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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Haves and the Have-Yachts
The New Yorker had a nice story about yachting you may enjoy.
The Haves and the Have-Yachts
Luxury ships attract outrage and political scrutiny. The ultra-rich are buying them in record numbers.
By Evan Osnos
The New Yorker, July 18, 2022
In the Victorian era, it was said that the length of a mans 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 Floridas 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, Mercers 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.
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Nobody can say precisely how many of Putins associates own superyachtsknown to professionals as white boatsbecause 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 worlds 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 Russias richest men, Alexei Mordashov, and a colossus suspected of belonging to Putin himself, the four-hundred-and-fifty-nine-foot Scheherazade.
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OShannassy 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 insightit all matters, he wrote in Superyacht Captain, a new memoir. A guest told OShannassy 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.
Excerpt
The imperative is not usually length for lengths 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. Its a level of service you cannot really contemplate until youve been fortunate enough to experience it.
Continues
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/25/the-haves-and-the-have-yachts
Mr. Crows yacht, the Michaela Rose
One of the things that is interesting about reading conspiracy theory is that much of what folks think is conspiracy is really many people acting in concert to make or protect their money. Catherine Austin Fitts
Goonch
(3,614 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,964 posts)German and Dutch yachts hold their value.
Exposed corrupt Supreme Court justices? Not so much.
Kid Berwyn
(14,964 posts)OShannassy 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 insightit all matters, he wrote in Superyacht Captain, a new memoir. A guest told OShannassy 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.
Source: The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/25/the-haves-and-the-have-yachts
Today, the Solar System. Tomorrow, the Galaxy, sir!