It looks like New Zealand yacht company Sensation Yachts is in some serious financial trouble. TVNZ reports that the Auckland-based company has to pay Russian investors more than $32 million over a deal gone bad. A $90 million contract was signed three years ago with the promise of five boats. The Russian investors paid $25 million in deposits but no boats were completed.

TVNZ goes on to reveal that Sensation's Australian boatyard in Newcastle is also floundering because they cannot afford to pay rent and keep workers. Both the Australian and New Zealand boatyards are facing increased pressure from creditors. Owner Ivan Erceg has been able to stave off creditors thus far paying just enough to keep the business afloat. Having to pay off the Russian contract could spell doom for this company which has produced some beautiful yachts including the 148-foot Maria Cha III shown above.

Luxury behemoth LVMH - Louis Vuitton, the world's leading luxury products group is expanding into the yacht business. The company is in talks to acquire Royal van Lent, a Dutch designer and builder of luxury custom mega-yachts sold under the Feadship brand. Like most of LVMH's brands, Royal van Lent's yachts target an ultra-exclusive clientele. The company specializes in yachts over 50 meters (164 feet) which sell for an average of $44 million each. Shown above is recent build, the Archimedes.

The news comes just days after luxury group Hermes announced their joint venture with the Monaco-based yacht maker Wally on what will doubtlessly be a new line of sleek and modern luxury yachts with Hermes appointments. Both of these announcements send a strong message that these brands believe the ultra high end of the luxury market is safe and sound in any economy.

This has got to be one of the stranger luxury craft plying the waters: Guilty, the 115-ft. yacht Greek billionaire Dakis Joannou commissioned from art world superstar Jeff Koons. Joannou, an industrialist who owns one of the world's finest collections of contemporary art, had Koons' design executed by Italian yacht builder Ivana Porfiri.

Though Koons' colorful scheme calls to mind the Pop Art paintings of the late Roy Liechtenstein, Joannou says the design is actually based on a WWI camouflage pattern. After the yacht's completion, Joannou came across a text painting entitled Guilty by British artist Sarah Morris, which he immediately purchased to decorate the yacht. The eye-popping craft which was recently spotted on its maiden voyage in Monaco.

[via Monaco Eye]

Perhaps summer water fun is getting boring -- just boating, waterskiing, and swimming -- and something with icy appeal you can climb up and slide off would do the trick. Reminiscent of a jump-castle on the water's surface Aviva's IceBerg brings out the adventurer in you. For $5,750 you can inflate it, place it and provide fun to a whole slew of friends and family for hours. (I know there are a bunch of bikini babes in the pictures -- these, sadly, are not included in the price...neither is an air pump but at least you can purchase that on the site.)

[via Luxury Launches]

When the time comes for you to move out of your home and into a facility, be it a nursing home, assisted living center, or just a retirement community, get ready to pay a huge rent check.

The estimated average annual cost of living in an assisted living facility starts above $30,000, not including the entry fee that could be over $100,000. Retirement communities that don't offer health care programs may have lower rent, but the waiting list can be long and the entry fees much steeper.

Some savvy seniors have put their savings into a much more lively retirement, like 89-year-old Beatrice Muller, who has spent the last nine years living on the luxury cruise ship RMS Queen Elizabeth 2. There are always physicians on the ship in case of a medical emergency, Muller gets all the food she can eat -- it's much better than nursing home cafeteria slop -- and she's seeing the world and meeting new people all the time. According to Muller, she pays about $7,000 a month, which makes this retirement cost about the same as, or even cheaper than, many high-end retirement communities.

The market is catching on, and now there are whole cruise ships dedicated to full-time residents. To purchase a condo for year-round residency on the Magellan will cost anywhere from $4 - $18 million, but fractional ownership (like time-shares) is available as well, starting under $200,000 for two-week ownership. This ship has 300 ports of call in 150 countries, and features luxury amenities like four fine dining restaurants, an observatory, tennis courts, swimming pools, and golf. Construction is due to be completed on this ship in mid-2010, but you can buy your condo now.

Pirates have attacked another luxury yacht. This time is was the Tiara, a 178-foot sailing sloop that first came to my attention in 2005 when the owner, Jonathan Leitersdorf listed his yacht and his Broadway loft with the same agent real estate agent. The yacht is a helicopter-carrying beauty designed by Dubois Naval Architects and launched by Alloy Yachts International. It is full of fine mahogany and 1930s-styled interiors and in 2005 was listed at $36 million. The yacht has since become a popular charter hosting the rich and famous including Giorgio Armani, Sean Combs and Jack Nicholson.

While off of southern Corsica in the Mediterranean, Tiara was attacked by four masked men with guns who pulled up in a speedboat. The pirates robbed the passengers and crew of more than $180,000 in cash from the yacht safe and from the nine guests who had chartered the yacht. The speedy pirates also took jewelry and artwork and within ten minutes quickly got back in their boat and disappeared. No one was hurt. Pirate attacks have occurred in the Philippines and off the coast off Somalia as we saw earlier this year but are rarer in the Mediterranean.

The Tiara charters for €180,000-190,000 per week, pictures from her charter listing are in the gallery below and show the beautiful wood interior that includes a master suite with a fireplace.

Finally, some new yacht designs not rendered in basic, boring, bright white. Setzer Design has created two new vessels for their Vision Line of mega-yacht designs. The one shown above is the Cerise, a 165-foot plumb bow done in bright red. The Cerise has four deck levels plus large holds and systems spaces as well as a crew lounge and cabins and walk-in refrigerator and freezer units. There are four guest cabins, one twin cabin and a master with a nearby office/library as well as a dedicated engineer's cabin. The yacht has a theater area with seating for 10 in the sky lounge, an oversized hot tub and several bar areas and lounges. The Cerise design cruises at 14 knots.

