(Bloomberg) — Venus, the yacht designed by the late Apple founder Steve Jobs with Philippe Starck, had a minor accident in Naples with Lady Moura, a luxury vessel owned by Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego.
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Salinas, who is vacationing in the Mediterranean off the coast of Italy, posted a video on X showing the Venus slowly drifting toward his yacht as his crew desperately screamed and whistled to avoid the collision.
“I would like to know what the captain and crew were doing that they didn’t see a yacht the size of mine in front of them,” Salinas wrote in a post shared on Wednesday.
He urged customers of his retail chain Grupo Elektra to buy Apple products to help Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, pay for the “inconvenience.”
“It takes a lot of polish to get the scratch out,” Elektra quickly replied to X, with a link to his online shop.
The minor incident, which occurred on July 22, was the result of a sudden change in wind speed near where both yachts were, according to a representative of the Venus’s owner. The person said Lady Moura threw out twice as much chain as Venus and it was Salinas’s vessel that rammed Venus. A longer chain gives a vessel more room to drift. Neither yacht pulled anchor, the person added.
The local coast guard in Italy confirmed that both vessels were anchored in the Mergellina district of Naples in late July when the incident occurred. However, the captains of both yachts chose not to alert the authorities, so no investigation was launched.
No member of the Powell Jobs family was on board at the time of the incident, the Venus representative added.
A spokesman for Salinas Pliego did not respond to a request for comment.
According to a 2014 interview with Starck, Jobs worked on the Venus design for years while he was already suffering from cancer.
– With support from Michael O’Boyle.
(Updated with comments from a Venus representative and the Coast Guard, as well as “no comment” from Salinas, beginning in the 6th paragraph.)
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