super yachts and their owners

Who Owns Which Superyacht? (A Complete Guide)

Have you ever wondered who owns the most luxurious, extravagant, and expensive superyachts? Or how much these lavish vessels are worth? In this complete guide, we’ll explore who owns these magnificent vessels, what amenities they hold, and the cost of these incredible yachts.

We’ll also take a look at some of the most expensive superyachts in the world and the notable people behind them.

Get ready to explore the world of superyachts and the people who own them!

Table of Contents

Short Answer

The ownership of superyachts is generally private, so the exact answer to who owns which superyacht is not always publicly available.

However, there are some notable superyacht owners that are known.

For example, Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, owns the Rising Sun, which is the 11th largest superyacht in the world.

Other notable owners include Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Overview of Superyachts

The term superyacht refers to a large, expensive recreational boat that is typically owned by the worlds wealthy elite.

These vessels are designed for luxury cruising and typically range in size from 24 meters to over 150 meters, with some even larger.

Superyachts usually feature extensive amenities and creature comforts, such as swimming pools, outdoor bars, movie theaters, helipads, and spas.

Superyachts can range in price from $30 million to an astonishingly high $400 million.

Like most luxury items, the ownership of a superyacht is a status symbol for those who can afford it.

The list of superyacht owners reads like a whos who of billionaires, with names like Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The most expensive superyacht in the world is owned by the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

While some superyacht owners prefer to keep their vessels out of the public eye, others have made headlines with their extravagant amenities.

Some of the most famous superyachts feature swimming pools, private beaches, helicopter pads, on-board cinemas, and luxurious spas.

In conclusion, owning a superyacht is an exclusive status symbol for the world’s wealthy elite.

These vessels come with hefty price tags that can range from $30 million to over $400 million, and feature some of the most luxurious amenities imaginable.

Notable owners include the Emir of Qatar, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Who are the Owners of Superyachts?

From Hollywood celebrities to tech billionaires, superyacht owners come from all walks of life.

Many of the most well-known owners are billionaires, including Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Other notable owners include Hollywood stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp.

However, not all superyacht owners are wealthy.

Many are everyday people who have worked hard and saved up to purchase their dream vessel.

Other notable billionaire owners include Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, and former US President Donald Trump.

These luxurious vessels come with hefty price tags that can range from $30 million to over $400 million.

For many superyacht owners, their vessels serve as a status symbol of wealth and luxury.

Some owners prefer to keep their yachts out of the public eye, while others have made headlines with their extensive amenities – from swimming pools and helicopter pads to on-board cinemas and spas.

Many of these yachts are designed to the owner’s exact specifications, ensuring that each one is totally unique and reflects the owner’s individual tastes and personality.

Owning a superyacht is an exclusive club, reserved for those with the means and the desire to experience the ultimate in luxury.

Whether they are billionaires or everyday people, superyacht owners are all united in their love of the sea and their appreciation for the finer things in life.

The Most Expensive Superyacht in the World

When it comes to superyachts, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, certainly knows how to make a statement.

His luxury vessel, the 463-foot Al Mirqab, holds the title of the world’s most expensive superyacht.

Built in 2008 by German shipbuilder Peters Werft, this impressive yacht is complete with 10 luxurious cabins, a conference room, cinema, and all the amenities one would expect from a vessel of this magnitude.

In addition, the Al Mirqab features a helipad, swimming pool, and even an outdoor Jacuzzi.

With a price tag of over $400 million, the Al Mirqab is one of the most expensive yachts in the world.

In addition to the Emir of Qatar, there are several other notable owners of superyachts.

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos all own luxurious vessels.

Bezos yacht, the aptly named The Flying Fox, is one of the longest superyachts in the world at a staggering 414 feet in length.

The Flying Fox also comes with a host of amenities, such as a helipad, swimming pool, spa, and multiple outdoor entertaining areas.

Bezos also reportedly spent over $400 million on the vessel.

Other notable owners of superyachts include Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns the $200 million Kingdom 5KR, and Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who owns the $200 million Rising Sun.

There are also many lesser-known owners, such as hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin, who owns the $150 million Aviva, and investor Sir Philip Green, who owns the $100 million Lionheart.

No matter who owns them, superyachts are sure to turn heads.

With their impressive size, luxurious amenities, and hefty price tags, these vessels have become a symbol of wealth and prestige.

Whether its the Emir of Qatar or a lesser-known owner, the worlds superyacht owners are sure to make a statement.

Notable Superyacht Owners

When it comes to the wealthiest and most luxurious owners of superyachts, the list reads like a whos who of the worlds billionaires.

At the top of the list is the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who holds the distinction of owning the most expensive superyacht in the world.

Aside from the Emir, other notable owners include Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

All of these owners have made headlines with their extravagant vessels, which are typically priced between $30 million and $400 million.

The amenities that come with these vessels vary greatly from owner to owner, but they almost always include luxurious swimming pools, helicopter pads, on-board cinemas, and spas.

Some owners opt for more extravagant features, such as submarines, personal submarines, and even their own personal submarines! Other owners prefer to keep their vessels out of the public eye, but for those who prefer a more showy approach, they can certainly make a statement with a superyacht.

No matter who owns the vessel, it’s no surprise that these superyachts are a status symbol among the world’s wealthiest.

Whether you’re trying to impress your peers or just looking to enjoy a luxurious outing, owning a superyacht is the ultimate way to show off your wealth.

What Amenities are Included on Superyachts?

Owning a superyacht is a sign of wealth and prestige, and many of the worlds most prominent billionaires have their own vessels.

The most expensive superyacht in the world is owned by the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, while other notable owners include Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The cost of a superyacht can range from $30 million to over $400 million, but the price tag doesnt quite capture the sheer extravagance and amenities of these vessels.

Superyachts come with all the comforts of home, and then some.

Many owners will equip their vessels with swimming pools, helicopter pads, on-board cinemas, spas, and other luxury amenities.

The interior of a superyacht can be custom-designed to the owners specifications.

Some owners opt for modern, sleek designs, while others prefer a more traditional look.

Many of the most luxurious yachts feature marble floors, walk-in closets, and custom-made furniture.

Some vessels even come with a full-service gym, complete with exercise equipment and trained professionals.

Other amenities may include a library, casino, media room, and private bar.

When it comes to outdoor amenities, superyachts have some of the most impressive features in the world.

Many yachts come with outdoor entertainment areas, complete with full kitchens, dining rooms, and lounge areas.

Some owners even opt for hot tubs or jacuzzis for relaxing afternoons in the sun.

And, of course, there are the jet skis, water slides, and other exciting water activities that come with many of these vessels.

No matter what amenities a superyacht has, it is sure to be an experience like no other.

From the sleek interiors to the luxurious outdoor features, these vessels provide a unique, luxurious experience that is unrivaled on land.

Whether you’re looking for a relaxing escape or an exciting adventure, a superyacht is sure to provide.

How Much Do Superyachts Cost?

When it comes to superyachts, the sky is the limit when it comes to cost.

These luxury vessels come with hefty price tags that can range from anywhere between $30 million to over $400 million.

So, if youre in the market for a superyacht, youre looking at an investment that could easily break the bank.

The cost of a superyacht is driven by a variety of factors, including size, amenities, and customization.

Generally, the larger the yacht, the more expensive it will be.

Superyachts typically range in size from 100 feet to over 200 feet, and they can be as wide as 40 feet.

The bigger the yacht, the more luxurious features and amenities it will have.

Amenities also play a significant role in the cost of a superyacht.

While some owners prefer to keep their yachts out of the public eye, others have made headlines with their extensive amenities.

From swimming pools and helicopter pads to on-board cinemas and spas, the sky is the limit when it comes to customizing a superyacht.

The more amenities a superyacht has, the more expensive it will be.

Finally, customization is another major factor that will drive up the cost of a superyacht.

Many luxury vessels have custom-designed interiors that are tailored to the owners tastes.

From custom furniture and artwork to lighting and audio systems, the cost of a superyacht can quickly escalate depending on the level of customization.

In short, the cost of a superyacht can vary widely depending on its size, amenities, and customization.

While some may be able to get away with spending a few million dollars, others may end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars on their dream yacht.

No matter what your budget is, its important to do your research and find out exactly what youre getting for your money before signing on the dotted line.

Keeping Superyachts Out of the Public Eye

When it comes to owning a superyacht, some owners prefer to keep their vessels out of the public eye.

Understandably, these individuals are concerned with privacy and discretion, and therefore tend to take measures to ensure their yachts are not visible to outsiders.

For instance, some superyacht owners opt to keep their vessels in private marinas, away from the public areas of larger ports.

Additionally, some yacht owners may choose to hire security guards to patrol and protect their vessels while they are moored or sailing.

In addition to physical security, some superyacht owners also use technology to keep their vessels out of the public eye.

For example, a yacht owner may choose to install a satellite-based communications system that allows them to keep their vessel completely off-radar.

This system works by bouncing signals off satellites rather than transmitting them, making it virtually impossible for anyone to track the yachts movements.

Finally, some superyacht owners also choose to limit the number of people who have access to their vessels.

For instance, the owner may only allow family members and close friends to board the yacht.

Additionally, the owner may choose to employ a limited number of staff to help maintain the vessel and keep it running smoothly.

These individuals may be required to sign non-disclosure agreements to ensure they do not disclose any information about the yacht or its owner.

Overall, while some superyacht owners may choose to keep their vessels out of the public eye, there are still plenty of other ways to show off the opulence associated with owning a superyacht.

From swimming pools and helicopter pads to on-board cinemas and spas, there are many luxurious amenities that can make a superyacht the envy of any jet setter.

Final Thoughts

Superyachts are a symbol of luxury and status, and the list of yacht owners reads like a who’s who of billionaires.

From the Emir of Qatar’s world-record breaking $400 million yacht to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s vessel with a helicopter pad and on-board spa, the amenities of these luxury vessels are truly stunning.

With prices ranging from $30 million to over $400 million, owning a superyacht is an expensive endeavor.

Whether you’re looking to purchase one or just curious to learn more about the owners and their amenities, this guide will provide you with all the information you need to stay up to date with the superyacht scene.

James Frami

At the age of 15, he and four other friends from his neighborhood constructed their first boat. He has been sailing for almost 30 years and has a wealth of knowledge that he wants to share with others.

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10 of the most impressive superyachts owned by billionaires

From a sailing yacht owned by a russian billionaire industrialist to the luxury launch of the patek philippe ceo, here are the best billionaire-owned boats on the water….

Words: Jonathan Wells

There’s something about billionaires and big boats . Whether they’re superyachts or megayachts, men with money love to splash out on these sizeable sea-going giants. And that all began in 1954 — with the big dreams of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

Onassis, keen to keep his luxury lifestyle afloat when at sea, bought Canadian anti-submarine frigate HMCS Stormont after World War II. He spent millions turning it into an opulent super yacht, named it after his daughter — and the Christina O kicked off a trend among tycoons. To this day, the world’s richest men remain locked in an arms race to build the biggest, fastest, most impressive superyacht of all. Here are 10 of our favourites…

Eclipse, owned by Roman Abramovich

Built by: Blohm+Voss of Hamburg, with interiors and exteriors designed by Terence Disdale. Launched in 2009, it cost $500 million (the equivalent of £623 million today).

Owned by: Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, the owner of private investment company Millhouse LLC and owner of Chelsea Football Club. His current net worth is $17.4 billion.

Key features: 162.5 metres in length / 9 decks / Top speed of 22 knots / Two swimming pools / Disco hall / Mini submarine / 2 helicopter pads / 24 guest cabins

Sailing Yacht A, owned by Andrey Melnichenko

Built by: Nobiskrug, a shipyard on the Eider River in Germany. The original idea came from Jacques Garcia, with interiors designed by Philippe Starck and a reported price tag of over $400 million.

Owned by: Russian billionaire industrialist Andrey Melnichenko, the main beneficiary of both the fertiliser producing EuroChem Group and the coal energy company SUEK. Though his current net worth is $18.7 billion, Sailing Yacht A was seized in Trieste on 12 March 2022 due to the EU’s sanctions on Russian businessmen.

Key features: 119 metres in length / 8 decks / Top speed of 21 knots / Freestanding carbon-fibre rotating masts / Underwater observation pod / 14 guests

Symphony, owned by Bernard Arnault

Built by: Feadship, the fabled shipyard headquartered in Haarlem in The Netherlands. With an exterior designed by Tim Heywood, it reportedly cost around $150 million to construct.

Owned by: French billionaire businessman and art collector Bernard Arnault. Chairman and chief executive of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods company, his current net worth is $145.8 billion.

Key features: 101.5 metres in length / 6 decks / Top speed of 22 knots / 6-metre glass-bottom swimming pool / Outdoor cinema / Sundeck Jacuzzi / 8 guest cabins

Faith, owned by Michael Latifi

Built by: Similarly to Symphony above, also Feadship. With exteriors designed by Beaulieu-based RWD, and interiors by Chahan Design, it cost a reported $200 million to construct in 2017.

Owned by: Until recently, Canadian billionaire and part-owner of the Aston Martin Formula 1 Team , Lawrence Stroll. Recently sold to Michael Latifi, father of F1 star Nicholas , a fellow Canadian businessman with a net worth of just under $2 billion.

Key features: 97 metres in length / 9 guest cabins / Glass-bottom swimming pool — with bar / Bell 429 helicopter

Amevi, owned by Lakshmi Mittal

Built by: The Oceanco shipyard, also in The Netherlands. With exterior design by Nuvolari & Lenard and interior design by Alberto Pinto, it launched in 2007 (and cost around $125 million to construct).

Owned by: Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, chairman and CEO of Arcelor Mittal, the world’s largest steelmaking company. He owns 20% of Queen Park Rangers, and has a net worth of $18 billion.

Key features: 80 metres in length / 6 decks / Top speed of 18.5 knots / On-deck Jacuzzi / Helipad / Swimming Pool / Tender Garage / 8 guest cabins

Odessa II, owned by Len Blavatnik

Built by: Nobiskrug, the same German shipyard that built Sailing Yacht A . Both interior and exterior were created by Focus Yacht Design, and the yacht was launched in 2013 with a cost of $80 million.

Owned by: British businessman Sir Leonard Blavatnik. Founder of Access Industries — a multinational industrial group with current holdings in Warner Music Group, Spotify and the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat — he is worth $39.9 billion.

Key features: 74 metres in length / 6 guest cabins / Top speed of 18 knots / Intimate beach club / Baby grand piano / Private master cabhin terrace / Outdoor cinema

Nautilus, owned by Thierry Stern

Built by: Italian shipyard Perini Navi in 2014. With interiors by Rémi Tessier and exterior design by Philippe Briand, Nautilus was estimated to cost around $90 million to construct.

Owned by: Patek Philippe CEO Thierry Stern. Alongside his Gulstream G650 private jet, Nautilus — named for the famous sports watch — is his most costly mode of transport. His current net worth is $3 billion.

Key features: 73 metres in length / 7 guest cabins / Top speed of 16.5 knots / Dedicated wellness deck / 3.5 metre resistance pool / Underfloor heating / Jet Skis

Silver Angel, owned by Richard Caring

Built by: Luxury Italian boatbuilder Benetti. Launched in 2009, the yacht’s interior has been designed by Argent Design and her exterior styling is by Stefano Natucci.

Owned by: Richard Caring, British businessman and multi-millionaire (his wealth peaked at £1.05 billion, so he still makes the cut). Chairman of Caprice Holdings, he owns The Ivy restaurants.

Key features: 64.5 metres in length / Cruising speed of 15 knots / 7 guest cabins / Lalique decor / 5 decks / Oval Jacuzzi pool / Sun deck bar / Aft deck dining table

Lady Beatrice, owned by Frederick Barclay

Built by: Feadship and Royal Van Lent in 1993. Exteriors were created by De Voogt Naval Architects, with interiors by Bannenberg Designs. She cost the equivalent of £63 million to build.

Owned by: Sir David Barclay and his late brother Sir Frederick. The ‘Barclay Brothers’ had joint business pursuits including The Spectator , The Telegraph and delivery company Yodel. Current net worth: £7 billion.

