96-foot Burger motoryacht Oriana
You may not recognize the name John Calley, but surely you know his work. The Hollywood mogul was at various times chief of Warner Brothers, United Artists and Sony Pictures, working behind the scenes on everything from “The Towering Inferno” and “A Clockwork Orange” to “Superman” and “Jerry Maguire.”
“When he was making ‘The Da Vinci Code’ movies, he started getting ill,” says Roy Sea, a sales broker with International Yacht Collection. “In his estate, he decided that all his boats and antique cars would go to a foundation that creates scholarships for underprivileged kids.”
Calley died in 2011, and the 96-foot Burger Oriana is currently owned by the John N. Calley Foundation. The asking price on the 1984 build is $1.25 million — and the sale’s proceeds will go toward scholarships.
“And the boat’s in great shape,” Sea says. “He was the third owner. He bought the boat from a charitable foundation, too, the Marine Resources Development Foundation in Key Largo. He kept it in Los Angeles and the Pacific Northwest. He used to be married to the actress Meg Tilly, and she’s from British Columbia, so the boat had a dock in Victoria and Vancouver.”
That’s where Oriana is currently lying, in Victoria. She has a pair of 800-horsepower Caterpillar 3412s that push her to a cruising speed of 14 knots and a top speed of 15 knots. When built, she was 91 feet; the 5-foot extension was done in 1986 at Bradford Marine, which transformed the original cockpit into an aft deck, extended the boat deck and installed cranes for larger tenders.
The specs, though, are not what most people ask about, Sea says. Instead, potential buyers always want to know if buying the yacht would count as a tax deduction.
“You’ve got to check with your accountant,” he says. “If he can make the case that you’re paying less for the boat than it’s worth, then you probably can [take the deduction], but it’s not something the foundation is going to give an opinion on.”
Learn more about Oriana at www.iyc.com.