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Superyacht Stardom – how the yacht guy got insta-famous

To many of us, it seems TheYachtGuy appeared overnight – suddenly there he was, top of our Instagram feeds, aboard yet another superyacht. For Alex Jimenez, the man behind the handle, it was 10 years of hard work and dedication. We caught up with Alex to find out how he made it into the superyacht spotlight.

Q1. Life before The Yacht Guy – Before introducing yourself to the superyacht world as ‘TheYachtGuy’, what was life like for Alex Jimenez? I don’t think much has changed, really. I’m just a regular guy with a job. It’s a really cool job, granted, but for the most part, aside from some more traveling, things have remained the same. I still sit at my local Dunkin Donuts having coffee, watch the family kids if someone needs me, etc. The only time things change is when I have to travel for work, and get fully into YachtGuy mode.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by I Am The Yacht Guy (@iamtheyachtguy) on Oct 20, 2019 at 10:20pm PDT

Q3. What have been some of the highlights so far in your career as TheYachtGuy? That’s a tough question, so many great times it’s hard to choose just one! I can definitely say that hanging out aboard MY BINA a couple years’ back in the Caribbean for four days was nice – we went to St Barths, St Maarten and Anguilla. I recently sailed the Bosphorus in Turkey but a highlight of that trip was actually riding in a tiny tender with a few guys in some really choppy water – I remember all of us laughing and wondering what the hell were we thinking.

View this post on Instagram Out on the water during MYS shooting Lürssen’s with @taylorchien @tomvanoossanen and @redcharlie1 A post shared by Alex J (@theyachtguy) on Sep 26, 2019 at 6:52am PDT

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Alex J (@theyachtguy) on Apr 17, 2019 at 11:05am PDT

Keep an eye out for more news from TheYachtGuy and his forthcoming projects by following him on Instagram, if you aren’t already…! Follow TheYachtGuy.

Roxanne Hughes

Related articles, champagne vs prosecco: what sets them apart, doing table service right. 12 top tips, the special skill you have to have if you’re going to be a yacht chef, 5 management tips for senior yacht crew.

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Who was on superyacht that sank off Sicily?

Twenty-two people were on board the Bayesian superyacht including British technology tycoon Mike Lynch, his wife and 18-year-old daughter, and Morgan Stanley International boss Jonathan Bloomer.

Friday 23 August 2024 12:34, UK

Details have emerged of the 22 people who were on board the superyacht that sank off the coast of Sicily.

The British-flagged vessel named Bayesian was carrying 12 passengers and 10 members of crew when it got into difficulty in the early hours of Monday.

Seven bodies have now been recovered. The other 15 people on board were rescued.

Here's what we know about those who were on the yacht.

Follow latest updates on the superyacht sinking

British technology tycoon Mike Lynch was among the original six people missing. On Thursday, divers confirmed his body had been recovered.

Raised in Ilford, east London by Irish parents, the 59-year-old made millions with the software company Autonomy he set up in 1996.

He had an estimated net worth of £852m, according to the 2023 Sunday Times Rich List, and is believed to have owned the yacht.

Off the back of Automomy's global success, Mr Lynch was given the roles of science adviser to former prime minister David Cameron and non-executive director of the BBC.

The Cambridge maths and sciences graduate sold the firm for £8.64bn to US giant Hewlett Packard (HP) in 2011.

Dubbed the "British Bill Gates", Mr Lynch has been in the headlines in recent months over a high-profile fraud case related to the sale of Autonomy to HP in 2011.

HP accused him of deliberately overstating the value of the company before it was acquired by the American technology firm. Mr Lynch denied any wrongdoing.

In June, a US jury cleared him of all charges .

Read more: Lynch's co-defendant dies days before yacht disaster

Hannah Lynch

Mr Lynch's 18-year-old daughter Hannah Lynch was also on board. A body believed to be that of the teenager was recovered on Friday from the yacht wreckage.

She had been on holiday with her parents, having secured a place to study English at the University of Oxford, according to reports.