[via Superyacht Times]

Luxury yacht brokerage Edmiston has commissioned seven avant-garde marine designers to come up with a nautical-themed take on Land Rover's classic Range Rover. The entry shown here, by self-described "yacht design pioneer" Dickie Bannenberg, features wooden side panels and a tailgate that folds into a nautical-style wooden bench, complete with champagne holders, while the rear windshield converts into a sun visor to shade it. The winner of the design competition will be announced on Sept. 25th during the Monaco Yacht Show, one of the megayacht community's biggest annual events. Visitors to the show will be able to custom order a Range Rover in any of the seven designs, with a delivery time of three to six months and a price range of about $300,000 - $1.2 million.

[via Megayacht News]

Evian has launched a new, smaller bottle of water -- with kid-friendly graphics and a reminder to moms that a few laps around the playground do leave Junior rather parched. The 330 mL mini bottle was designed to fit neatly into a kid's lunchbox, a child's grip and the back to school shopping list. The six-pack of French Alps water has a suggested retail price of $5.99 and will arrive on shelves this month.

[Thanks Yogesh]

The avant-garde super-yacht designed by famed British architect Lord Norman Foster for UK fractional ownership firm YachtPlus is nearing completion and should be available next month. My colleague Deidre Woollard first reported on the luxurious project last year. The high-tech 132-ft. Foster-designed "Signature Series" craft is the first in YachtPlus' fleet, each of which will have eight owners at a share price of about $2 million each, bringing the total cost to about $16 million. Construction on the flagship steel-jacketed vessel is in its final phase at the state-of-the-art Rodriquez Cantieri Navali (RCN) shipyard in Italy. Aside from it's eye-popping design, the company claims Foster's yacht offers more deck space, interior comfort and glass surfaces than any equivalent craft of her size.

This summer, luxury charter service V1 Jets opened up its seaplane service from Manhattan to the Hamptons (formerly reserved for members) to anyone with the price of a ticket, and it's proved to be very popular with the gliteratti. The 40 minute trip on an 8-passenger Cessna, which costs $495 one-way, has been taken by the likes of models Adriana Lima and Petra Nemcova, actors Pierce Brosnan and Jeremy Piven, and mogul Barry Diller. V1 Jets was founded in 2003 by hedge fund manager Andrew Zarrow who envisioned a way to utilize the excessive amount of "dead legs" created by private aircraft returning empty after delivering clients to their destinations, saving money and resources in the process.

Just a follow-up on a story we've been following for a while. The lavish 269-foot yacht which once belonged to Saddam Hussein will be headed back to Iraq. Sail World reports that though the Cayman island firm Sudeley, which is part-owned by King Abdullah of Jordan, told a French commercial court in Nice that it is the legal owner, that claim was rejected for lack of evidence. They ruled that ownership should be given back to Iraq. Saddam Hussein had ordered the lavish yacht in 1981 but never took delivery of it. He was afraid that it would be bombed and so he left it in Jeddah Harbor in the hands of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family, who named it the Royal Yacht Al Yamamah (The Dove). The yacht has accommodations for 28 in one master cabin, nine double cabins and four twin cabins as well as room for 35 crew. Rumor has it that the yacht has a hospital, swimming pools, gold taps, and a mosque as well as a missile defense system and a mini-submarine. She was renamed the Ocean Breeze and last year Sudeley tried to sell it for $34.45 million through Burgess.

Riviera Radio reports that the yacht has now left Nice port and is on its way to Greece and that she may end up anchored in Basra harbor and turned into a museum.

Being the peak of summer it's also the peak of surfing season in most places, and for those who love the sport and just can't seem to get enough the answer might be to bring a surfboard into the house with you in the form of a coffee table. The "Endless Wave" is a table made of a real surfboard perched on top of a wave-shaped pedestal. It does, perhaps a little surprisingly, come across looking very classy and stylish. There are several color options available (or they can custom color one for you) and two different styles to choose from -- the Malibu and the Waikiki. $1800

Via Forbes

Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko's long-awaited yacht is getting some pricey decoration. The wildly distinctive yacht, known simply as "A" named after Melnichenko's wife Aleksandra, was designed by Philippe Starck. The Times Online reports that the $400 million megayacht recently motored to Norway to pick up three Monet paintings. It is believed that Melnichenko chose Norway to avoid EU import taxes.

The 390-foot ship was built by Blohm & Voss and features details including a glass roof looking up into one of the two swimming pools. It has six guest cabins but room for 42 staff members.

Check out more pictures of this incredible yacht at Monaco Eye.

The second "Pinot Lovers' Cruise" is scheduled for May 31 - June 12, 2009, and combines the wines of August West with Freeman Vineyard & Winery. The 12-day trip on Oceania Cruises' Insignia makes stops in 12 cities, starting in Rome and ending in Istanbul. Oceania only carries 650 passengers and is known for its relaxed, no-tie policy, and gourmet cuisine, overseen by Executive Chef Jacques Pepin. The cruise includes a private winemakers' dinner, wine tastings and discussions, tours of top Italian wine-estates and plenty of Pinot parties.

Freeman has been named as one of the Magnificent 30 "Hottest Pinots" by the Wine Spectator, while the San Francisco Chronicle recognized August West as one of its top 10 wineries of 2005. Both wineries have received multiple 90+ scores from Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast and the Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine.

Cruise prices range from $3,649 - $7,049 per person double, including free airfare from 20 major U.S. airports. Book by September 1 and receive prepaid gratuities, worth up to $300 per cabin.