Key features: 60 metres in length / 18 knots maximum speed / Monaco home port / Named for the brothers’ mother, Beatrice Cecelia Taylor / 8 guest cabins

Space, owned by Laurence Graff

Built by: Space was the first in Feadship’s F45 Vantage series , styled by Sinot Exclusive Yacht Design and launched in 2007. She cost a reported $25 million to construct.

Owned by: Laurence Graff, English jeweller and billionaire businessman. As the founder of Graff Diamonds, he has a global business presence and a current net worth of $6.26 billion.

Key features: 45 metres in length / Top speed of 16 knots / Al fresco dining area / Sun deck Jacuzzi / Breakfast bar / Swimming platform / Steam room

Want more yachts? Here’s the handcradfted, homegrown history of Princess…

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Sailing in Opulence: Exploring the World of Super Yachts and Their Magnate Owners

A super yacht is a luxury vessel that is typically defined as a professionally crewed sailing or motor yacht that is over 79 feet/24 m in length. These boats are owned by the world’s wealthiest individuals – Super yacht owners, and used as a floating mansions for vacations.

Super yachts are a symbol of opulence and wealth, and their owners tend to be business magnates, celebrities, and other high net worth individuals. The cost of a super yacht can range from tens of millions of dollars to over a billion dollars, depending on the size, features, and amenities of the boat.

Some of the most famous super yacht owners include Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who owns the Eclipse, the world’s second largest super yacht at 533 feet in length. The world’s largest super yacht belongs to Saudi Arabian prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, at a staggering 590 feet.

Other notable super yacht owners include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who owned the Octopus, a 414-foot/126 m yacht equipped with its own submarine and helicopter. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson is also the owner of the Necker Belle, a 105-foot/32 m catamaran.

In addition to the luxurious amenities on board, such as plush staterooms, multiple decks, hot tubs, and state-of-the-art entertainment systems, super yachts also come with a host of amenities for their crew, including a professional chef and staff to cater to the owner’s every need.

While owning a super yacht is a dream for many, it is a reality for only a select few. These lavish vessels are a symbol of success and extravagance, and their owners are often among the most influential and wealthy individuals in the world.

Many super yacht owners are successful business leaders and entrepreneurs who have made their fortune through a variety of industries. Roman Abramovich, for example, made his fortune in the oil and gas industry before branching out into other areas such as steel and mining. Paul Allen was a co-founder of Microsoft, and Richard Branson is the founder of the Virgin Group, which encompasses a wide range of businesses including air travel, telecommunications, and media.

Other super yacht owners include Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle; David Geffen, a media executive and co-founder of DreamWorks; and Philip Green, a British businessman who owns the Arcadia Group, a retail company that includes brands such as Topshop and Miss Selfridge.

In addition to using their super yachts for personal vacations and entertaining, some owners also use them to host business meetings and events. The privacy and luxury of a super yacht can make it a desirable location for conducting business, and the ability to travel to different locations can also be a benefit.

While the cost of owning a super yacht is prohibitively expensive for most people, these lavish vessels continue to be a symbol of success and a status symbol for their wealthy owners. Whether for personal pleasure or business purposes, super yachts are a coveted possession for only the most successful individuals.

One example of a super yacht owner is Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich . Abramovich is the owner of the Eclipse, the world’s second largest super yacht at 533 feet in length. The Eclipse was built by German yacht builder Blohm + Voss and was delivered to Abramovich in 2010.

The cost of the Eclipse is not publicly known, but it is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars range. In addition to its size and luxurious amenities, the Eclipse is also equipped with a missile defense system and a submarine for super yacht owners Abramovich’s personal use.

Abramovich made his fortune in the oil and gas industry in Russia before branching out into other ventures such as steel and mining. He is also the owner of the Chelsea Football Club in the English Premier League.

In addition to the Eclipse, Abramovich also owns a number of other yachts, including the Sussurro and the Luna. He is known for his love of yachting and is often seen vacationing on his super yachts in locations around the world.

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The luxury boats owned by some of the wealthiest people in tech, from a yacht so big it has its own support boat to superyachts with swimming pools and basketball courts

• Many billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson enjoy spending their time on luxurious yachts.
• The boats are decked out with amenities that many Americans can only dream of.
• Here are some of the billionaires in tech who own private yachts.

A regular Jane celebrating a personal renaissance after a long-term relationship might commemorate the new era with an ankle tattoo of a spiritual saying. When you're a billionaire, you could do it instead with a $500 million megayacht . 

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made waves in May riding around the roughly 127-meter "Koru," a Māori term that may signify a fresh start, with his reported fiancée Lauren Sanchez. (In 2019, Bezos finalized his divorce from MacKenzie Scott, whom he was married to for 25 years).

Beyond the private planes occupying the hangars of billionaires, yachts have come to symbolize the highly private sites of leisure and networking reserved for the ultra-wealthy .   

Tech billionaires like Bezos, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, and Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have all purchased their own mini vacation hubs at sea, decking their boats with amenities like gyms, spas, pools, nightclubs, and movie theaters.

For those wishing to experience life aboard these multi-million-dollar yachts, some are available to rent out for a few nights or weeks at a time. Late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen's yacht can be booked for $2.2 million per week or more, according Bloomberg .

Chartering yachts owned by billionaires like Alphabet cofounder Sergey Brin has previously cost customers anywhere from $773,000 a week to $1.2 million .

It remains to be seen how these vessels will fare against the apparent Orca uprising.  

Take a look at some of the yachts that have been owned by tech billionaires.

A mystery buyer bought a 414-foot superyacht that was once owned by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen for $278 million. Allen had the boat, which was named "Octopus," built in 2003 for $200 million. Since the tech billionaire's death in 2018, the boat had been listed for as much as $325 million.

Source:  SuperYacht Times

The wealthy can book the yacht for a weekly rate of $2.2 million or more, through the luxury company Camper & Nicholsons, Bloomberg reported last year.

Sources: Bloomberg; Insider . 

Amazon founder Bezos' $500 million megayacht, the roughly 127-meter "Koru," sparked attention in May for its artistic decor. A sculpture of a woman on the boat appeared to observers to be the likeness of Bezos' reported fiancée Sanchez, who was also seen that month on the yacht sporting a large ring.

Sources: Insider ; People .

Even before its completion, "Koru" drew the ire of Dutch people vowing to hurl eggs at the boat if it would require a historic bridge in Rotterdam to be taken apart to let it through. An egg crisis was averted however, as the company making the ship found a less-irksome alternative.

Source: Insider . 

Bezos has long been interested in yachts. In 2019, he was spotted aboard entertainment mogul David Geffen's superyacht.

Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison owns a 288-foot yacht named Musashi that he acquired in 2013. The yacht has several amenities, including an elevator, swimming pool, movie theater, and both an indoor and outdoor gym.

Source: Yacht Bible

Ellison has owned several superyachts over the years, including the Katana, the Ronin, and the Rising Sun.

Source: Forbes .

The Oracle cofounder also has a knack for competitive yacht racing, and helped to found and back a racing team, called Oracle Team USA, in 2000. The team has found success and won several prestigious titles over the years.

Source: Telegraph

Ellison previously owned a bigger, 454-foot yacht called Rising Sun, which was designed specifically for the CEO in 2005. That yacht reportedly has 82 rooms, a movie theater, a wine cellar, and a basketball court. However, Ellison sold off the Rising Sun to Geffen for a reported $300 million.

Source: Forbes , Boat International

Ellison's boat, Musashi, is a sister ship to the yacht of another billionaire, former Sears CEO Eddie Lampert. However, the yacht, named Fountainhead, is often mistaken for belonging to billionaire investor Mark Cuban. "The guy who owns the boat tells everyone that it's mine," Cuban told Page Six in 2016. "It's so crazy ... I don't even own a boat."

Source: Page Six

Ellison's yacht reportedly influenced the decision of late Apple CEO Steve Jobs to get a boat himself. However, Jobs never set foot on the boat — the yacht was commissioned in 2008, but wasn't completed until 2012, a year after his death.

Source: Business Insider

When Jobs died in 2011, his yacht — along with his $14.1 billion fortune — was inherited by his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and president of a social-impact nonprofit called the Emerson Collective. The 256-foot yacht is named Venus, and is worth $130 million.

Google's billionaire cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are known to splurge. An Insider feature in December documented some of the trappings of their luxury, including planes and yachts.

Source: Insider .

Page owned a yacht named Senses, a $45 million, 194-foot boat that he bought in 2011 from a New Zealand businessman. He's since sold the yacht, Insider reported in 2021, a vessel that had a private beach club with a Jacuzzi and sun beds, both indoor and outdoor dining areas, and a helicopter pad. It's unclear what other sea vessels he owns, though Insider has previously reported he might have another yacht.

Sources: Boat International; Insider . 

Brin meanwhile owns a number of yachts and vessels including the 73-meter Dragonfly, and the 40-meter Butterfly, Insider reported in January.

Dragonfly, the $80 million boat that has a movie-theater, shares a name with Google's once-secret project to launch a censored search engine in China. Google said in 2019 it had officially terminated the project.

Source: Insider , Forbes .

The former Google CEO picked up the Alfa Nero yacht for nearly $68 million in an auction in June, according to a Bloomberg report. The yacht had apparently been left amid Russia's war in Ukraine, according to the report.

Source: Bloomberg .

For Skype cofounder Niklas Zennstrom, his interest in yachts skews toward racing and competitive sailing. Zennstrom has gone through a succession of boats all named Ran.

Source: CNN

The Ran VII yacht is among the most advanced of Zennstrom's boats. The racing yacht uses electrical power, which Zennstrom has said makes it "lighter, less drag, quieter, and most importantly it is environmentally friendly."

The 40-foot yacht has been meant to compete in regattas through the racing team owned by Zennstrom and his wife, Catherine. The Ran racing team launched in 2008, and has won some prestigious regattas.

Barry Diller, chairman of digital media company IAC, co-owns a $70 million yacht with his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.

The sailing yacht, named Eos, is 350 feet long with six bedrooms. The power couple has hosted many celebrities over the years — a few that have been spotted aboard Eos include model Karlie Kloss, actor Bradley Cooper, journalist Anderson Cooper, and singer Harry Styles.

Source: W Magazine

For Jim Clark, the cofounder of Netscape, one yacht hasn't been enough. Clark has owned boats for more than 30 years, and in 2012, he put up two of his sailing yachts for sale.

Clark listed the boats for a combined $113 million: the 136-foot Hanuman for $18 million, and the 295-foot Athena for $95 million. However, Clark has yet to offload Athena. Clark also previously owned a 155-foot yacht named Hyperion, and currently also owns a sloop called Hanuman.

Source: Boat International , Forbes

Charles Simonyi worked at Microsoft until 2002, and oversaw the creation of Microsoft Office software. A few years before he left, Simonyi decided to purchase a yacht. He told the designer that wanted his yacht to be "home away from [his] home in Seattle."

Source: Boat International

The product of that conversation in 1999 is Simonyi's yacht named Skat, meaning "treasure" in Danish. The yacht measures 233 feet long, and is unique with its nontraditional design and gray color. Skat features a matching gray helicopter, a gym, and motorcycles.

Source: Yacht Charter Fleet

Opulent British billionaire Richard Branson owned a yacht until he sold it in September 2018. The 105-foot catamaran sold for $3 million, significantly lower than the $9.6 million price Branson listed the boat for in 2014.

Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, bought the boat in 2009. He named it Necker Belle, a nod to his private Caribbean island, Necker Island.

Additional reporting by Paige Leskin.

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Each of the superyachts in our database has been broken down to give you the best insight into the incredible specifications and luxury features that these vessels have to offer. 

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The World’s Most Expensive Superyachts And Their Owners

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]The World’s Most Expensive Superyachts And Their Owners. The top 10 list of the world’s most expensive superyachts and the names of the billionaires who own them.

Valued at US$1 billion,  Eclipse  owned by Russian businessman Roman Abramovich tops the Wealth-X list. The 536-foot-long yacht was launched in 2010 – and until last year had the distinction of being the world’s longest superyacht.

Landing in third spot on the Wealth-X list is Topaz, the 482-foot-long yacht valued at US$520 million and owned by Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is another member of the Abu Dhabi royal family. Launched in 2012,  Topaz  was built in the same shipyard as Azzam in Bremen, Germany by Lürssen Yachts.

Here are the first five most expensive yachts in the world and their owners:

The top 10 list:

10 Luxury Superyachts Owned by Famous People

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Written by Maria Korotaeva

Have you ever wondered who owned the most impressive superyachts in the world? Very popular in the world of celebrities and famous people, superyachts are seen as a “must-do” and “must-have”. Here are the 10 impressive luxury mega and super yachts owned by well-known people around the globe.

Musashi – Larry Ellison

The list starts with mega yacht MUSASHI and her owner Larry Ellison. Ellison is the owner of American software company Oracle and is one of the richest people in the world, as well as a real yacht enthusiast. His yacht Musashi is a breathtaking megayacht launched in 2011 by Feadship . This 88m opulent vessel was designed by De Voogt Naval Architects . Sinot Yacht design took care of the stunning interior decor of Musashi. Her name was taken from a famous Japanese Samurai, which stands for “warrior”.

Musashi. Photo credit @christo303

Lary Ellison is the previous owner of another military style mega yacht – the 138m mega yacht RISING SUN, which was built in 2004 by Lurssen.

Symphony – Bernard Arnault

Bernard Arnault is the lucky owner of the 101m mega yacht SYMPHONY . A well-known person in the world of luxury goods, Arnault has been the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of LVMH and the Chairman of Christian Dior S.A. for a long time. With an excellent pedigree, Symphony is a breathtaking vessel built by Feadship in 2015. Her striking exterior is by renowned Tim Heywood , while naval architecture is by Feadship De Voogt Naval Architects.

Superyacht Symphony. Photo credit Feadship

He previously owned 70m superyacht AMADEUS , which was commissioned in 2016 but her asking price has not been disclosed until now.

Octopus – Paul Allen

Paul Allen is the co-founder of Microsoft and is another bespoke yacht owner. His motor yachts  OCTOPUS , TATOOSH and MEDUSE are some of the largest and most recognisable luxury yachts in the world. Famous for taking parts in many rescue operations, Octopus is equipped with two helipads, a submarine and tenders. This huge Lurssen explorer superyacht also provides a wide range of lavish facilities and amenities, including a basketball court, swimming pool, Jacuzzis and a movie theatre. Octopus accommodates 26 guests, assisted by a crew of 57.

Octopus. Photo credit Mark O’Connell

Venus – Steve Jobs’s Family

Motor yacht VENUS was built by Feadship for Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Inc. Steve Jobs played a very important role in designing this stylish 78m vessel in collaboration with bespoke yacht designer Philippe Starck . This all-aluminium custom yacht was named after the Roman goddess. Venus now belongs to Steve Job’s family.

Superyacht Venus. photo via @rocabella_yachts

Seven Seas – Steve Spielberg

Superyacht  SEVEN SEAS  represents a showpiece of Oceanco excellence. She is owned by legendary Hollywood director Steven Spielberg. Bespoke Italian designers Nuvolari Lenard worked on the design of the yacht. At 86m Seven Seas features large interior living spaces. Her outstanding feature is the infinity swimming pool on the aft deck, which can be transformed into a helipad or an entertaining area – amazing! Who wouldn’t want to go on a luxury holiday aboard Steven Spielberg’s luxury yacht?

Seven Seas. Photo credit Julien Hubert

Eclipse – Roman Abramovich

The second largest superyacht in the world is owned by Roman Abramovich, Russian billionaire businessman, investor and the owner of Chelsea Football Club. The 162.5m ECLIPSE was launched in 2009 as the world’s largest superyachts. However, in 2013 AZZAM had taken the title of the largest yacht in the world with her imposing 180m LOA. Eclipse’s exterior design is a work of Terence Disdale . Eclipse is believed to have a value of $400 million. Apart from her incredible luxury features onboard, such as two helipads, two large swimming pools and a cinema, Eclipse also has an “anti-paparazzi” photo-protection system.

M/Y Eclipse anchored in the waters of the Caribbean, Photo credit Chip Methvin

A list of Abramovich’formerrs yachts includes 115m PELORUS , 112m LE GRAND BLEU , 85m ECSTASEA and 115m LUNA .