Her former school, Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, west London, said they were "incredibly shocked by the news that Hannah and her father are among those missing in this tragic accident" when the yacht first sank.

Angela Bacares

Mr Lynch's wife Angela Bacares was on board the yacht and was rescued.

The 57-year-old said she and Mr Lynch were awoken by the boat "tilting" at 4am - half an hour before it sank.

Jonathan Bloomer

Jonathan Bloomer, the chairman of investment bank Morgan Stanley International, was confirmed dead on Thursday.

According to the Financial Times, Mr Bloomer appeared as a defence witness for Mr Lynch during his US criminal trial and the pair were good friends. He also chaired Autonomy's audit committee.

The 70-year-old was the chief executive of UK-Hong Kong insurer Prudential until he was ousted by the board in 2005.

He was also chairman of the insurance provider Hiscox.

Judy Bloomer

Mr Bloomer's wife Judy was on the yacht trip with her husband. Divers confirmed they found her body on Thursday.

Mrs Bloomer was a former board member at The Eve Appeal charity, which focuses on gynaecological cancers.

The charity described her as a "brilliant champion for women's health and medical research... an incredible supporter, committee member, and trustee of our charity for over 20 years".

Read more: 'Alarming' potential cause of superyacht disaster What we know about superyacht that sank

Recaldo Thomas

The yacht's on-board chef Recaldo Thomas died in the sinking.

He was Canadian-Antiguan and part of the crew of the Bayesian.

His body was the first to be recovered from the wreckage.

Chris Morvillo

Christopher Morvillo Pic: Clifford Chance handout

US lawyer Chris Morvillo was among those divers found dead on Thursday.

The father-of-two worked on Mr Lynch's US fraud trial and was a partner of law firm Clifford Chance's US branch.

Mr Morvillo was assistant attorney for the Southern District of New York between 1995 and 2005 and worked on the terrorist investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

In a recent LinkedIn post, he thanked the legal team that helped win Mr Lynch's trial.

Signing off the post, he said: "And, finally, a huge thank you to my patient and incredible wife, Neda Morvillo, and my two strong, brilliant, and beautiful daughters, Sabrina Morvillo and Sophia Morvillo.

"None of this would have been possible without your love and support. I am so glad to be home. And they all lived happily ever after…."

Neda Morvillo

Mr Morvillo's wife Neda died in the disaster alongside her husband.

The 57-year-old had a luxury jewellery brand, which she ran under her maiden name Neda Nassiri.

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

Ayla Ronald

Ayla Ronald, a senior associate at Clifford Chance, survived the yacht disaster, the law firm confirmed.

The 36-year-old worked alongside Chris Morvillo in helping defend Mike Lynch in court.

Clifford Chance said in a statement: "Our utmost priority is providing support to the family as well as our colleague Ayla Ronald, who together with her partner, thankfully survived the incident."

She is originally from Christchurch, New Zealand, but lives in London, her father told local media there.

He said she was left "very shaken" but "she and her partner are alive".

Charlotte Golunski

Charlotte Golunski was on board the yacht and was rescued along with her one-year-old daughter, Sofia.

She spoke to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, confirming she survived the yacht sinking and told how she kept her daughter alive after she was rescued.

"I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning," she said.

"It was all dark. In the water I couldn't keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others."

The 35-year-old is a partner at one of Mr Lynch's firms - Invoke Capital - and has worked there since 2012, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She also worked at Hewlett Packard, which acquired Autonomy in 2011, for 11 months.

Before that, she studied history at the University of Oxford.

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James Emsley

Ms Golunski's partner James Emsley was also rescued from the yacht, according to Sicily's civil protection agency.

The 36-year-old is the father of her one-year-old daughter.

James Cutfield

The 51-year-old captain of the yacht spoke to Italian newspaper La Repubblica after he was rescued.

Mr Cutfield, from New Zealand, was taken for treatment at the Termini Imerese emergency unit, where he told the newspaper: "We didn't see it coming."

Leah Randall

Leah Randall was part of the Bayesian crew and survived the sinking.

She was pictured going ashore in Porticello on Monday morning and is from South Africa.

