Lady’s Day for superyacht at Ocean Village Marina

At first glance, 59 metre Calixe looked like ‘just’ another superyacht in the conveyor belt of beauties that continue to grace the waters of Gibraltar’s Ocean Village. However, when Calixe cruised in to the marina in June, she was known to be a bit different for she is in fact owned by a woman. And, in the world of male-dominated mega-million superyachts, that’s a real rarity.

Calixe is the property of California newspaper publisher, Wendy McCaw. Her ex-husband, mobile mogul Craig McCaw, sold the remainder of his business McCaw Cellular to AT&T in 1994 for the tidy sum of 11.5 billion dollars – at the time the second largest merger in US history. Just a few years later, in 1997, the couple went through divorce and Wendy is said to have received 460 million dollars in the settlement – Calixe also became hers.

Wendy now joins a microscopic clique of female superyacht owners headed up by Elena Ambrosiadou, one of the world’s most successful hedge fund managers, who bought the iconic 88 metre Maltese Falcon in 2009. However, unlike Elena who charters her yacht from around 350,000 euros a week - “I work 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I doubt if I’ll be spending much time on her. This is an enterprise.” – Wendy only uses her yacht for personal trips, never for charter, and was seen departing Ocean Village not by sea, but on ship’s toy, the helicopter.

Built by Feadship and launched in 1986, Calixe is certainly more traditional than cutting-edge in interior and exterior design but turns heads due to her immaculate presentation and unique green-white paint job. She accommodates ten passengers and 13 crew members and has a sporty white-hulled speedboat and the green-white liveried chopper atop. Interestingly Wendy is widely known for donating millions of dollars in the 1990s to help return Keiko, the orca star of film Free Willy, to the wild.

The daily rate for a Calixe-sized berth at Ocean Village is £4 per metre. A 20% discount is available for annual bookings when paid in advance in full. Occupiers of Premier Berths will also receive an ‘Ocean Village Privilege Card’ offering crews concessions in certain stores, eateries, the Health Club and more to reward them for their loyalty.

For further information, visit gibraltarberths.com. To stay up to date with all activities at Ocean Village join facebook.com/OceanVillageGibraltarOFFICIAL or follow twitter.com/#!/OceanVillageGib.