Amphitrite – JK Rowling

In 2016, Harry Potter author JK Rowling bought the breathtaking 47.6-metre superyacht AMPHITRITE (ex. Vajoliroja). The legendary luxury vessel was previously owned by another famous person, Johny Depp. Amphitrite was designed by Taka Yachts and built by Turquoise Yachts (formerly Proteksan Turquoise) in Anatolia, Turkey . Amphitrite boasts stunning interior design by Redman Whiteley Dixon . It has been reported that JK Rowling put the yacht for sale again at an asking price of €17,800,000.

Amphitrite (ex. Vajoliroja). Photo credit @stamp2k1

Main – Giorgio Armani

Imposing motor yacht MAIN is owned by the fashion guru Giorgio Armani. His magnificent 65m luxury vessel was designed by Codecasa , who took into account all the requirements of Giorgio Armani. Main features a notable dark green painted hull made os steel and aluminium superstructure. Armani trusted Ortelli Architetti on designing the interior styling. At 65m, Main boasts large interior spaces and can accommodate 14 guests.

Main. Photo credit @mueckenpeter

Dubai – Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum

Mega yacht DUBAI is currently the third largest superyacht in the world. Her owner is not a celebrity, nor an actor: Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum is the ruler of the Emirate of Dubai . The magnificent 163-metre Dubai can carry a party of 115, including her crew of 88. Dubai was designed by Andrew Winch and built by the Emirati shipbuilder Platinum Yachts . This mega yacht features a huge amount of luxury amenities, including a swimming pool, a helicopter pad, cinema and a large gymnasium.

Mega Yacht Dubai. Photo credit Ade Owens

Privacy – Tiger Woods

The golf elite and thousands of fans of Tiger Woods surely know the meaning behind his superyacht’s name. If you were one of the most popular men in the universe, stalked by paparazzi and fans, you would love privacy too. Motor yacht PRIVACY was commissioned to Tiger Woods in 2004 for $20 million. She was designed and built by Christensen Shipyards , while his bride at that time, Elin Nordegren, arrange the interior styling. Privacy can cruise at a speed of 12 knots with a range of 4,000 nm. At 47.24m, this yacht boasts living spaces with a total of 6,500 square metres.

Motor yacht Privacy

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Mega-Yachts (and Their Owners)

Question number one: do they need more friends.

Yacht-setters, i.e. the maritime equivalent to jet-setters, circle the globe on mega yachts, the price tags of which can easily equal the yearly-budgets for a small nation. But don’t think it’s easy being rich — these gazillionairs have their yachting woes . The Biggie: when their mega yacht breaks down in a foreign port.

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I asked Sean Blue, Head of Global Watercraft for AIG Private Client Group (which represents the owners of more that 300 80-foot-plus super yachts worldwide), to tell me about mega yachts and their owners .

Who are the owners of super yachts? I can’t divulge our clients, but I can share that mega yacht owners include CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, captains of industry, entertainers, engineers, inventors, rulers, owners of manufacturing companies, billionaires, and generally people who are leaders in their fields. Mega yachts are generally defined as yachts greater than 100 feet or longer, all the way up to the current largest yacht in the world — AZZAM, which is 180.6 meters long (594 feet).

Tell me about the distances these yachts can navigate. This depends on the specifications of the yacht and what it was designed for . Some are not designed to travel long distances and instead are built for speed, or for local cruising, or with maybe enough range to make a trans-Atlantic crossing safely. But others are built with an incredible amount of range in mind and can travel some 8,000 nautical miles without refueling, while others are designed to explore arctic regions, or both. Circumnavigations are not uncommon and large yachts regularly make ocean transits — whether cruising from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, or en route to Fiji across the Pacific. The only real limitations are time and money. And for most mega yacht owners, it’s just time.

Are these really ships — how do you differentiate a yacht from a ship? Some of them really are ships and are built that way, but the difference lies in how they are used. A yacht is a vessel built for the pleasure of her owner. The best yachts are built to commercial ship standards in terms of seaworthiness, safety, and technology; often times even a higher standard.

How about the price tag for these yachts? $1,000,000 a meter is the rule of thumb, but this can vary depending on the design, builder, systems, interiors and a great many other things. The largest yacht currently in the world, AZZAM, is reported to have cost over $700M to build. In addition to the yachts themselves are the interior décors and furnishings, wine collections, fine art collections, and its “toys” and tenders (support vessels).

What happens when a yacht breaks down on the other side of the globe? Mega yachts are managed and run by highly trained professionals from the captains and crews to the yacht managers that are often hired to manage all the aspects of owning and running a yacht. Not unlike the world of aviation, maintenance is ongoing, so an all-out breakdown on the water whereby you have a dead ship is a relatively rare occurrence. Fire aboard a yacht is actually a little more common, which is the primary source of large losses on yachts that AIG has seen, and something to which we pay a lot of attention by providing shipboard fire training for crews and local firefighters in seaside communities. Whether it’s a breakdown or a fire, after the initial response to save lives and property, the yacht may call for assistance from a neighboring ship or vessel and in some cases call a towing or salvage company for assistance to get the yacht back to the nearest safest port to evaluate damage and decide on next steps. That is usually when specialty insurers are called to facilitate the logistics and repairs.

What if it just needs work? Most of the work performed on a super yacht is performed by its crew. If there is need beyond that, specialists can be flown in from all around the world. Larger yachts are like big commercial buildings with air conditioning systems, watermakers, plumbing, electrical, hydraulics, refrigeration, and virtually any mechanical system you can imagine. If expertise is not available locally, you get the experts to come to you.   

Where do they go for repairs? The best local place they can find that can address the yacht’s specific need. There are numerous facilities around the world that can accommodate and repair mega yachts, but as you get farther from the Western world, these facilities may not specialize or deal with yachts everyday and may be more directed toward commercial work and a more industrial level of care and finish quality. Often in these situations, repairs are made for the safety and seaworthiness of the yacht and cosmetics are handled at a later date at a facility specializing in the high level of yacht fitting and finish.

Does work need to be done on dry land? Some works can be accomplished while the yacht is in the water , even if it involves work to the bottom or propulsion or stabilizer equipment and that may sometimes be a safer and less expensive route if it’s feasible, but some maintenance and repair does require a haul out on land or dry dock.

How much does a typical yacht weigh? There really is not a typical yacht, and the weight can vary greatly. Yachts are generally measured in gross tonnage, which is a volumetric measurement.  A yacht at the smaller end of the Mega Yacht segment, such as a 112-foot Westport, displaces 275,000 pounds and carries a gross tonnage of 207 gross tonnes. AZZAM, the largest yacht in the world, which is  590 feet long and was built by Lurssen in Germany, is reported to be over 13,000 gross tonnes.  

Are there places in the U.S. that repair yachts? The U.S. is blessed with many great facilities around the country and on every coast that are capable of repairing and refitting yachts and mega yachts.   Some are boat and ship yards that are also involved in building yachts, while some are mixed between private and commercial work, and others cater exclusively to the mega yacht community. South Florida is certainly an area of concentration for these facilities, but not the only region where one can find them.

Are there cranes capable of lifting these heavy yachts? Travel lifts can accommodate some pretty large yachts, but at a certain size, a dry-dock might be necessary and in these cases, this can certainly limit your options on where your yacht can be hauled and repaired.

An aside: Marine Group Boat Works in San Diego caters to mega yacht owners. Its six-story traveling crane is capable of lifting 665-tons. Each tire (there are 16) stands a foot taller than a grown man.  The crane is said to be the strongest mobile crane in the U.S. It made record books when the 626 ton mega-yacht Ronin (previously owned by billionaire Larry Ellison – now owned by Venezuelan banker Victor Vargas ), became the largest private yacht ever to be lifted by a moving crane.

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World’s Richest Yacht Owners

The world’s richest yacht owners.

It’s no surprise that owning a yacht is popular among the billionaire class. It’s not uncommon for billionaires around the world to not only own one luxury superyacht, but multiple yachts. Not to mention tenders and other high-tech watercrafts. Some of the richest people in the world own some of the largest, most expensive mega yachts. We take a look at some of the world’s richest yacht owners and the luxury vessels they have bought.

Bernard Arnault

Worth a whopping $156.8 billion in 2021, Bernard Arnault is a French businessman and art collector most known as the chairman and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. He is currently the third richest person in the world. 1 LVMH is a French multinational conglomerate and the world’s largest luxury-goods company. Renowned brands such as Dior, Givenchy, Bulgari, and Tiffany & co. are owned by this corporation.

Bernard Arnault Yacht

Bernard Arnault owns the 101.5-meter motor yacht Symphony . Built in the Netherlands by Feadship, this luxury super yacht has four main engines and can carry 20 passengers and 38 crew. A 6-meter glass-bottom swimming pool and outdoor cinema are some of the vessel’s standout features.

Larry Ellison

Worth $90.6 billion in 2021, Larry Ellison is an American business magnate and investor. One of the most famous yacht owners, he is best known for being the co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle Corporation. Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation known as the world’s largest database management company.

Larry Ellison Yacht

Larry Ellison owns the 87.78-meter motor yacht Musashi . Built in the Netherlands by Feadship in 2011, this five-deck super yacht can accommodate 18 guests and 24 crew. Its exterior was inspired by Japanese design and Art Deco style. An outdoor gym and spa are only a few of the vessel’s luxury amenities.

The eighth richest man in the world as of 2021, Larry Page is worth $90.3 billion. He is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur best known as one of two co-founders of Google. Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in internet-related services and products which includes the world’s most used search engine, online advertising platforms, and cloud computing.

Larry Page Yacht

Larry Page owns the 58.8-meter motor yacht SENSES . Built and launched by German yacht builder Fr. Schweers Shipyard in 1999, it went under its latest yacht refit in 2015. This luxury yacht sleeps up to 12 guests with accommodations for 14 crew. An expedition yacht, SENSES  features a large helipad, ice-strengthened hull, and three high-speed tenders.

Yacht Management South Florida, Inc. specializes in complete yacht care . As such, we offer premier maintenance services at our South Florida marina including boat bottom cleaning , and hull painting. Our certified yacht technicians can also go to your yacht to provide dockside assistance and emergency yacht repair services .

Contact us today to schedule any technical work or learn more about out our extensive yacht maintenance services and first-class yacht management program!

Additional Reading

• Top 5 Largest Yachts in The World
• List of Famous Yachts in Movies
• Dorothy Neufeld, Visual Capitalist – The Richest People in the World in 2021

For all inquiries, fill out the form below and a member of our team will respond as soon as possible

Who Owns Superyachts In 2023 —And What Does That Mean For You As Crew?

Where once oligarchs, oil tycoons, royals and old money ruled the roost in the yachting world, tech billionaires have increasingly dominated the superyacht market. Who are these people — and more importantly — what does their different style of ‘yachting’ mean for you as crew?

The list of tech billionaires (at least, the list we know of) is long and getting longer by the year. And as their wealth grows, so does the size of the boats they own!

Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison (Musashi), Charles Simonyi (SKAT), Sergey Brin (Dragonfly), and Larry Page (Senses) are just some of the tech billionaires known to own a superyacht. Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, is rumoured to own Andromeda.

While we can only speculate on how these exact individuals use their yachts or what they are like onboard, some general traits might set the tech billionaire yacht owner out as using their yachts differently than generations of yacht owners before them.

Overall, tech billionaires are often younger, more adventurous and less hidebound regarding old rules and service styles. Here are a few general trends we can assume.

They want to eat well, but less fussily, and with a greater premium on health.

Where silver service, ultra-decadent meals, and mountains of wasted food were — and often still are— preferred by old-money yacht owners and charterers, the modern tech billionaire is more likely to be health-conscious and eat food that is plated rather than buffet style or silver service. Yacht chefs now need to be more skilled in special diets, such as plant-based or keto, and offer a broader range of cuisines.

They want to WORK.

Superyachts used to be for holidays only. This was partly by necessity —the lack of connectivity meant that work went on the back burner for summer months as guests swanned around the Mediterranean. Now, the extraordinary technological strides on board allow yacht owners to have offices where they can work anywhere in the world.

They want to go far beyond the milk run.

While anchoring off St Tropez or Cap Ferrat for weeks in August will always be in style, there has been an explosion in remote cruising, often fuelled by this younger, more adventurous set of yacht owners who can work from anywhere- Antarctica to Alaska and beyond.

This has fed into the next point…

A desire for adventure and exploration has changed yacht design.

As younger, more adventurous owners like tech billionaires have joined the superyacht market, the design of yachts and the toys they carry have changed markedly. New types of vessels have been created to meet this desire for off-the-beaten-track cruising, from support yachts to water toys to the massive growth in explorer yachts. Gone are the days when one yacht layout was almost identical to another. Now, we have winter gardens, submarines, ice rooms, ski rooms, large onboard offices, and helicopter hangars.

Not all of these changes have been driven by tech billionaires, granted. Still, their vision of what is possible has dramatically changed what yachts look like and how they operate as machines, with new types of propulsion, greater ranges, and a considerable amount more tech onboard.

Some things never change.

One thing hasn’t changed, though—a wealthy person’s desire for privacy. Discretion remains perhaps the most essential trait in any crew member, which you must keep in mind when working on yachts —even in the day of constant social media and shows like Below Deck.

A wealthy person’s desire for privacy and discretion is a constant that crew forget at their peril. Are you ensuring that you are a trusted asset? You may have signed that NDA, but do you let stories slip now and then at the bar? Are you careful about not taking photos onboard that give away anything about the boat or the owners? Do you make sure you don’t share the yacht’s cruising plans?

In a world where stories about tech billionaires will fly around the globe at light speed, you must be the gatekeeper. Stories cannot leave the passerelle.

Contact information

Sharon Rose

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The superyachts owned by tech moguls

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is set to join the exclusive club of yacht-owning tech tycoons as the rumoured owner of Oceanco's mighty 127m sailing yacht . Though it should come as no surprise - other big names in tech such as the late Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison and Paul Allen have been responsible for some of the biggest and most ground-breaking superyachts in the world...

The 127-metre Oceanco sailing yacht Koru, formerly Y721, was launched and reportedly delivered to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in April 2023. This three-masted schooner, meaning “new beginnings” in Maori, with an expected 33000 GT and a steel hull and aluminium superstructure, is the largest in the world and the longest built in the Netherlands at Oceanco. Knocking Lürssen's Eos , owned by Biller and Diane von Furstenburg, off the top spot, Koru harnesses design similarities with her black hull, white superstructure and classic lines. However, the intricate gold paintwork, scarlet bootstrap and elaborate figurehead on the bow particularly set her apart.

Larry Ellison

American business magnate Larry Ellison is the co-founder of the billion-dollar computer tech corporation Oracle. In 2004, he commissioned the 138-metre Lürssen superyacht Rising Sun (pictured), which stands today as the 15th largest yacht in the world. It was also the last yacht that ever came from the drawing boards of legendary designed Jon Bannenberg, sporting a military-esque profile with a lean destroyer-type hull and extensive use of structural glass . Rising Sun boasts 8,000m² of living space including a wine cellar and basketball court, with a crew of 45. One of her tenders, a catamaran, even carries the yacht’s 4x4 vehicle ashore. 

Ellison later sold the yacht to media mogul David Geffen and has since hosted a parade of Hollywood's glitterati on board including Leonardo DiCaprio, Steven Spielberg, Bruce Springsteen and Oprah Winfrey – to name a few. 

In 2011, Ellison appeared to downsize and took delivery of the 88-metre Feadship Musashi . Not unlike Rising Sun in its appearance, structural glass features heavily throughout with a central glass lift, surrounded by a stainless steel and glass staircase that passes through every deck.

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The late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is responsible for two of the most iconic superyachts in the world. At 126-metres in length, Octopus is perhaps his most famous. Built by Lürssen in 2003, this ice-classed superyacht was designed for extended cruising to the most remote locations on earth with a range of 12,500 nautical miles. Home to a helicopter garage, drive-in tender garage, six tenders, and a submarine, she packs a serious punch within her 9,932GT – not to mention the cinema, swimming pool, recording studio, basketball court and spa. At the end of 2019, she joined the market for the very first time , having completed an eight-month refit at Blohm+Voss, and remains the benchmark for exploration yachting.

