Steven Spielberg's 357ft yacht test immediately convinced billionaires to service yachts at one specific boatyard

Steven Spielberg may be known for blockbusters, but it was his yacht, Seven Seas, that ended up stealing the show at La Ciotat Shipyards.

It was supposed to be a routine superyacht refit, but it quickly turned into a a global showcase.

However, all eyes were on the infrastructure, not just the vessel.

What happened next turned a French shipyard into the new must-visit pit stop for the world’s billionaire boat owners.

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The perfect yacht for a stress test

There is a surprising similarity between filmmaking and building superyachts.

Movies are perfected in editing suites, while floating palaces get their polish in enormous refit hubs.

For Seven Seas, Spielberg’s 357-foot Oceanco-built yacht, that ‘editing room’ was La Ciotat in the south of France.

Valued at around $250 million and stretching longer than two Olympic swimming pools laid end to end, this is not a vessel you casually hoist out of the water.

That is exactly why Seven Seas became the debut vessel for Atlas, La Ciotat’s new megayacht platform designed for yachts over 80 metres.

The 109-metre giant, packed with seven guest suites, two pools, a cinema, and a helicopter landing area, effectively became a full-scale stress test for the yard’s latest investment.

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Atlas is no ordinary lift

Built over 30 months at a reported cost of $91 million, the system features a 100-meter-long shiplift powered by 20 chain-jack units, ten per side.

Each jack uses dual closed-loop chains for full redundancy, a tougher and more fail-safe setup than traditional wire-rope systems.

In simple terms, it is engineered for the kind of loads that make other facilities nervous.

Seeing Seven Seas rise from the water was described as almost effortless.

Despite the yacht’s 4,444 gross tonnage, the platform handled the haul-out smoothly before transferring the vessel inland for heavier works.

These days, the guest list reads like a billionaire roll call.

Jeff Bezos’ Koru, Sergey Brin’s Dragonfly, Mark Zuckerberg’s Launchpad, and Eric Schmidt’s Whisper have all used the facility.

Spielberg’s yacht came in for maintenance, but the real premiere was Atlas announcing itself as one of Europe’s most serious superyacht stages.

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