Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies

Visitor is enough to create a giant case of boat envy

One of the 200 largest American-owned yachts takes a rest at the St. Petersburg city marina.

ST. PETERSBURG - Got a spare $115,000 to rent a big boat to cruise the Caribbean for a week?

Consider the Azure Leisure, a 142-foot yacht with a crew of eight, Cuban mahogany interior and a fully stocked bar.

Since Monday, the yacht has been docked at the St. Petersburg Municipal Marina. It's the largest boat to tie up at the marina in more than 25 years, marina assistant Francis Mohan said.

Azure Leisure towers over the other boats at the marina. The crewhands, uniformly dressed in yellow polo shirts and khaki shorts, keep the white luxury yacht sparkly as sun.

"Looking at it at the dock is one thing," Mohan said. "Looking at it coming through the entrance is another. I called the supervisor and said, "Looks like I got a battleship."'

The pleasure craft appears to belong to Chicago equity investor Bryan Cressey. Cressey's firm, Thoma Cressey Equity Partners, has an investment in the Tampa company Global Imaging Systems Inc.

Yachts that spend winters in the Caribbean, as the Azure Leisure often does, typically stop off in the states for repairs during the slower months of January and February, said Diane Byrne, executive editor of Power & Motoryacht magazine. She was aboard the boat once.

The captain, Andrew Mercer, declined to comment on what he was doing in St. Petersburg beyond "just hanging." The ship is scheduled to depart Monday, after a week's stay that cost $956.29 at the marina.

Cressey is a board member of the International SeaKeepers Society, a nonprofit organization that equips yachts with sensors to monitor the ocean. Cressey was unavailable for comment. Kendra Davenport, a director of development and communications for the SeaKeepers, confirmed that Cressey owns the Azure Leisure, as the group's Web site says. He was in Chicago, not on the vessel, Davenport said.

The ship, listed by Power & Motoryacht magazine as one of the 200 largest American-owned yachts, has graced numerous magazine covers, said Mike Kelsey, president of Palmer Johnson, the Wisconsin company that built the yacht. It was also featured on a yachting TV show hosted by actor Robert Urich.

"She's a sweetheart," Kelsey said. "It was just a very successful marriage of design and function."

When the owner isn't using it, the yacht can be rented for $115,000, according to the Web site www.luxuryachts.net The site says the boat sails in the Caribbean in winter and the U.S. Great Lakes during the summer.

The 26-foot-wide boat, which can accommodate 10 passengers in its five staterooms, was built in 1997, Kelsey said.

Michael Kittredge, the founder of Yankee Candle Co., had already put down money on a 35-foot boat at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show in 1997. Then, the 142-footer caught his eye. Kittridge ended up buying the luxury yacht that day and naming it Paraffin, after the substance used to make candles.

"When we walked in there, it's like an English mansion," said Kittredge, who sold the boat in 2000 to its current owner. "It was an expensive day."

Byrne, the editor of Power & Motoryacht, remembers being impressed by the Cuban mahogany interior when she boarded the ship.

"Everything looks like it was basically peeled off one tree all around the room," Byrne said. "It's the kind of thing you would expect when you're spending millions of dollars to have a yacht."

Mercer, the boat's captain, did not say where the boat, which has its home port in George Town of the Cayman Islands, was headed next. But for now, it has become the talk of the marina.

"The biggest problem we have," Mohan said, "is people just walking down the sidewalk and wanting to look at it."

- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.