Tatoosh is another honourable mention and was built by German shipyard Nobiskrug in 2000, three years prior to the delivery of Octopus . At 92-metres, she's smaller than her successor, but to describe Tatoosh as "small" would be a severe understatement. Highlights include a six-foot-deep swimming pool, a pair of helipads, a crew of 30, and a custom 12-metre Hinckley powerboat that she carries on her top deck. Tatoosh is also listed for sale following a refit earlier this year. 

Yachts for charter

The 78-metre Feadship Venus was built for the late Apple boss and founder Steve Jobs. Built under the codename Project Aqua, Venus was launched to international fanfare in 2012, heralded for its extensive use of glass and pared-back design courtesy of Philippe Starck . Innovative features include a false top deck that conceals the communication and television receivers from view and a passarelle that, when opened, looks like the charging port of an iPhone. Venus ’s interior details have been closely guarded since its launch. Sadly, Jobs died a year before the yacht was delivered.

Charles Simonyi

Charles Simonyi led the team that built the first edition of the Microsoft Office software suite and was rumoured to have previously owned Lürssen’s iconic 71-metre SKAT .  Nearly two decades after her launch in 2002, she joined the market for the first time and now Simonyi is thought to have upgraded to the 89-metre Lürssen Norn . Both yachts, penned by Espen Onion, share similar design features. Standout features include an alfresco cinema and adapted depth pool floor with dance floor. Norn was delivered in May 2023.

Sergey Brin

Google co-founder Sergey Brin reportedly owns the high-speed SilverYachts superyacht named Dragonfly , after Google’s once-secret project to launch a censored search engine in China. Delivered in 2009, the 73.3-metre Dragonfly was hailed as the fastest, most fuel-efficient long-range cruising superyacht on the water with a transatlantic range at 22 knots and a fuel consumption of only 360 litres per hour at 18 knots, extending her range to 4,500 nautical miles. Dragonfly is said to have a dance floor and open-air movie theatre on board. The vessel was applauded for its contribution to the disaster relief effort in Vanuatu after Hurricane Pam devastated the island in 2015. The crew reportedly moved 62 metric tons of freshwater ashore, treated over 250 patients, facilitated three medical evacuations, and built shelters in multiple villages and cleared numerous helicopter landing zones for ongoing support.

Google’s billionaire co-founder Larry Page purchased the 60-metre explorer yacht conversion Senses from a New Zealand businessman Sir Douglas Myers back in 2011. The globe-trotting superyacht features interiors by Philippe Starck and can accommodate a total of 12 guests on board, with primary guests reaping the benefits of the master suite's gyro-stabilised bed. Senses also houses an exceptional toy box with three high-speed tenders, six wave runners, a jet board and a JetLev. According to the New Zealand Herald, Senses is currently undergoing a refit in Whangārei, New Zealand, after being sold to an unknown buyer in 2020. 

Barry Diller

The world’s largest three-masted schooner – also the third largest sailing yacht in the world – is owned by fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg and her husband Barry Diller, chairman and senior executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp and Expedia Group. The 92.92-metre sailing yacht, named Eos , was built in Germany by Lürssen and delivered in 2006 with a trio of masts that stand 61-metres tall. The sailing yacht has hosted the couple's star-studded group of friends including Andy Cohen, Gayle King, Bradley Cooper, Harry Styles and Karlie Kloss. The interiors were designed by Francois Catroux, who Vanity Fair named as “the super-rich's favourite interior designer" in 2016.

Mark Zuckerburg

The 107-metre Kleven superyacht Andromeda was built for serial superyacht owner Graeme Hart and delivered under the name Ulysses . In 2017, a year after its launch, rumours began circulating that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg had purchased the rugged, six-deck explorer (although a Facebook spokesperson was quick to stamp out the rumours and released a statement denying the claims). Andromeda can carry 36 guests and is equipped with an impressive inventory of toys and tenders, including six motorbikes, two ATVs, a helicopter and an amphibious rib. Five years after her launch, Andromeda still ranks among the largest explorer yachts in the world . 

Eric Schmidt

The former Google ceo Eric Schmidt backed out of the purchase of the abandoned 81.3-metre Oceanco Alfa Nero but has been said to have moved onto become the new owner of a 95-metre Lürssen. Kismet was sold in September 2023 to the billionaire as part of one of the biggest brokerage deal of the year. With the details shrouded in secrecy the yacht is now aptly known as Whisper . Espen Onio was responsible for her iconic exterior while inside was thanks to  Reymond Langton , achieving the original brief from the previous commissioning owner Shahid Khan of “caviar and champagne.” Standout details include the hi-tech, art deco saloon, a private observation platform and the Persian-inspired spa area.

The co-founder and former ceo of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, has been rumoured to own the 99.9-metre Feadship , Moonrise. The yacht’s clean and strong lines, penned by Chris Bottoms from Studio de Voogt , won the highly competitive class of best displacement motor yachts above 3,000 GT in the World Superyacht Awards 2021. Features include the helicopter landing deck and modern interiors by Remi Tessier . Accommodation is for up to 16 guests, and there are 32 crew members onboard Moonrise to attend to the guests' every need. The Ukrainian-American mogul is also said to own the accompanying support vessel Nebula.

Evan Speigel

The Silicone Valley ceo, Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel has been reportedly said to own the 94.8-metre Feadship Bliss. Delivered in 2021 the motor yacht penned by Feadship's Studio De Voogt Naval Architects has most recently been spotted cruising Auckland in September 2023. Spiegel is rumoured to be Feadship's younger client. Bliss can accommodate up to 18 guests across nine staterooms; however little else is known about the 2983 GT yacht.

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The Haves and the Have-Yachts

By Evan Osnos

In the Victorian era, it was said that the length of a man’s boat, in feet, should match his age, in years. The Victorians would have had some questions at the fortieth annual Palm Beach International Boat Show, which convened this March on Florida’s Gold Coast. A typical offering: a two-hundred-and-three-foot superyacht named Sea Owl, selling secondhand for ninety million dollars. The owner, Robert Mercer, the hedge-fund tycoon and Republican donor, was throwing in furniture and accessories, including several auxiliary boats, a Steinway piano, a variety of frescoes, and a security system that requires fingerprint recognition. Nevertheless, Mercer’s package was a modest one; the largest superyachts are more than five hundred feet, on a scale with naval destroyers, and cost six or seven times what he was asking.

For the small, tight-lipped community around the world’s biggest yachts, the Palm Beach show has the promising air of spring training. On the cusp of the summer season, it affords brokers and builders and owners (or attendants from their family offices) a chance to huddle over the latest merchandise and to gather intelligence: Who’s getting in? Who’s getting out? And, most pressingly, who’s ogling a bigger boat?

On the docks, brokers parse the crowd according to a taxonomy of potential. Guests asking for tours face a gantlet of greeters, trained to distinguish “superrich clients” from “ineligible visitors,” in the words of Emma Spence, a former greeter at the Palm Beach show. Spence looked for promising clues (the right shoes, jewelry, pets) as well as for red flags (cameras, ornate business cards, clothes with pop-culture references). For greeters from elsewhere, Palm Beach is a challenging assignment. Unlike in Europe, where money can still produce some visible tells—Hunter Wellies, a Barbour jacket—the habits of wealth in Florida offer little that’s reliable. One colleague resorted to binoculars, to spot a passerby with a hundred-thousand-dollar watch. According to Spence, people judged to have insufficient buying power are quietly marked for “dissuasion.”

For the uninitiated, a pleasure boat the length of a football field can be bewildering. Andy Cohen, the talk-show host, recalled his first visit to a superyacht owned by the media mogul Barry Diller: “I was like the Beverly Hillbillies.” The boats have grown so vast that some owners place unique works of art outside the elevator on each deck, so that lost guests don’t barge into the wrong stateroom.

At the Palm Beach show, I lingered in front of a gracious vessel called Namasté, until I was dissuaded by a wooden placard: “Private yacht, no boarding, no paparazzi.” In a nearby berth was a two-hundred-and-eighty-foot superyacht called Bold, which was styled like a warship, with its own helicopter hangar, three Sea-Doos, two sailboats, and a color scheme of gunmetal gray. The rugged look is a trend; “explorer” vessels, equipped to handle remote journeys, are the sport-utility vehicles of yachting.

If you hail from the realm of ineligible visitors, you may not be aware that we are living through the “greatest boom in the yacht business that’s ever existed,” as Bob Denison—whose firm, Denison Yachting, is one of the world’s largest brokers—told me. “Every broker, every builder, up and down the docks, is having some of the best years they’ve ever experienced.” In 2021, the industry sold a record eight hundred and eighty-seven superyachts worldwide, nearly twice the previous year’s total. With more than a thousand new superyachts on order, shipyards are so backed up that clients unaccustomed to being told no have been shunted to waiting lists.

One reason for the increased demand for yachts is the pandemic. Some buyers invoke social distancing; others, an existential awakening. John Staluppi, of Palm Beach Gardens, who made a fortune from car dealerships, is looking to upgrade from his current, sixty-million-dollar yacht. “When you’re forty or fifty years old, you say, ‘I’ve got plenty of time,’ ” he told me. But, at seventy-five, he is ready to throw in an extra fifteen million if it will spare him three years of waiting. “Is your life worth five million dollars a year? I think so,” he said. A deeper reason for the demand is the widening imbalance of wealth. Since 1990, the United States’ supply of billionaires has increased from sixty-six to more than seven hundred, even as the median hourly wage has risen only twenty per cent. In that time, the number of truly giant yachts—those longer than two hundred and fifty feet—has climbed from less than ten to more than a hundred and seventy. Raphael Sauleau, the C.E.O. of Fraser Yachts, told me bluntly, “ COVID and wealth—a perfect storm for us.”

And yet the marina in Palm Beach was thrumming with anxiety. Ever since the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, launched his assault on Ukraine, the superyacht world has come under scrutiny. At a port in Spain, a Ukrainian engineer named Taras Ostapchuk, working aboard a ship that he said was owned by a Russian arms dealer, threw open the sea valves and tried to sink it to the bottom of the harbor. Under arrest, he told a judge, “I would do it again.” Then he returned to Ukraine and joined the military. Western allies, in the hope of pressuring Putin to withdraw, have sought to cut off Russian oligarchs from businesses and luxuries abroad. “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains,” President Joe Biden declared, in his State of the Union address.

Nobody can say precisely how many of Putin’s associates own superyachts—known to professionals as “white boats”—because the white-boat world is notoriously opaque. Owners tend to hide behind shell companies, registered in obscure tax havens, attended by private bankers and lawyers. But, with unusual alacrity, authorities have used subpoenas and police powers to freeze boats suspected of having links to the Russian élite. In Spain, the government detained a hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar yacht associated with Sergei Chemezov, the head of the conglomerate Rostec, whose bond with Putin reaches back to their time as K.G.B. officers in East Germany. (As in many cases, the boat is not registered to Chemezov; the official owner is a shell company connected to his stepdaughter, a teacher whose salary is likely about twenty-two hundred dollars a month.) In Germany, authorities impounded the world’s most voluminous yacht, Dilbar, for its ties to the mining-and-telecom tycoon Alisher Usmanov. And in Italy police have grabbed a veritable armada, including a boat owned by one of Russia’s richest men, Alexei Mordashov, and a colossus suspected of belonging to Putin himself, the four-hundred-and-fifty-nine-foot Scheherazade.

In Palm Beach, the yachting community worried that the same scrutiny might be applied to them. “Say your superyacht is in Asia, and there’s some big conflict where China invades Taiwan,” Denison told me. “China could spin it as ‘Look at these American oligarchs!’ ” He wondered if the seizures of superyachts marked a growing political animus toward the very rich. “Whenever things are economically or politically disruptive,” he said, “it’s hard to justify taking an insane amount of money and just putting it into something that costs a lot to maintain, depreciates, and is only used for having a good time.”

Nobody pretends that a superyacht is a productive place to stash your wealth. In a column this spring headlined “ A SUPERYACHT IS A TERRIBLE ASSET ,” the Financial Times observed, “Owning a superyacht is like owning a stack of 10 Van Goghs, only you are holding them over your head as you tread water, trying to keep them dry.”

Not so long ago, status transactions among the élite were denominated in Old Masters and in the sculptures of the Italian Renaissance. Joseph Duveen, the dominant art dealer of the early twentieth century, kept the oligarchs of his day—Andrew Mellon, Jules Bache, J. P. Morgan—jockeying over Donatellos and Van Dycks. “When you pay high for the priceless,” he liked to say, “you’re getting it cheap.”

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In the nineteen-fifties, the height of aspirational style was fine French furniture—F.F.F., as it became known in certain precincts of Fifth Avenue and Palm Beach. Before long, more and more money was going airborne. Hugh Hefner, a pioneer in the private-jet era, decked out a plane he called Big Bunny, where he entertained Elvis Presley, Raquel Welch, and James Caan. The oil baron Armand Hammer circled the globe on his Boeing 727, paying bribes and recording evidence on microphones hidden in his cufflinks. But, once it seemed that every plutocrat had a plane, the thrill was gone.

In any case, an airplane is just transportation. A big ship is a floating manse, with a hierarchy written right into the nomenclature. If it has a crew working aboard, it’s a yacht. If it’s more than ninety-eight feet, it’s a superyacht. After that, definitions are debated, but people generally agree that anything more than two hundred and thirty feet is a megayacht, and more than two hundred and ninety-five is a gigayacht. The world contains about fifty-four hundred superyachts, and about a hundred gigayachts.

For the moment, a gigayacht is the most expensive item that our species has figured out how to own. In 2019, the hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin bought a quadruplex on Central Park South for two hundred and forty million dollars, the highest price ever paid for a home in America. In May, an unknown buyer spent about a hundred and ninety-five million on an Andy Warhol silk-screen portrait of Marilyn Monroe. In luxury-yacht terms, those are ordinary numbers. “There are a lot of boats in build well over two hundred and fifty million dollars,” Jamie Edmiston, a broker in Monaco and London, told me. His buyers are getting younger and more inclined to spend long stretches at sea. “High-speed Internet, telephony, modern communications have made working easier,” he said. “Plus, people made a lot more money earlier in life.”

A Silicon Valley C.E.O. told me that one appeal of boats is that they can “absorb the most excess capital.” He explained, “Rationally, it would seem to make sense for people to spend half a billion dollars on their house and then fifty million on the boat that they’re on for two weeks a year, right? But it’s gone the other way. People don’t want to live in a hundred-thousand-square-foot house. Optically, it’s weird. But a half-billion-dollar boat, actually, is quite nice.” Staluppi, of Palm Beach Gardens, is content to spend three or four times as much on his yachts as on his homes. Part of the appeal is flexibility. “If you’re on your boat and you don’t like your neighbor, you tell the captain, ‘Let’s go to a different place,’ ” he said. On land, escaping a bad neighbor requires more work: “You got to try and buy him out or make it uncomfortable or something.” The preference for sea-based investment has altered the proportions of taste. Until recently, the Silicon Valley C.E.O. said, “a fifty-metre boat was considered a good-sized boat. Now that would be a little bit embarrassing.” In the past twenty years, the length of the average luxury yacht has grown by a third, to a hundred and sixty feet.

Thorstein Veblen, the economist who published “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” in 1899, argued that the power of “conspicuous consumption” sprang not from artful finery but from sheer needlessness. “In order to be reputable,” he wrote, “it must be wasteful.” In the yachting world, stories circulate about exotic deliveries by helicopter or seaplane: Dom Pérignon, bagels from Zabar’s, sex workers, a rare melon from the island of Hokkaido. The industry excels at selling you things that you didn’t know you needed. When you flip through the yachting press, it’s easy to wonder how you’ve gone this long without a personal submarine, or a cryosauna that “blasts you with cold” down to minus one hundred and ten degrees Celsius, or the full menagerie of “exclusive leathers,” such as eel and stingray.

