“Big John” Papanicolaou, the Greek businessman who rescued Aristotle Onassis's fabled yacht Christina (renamed Christina O), was a cigar-chomping, bear-like figure of a man with sharp-as-tacks intelligence matched only by his impatience. “I knew working for hint on this boat would be a challenge,” recounts Costas Carabelas, the Greek naval architect who took on the design and management of the 18-month rebuild, which began 25 years ago in 1999. “I just didn't appreciate how much.” Carabelas would suffer a heart attack because of the ordeal, but lives to tell the tale - here, for the first time. Papanicolaou, hereinafter Big John, died in 2010, aged just 60.
Christina was just as unique and rule-breaking as her first owner, who'd acquired the vessel half a century earlier. Shipping magnate Onassis had started out as a refugee in Buenos Aires and rose to become the richest man on the planet - and owner of the world's most famous luxury yacht. The 99-metre was designed by the brilliant, controversial German Caesar Pinnau to offer otherworldly levels of opulence.
One anecdote serves to showcase the yacht's significance. In 1959, Onassis invited aboard Sir Winston Churchill, opera singer Maria Callas (soon to become Onassis's mistress), John F Kennedy and Kennedy's wife, Jackie (later to become Onassis's wife). Upon his death 16 years later, he left the boat to Jackie and his daughter, Christina, providing for $500,000 in annual upkeep of the vessel. The two women fell out and the boat was gifted to the Greek state, then abandoned, submerged, at a Greek naval base off the coast near Piraeus - which is where Big John found her.
Despite her demise, Christinas legacy had lived on - among other ways, in the tans, sunglasses, espadrilles and similar accoutrements that set the trend for the superyacht lifestyle we now know. Alert to such shifts, Big John predicted a growth in the industry and the desire for bigger and bigger boats. “He'd say, ‘Forget about passenger, cargo or container ships; focus on yachts,”’ recalls Carabelas.
Rescuing Christina was an ambitious project - the “Rubik's Cube” that the rebuild came to represent didn't just result front Big John's force of personality and unending interventions
