Late last year, venture capitalist Tom Perkins decided it was time to put his megayacht, The Maltese Falcon, up for sale. He won’t say how much he paid for it—reports range from $150 million to $300 million—but now he’s asking $178,606,500 (give or take) for the slightly used yacht, which the builder delivered to Perkins in June 2006. Why is he letting it go after just a couple of years? The fun was in the planning, not the sailing.

“My pleasure comes from solving all the technical problems,” he says. “The Falcon was a huge challenge and is now a huge success.”

Among owners of megayachts (ships measuring 80 feet and longer), Perkins’ attitude is the norm, not the exception. “Guys who build boats like that are kind of peculiar to begin with,” says Bryan Murphy, a broker for Yacht Solutions, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “Many times they do a project like that for the experience, and after it’s done they want to move on to a new one.” In fact, that is exactly the case with Perkins. He’s moving on to a miniature submarine now under construction by famed ocean engineer and inventor Graham Hawkes; once the Falcon is sold, Perkins plans to commission another yacht to haul the sub around with.

That would seem to imply a glut of megayachts on the market and a dearth of buyers willing to take Perkins’ seconds. But industry insiders say the opposite is true, at least for the megayacht segment of the luxury-boat market.

According to Alayna Gossan of National Liquidators, the world’s largest boat-liquidation company, with the U.S. on the edge of a recession, repossessions are up compared with this time last year—for the smaller, cheaper, under-80-foot vessels. “A lot of people would like to sell their yachts but can’t,” says Bill Sanderson, a broker for Camper & Nicholsons U.S.A. in Palm Beach, Florida.

That’s not the case for megayachts. The global economic boom of the last several years has brought more buyers into the market from more parts of the world, resulting in overwhelming demand for new boats. “There are no empty slots in the shipyards,” says Alev Karagulle, director of marketing and communications for Burgess Yachts, which handles chartering, brokerage, and building for yachts measuring more than 130 feet. “They are all full, up to 2012.”

In fact, a relatively strong global economy is even helping the weakened U.S. building market, according to Jill Bobrow, editor in chief of Showboat International, the magazine of megayachts. Each year, Showboat estimates the length of the line of the global orders for yachts 80 feet or longer placed bow-to-stern. In 2004, the line measured 14.7 miles; in 2007, it reached 17.9 miles. This year, the line is expected to hit 21.5 miles. “Some from Europe are [building] in the States because the dollar is so low—and they have money, money, money, and lots of it,” Bobrow says.