But these shrines to excess capital exist in a conditional state of visibility: they are meant to be unmistakable to a slender stratum of society—and all but unseen by everyone else. Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the yachting community was straining to manage its reputation as a gusher of carbon emissions (one well-stocked diesel yacht is estimated to produce as much greenhouse gas as fifteen hundred passenger cars), not to mention the fact that the world of white boats is overwhelmingly white. In a candid aside to a French documentarian, the American yachtsman Bill Duker said, “If the rest of the world learns what it’s like to live on a yacht like this, they’re gonna bring back the guillotine.” The Dutch press recently reported that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, was building a sailing yacht so tall that the city of Rotterdam might temporarily dismantle a bridge that had survived the Nazis in order to let the boat pass to the open sea. Rotterdammers were not pleased. On Facebook, a local man urged people to “take a box of rotten eggs with you and let’s throw them en masse at Jeff’s superyacht when it sails through.” At least thirteen thousand people expressed interest. Amid the uproar, a deputy mayor announced that the dismantling plan had been abandoned “for the time being.” (Bezos modelled his yacht partly on one owned by his friend Barry Diller, who has hosted him many times. The appreciation eventually extended to personnel, and Bezos hired one of Diller’s captains.)

As social media has heightened the scrutiny of extraordinary wealth, some of the very people who created those platforms have sought less observable places to spend it. But they occasionally indulge in some coded provocation. In 2006, when the venture capitalist Tom Perkins unveiled his boat in Istanbul, most passersby saw it adorned in colorful flags, but people who could read semaphore were able to make out a message: “Rarely does one have the privilege to witness vulgar ostentation displayed on such a scale.” As a longtime owner told me, “If you don’t have some guilt about it, you’re a rat.”

Alex Finley, a former C.I.A. officer who has seen yachts proliferate near her home in Barcelona, has weighed the superyacht era and its discontents in writings and on Twitter, using the hashtag #YachtWatch. “To me, the yachts are not just yachts,” she told me. “In Russia’s case, these are the embodiment of oligarchs helping a dictator destabilize our democracy while utilizing our democracy to their benefit.” But, Finley added, it’s a mistake to think the toxic symbolism applies only to Russia. “The yachts tell a whole story about a Faustian capitalism—this idea that we’re ready to sell democracy for short-term profit,” she said. “They’re registered offshore. They use every loophole that we’ve put in place for illicit money and tax havens. So they play a role in this battle, writ large, between autocracy and democracy.”

After a morning on the docks at the Palm Beach show, I headed to a more secluded marina nearby, which had been set aside for what an attendant called “the really big hardware.” It felt less like a trade show than like a boutique resort, with a swimming pool and a terrace restaurant. Kevin Merrigan, a relaxed Californian with horn-rimmed glasses and a high forehead pinked by the sun, was waiting for me at the stern of Unbridled, a superyacht with a brilliant blue hull that gave it the feel of a personal cruise ship. He invited me to the bridge deck, where a giant screen showed silent video of dolphins at play.

Merrigan is the chairman of the brokerage Northrop & Johnson, which has ridden the tide of growing boats and wealth since 1949. Lounging on a sofa mounded with throw pillows, he projected a nearly postcoital level of contentment. He had recently sold the boat we were on, accepted an offer for a behemoth beside us, and begun negotiating the sale of yet another. “This client owns three big yachts,” he said. “It’s a hobby for him. We’re at a hundred and ninety-one feet now, and last night he said, ‘You know, what do you think about getting a two hundred and fifty?’ ” Merrigan laughed. “And I was, like, ‘Can’t you just have dinner?’ ”

Among yacht owners, there are some unwritten rules of stratification: a Dutch-built boat will hold its value better than an Italian; a custom design will likely get more respect than a “series yacht”; and, if you want to disparage another man’s boat, say that it looks like a wedding cake. But, in the end, nothing says as much about a yacht, or its owner, as the delicate matter of L.O.A.—length over all.

The imperative is not usually length for length’s sake (though the longtime owner told me that at times there is an aspect of “phallic sizing”). “L.O.A.” is a byword for grandeur. In most cases, pleasure yachts are permitted to carry no more than twelve passengers, a rule set by the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, which was conceived after the sinking of the Titanic. But those limits do not apply to crew. “So, you might have anything between twelve and fifty crew looking after those twelve guests,” Edmiston, the broker, said. “It’s a level of service you cannot really contemplate until you’ve been fortunate enough to experience it.”

As yachts have grown more capacious, and the limits on passengers have not, more and more space on board has been devoted to staff and to novelties. The latest fashions include IMAX theatres, hospital equipment that tests for dozens of pathogens, and ski rooms where guests can suit up for a helicopter trip to a mountaintop. The longtime owner, who had returned the previous day from his yacht, told me, “No one today—except for assholes and ridiculous people—lives on land in what you would call a deep and broad luxe life. Yes, people have nice houses and all of that, but it’s unlikely that the ratio of staff to them is what it is on a boat.” After a moment, he added, “Boats are the last place that I think you can get away with it.”

Even among the truly rich, there is a gap between the haves and the have-yachts. One boating guest told me about a conversation with a famous friend who keeps one of the world’s largest yachts. “He said, ‘The boat is the last vestige of what real wealth can do.’ What he meant is, You have a chef, and I have a chef. You have a driver, and I have a driver. You can fly privately, and I fly privately. So, the one place where I can make clear to the world that I am in a different fucking category than you is the boat.”

After Merrigan and I took a tour of Unbridled, he led me out to a waiting tender, staffed by a crew member with an earpiece on a coil. The tender, Merrigan said, would ferry me back to the busy main dock of the Palm Beach show. We bounced across the waves under a pristine sky, and pulled into the marina, where my fellow-gawkers were still trying to talk their way past the greeters. As I walked back into the scrum, Namasté was still there, but it looked smaller than I remembered.

For owners and their guests, a white boat provides a discreet marketplace for the exchange of trust, patronage, and validation. To diagram the precise workings of that trade—the customs and anxieties, strategies and slights—I talked to Brendan O’Shannassy, a veteran captain who is a curator of white-boat lore. Raised in Western Australia, O’Shannassy joined the Navy as a young man, and eventually found his way to skippering some of the world’s biggest yachts. He has worked for Paul Allen, the late co-founder of Microsoft, along with a few other billionaires he declines to name. Now in his early fifties, with patient green eyes and tufts of curly brown hair, O’Shannassy has had a vantage from which to monitor the social traffic. “It’s all gracious, and everyone’s kiss-kiss,” he said. “But there’s a lot going on in the background.”

O’Shannassy once worked for an owner who limited the number of newspapers on board, so that he could watch his guests wait and squirm. “It was a mind game amongst the billionaires. There were six couples, and three newspapers,” he said, adding, “They were ranking themselves constantly.” On some boats, O’Shannassy has found himself playing host in the awkward minutes after guests arrive. “A lot of them are savants, but some are very un-socially aware,” he said. “They need someone to be social and charming for them.” Once everyone settles in, O’Shannassy has learned, there is often a subtle shift, when a mogul or a politician or a pop star starts to loosen up in ways that are rarely possible on land. “Your security is relaxed—they’re not on your hip,” he said. “You’re not worried about paparazzi. So you’ve got all this extra space, both mental and physical.”

O’Shannassy has come to see big boats as a space where powerful “solar systems” converge and combine. “It is implicit in every interaction that their sharing of information will benefit both parties; it is an obsession with billionaires to do favours for each other. A referral, an introduction, an insight—it all matters,” he wrote in “Superyacht Captain,” a new memoir. A guest told O’Shannassy that, after a lavish display of hospitality, he finally understood the business case for buying a boat. “One deal secured on board will pay it all back many times over,” the guest said, “and it is pretty hard to say no after your kids have been hosted so well for a week.”

Take the case of David Geffen, the former music and film executive. He is long retired, but he hosts friends (and potential friends) on the four-hundred-and-fifty-four-foot Rising Sun, which has a double-height cinema, a spa and salon, and a staff of fifty-seven. In 2017, shortly after Barack and Michelle Obama departed the White House, they were photographed on Geffen’s boat in French Polynesia, accompanied by Bruce Springsteen, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, and Rita Wilson. For Geffen, the boat keeps him connected to the upper echelons of power. There are wealthier Americans, but not many of them have a boat so delectable that it can induce both a Democratic President and the workingman’s crooner to risk the aroma of hypocrisy.

The binding effect pays dividends for guests, too. Once people reach a certain level of fame, they tend to conclude that its greatest advantage is access. Spend a week at sea together, lingering over meals, observing one another floundering on a paddleboard, and you have something of value for years to come. Call to ask for an investment, an introduction, an internship for a wayward nephew, and you’ll at least get the call returned. It’s a mutually reinforcing circle of validation: she’s here, I’m here, we’re here.

But, if you want to get invited back, you are wise to remember your part of the bargain. If you work with movie stars, bring fresh gossip. If you’re on Wall Street, bring an insight or two. Don’t make the transaction obvious, but don’t forget why you’re there. “When I see the guest list,” O’Shannassy wrote, “I am aware, even if not all names are familiar, that all have been chosen for a purpose.”

For O’Shannassy, there is something comforting about the status anxieties of people who have everything. He recalled a visit to the Italian island of Sardinia, where his employer asked him for a tour of the boats nearby. Riding together on a tender, they passed one colossus after another, some twice the size of the owner’s superyacht. Eventually, the man cut the excursion short. “Take me back to my yacht, please,” he said. They motored in silence for a while. “There was a time when my yacht was the most beautiful in the bay,” he said at last. “How do I keep up with this new money?”

The summer season in the Mediterranean cranks up in May, when the really big hardware heads east from Florida and the Caribbean to escape the coming hurricanes, and reconvenes along the coasts of France, Italy, and Spain. At the center is the Principality of Monaco, the sun-washed tax haven that calls itself the “world’s capital of advanced yachting.” In Monaco, which is among the richest countries on earth, superyachts bob in the marina like bath toys.

The nearest hotel room at a price that would not get me fired was an Airbnb over the border with France. But an acquaintance put me on the phone with the Yacht Club de Monaco, a members-only establishment created by the late monarch His Serene Highness Prince Rainier III, whom the Web site describes as “a true visionary in every respect.” The club occasionally rents rooms—“cabins,” as they’re called—to visitors in town on yacht-related matters. Claudia Batthyany, the elegant director of special projects, showed me to my cabin and later explained that the club does not aspire to be a hotel. “We are an association ,” she said. “Otherwise, it becomes”—she gave a gentle wince—“not that exclusive.”

Inside my cabin, I quickly came to understand that I would never be fully satisfied anywhere else again. The space was silent and aromatically upscale, bathed in soft sunlight that swept through a wall of glass overlooking the water. If I was getting a sudden rush of the onboard experience, that was no accident. The clubhouse was designed by the British architect Lord Norman Foster to evoke the opulent indulgence of ocean liners of the interwar years, like the Queen Mary. I found a handwritten welcome note, on embossed club stationery, set alongside an orchid and an assemblage of chocolate truffles: “The whole team remains at your entire disposal to make your stay a wonderful experience. Yours sincerely, Service Members.” I saluted the nameless Service Members, toiling for the comfort of their guests. Looking out at the water, I thought, intrusively, of a line from Santiago, Hemingway’s old man of the sea. “Do not think about sin,” he told himself. “It is much too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it.”

I had been assured that the Service Members would cheerfully bring dinner, as they might on board, but I was eager to see more of my surroundings. I consulted the club’s summer dress code. It called for white trousers and a blue blazer, and it discouraged improvisation: “No pocket handkerchief is to be worn above the top breast-pocket bearing the Club’s coat of arms.” The handkerchief rule seemed navigable, but I did not possess white trousers, so I skirted the lobby and took refuge in the bar. At a table behind me, a man with flushed cheeks and a British accent had a head start. “You’re a shitty negotiator,” he told another man, with a laugh. “Maybe sales is not your game.” A few seats away, an American woman was explaining to a foreign friend how to talk with conservatives: “If they say, ‘The earth is flat,’ you say, ‘Well, I’ve sailed around it, so I’m not so sure about that.’ ”

In the morning, I had an appointment for coffee with Gaëlle Tallarida, the managing director of the Monaco Yacht Show, which the Daily Mail has called the “most shamelessly ostentatious display of yachts in the world.” Tallarida was not born to that milieu; she grew up on the French side of the border, swimming at public beaches with a view of boats sailing from the marina. But she had a knack for highly organized spectacle. While getting a business degree, she worked on a student theatre festival and found it thrilling. Afterward, she got a job in corporate events, and in 1998 she was hired at the yacht show as a trainee.

With this year’s show five months off, Tallarida was already getting calls about what she described as “the most complex part of my work”: deciding which owners get the most desirable spots in the marina. “As you can imagine, they’ve got very big egos,” she said. “On top of that, I’m a woman. They are sometimes arriving and saying”—she pointed into the distance, pantomiming a decree—“ ‘O.K., I want that!  ’ ”

Just about everyone wants his superyacht to be viewed from the side, so that its full splendor is visible. Most harbors, however, have a limited number of berths with a side view; in Monaco, there are only twelve, with prime spots arrayed along a concrete dike across from the club. “We reserve the dike for the biggest yachts,” Tallarida said. But try telling that to a man who blew his fortune on a small superyacht.

Whenever possible, Tallarida presents her verdicts as a matter of safety: the layout must insure that “in case of an emergency, any boat can go out.” If owners insist on preferential placement, she encourages a yachting version of the Golden Rule: “What if, next year, I do that to you? Against you?”

Does that work? I asked. She shrugged. “They say, ‘Eh.’ ” Some would gladly risk being a victim next year in order to be a victor now. In the most awful moment of her career, she said, a man who was unhappy with his berth berated her face to face. “I was in the office, feeling like a little girl, with my daddy shouting at me. I said, ‘O.K., O.K., I’m going to give you the spot.’ ”

Securing just the right place, it must be said, carries value. Back at the yacht club, I was on my terrace, enjoying the latest delivery by the Service Members—an airy French omelette and a glass of preternaturally fresh orange juice. I thought guiltily of my wife, at home with our kids, who had sent a text overnight alerting me to a maintenance issue that she described as “a toilet debacle.”

Then I was distracted by the sight of a man on a yacht in the marina below. He was staring up at me. I went back to my brunch, but, when I looked again, there he was—a middle-aged man, on a mid-tier yacht, juiceless, on a greige banquette, staring up at my perfect terrace. A surprising sensation started in my chest and moved outward like a warm glow: the unmistakable pang of superiority.

That afternoon, I made my way to the bar, to meet the yacht club’s general secretary, Bernard d’Alessandri, for a history lesson. The general secretary was up to code: white trousers, blue blazer, club crest over the heart. He has silver hair, black eyebrows, and a tan that evokes high-end leather. “I was a sailing teacher before this,” he said, and gestured toward the marina. “It was not like this. It was a village.”

Before there were yacht clubs, there were jachten , from the Dutch word for “hunt.” In the seventeenth century, wealthy residents of Amsterdam created fast-moving boats to meet incoming cargo ships before they hit port, in order to check out the merchandise. Soon, the Dutch owners were racing one another, and yachting spread across Europe. After a visit to Holland in 1697, Peter the Great returned to Russia with a zeal for pleasure craft, and he later opened Nevsky Flot, one of the world’s first yacht clubs, in St. Petersburg.

For a while, many of the biggest yachts were symbols of state power. In 1863, the viceroy of Egypt, Isma’il Pasha, ordered up a steel leviathan called El Mahrousa, which was the world’s longest yacht for a remarkable hundred and nineteen years, until the title was claimed by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. In the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt received guests aboard the U.S.S. Potomac, which had a false smokestack containing a hidden elevator, so that the President could move by wheelchair between decks.

But yachts were finding new patrons outside politics. In 1954, the Greek shipping baron Aristotle Onassis bought a Canadian Navy frigate and spent four million dollars turning it into Christina O, which served as his home for months on end—and, at various times, as a home to his companions Maria Callas, Greta Garbo, and Jacqueline Kennedy. Christina O had its flourishes—a Renoir in the master suite, a swimming pool with a mosaic bottom that rose to become a dance floor—but none were more distinctive than the appointments in the bar, which included whales’ teeth carved into pornographic scenes from the Odyssey and stools upholstered in whale foreskins.

For Onassis, the extraordinary investments in Christina O were part of an epic tit for tat with his archrival, Stavros Niarchos, a fellow shipping tycoon, which was so entrenched that it continued even after Onassis’s death, in 1975. Six years later, Niarchos launched a yacht fifty-five feet longer than Christina O: Atlantis II, which featured a swimming pool on a gyroscope so that the water would not slosh in heavy seas. Atlantis II, now moored in Monaco, sat before the general secretary and me as we talked.

