, 2 Riva tenders, a crew of 48, a top speed of 20 knots, and cruising speed of 17.5 knots. Propulsion was supplied by two 3,000 horsepower (2,200 kW) Nohab Polar engines.
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