Gucci Family restores 214-foot yacht

Raised at the steps of the Gucci fashion house, Maurizio Gucci and his daughters, Allegra and Alessandra, became avid sailors. Their prized possession? The world’s largest wooden sailing boat which the family rescued and restored to its former glory.

Allegra Gucci’s first palpable memory was aboard her family’s sailboat, the 214-foot Creole. As she recalls growing up, the world’s largest wooden sailing yacht formed a playful cocoon for water fights, running along hundreds of feet of teak decks, swallow dives into the ocean, and, at peak performance, adrenaline rushes as the boat thundered at full sail in the Mediterranean.

Fun and games belie this superyacht’s stature. Creole is a head-turning behemoth with a crown of sails and an ink-black hull. Born in 1927, the boat is a work of genius from Charles E. Nicholson, the era’s greatest naval architect. “Creole is Nicholson’s masterpiece,” Gucci tells Robb Report in a rare interview, noting the boat has been in her family since her father purchased the then-dilapidated three-masted schooner in 1983, two years after she was born. – Full report