Over the years, d’Alessandri had watched waves of new buyers arrive from one industry after another. “First, it was the oil. After, it was the telecommunications. Now, they are making money with crypto,” he said. “And, each time, it’s another size of the boat, another design.” What began as symbols of state power had come to represent more diffuse aristocracies—the fortunes built on carbon, capital, and data that migrated across borders. As early as 1908, the English writer G. K. Chesterton wondered what the big boats foretold of a nation’s fabric. “The poor man really has a stake in the country,” he wrote. “The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht.”

Each iteration of fortune left its imprint on the industry. Sheikhs, who tend to cruise in the world’s hottest places, wanted baroque indoor spaces and were uninterested in sundecks. Silicon Valley favored acres of beige, more Sonoma than Saudi. And buyers from Eastern Europe became so abundant that shipyards perfected the onboard banya , a traditional Russian sauna stocked with birch and eucalyptus. The collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, had minted a generation of new billionaires, whose approach to money inspired a popular Russian joke: One oligarch brags to another, “Look at this new tie. It cost me two hundred bucks!” To which the other replies, “You moron. You could’ve bought the same one for a thousand!”

In 1998, around the time that the Russian economy imploded, the young tycoon Roman Abramovich reportedly bought a secondhand yacht called Sussurro—Italian for “whisper”—which had been so carefully engineered for speed that each individual screw was weighed before installation. Soon, Russians were competing to own the costliest ships. “If the most expensive yacht in the world was small, they would still want it,” Maria Pevchikh, a Russian investigator who helps lead the Anti-Corruption Foundation, told me.

In 2008, a thirty-six-year-old industrialist named Andrey Melnichenko spent some three hundred million dollars on Motor Yacht A, a radical experiment conceived by the French designer Philippe Starck, with a dagger-shaped hull and a bulbous tower topped by a master bedroom set on a turntable that pivots to capture the best view. The shape was ridiculed as “a giant finger pointing at you” and “one of the most hideous vessels ever to sail,” but it marked a new prominence for Russian money at sea. Today, post-Soviet élites are thought to own a fifth of the world’s gigayachts.

Even Putin has signalled his appreciation, being photographed on yachts in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. In an explosive report in 2012, Boris Nemtsov, a former Deputy Prime Minister, accused Putin of amassing a storehouse of outrageous luxuries, including four yachts, twenty homes, and dozens of private aircraft. Less than three years later, Nemtsov was fatally shot while crossing a bridge near the Kremlin. The Russian government, which officially reports that Putin collects a salary of about a hundred and forty thousand dollars and possesses a modest apartment in Moscow, denied any involvement.

Many of the largest, most flamboyant gigayachts are designed in Monaco, at a sleek waterfront studio occupied by the naval architect Espen Øino. At sixty, Øino has a boyish mop and the mild countenance of a country parson. He grew up in a small town in Norway, the heir to a humble maritime tradition. “My forefathers built wooden rowing boats for four generations,” he told me. In the late eighties, he was designing sailboats when his firm won a commission to design a megayacht for Emilio Azcárraga, the autocratic Mexican who built Televisa into the world’s largest Spanish-language broadcaster. Azcárraga was nicknamed El Tigre, for his streak of white hair and his comfort with confrontation; he kept a chair in his office that was unusually high off the ground, so that visitors’ feet dangled like children’s.

In early meetings, Øino recalled, Azcárraga grew frustrated that the ideas were not dazzling enough. “You must understand,” he said. “I don’t go to port very often with my boats, but, when I do, I want my presence to be felt.”

The final design was suitably arresting; after the boat was completed, Øino had no shortage of commissions. In 1998, he was approached by Paul Allen, of Microsoft, to build a yacht that opened the way for the Goliaths that followed. The result, called Octopus, was so large that it contained a submarine marina in its belly, as well as a helicopter hangar that could be converted into an outdoor performance space. Mick Jagger and Bono played on occasion. I asked Øino why owners obsessed with secrecy seem determined to build the world’s most conspicuous machines. He compared it to a luxury car with tinted windows. “People can’t see you, but you’re still in that expensive, impressive thing,” he said. “We all need to feel that we’re important in one way or another.”

In recent months, Øino has seen some of his creations detained by governments in the sanctions campaign. When we spoke, he condemned the news coverage. “Yacht equals Russian equals evil equals money,” he said disdainfully. “It’s a bit tragic, because the yachts have become synonymous with the bad guys in a James Bond movie.”

What about Scheherazade, the giant yacht that U.S. officials have alleged is held by a Russian businessman for Putin’s use? Øino, who designed the ship, rejected the idea. “We have designed two yachts for heads of state, and I can tell you that they’re completely different, in terms of the layout and everything, from Scheherazade.” He meant that the details said plutocrat, not autocrat.

For the time being, Scheherazade and other Øino creations under detention across Europe have entered a strange legal purgatory. As lawyers for the owners battle to keep the ships from being permanently confiscated, local governments are duty-bound to maintain them until a resolution is reached. In a comment recorded by a hot mike in June, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national-security adviser, marvelled that “people are basically being paid to maintain Russian superyachts on behalf of the United States government.” (It usually costs about ten per cent of a yacht’s construction price to keep it afloat each year. In May, officials in Fiji complained that a detained yacht was costing them more than a hundred and seventy-one thousand dollars a day.)

Stranger still are the Russian yachts on the lam. Among them is Melnichenko’s much maligned Motor Yacht A. On March 9th, Melnichenko was sanctioned by the European Union, and although he denied having close ties to Russia’s leadership, Italy seized one of his yachts—a six-hundred-million-dollar sailboat. But Motor Yacht A slipped away before anyone could grab it. Then the boat turned off the transponder required by international maritime rules, so that its location could no longer be tracked. The last ping was somewhere near the Maldives, before it went dark on the high seas.

The very largest yachts come from Dutch and German shipyards, which have experience in naval vessels, known as “gray boats.” But the majority of superyachts are built in Italy, partly because owners prefer to visit the Mediterranean during construction. (A British designer advises those who are weighing their choices to take the geography seriously, “unless you like schnitzel.”)

In the past twenty-two years, nobody has built more superyachts than the Vitellis, an Italian family whose patriarch, Paolo Vitelli, got his start in the seventies, manufacturing smaller boats near a lake in the mountains. By 1985, their company, Azimut, had grown large enough to buy the Benetti shipyards, which had been building enormous yachts since the nineteenth century. Today, the combined company builds its largest boats near the sea, but the family still works in the hill town of Avigliana, where a medieval monastery towers above a valley. When I visited in April, Giovanna Vitelli, the vice-president and the founder’s daughter, led me through the experience of customizing a yacht.

“We’re using more and more virtual reality,” she said, and a staffer fitted me with a headset. When the screen blinked on, I was inside a 3-D mockup of a yacht that is not yet on the market. I wandered around my suite for a while, checking out swivel chairs, a modish sideboard, blond wood panelling on the walls. It was convincing enough that I collided with a real-life desk.

After we finished with the headset, it was time to pick the décor. The industry encourages an introspective evaluation: What do you want your yacht to say about you? I was handed a vibrant selection of wood, marble, leather, and carpet. The choices felt suddenly grave. Was I cut out for the chiselled look of Cream Vesuvio, or should I accept that I’m a gray Cardoso Stone? For carpets, I liked the idea of Chablis Corn White—Paris and the prairie, together at last. But, for extra seating, was it worth splurging for the V.I.P. Vanity Pouf?

Some designs revolve around a single piece of art. The most expensive painting ever sold, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi,” reportedly was hung on the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s four-hundred-and-thirty-nine-foot yacht Serene, after the Louvre rejected a Saudi demand that it hang next to the “Mona Lisa.” Art conservators blanched at the risks that excess humidity and fluctuating temperatures could pose to a five-hundred-year-old painting. Often, collectors who want to display masterpieces at sea commission replicas.

If you’ve just put half a billion dollars into a boat, you may have qualms about the truism that material things bring less happiness than experiences do. But this, too, can be finessed. Andrew Grant Super, a co-founder of the “experiential yachting” firm Berkeley Rand, told me that he served a uniquely overstimulated clientele: “We call them the bored billionaires.” He outlined a few of his experience products. “We can plot half of the Pacific Ocean with coördinates, to map out the Battle of Midway,” he said. “We re-create the full-blown battles of the giant ships from America and Japan. The kids have haptic guns and haptic vests. We put the smell of cordite and cannon fire on board, pumping around them.” For those who aren’t soothed by the scent of cordite, Super offered an alternative. “We fly 3-D-printed, architectural freestanding restaurants into the middle of the Maldives, on a sand shelf that can only last another eight hours before it disappears.”

For some, the thrill lies in the engineering. Staluppi, born in Brooklyn, was an auto mechanic who had no experience with the sea until his boss asked him to soup up a boat. “I took the six-cylinder engines out and put V-8 engines in,” he recalled. Once he started commissioning boats of his own, he built scale models to conduct tests in water tanks. “I knew I could never have the biggest boat in the world, so I says, ‘You know what? I want to build the fastest yacht in the world.’ The Aga Khan had the fastest yacht, and we just blew right by him.”

In Italy, after decking out my notional yacht, I headed south along the coast, to Tuscan shipyards that have evolved with each turn in the country’s history. Close to the Carrara quarries, which yielded the marble that Michelangelo turned into David, ships were constructed in the nineteenth century, to transport giant blocks of stone. Down the coast, the yards in Livorno made warships under the Fascists, until they were bombed by the Allies. Later, they began making and refitting luxury yachts. Inside the front gate of a Benetti shipyard in Livorno, a set of models depicted the firm’s famous modern creations. Most notable was the megayacht Nabila, built in 1980 for the high-living arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, with a hundred rooms and a disco that was the site of legendary decadence. (Khashoggi’s budget for prostitution was so extravagant that a French prosecutor later estimated he paid at least half a million dollars to a single madam in a single year.)

In 1987, shortly before Khashoggi was indicted for mail fraud and obstruction of justice (he was eventually acquitted), the yacht was sold to the real-estate developer Donald Trump, who renamed it Trump Princess. Trump was never comfortable on a boat—“Couldn’t get off fast enough,” he once said—but he liked to impress people with his yacht’s splendor. In 1991, while three billion dollars in debt, Trump ceded the vessel to creditors. Later in life, though, he discovered enthusiastic support among what he called “our beautiful boaters,” and he came to see quality watercraft as a mark of virtue—a way of beating the so-called élite. “We got better houses, apartments, we got nicer boats, we’re smarter than they are,” he told a crowd in Fargo, North Dakota. “Let’s call ourselves, from now on, the super-élite.”

In the age of oversharing, yachts are a final sanctum of secrecy, even for some of the world’s most inveterate talkers. Oprah, after returning from her sojourn with the Obamas, rebuffed questions from reporters. “What happens on the boat stays on the boat,” she said. “We talked, and everybody else did a lot of paddleboarding.”

I interviewed six American superyacht owners at length, and almost all insisted on anonymity or held forth with stupefying blandness. “Great family time,” one said. Another confessed, “It’s really hard to talk about it without being ridiculed.” None needed to be reminded of David Geffen’s misadventure during the early weeks of the pandemic, when he Instagrammed a photo of his yacht in the Grenadines and posted that he was “avoiding the virus” and “hoping everybody is staying safe.” It drew thousands of responses, many marked #EatTheRich, others summoning a range of nautical menaces: “At least the pirates have his location now.”

The yachts extend a tradition of seclusion as the ultimate luxury. The Medici, in sixteenth-century Florence, built elevated passageways, or corridoi , high over the city to escape what a scholar called the “clash of classes, the randomness, the smells and confusions” of pedestrian life below. More recently, owners of prized town houses in London have headed in the other direction, building three-story basements so vast that their construction can require mining engineers—a trend that researchers in the United Kingdom named “luxified troglodytism.”

Water conveys a particular autonomy, whether it’s ringing the foot of a castle or separating a private island from the mainland. Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, gave startup funding to the Seasteading Institute, a nonprofit group co-founded by Milton Friedman’s grandson, which seeks to create floating mini-states—an endeavor that Thiel considered part of his libertarian project to “escape from politics in all its forms.” Until that fantasy is realized, a white boat can provide a start. A recent feature in Boat International , a glossy trade magazine, noted that the new hundred-and-twenty-five-million-dollar megayacht Victorious has four generators and “six months’ autonomy” at sea. The builder, Vural Ak, explained, “In case of emergency, god forbid, you can live in open water without going to shore and keep your food stored, make your water from the sea.”

Much of the time, superyachts dwell beyond the reach of ordinary law enforcement. They cruise in international waters, and, when they dock, local cops tend to give them a wide berth; the boats often have private security, and their owners may well be friends with the Prime Minister. According to leaked documents known as the Paradise Papers, handlers proposed that the Saudi crown prince take delivery of a four-hundred-and-twenty-million-dollar yacht in “international waters in the western Mediterranean,” where the sale could avoid taxes.

Builders and designers rarely advertise beyond the trade press, and they scrupulously avoid leaks. At Lürssen, a German shipbuilding firm, projects are described internally strictly by reference number and code name. “We are not in the business for the glory,” Peter Lürssen, the C.E.O., told a reporter. The closest thing to an encyclopedia of yacht ownership is a site called SuperYachtFan, run by a longtime researcher who identifies himself only as Peter, with a disclaimer that he relies partly on “rumors” but makes efforts to confirm them. In an e-mail, he told me that he studies shell companies, navigation routes, paparazzi photos, and local media in various languages to maintain a database with more than thirteen hundred supposed owners. Some ask him to remove their names, but he thinks that members of that economic echelon should regard the attention as a “fact of life.”

To work in the industry, staff must adhere to the culture of secrecy, often enforced by N.D.A.s. On one yacht, O’Shannassy, the captain, learned to communicate in code with the helicopter pilot who regularly flew the owner from Switzerland to the Mediterranean. Before takeoff, the pilot would call with a cryptic report on whether the party included the presence of a Pomeranian. If any guest happened to overhear, their cover story was that a customs declaration required details about pets. In fact, the lapdog was a constant companion of the owner’s wife; if the Pomeranian was in the helicopter, so was she. “If no dog was in the helicopter,” O’Shannassy recalled, the owner was bringing “somebody else.” It was the captain’s duty to rebroadcast the news across the yacht’s internal radio: “Helicopter launched, no dog, I repeat no dog today”—the signal for the crew to ready the main cabin for the mistress, instead of the wife. They swapped out dresses, family photos, bathroom supplies, favored drinks in the fridge. On one occasion, the code got garbled, and the helicopter landed with an unanticipated Pomeranian. Afterward, the owner summoned O’Shannassy and said, “Brendan, I hope you never have such a situation, but if you do I recommend making sure the correct dresses are hanging when your wife comes into your room.”

In the hierarchy on board a yacht, the most delicate duties tend to trickle down to the least powerful. Yacht crew—yachties, as they’re known—trade manual labor and obedience for cash and adventure. On a well-staffed boat, the “interior team” operates at a forensic level of detail: they’ll use Q-tips to polish the rim of your toilet, tweezers to lift your fried-chicken crumbs from the teak, a toothbrush to clean the treads of your staircase.

Many are English-speaking twentysomethings, who find work by doing the “dock walk,” passing out résumés at marinas. The deals can be alluring: thirty-five hundred dollars a month for deckhands; fifty thousand dollars in tips for a decent summer in the Med. For captains, the size of the boat matters—they tend to earn about a thousand dollars per foot per year.

Yachties are an attractive lot, a community of the toned and chipper, which does not happen by chance; their résumés circulate with head shots. Before Andy Cohen was a talk-show host, he was the head of production and development at Bravo, where he green-lighted a reality show about a yacht crew: “It’s a total pressure cooker, and they’re actually living together while they’re working. Oh, and by the way, half of them are having sex with each other. What’s not going to be a hit about that?” The result, the gleefully seamy “Below Deck,” has been among the network’s top-rated shows for nearly a decade.

To stay in the business, captains and crew must absorb varying degrees of petty tyranny. An owner once gave O’Shannassy “a verbal beating” for failing to negotiate a lower price on champagne flutes etched with the yacht’s logo. In such moments, the captain responds with a deferential mantra: “There is no excuse. Your instruction was clear. I can only endeavor to make it better for next time.”