Her mother Heidi told Sky News said she was "beyond relieved that my daughter's life was spared by the grace of God".

"It doesn't make it any easier living with the heartache of those who have lost their lives [or are] missing. My very deepest condolences to the chef's family as they formed a great friendship," she said.

Katja Chicken

Katja Chicken was another South African member of crew on board the Bayesian and was pictured being brought to safety in Porticello on Monday.

The Italian coastguard confirmed on Tuesday evening that Leo Eppel, a crew member, also survived the yacht sinking.

Suspected Gunman Said He Was Willing to Fight and Die in Ukraine

Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, told The New York Times in 2023 that he had traveled to Ukraine and wanted to recruit Afghan soldiers to fight there.

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By Adam Goldman Thomas Gibbons-Neff Glenn Thrush and Najim Rahim

Published Sept. 15, 2024 Updated Sept. 16, 2024, 11:46 a.m. ET

Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old man who was arrested on Sunday in connection with what the F.B.I. described as an attempted assassination on former President Donald J. Trump , had expressed the desire to fight and die in Ukraine.

Mr. Routh’s posts on the social media site X revealed a penchant for violent rhetoric in the weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER AND FIGHT AND DIE,” he wrote.

On the messaging application Signal, Mr. Routh wrote that “Civilians must change this war and prevent future wars” as part of his profile bio. On WhatsApp, his bio read, “Each one of us must do our part daily in the smallest steps help support human rights, freedom and democracy; we each must help the chinese.”

Mr. Routh, a former roofing contractor from Greensboro, N.C., was interviewed by The New York Times in 2023 for an article about Americans volunteering to aid the war effort in Ukraine . Mr. Routh, who had no military experience, said he had traveled to the country after Russia’s invasion and wanted to recruit Afghan soldiers to fight there.

In a telephone interview with The New York Times in 2023, when Mr. Routh was in Washington, he spoke with the self-assuredness of a seasoned diplomat who thought his plans to support Ukraine’s war effort were sure to succeed. But he appeared to have little patience for anyone who got in his way. When an American foreign fighter seemed to talk down to him in a Facebook message he shared with The New York Times, Mr. Routh said, “he needs to be shot.”

In the interview, Mr. Routh said he was in Washington to meet with the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission “for two hours” to help push for more support for Ukraine. The commission is led by members of Congress and staffed by congressional aides . It is influential on matters of democracy and security and has been vocal in supporting Ukraine.

Mr. Routh also said he was seeking recruits for Ukraine from among Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban. He said he planned to move them, in some cases illegally, from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine. He said dozens had expressed interest.

“We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan, since it’s such a corrupt country,” he said.

It is not clear whether Mr. Routh followed through, but one former Afghan soldier said he had been contacted and was interested in fighting if it meant leaving Iran, where he was living illegally.

A man with the same name and similar age as Mr. Routh was arrested in 2002 in Greensboro, N.C., after barricading himself inside a building with a fully automatic weapon, according to the Greensboro News & Record newspaper.

The newspaper said the man was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and possession of a fully automatic machine gun. It is not clear how the charges were resolved.

It is not clear if Mr. Routh, a lean man with reddish-brown hair who wore American flag clothing in one of his profile pictures, fired any shots before leaving the scene on Sunday, according to the Secret Service.

In a series of posts on X in 2020, Mr. Routh expressed admiration for former Representative Tulsi Gabbard, then a Democratic presidential candidate, saying “she will tirelessly negotiate peace deals in Syria, Afghanistan, and all turmoil zones.”

At some point over the past several years, Mr. Routh moved to Hawaii, where a man with his name ran a small business.

In a May 2020 post, he invited Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, to Hawaii for a vacation and offered to act as “ambassador and liaison” to resolve disputes between the two nations.

When deputies stopped him on Interstate 95 after the incident, Mr. Routh appeared calm, did not ask why he was being detained, and “was not armed when we took him out of the car,” Sheriff William D. Snyder of Martin County told a local station, WPTV .

