Steve Jobs-Commissioned Yacht Free to Set Sail

A yacht commissioned by the late Steve Jobs has been "freed" after the Apple co-founder's family reached an agreement to set aside funds to pay the boat's designer Phillpe Starck a disputed fee for his services.

Starck's attorneys had last week after their client claimed Jobs's family owed him 3 million euros ($3.96 million) beyond what he had been paid for designing the craft dubbed Venus.

Now the Jobs family and Starck have reached a "tentative agreement" for payment of the disputed fee, the Mac Observer reported Wednesday. As a result, Venus is no longer under seizure by Dutch authorities.

Starck's attorney Gérard Moussault told the French daily Le Monde that Jobs's family had placed a security deposit of an unspecified amount in a bank account, allowing the yacht to be released.

Starck had reportedly hired a debt collection agency and got a legal order to keep the boat from leaving the Netherlands before the dispute was resolved. According to Bloomberg, the disagreement stemmed from an arrangement whereby Starck was to receive 6 percent of the yacht's construction costs, which were initially estimated at 150 million euros. Jobs's heirs, however, are arguing that Venus only cost 105 million euros to build, resulting in the 3 million euro shortfall in Starck's payment.

Jobs commissioned the luxury yacht prior to his death, and after years of work, . It appears to be controlled by a series of seven, 27-inch iMacs set up in the yacht's control room, or wheelhouse.

The ship itself is approximately 230 to 260 feet long and, like the design of Jobs's electronics, features a hull that's built entirely out of aluminum. A large pane of (reinforced) glass runs around the ship's side, starting at right around the midpoint of the vessel and wrapping around the boat's bow.

Venus was first described by Walter Isaacson, in his Oct. 2011 biography entitled, "Steve Jobs."

"As at an Apple store, the cabin windows were large panes, almost floor to ceiling, and the main living area was designed to have walls of glass that were forty feet long and ten feet high," the book said. "He had gotten the chief engineer of the Apple stores to design a special glass that was able to provide structural support."

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