The job comes with perilously little protection. A big yacht is effectively a corporation with a rigid hierarchy and no H.R. department. In recent years, the industry has fielded increasingly outspoken complaints about sexual abuse, toxic impunity, and a disregard for mental health. A 2018 survey by the International Seafarers’ Welfare and Assistance Network found that more than half of the women who work as yacht crew had experienced harassment, discrimination, or bullying on board. More than four-fifths of the men and women surveyed reported low morale.

Karine Rayson worked on yachts for four years, rising to the position of “chief stew,” or stewardess. Eventually, she found herself “thinking of business ideas while vacuuming,” and tiring of the culture of entitlement. She recalled an episode in the Maldives when “a guest took a Jet Ski and smashed into a marine reserve. That damaged the coral, and broke his Jet Ski, so he had to clamber over the rocks and find his way to the shore. It was a private hotel, and the security got him and said, ‘Look, there’s a large fine, you have to pay.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, the boat will pay for it.’ ” Rayson went back to school and became a psychotherapist. After a period of counselling inmates in maximum-security prisons, she now works with yacht crew, who meet with her online from around the world.

Rayson’s clients report a range of scenarios beyond the boundaries of ordinary employment: guests who did so much cocaine that they had no appetite for a chef’s meals; armed men who raided a boat offshore and threatened to take crew members to another country; owners who vowed that if a young stew told anyone about abuse she suffered on board they’d call in the Mafia and “skin me alive.” Bound by N.D.A.s, crew at sea have little recourse.“We were paranoid that our e-mails were being reviewed, or we were getting bugged,” Rayson said.

She runs an “exit strategy” course to help crew find jobs when they’re back on land. The adjustment isn’t easy, she said: “You’re getting paid good money to clean a toilet. So, when you take your C.V. to land-based employers, they might question your skill set.” Despite the stresses of yachting work, Rayson said, “a lot of them struggle with integration into land-based life, because they have all their bills paid for them, so they don’t pay for food. They don’t pay for rent. It’s a huge shock.”

It doesn’t take long at sea to learn that nothing is too rich to rust. The ocean air tarnishes metal ten times as fast as on land; saltwater infiltrates from below. Left untouched, a single corroding ulcer will puncture tanks, seize a motor, even collapse a hull. There are tricks, of course—shield sensitive parts with resin, have your staff buff away blemishes—but you can insulate a machine from its surroundings for only so long.

Hang around the superyacht world for a while and you see the metaphor everywhere. Four months after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the war had eaten a hole in his myths of competence. The Western campaign to isolate him and his oligarchs was proving more durable than most had predicted. Even if the seizures of yachts were mired in legal disputes, Finley, the former C.I.A. officer, saw them as a vital “pressure point.” She said, “The oligarchs supported Putin because he provided stable authoritarianism, and he can no longer guarantee that stability. And that’s when you start to have cracks.”

For all its profits from Russian clients, the yachting industry was unsentimental. Brokers stripped photos of Russian yachts from their Web sites; Lürssen, the German builder, sent questionnaires to clients asking who, exactly, they were. Business was roaring, and, if some Russians were cast out of the have-yachts, other buyers would replace them.

On a cloudless morning in Viareggio, a Tuscan town that builds almost a fifth of the world’s superyachts, a family of first-time owners from Tel Aviv made the final, fraught preparations. Down by the docks, their new boat was suspended above the water on slings, ready to be lowered for its official launch. The scene was set for a ceremony: white flags in the wind, a plexiglass lectern. It felt like the obverse of the dockside scrum at the Palm Beach show; by this point in the buying process, nobody was getting vetted through binoculars. Waitresses handed out glasses of wine. The yacht venders were in suits, but the new owners were in upscale Euro casual: untucked linen, tight jeans, twelve-hundred-dollar Prada sneakers. The family declined to speak to me (and the company declined to identify them). They had come asking for a smaller boat, but the sales staff had talked them up to a hundred and eleven feet. The Victorians would have been impressed.

The C.E.O. of Azimut Benetti, Marco Valle, was in a buoyant mood. “Sun. Breeze. Perfect day to launch a boat, right?” he told the owners. He applauded them for taking the “first step up the big staircase.” The selling of the next vessel had already begun.

Hanging aloft, their yacht looked like an artifact in the making; it was easy to imagine a future civilization sifting the sediment and discovering that an earlier society had engaged in a building spree of sumptuous arks, with accommodations for dozens of servants but only a few lucky passengers, plus the occasional Pomeranian.

We approached the hull, where a bottle of spumante hung from a ribbon in Italian colors. Two members of the family pulled back the bottle and slung it against the yacht. It bounced off and failed to shatter. “Oh, that’s bad luck,” a woman murmured beside me. Tales of that unhappy omen abound. In one memorable case, the bottle failed to break on Zaca, a schooner that belonged to Errol Flynn. In the years that followed, the crew mutinied and the boat sank; after being re-floated, it became the setting for Flynn’s descent into cocaine, alcohol, orgies, and drug smuggling. When Flynn died, new owners brought in an archdeacon for an onboard exorcism.

In the present case, the bottle broke on the second hit, and confetti rained down. As the family crowded around their yacht for photos, I asked Valle, the C.E.O., about the shortage of new boats. “Twenty-six years I’ve been in the nautical business—never been like this,” he said. He couldn’t hire enough welders and carpenters. “I don’t know for how long it will last, but we’ll try to get the profits right now.”

Whatever comes, the white-boat world is preparing to insure future profits, too. In recent years, big builders and brokers have sponsored a rebranding campaign dedicated to “improving the perception of superyachting.” (Among its recommendations: fewer ads with girls in bikinis and high heels.) The goal is partly to defuse #EatTheRich, but mostly it is to soothe skittish buyers. Even the dramatic increase in yacht ownership has not kept up with forecasts of the global growth in billionaires—a disparity that represents the “one dark cloud we can see on the horizon,” as Øino, the naval architect, said during an industry talk in Norway. He warned his colleagues that they needed to reach those “potential yacht owners who, for some reason, have decided not to step up to the plate.”

But, to a certain kind of yacht buyer, even aggressive scrutiny can feel like an advertisement—a reminder that, with enough access and cash, you can ride out almost any storm. In April, weeks after the fugitive Motor Yacht A went silent, it was rediscovered in physical form, buffed to a shine and moored along a creek in the United Arab Emirates. The owner, Melnichenko, had been sanctioned by the E.U., Switzerland, Australia, and the U.K. Yet the Emirates had rejected requests to join those sanctions and had become a favored wartime haven for Russian money. Motor Yacht A was once again arrayed in almost plain sight, like semaphore flags in the wind. ♦

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Superyachts and the Super Rich

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Superyachts, like the billionaire class, shouldn’t exist. We need to institute a global wealth tax, shut down tax havens, and, yes, take their boats.

The superyacht Lady Lau in the port of Bonifacio, Southern Corsica, France. Myrabella / Wikimedia Commons

Hedge fund billionaire Daniel Loeb recently found himself in hot water after it was discovered that his superyacht had damaged Belize’s fragile barrier reef. Operators of the Samadhi — Buddhist for “a state of meditative consciousness and enlightenment” — had anchored the superyacht to live corals at the Lighthouse Reef Atoll, a Unesco World Heritage site.

Loeb was apologetic and promised to help fix the damaged reef. But the incident speaks volumes about the global billionaire class, whose fortunes grew by 25 percent last year. Today, the twenty-six richest people have more wealth than the world’s poorest 3.8 billion. What are the super-rich doing with all this money? For one thing, they’re buying boats.

Here are four things we can learn about the super-rich from their superyachts.

1. They Live in Their Own World

There are nearly five thousand superyachts (boats longer than thirty meters) sailing the world’s seas. But unless you’re a billionaire, a friend of a billionaire, or a pirate, you’ve probably never even seen a superyacht, let alone stepped foot on one.

On board these floating palaces are the uber-rich — the high-net-worth individuals who run the world. These individuals pull the levers of the global economy, but they are, for the most part, hidden from ordinary people, moving from their luxury high-rises to their private planes to their enormous boats.

This closed and relatively small network of elites is demonstrated and solidified through the consumption and display of luxury goods. The billionaires — from Saudi oil tycoons to Russian oligarchs to Silicon Valley tech royalty — meet at the Monaco Yacht Show to compare mast size, trade tips on how to protect a Picasso from saltwater damage, and form business partnerships.

2. They Are Above the Business Cycle

Manufacturing output is declining in a growing number of countries around the world, but yacht production is going strong. Superyacht orders have grown year over year for the past five years, and yacht builders in Britain, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands expect to see 20 percent growth in the coming decade. The .01 percent aren’t blown off course by economic headwinds.

In fact, when the business cycle goes south, and ordinary people are sucked into its maw, the super-rich often benefit. While the UK’s British Home Stores chain tanked, and 20,000 pensioners were set adrift, Topshop tycoon Philip Green was at his leisure on his £100 million superyacht Lionheart .

Superyacht owners have also proven themselves worthy pirates. Jho Low — the financier who siphoned $4.5 billion from the Malaysian government — bought himself at $250 million boat that he called “Tranquility.”

3. They Don’t Care About the Planet

As the planet alternates between burning and flooding, more and more wealthy people have expressed their concern. They sign up for the Giving Pledge. They start foundations. They donate money to save the polar bears. They also buy bigger and bigger boats. The number of boats longer than 60 meters — 364 — has doubled in the past decade. Russian oligarch Farkhad Akhmedov’s £350 million superyacht (which he has been desperately trying to keep out of the hands of his ex-wife, Tatiana) has two helipads, a swimming pool, a mini submarine, and nine decks.

Ever attuned to changing tastes, however, yacht designers are now touting “sustainable yacht design.” The world’s first environmentally friendly superyacht is being built — a $644 million hydrogen-powered yacht complete with infinity pool, helipad, and gym. For the millennials who purportedly care about experiences more than things, yacht designers are building solar-powered “explorer” yachts that can break through arctic ice and travel for weeks without a refuel.

4. They Should Pay a Lot More in Taxes

The superyachts at this year’s Monaco Yacht Show alone were worth a combined $2.7 billion. Superyacht owners spend upward of $750 million for their boats. They hire dozens of people to crew them, spending between $5 and $10 million a year to cruise from one hotspot to the next.  But money is no object for these billionaires. Indeed, it seems to fall into their laps through windfalls like the Trump tax cuts , which fueled a number of fresh superyacht purchases.

Superyachts also serve as handy floating tax havens. As the Paradise Papers investigation showed, elites go to great lengths to avoid paying taxes on their luxury purchases. Superyachts have the advantage of being mobile, making it much easier to evade the tax man. Big boats are also a good place to hide other, smaller luxury purchases, like artwork and jewelry.

Superyachts encapsulate everything wrong with our for-profit system — as billions struggle to survive, and the planet tumbles toward ecological catastrophe, the world’s richest people sail away, sheltered from the rough seas of capitalism.

These superyachts, like the billionaire class, shouldn’t exist. We need to institute a global wealth tax, shut down tax havens, and, yes, take their boats.

Joining the Gucci-loafer set for a glimpse of superyacht life in Monaco

Sanctions imposed on russian oligarchs don’t seem to have hurt the big-flashy-boat industry.

MONTE CARLO — Welcome aboard at the Monaco Yacht Show, where the world’s superyachts are bought and sold. Warning: If you find the excesses of the 0.01 percent triggering, avert your eyes.

The scene here is like a parking lot crammed with water toys that cost a cool collective $4.3 billion.

The technical term for the size of these pleasure craft is “enormous.” The top class — the megayachts — are now 100 meters in length — that’s 328 feet, more than a football field from goal line to goal line. There are dozens of these boats on order.

There’s also talk of gigayachts to come. Asked what a giga might be, a top broker joked: “That would be a repurposed aircraft carrier.”

Have one helipad? Sad. Why not have two?

Jet Skis? The new must-have toy is a submersible.

There are onboard elevators, naturally, to get between the four, five and six decks. Surfaces are clad in lost forests of teak and mahogany with gleaming stainless steel accents. The deckhands are constantly polishing, rubbing, squeegeeing.

You might think superyacht sales would be super down, what with global inflation, a real estate bust in China, threats of recession, trench warfare in Europe and — dare we say it here? — a planetary climate crisis. Surprise. You would be wrong.

Italy impounds $700 million megayacht linked to Putin

Russian oligarchs have traditionally been big buyers of showy yachts, accounting for an estimated 10 percent of sales. Sanctions and the U.S. Justice Department’s Task Force KleptoCapture have taken a bite. A lot of the Russian boats — including the $700 million megayacht Scheherazade, allegedly owned by Vladimir Putin himself — have been seized.

But the world is bigger than Russia — and there are more billionaires than ever.

“The sanctions didn’t affect the industry as much as you might think,” said Bob Denison , a top American broker with new offices in Monaco. He said the orders for “new builds” in European shipyards that were canceled because the buyers were placed on sanction lists were quickly snapped up by others who weren’t.

Russian oligarchs loved luxe Sardinia. Now they’re frozen out of paradise.

The problem with the superyacht market today?

“There’s not enough superyachts,” said Jeremy Roche, one of Denison’s directors.

It costs 600 euros ($635) for a day pass to the Monaco Yacht Show. Many well-heeled lookie-loos have come this week to stroll along the blue-carpeted docks and bump into a champagne tent.

And by well-heeled, we mean it. You must take off your shoes to board boats at the show — even if you are the prince of Monaco. So high-end footwear is strewn in front of the gangways, the ubiquitous Gucci loafers jumbled together with sneakers from Dior and Balenciaga that will set you back about $1,000 per pair.

The number of real buyers — the whales — is harder to calculate. A sales rep estimated there might be one buyer for every 100 staff — that’s exhibitors, brokers, deckhands, hostesses, marketers, cleaners, security.

We got an invitation from a friendly publicist to take a tour of Phoenix 2, built by Lürssen shipyard in northern Germany. She’s 90 meters, or 295 feet, with room for 14 guests in seven cabins, attended by a crew of 28 — and on sale for $132 million.

The boat was designed for the “richest man in Poland,” the late Jan Kulczyk, who wanted the interior to resemble an art deco Manhattan penthouse. There’s an Empire State Building vibe, with a lot of black and white — plus a bourbon bar, lap pool, steam sauna, screening room, gym, wine cave, Steinway piano and duplex owners’ cabin.

Henry Smith, a partner at Cecil Wright brokerage, was showing the boat and happy to discuss the evolving market for superyachts — generally, boats more than 24 meters.

Yacht justice: A new front in the war drags Russia’s oligarchs into the spotlight

Three decades ago, a 40-meter yacht would have been gigantic, he said. Today, those are considered midsize. Of the roughly 1,200 superyachts on order in boatyards, about two dozen are more than 100 meters.

“Boats just get bigger and bigger, with prices going up and up,” he said. “The future looks bright.”

The pace of sales is down a bit from the records of the pandemic years, when the ultrarich sought out superyachts as safe havens. But Smith said this year is still good.

He and his brokerage recently oversaw the sale of superyacht Kismet , originally built for Pakistani American billionaire Shahid Khan , owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars. The boat was on the market for just three months and sold for 149 million euros ($157 million).

Jaguars owner Shahid Khan proves to be the exception in more ways than one among NFL owners

The buyers keep coming, but they are changing, the brokers say.

Traditionally, they have been multimillionaires — 99 percent male — who sell their businesses in their mid-60s and want some high-end downtime with family and friends. The trend now is younger, with younger families, who struck it rich, or as Smith called it, experienced “a big liquidity event.”

He said, “I took on a chap who made several billion very quickly,” who wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted, except that he really wanted … something big.

At the boat show, we learned that sometimes it’s impossible to accommodate everything you need on your superyacht.

Tenders — used to ferry owners and guests from ship to shore — have a low profile and can be stored aboard in what the yachting community calls “the garage.” Robert Oakley of Falcon Tenders will sell you Miss Wonderly for $2.19 million. It’s powered by a hybrid diesel-electric engine, which gives you one hour on electric in port. “Think limousine,” he said.

But where do you put the sub?

