Steve Jobs' Estate Pays to Free Impounded Superyacht

Steve Jobs' superyacht Venus was free to leave Amsterdam port Monday after the late Apple co-founder's estate paid a deposit to resolve a dispute with designer Philippe Starck, who had had the yacht impounded.

"The Venus is no longer impounded, we have found a solution," Gerard Moussault, a Hague-based lawyer for the Jobs estate, told AFP.

"A security deposit was paid into a bank account, but I cannot say for how much," Moussault said after French designer Starck last week asked Amsterdam bailiffs to seize the sleek 70-metre (230-foot) yacht.

The vessel, which reportedly cost over 100 million euros ($130 million) to build, was impounded after Starck said Jobs' estate still owed him three million euros for his contribution to its design.

Starck said he was to be paid a fixed sum of nine million euros, while lawyers for Jobs' estate said he was to be paid a percentage of the project's cost equal to six million euros.

The Dutch-built yacht, which was only unveiled in October -- just over a year after Jobs died -- is in Amsterdam harbor because of bad weather.

"The captain is waiting for better weather to set sail," Moussault said.

Starck's lawyer in the Netherlands, Roelant Klaassen, said on Friday that Jobs and Starck were "very close in the period that the design was made and the building proceeded.

"That's one of the reasons there was no formal agreement on the job," he said.

The yacht will reportedly be shipped by another ship to the United States, where Jobs' family, including widow Laurene Powell Jobs and their three children Reed, Erin and Eve, are to take charge of her.

The aluminium-hulled yacht was built by Royal De Vries shipbuilder's in Aalsmeer, just south of Amsterdam, with interiors designed by Starck.

The bridge features a control panel made up of an array of seven iMac computers.

Starck said last year that he was working on the yacht, which was mentioned in Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, who died on October 5, 2011. He said it was "sleek and minimalist", with teak decks.