This Turtle-Shaped Yacht Might Be the Biggest Boat in the World

What will the world do with a 1,800 foot long, 2,000 foot wide yacht shaped like a sea turtle? That’s unclear, but it appears we’ll be getting one nevertheless.

Per a new report from CNN, Italian design house Pierpaolo Lazzarini has debuted plans for a gargantuan terayacht — which, for the uninitiated, is a name given to vessels bigger than super, mega and giga yachts — to the tune of $8 billion, with Saudi Arabia as the proposed home for the project.

The boat is set to be called Pangeos, named after Pangea — a supercontinent that incorporated almost all the landmasses on Earth, that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras — presumably in a nod to its size. In fact, Pangeos will be the largest floating structure ever built. One square kilometer of sea will need to be dredged and a circular dam erected to even accommodate the build.

“A full-on ‘floating city’ according to Lazzarini, the yacht will have space for hotels, shopping malls, parks and even ports for smaller ships and aircraft to get guests there in style,” Julia Buckley writes. Pangeos will even feature a real city layout, with blocks, a port and and a main square.

So why the turtle shape? That’s…also unclear, though the flippers will purportedly be capable of drawing energy from the drag and waves breaking against the ship.

As it stands now, construction is set to begin in 2033 and last somewhere around eight years. But, of course, assuming Lazzarrini comes up with that $8 billion between now and then. Currently, they’re relying on a crowdfunding initiative, where, according to CNN, you can buy anything from a virtual entrance ticket ($16) to a VIP apartment ($169) by way of NFT. And if you decide that want to buy a real one come time, you can apply that money towards your deposit (though, we’d venture to guess that even $169 isn’t going to make that much of a dent).

As Buckley so eloquently put it, “In a time of economic crisis, what could be more outré than a [tera]yacht?”

The jury’s still out on that one.