Ian Sheard, the engineering director of Seamagine , maker of private submarines, explained it to us.

“You got the big white boat, the superyacht, right?” Sheard said. “Then you need the toy hauler.”

“The ‘shadow ship’ that follows the superyacht that has all the stuff you can’t fit on the superyacht.”

Richer than the royals: Win puts Rishi Sunak’s wealth in the spotlight

His submarines cost $4 million to $7 million and can carry two to seven passengers, with over 12,000 drama-free dives so far.

On our tours of superyachts, the guides often spoke of the boats’ “understated glamour.” But the glamour seemed bluntly stated, which was kind of the point?

Some interiors had a look and feel of a neutral-color Four Seasons. Others brought to mind a Vegas suite for a high-roller.

Aboard the $110 million Kensho, the publicist said that the owner (Udo Müller, chief executive of Ströer Media), wanted “a villa at sea.”

She described it as “more Zen, more calm.”

The kind of calm that three onboard bars might provide.

An older, smaller superyacht can be had for as little as $10 million — the price of an upscale home in Los Angeles or London. But if you are not ready to buy, many of the boats are used by their owners for only a few weeks in the high season and are otherwise available for charter.

To rent the Phoenix 2 costs a base price of $1.22 million per week. That doesn’t include fuel, food, drink, taxes, mooring and dock fees or tips — so call it $1.6 million. We had to ask a couple of times about the bill and were told to keep adding zeros.

It’s the fuel that gets you. A 50-meter yacht making a fast run between Monaco and St. Tropez might burn through $35,000 of diesel.

And even if you don’t go anywhere, a mooring ball or a slip at a primo port can cost thousands of dollars a night.

There was some talk at the Monaco Yacht Show about sustainability — about new green fuels, more gentle anchoring — but it was a sideshow.

Smith, the super broker, put it this way. “Green yachting is mostly a fallacy,” he said, adding, “no illusion, these things pollute.” Though you can mitigate the damage a bit.

He suggested anyone chartering a superyacht for a week “go out and plant a lot of trees.”

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‘Yachts at the top’: power, privacy and privilege in the world of Australian superyachts

Superyachts are floating markers of power and luxury, and sales are booming. As Australia hopes to lure more of the vessels and their elite clientele, what do we know about this world?

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Visible from the footpath at the water’s edge, the superyachts berthed at Melbourne City Marina bob gently up and down, their sleek and shiny exteriors reflecting the placid waters below.

For me, and most people on this planet, this is about as close as we are likely to get to a superyacht. In Australia, that’s a pleasurecraft longer than 24 metres. Internationally, the starting length is 30 metres. The City of Melbourne recently spent $1.97m upgrading Victoria Harbour, including its four superyacht berths, to fit vessels up to 67 metres long. But for the tiny portion of the world’s ultra wealthy for whom superyacht size is a matter of concern, 67 metres is fairly moderate. The longest privately owned superyacht in the world is the 180-metre Azzam, reportedly built for the former president of the United Arab Emirates , the late Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Superyachts are markers of power and extravagance. They are floating, transportable six-star hotels, capable of including everything from nail parlours to gyms, helipads and boardrooms, marble bathrooms and priceless art, as well as what the industry calls “toys” – from jet skis worth the equivalent of the average Australian worker’s salary to private submarines worth millions.

In a recent memoir, the longtime Australian seafarer and superyacht captain Brendan O’Shannassy writes: “Until space travel becomes a commercial reality, [superyachts] are the greatest display of wealth on the planet.”

For all their capacity to allow long-distance travel in extreme luxury, though, superyachts aren’t frequent visitors to Australian waters. The local industry has been lobbying to change that, and state and federal governments have made superyacht-friendly moves, hitching millions of dollars in public infrastructure upgrades and tax concessions to claims that these will bring millions in economic benefits to every port in which a vessel makes anchor.

But despite public money going towards establishing and upgrading infrastructure that is only accessible to the very privileged few, there’s been little public scrutiny of this elite industry.

S uperyachts are not super common, although their numbers are growing. Sales company Edmiston recently estimated that the global fleet comprised a total of 5,892 vessels – representing an increase of 44% over the last decade. Most of those yachts are between 30 and 50 metres (4,957); 13% are between 50 and 80 metres (753) and 3% are over 80 metres (182).

There are only about 120 superyachts owned by Australians, concentrated mostly around Sydney Harbour and south-east Queensland. About half of them are charter vessels. It’s likely all of them have, at some point, been through Captain Richard Morris’s hands.

Fresh off the plane from the Dubai Boat Show, Morris tells Guardian Australia that he got his start in the merchant navy at 17, before landing a job as a deckhand two years later on the 86-metre superyacht Nabila, owned by the influential and extravagant Saudi arms dealer, fixer and liaison of presidents and tycoons Adnan Khashoggi. Nabila was Khashoggi’s third yacht and the height of ostentatious luxury when it launched in 1980. Its 100 rooms included Italian hand-carved onyx bathrooms, a patisserie, a movie theatre, a hair salon, a hospital with an operating theatre, and 320 metres of Italian leather upholstery. When Khashoggi’s empire began to decay in the late 80s, he sold Nabila to Donald Trump for $29m – considered a bargain – with the businessman who would later become US president renaming the yacht the Trump Princess .

Morris, meanwhile, left Nabila after a year and began building his own career as a seafarer, becoming a captain at just 27 and a master mariner. He moved ashore in 1999 and was hired by NSW Maritime to build a new superyacht marina in Rozelle Bay.

“That was the beginning of superyachting in Australia,” Morris says. “Prior to that, only a few people here had superyachts, because there was the tall poppy syndrome – high net wealth Australians were reluctant to show their extreme wealth.”

The Sydney Olympics in 2000 changed that, Morris says. The marina development was partly to accommodate the super wealthy who were planning to bring their yachts down for the Games. Morris managed the marina for the next decade, before moving into local superyacht sales and charters.

The Sydney experience is one that the industry is keen to replicate for the forthcoming Brisbane Olympics. The mining magnate Gina Rinehart may have been lampooned by the public in 2021 when she complained that she had nowhere to moor her yacht in Brisbane , but the Queensland Labor government appears to agree it should invest in more superyacht infrastructure. It’s had a multiyear superyacht strategy since 2018, and in May last year it was updated and extended to take the Olympics into account.

Its listed achievements so far include $28m to upgrade the Cairns Marine Precinct, $2.87m for a 160-metre superyacht berth on the Gold Coast, and planning for 80-metre superyacht facilities and additional marinas in new developments on the Spit. Its stated goal is for Queensland to be “world recognised as the major superyacht hub in the Asia-Pacific region”. Economic modelling for industry lobby group Superyacht Australia argues the 2032 Games presents “an unparalleled opportunity to springboard the sector on to the global stage and demonstrate the prosperity the sector can support in Australia”. It hopes Australia will reach 8% of the global market – that’s 533 vessels – in the next three years, which it says will yield hundreds of millions of dollars in direct economic benefits.

Until just prior to the pandemic, superyachts could not come to Australia without the owner paying a hefty tax on the vessel, with the visiting multimillion-dollar vessels treated as though they were being imported permanently into the country. That changed with the passage of the Special Recreational Vessels Act 2019. The act, which relieves the owner of having to pay import duties including GST, was hitched as a rider to various unrelated bills by the Coalition government until it was passed as a standalone just before Christmas in 2019.

The legislation allows foreign vessels to be chartered while in Australian waters, with GST payable only on the charter itself.

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The then member for the Queensland seat of Dawson, George Christensen, claimed it as a pet project. “I have been very, very pushy in getting this legislation to come forward,” Christensen said at the time.

Christensen claimed the bill was “just about ensuring that local communities can get some of the coin that these people drop”. Labor passed the bill with minor amendments.

Since then, six superyachts have applied for a temporary licence, with just four making the trip.

‘It’s your world’

The industry estimates that the local market for superyacht charter or purchase is 1% of the population. It sees it as a subset of the cruise market, which is estimated to capture about 5% of Australians.

It’s hard to ignore the symbolism of that figure, the 1%. Morris’s anecdotes help to illustrate just how that plays out in practice. In 2011, the manager of U2 called him, he recalls, hoping to find a suitable superyacht for the band who were dissatisfied with the crowds at the Park Hyatt. (He was unable to find one that met the band’s specific desires.) That same year, Morris put up the actor Kevin Spacey in the 37-metre Tango during Spacey’s run as Richard III in Sam Mendes’s production that toured Sydney’s Lyric theatre.

“Dinner was at 1am and [Spacey’s] guests would leave at 4am. Then the yacht would move to Rose Bay and he’d sleep till midday, and then come back and do it all again,” Morris says.

“It’s an option for these very high-profile people. They’re anchored in the middle of the harbour. The level of security and discretion that a superyacht provides is much better than any hotel. They can control their world. And that’s the essence of yachting – it’s your world.”

When Covid lockdowns hit, owners of superyachts raced to their vessels, escaping up to the Great Barrier Reef instead of staying at home, Morris says. The associated freedom saw a boom in superyacht sales in 2021 . Since the onset of the war in Ukraine, however, superyachts have also become associated with sanctioned Russian oligarchs. Not without reason: they represented 30% of the global market. Documents recently revealed, for example, that the former Chelsea FC boss Roman Abramovich owned 16 superyachts , a full eight of which were support vessels for the 162.5-metre A$649.5m Eclipse he’d had built in 2010.

Morris says there were Russians who had planned to come to Australia prior to the war – one of whom was going to contract him to manage his yacht. It would have put millions through his business. The sanctions, though, have “put the fear of God through the industry”, he says.

“If I was managing a Russian yacht I would have gotten rid of it. It’s so lucrative, though, that a lot of people didn’t. I’m glad that the Russian client didn’t come. Sure, I missed out on huge revenue, but that’s not the point.”

T he 2032 Olympics aren’t the local industry’s only goal. Another is to bring more vessels to Australia to make use of the shipyards – mainly in Queensland and Western Australia – for maintenance, retrofitting and building. Another still is to increase the number of Australians joining the superyacht workforce.

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On Facebook groups like Superyacht Crew , keen industry up-and-comers post pictures of themselves – snorkelling, in uniform, sipping a glass of wine in a party dress – alongside their formal qualifications and experience. The semi-casual CV comes with added notes about the seafarer’s personality, including whether or not they have tattoos (being tattoo-free appears to be a selling point).

Employment standards, however, can vary. Commercially registered yachts available for charter, which usually have permanent captain and crew despite the rotating guest list, are bound by the Maritime Labour Convention 2006, which lays out minimum standards of employment, including legally enforceable contracts, maximum working hours per week, shore leave and annual leave entitlements, and the right to return to your country of residence for free. Enforcement of those standards is the responsibility of the country under whose flag the ship sails, and yachts chartering out of Australia need to be registered here.

Private yachts are a different story. They are not automatically covered by the Maritime Labour Convention, and employment contracts are often managed by owners’ personal office staff. Non-disclosure agreements are common, and rumours abound that upsetting the wrong people on board can see you unceremoniously dumped at the nearest port.

Superyacht crew in Australia are not covered by any union-based collective bargaining agreements. The Maritime Union of Australia national secretary, Paddy Crumlin, tells Guardian Australia that the MUA doesn’t have a real presence among the superyacht labour force, but alleges exploitation and harassment are rife. Morris vehemently rejects this, saying the working conditions on superyachts are “exceptional”, better than cruising or commercial shipping, higher paid, and far exceeding the minimums set by the Maritime Labour Convention.

Guardian Australia was unable to speak to any junior superyacht crew directly, despite attempts, but a survey of 402 superyacht crew members conducted by the International Seafarers’ Welfare and Assistance Network in 2018 described them as mainly well paid. More than 90% of survey respondents – male and female – said they felt safe on board, though 53% of female crew said they had experienced discrimination, harassment or bullying from owners, other crew or guests, compared with 30% of men, who most commonly experienced it from captains or other senior crew. The level of work-related stress was high, particularly among women.

No matter who ultimately owns them, private yachts are likely to be flying what the industry calls a “flag of convenience”, which can make standards harder to enforce, as the boat can spend very little, if any, time in its country of registration. Flags of convenience are a common maritime business practice, though, including in cruising and freight. And the results can be ironic: a cursory registry search of some high-profile private superyachts reveals, for example, that the mining magnate Andrew Forrest’s 58.2-metre Pangaea Ocean Explorer – which will shortly carry out environmental surveys on the DNA of ocean life, assisted by $3m in federal funding to Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation – sails under the Jamaican flag. Clive Palmer’s 56-metre $40m yacht, despite being patriotically named Australia , is registered in Malta.

Control, chameleons and seasick fish

What is it that draws the ultra rich to yachting?

“Control,” says David Good, the chief executive of industry peak body Superyachts Australia. “You can control the itinerary, who is on board and what food is going to be served. During the pandemic, when you were on board was probably the only time you could fully take control of who was going to be with you and your family. Covid was probably one of the best things that ever happened to boating in general.”

Sam Sorgiovanni concurs. He’s used to catering to the whims of wealth: a sought-after designer based in Western Australia with about 35 years of experience, Sorgiovanni estimates he’s designed at least 20 superyachts. The biggest challenges usually relate to balancing functionality with the budget constraints of the commissioner. But some design requests are more complicated.

For the Nirvana, Sorgiovanni says his company designed two onboard terrariums for chameleons, water dragons, turtles and frogs, and a separate cricket facility to breed the reptiles’ food. The terrarium included curtains to shield the animals from the disco lights of an adjacent salon. On Anastasia and Barbara – owned by the same Russian billionaire as Nirvana – the designers were asked to include fish tanks. Unfortunately, they later discovered, fish kept in a tank on a boat die – from seasickness.

The origin of most of the super wealth that fuels superyacht ownership is natural resources, Sorgiovanni says. But criticism of the industry, he says, echoing Morris, is “tall poppy syndrome”.

“Yachting is the greatest redistribution of wealth around. Although it is for the privileged few, if you take a 100-metre yacht, there’s 50 crew on board, they’re all being paid, they’ve all got families, and wherever that yacht goes, especially if we’re allowing them to come into charter, as soon as it pulls into port … it would be millions generated every time the vessel comes in,” he says.

“It’s a pyramid. We’ve got the yachts at the top, and a pyramid of suppliers underneath it.”

S altwater and air is hard on boats, and superyachts require a lot of money for upkeep, and a lot of maintenance. So when an owner abandons ship, the vessels suddenly become very large and very unwieldy public burdens.

In February, the government of Antigua and Barbuda claimed and put up for auction the 82-metre Alfa Nero, which it said had been abandoned in Falmouth Harbour since early last year. The owner is rumoured to be the Russian oligarch Andrey Guryev; Guryev has denied owning the yacht, according to other reports.

That same month, the 29-metre superyacht Nakoa broke free of its moorings in Honolua Bay in north-west Maui, Hawaii, and drifted before running hard aground in shallow water, peppered by rocks and reef.

The US Coast Guard seized jurisdiction of the yacht after its owner, the charter mogul Jim Jones, informed authorities that he would not organise or pay for the boat’s salvage. Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources said in a series of statements that Jones would instead receive a bill of at least US$460,000 for the salvage effort, and may face further penalties and possible legal action.

Facing widespread criticism, Jones told Honolulu media that he was “taking responsibility” for the matter. “We’ve been talking to the DLNR to let them know we’re not leaving them with the bill,” Jones said. “We’re not running.”

Timely and safe salvage was important to the local community but also to the environment. The grounding occurred just outside a significant marine conservation zone, and the yacht struck and damaged at least 30 corals and live rocks, its hull leaking diesel into the reef. Footage of the wreck circulated on social media, where commenters raged about the fuel seeping into the pristine water and the damage to the reef.

It took contractors three salvage attempts over nearly two weeks to dislodge the 122-tonne Nakoa. On 5 March, three tugboats managed to drag it back into the water. As they set off to tow the yacht to Honolulu, a pod of humpback whales surfaced and escorted the boats out of the bay, away from the marine sanctuary.

The Nakoa never made it back to dock . Halfway to Honolulu, the yacht began listing heavily. Unable to be dragged any further, it was scuttled in the deep channel between the islands of Maui and Molokai, and left to sink to the ocean floor.

The whales swam on.

• Inequality reporting

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