You can read the book if you are interested in the details. The main reason the authors posited their theory of migration by sea was that the mainstream theory which had people walking to America lacked any evidence to back it up. Had the Clovis people walked to America, there should be some trace of their presence in the form of spear points found in Alaska or Siberia, but there wasnt. Instead, the authors claim that the Clovis trail of artifacts leads back to the coast of Spain.
Critics of this theory say that there is no evidence of the boats that the Clovis people supposedly used to make their crossing. Of course there wouldnt be after all this time because the organic materials that made up the boats would long have disappeared.
But the main thing that interests me about this dispute is the inability of modern people to imagine the ability of earlier humans to build boats. It is also something that the authors accuse their critics of. In any case, there are other migrations that were made thousands of years ago, like the migration to Australia that left no evidence of boats although they could not have been made in any other way given that even at lowest sea levels there was water between their starting point and their destination.
Michael Collins, the author of the foreword to the book calls this inability to imagine that ancient people were as imaginative as contemporary humans paleoracism. I dont know that I would call that shortage of imagination racism, but it springs out of the same place that racism does, out of the inability to give others full credit for human abilities.
French artist Julien Berthier created this boat. According to him, "Love love is the permanent and mobile image of a wrecked ship that has become a functional and safe leisure object".
When stories are told about the early days of short and single-handed long distance ocean racing, the names of Chichester, Hasler and the French hero Eric Tabarly are the most easily remembered. Its often forgotten that only one Frenchman took part in the first Observer Singlehanded Transatlantic race - and it wasnt Tabarly.
Lacombes “Cap-Horn” was a compact weekend family cruiser of 21ft overall, built by Jouet, a well established boat building firm in Sartrouville, on the River Seine. It was a design that, though simple, was rather more sophisticated than the type of basic small cruising boat that was becoming popular in France in the 1950s, when the influential Glenans Sailing School began to turn out a few dozen enthusiastic young sailors every summer. 
The plywood Herbulot designs of the day, simple, compact, practical and inexpensive, were emblematic of French sailing in the 50s and early 60s. Just a year after the first OSTAR, however, Frances first all-GRP production cruising boat emerged from the Jouet factory, and Cap-Horns strong and lightweight cold moulded construction suddenly seemed old fashioned and labour intensive compared with the new high-tech material. 
Cap-Horn built by P. Jouet & Cie, designed J. J. Herbulot
The French designer, Philippe Starck is best known for his furniture and kitchen gadget designs, including his iconic lemon juicer. He is not, as far as I know, a naval architect, yet the most exciting and, to my mind, most beautiful of the worlds billionaire mega-yachts has its origin on Starcks drawing board. 
Apart from sheer stylish looks, the clean lines of the exterior answer another function – that of security. The lack of any external features such as rails, handholds, or openings makes it very difficult for pirates or other undesired visitors to board the ship. For the same reason, the helicopter pad on the bow is easily rendered unusable by extending a telescopic mast through the deck. Clamshell doors hide all the access points, including the garage for the 2 launches, extending harbour gangways and even the anchor cable fairleads. 
The yacht is variously said to have cost $200 to $300 million. Crew salaries, maintenance and running costs are unlikely to be less than another 5 to 10 million a year. So, its not enough to be very rich indeed - Wayne Rooney rich, for instance - to own this yacht. You need to be able to spend twice Waynes annual salary, every year, just to run it. Fortunately for Mr. Melnichenko, whose wealth is conservatively estimated at $2-3 billion, he can. 
Obviously the interior décor is super palatial. I wont even try to describe it. You can find more details in the Wall Street Journal video and on the sites to which I have linked below. But the accessory I really like, and which makes me warm greatly to the scarily rich Mr. Melnichenko, is the uncompromising design of the yachts twin 30 ft. motor-launch tenders. He could easily have bought a couple of off-the-shelf plastic speedboats, and in spite of the fact that each one of these beauties probably cost as much as a very nice house in Torremolinos, he clearly would have nothing that was not rare and spectacular for his yacht. This, for Mr Melnichenko was probably no more of an extravagance than my purchase of a pair of shiny bronze rowlocks, instead of perfectly serviceable plain galvanised, for my 10 ft rowing dinghy. 