Adam Goldman writes about the F.B.I. and national security. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. More about Adam Goldman

Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a Ukraine correspondent and a former Marine infantryman. More about Thomas Gibbons-Neff

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons. More about Glenn Thrush

Najim Rahim is a reporter in the Kabul, Afghanistan, bureau. More about Najim Rahim

I took a $13,000 pay cut to work as a deckhand on a superyacht. I don't regret it as it gave me a career I can grow in.

Nathan Marx was a quality controller in South Africa but decided to switch to becoming a superyacht deckhand.
Marx said the job has more growth potential than his previous job and helped him develop more meaningful relationships.
Working around the wealthy has shown Marx that success is attainable and wealth doesn't change people's core natures.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nathan Marx, a deckhand for a superyacht. It has been edited for length and clarity.

From 2020 to the end of 2023, I was a quality controller at an engineering company that made mining machinery in South Africa, I managed 132 employees and earned 3,000 euros, around $3,333 a month.

My future was pretty secure at the company, but I lacked that sense of adventure and felt like there was more to life than working away every day and not seeing the world as I would like.

I knew some friends who had entered the yachting industry since leaving school, and it looked very intriguing and adventurous.

My previous job had long hours and was hard work, which made me comfortable stepping into the yachting industry.

When I started working on deckhand certification courses in January this year, I was told about these massive yachting hubs where it'd be easier to find work opportunities because they were saturated with boats.

Watch: While Delta's business is 'extremely robust,' the airline's marketing chief stays focused on the data

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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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The Haves and the Have-Yachts

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.”

Man talking to woman who is holding a baby keeping the dog and another child entertained and cooking.

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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.”

Two people standing on city sidewalk on hot summer day.

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.

Billboard that resembles on for an injury lawyer but is actually of a woman saying I told you so.

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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Who is Dennis Washington? The billionaire who almost bought Ekati mine, again

In the first 3 months of the pandemic, his net worth grew by 13%.

Social Sharing

Dennis Washington, 86, is the wealthiest man in Montana, with a net worth of $6.1 billion US.

He is the majority interest owner of The Washington Companies, which made a $166 million offer on the N.W.T. 's troubled Ekati Diamond Mine in September. The owner, Dominion Diamond Mines, went into creditor protection in April, saying the COVID-19 pandemic had essentially shut down the diamond industry.

Though Washington's multi-million dollar offer is now a dead deal , CBC News took a look at the billionaire's lengthy business background.

In the first three months of the pandemic Washington's net worth has grown by 13 per cent from $5.5 billion US to $6.2 billion US, states a June 24 news release from Americans for Tax Fairness.

In Depth Tax breaks may have been at the heart of dead deal for Ekati mine

Profiles of Washington describe him as a self-made billionaire who started out selling newspapers as a teenager and became one of America's most powerful industrialists.

His portfolio includes a " significant ownership " in Seaspan ULC, through The Washington Companies, which are involved in rail and marine transport, construction and mining, heavy equipment, aviation and real estate development, states the Seaspan website.

His largest asset is Montana Rail Link, reports Bloomberg .

Washington has a hobby refurbishing boats, including one 332-foot luxury yacht named Attessa IV. It recently docked in B.C. for some repairs and flies the Cayman Island flag .

His business with mines

Washington got his start in the construction business in 1964, according to the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation.

In the 1980s, he revived a floundering copper pit mining operation in Butte, and Montana Resources now produces up to 80 million pounds of copper a year and spends $74 million on payroll tax and purchases every year.

Although metal prices have tumbled because of the pandemic, the mine is still in operation .

He also held mining interests in the state, which he sold or leased to a group of three businessmen who in 1998 were convicted in an offshore investment scam that cheated investors and enriched the executives by $100 million US.

Washington's interests in the N.W.T.

The N.W.T. government says it is hopeful the purchase of Ekati will get northerners back to work.

Recently, Dominion Diamond has fired some of the mine's workers , ending their benefits and pension contributions, and withholding information on severance pay.

Of Ekati's 634 Canadian workers, 40 per cent are northerners (253 people) and within that northern workforce, 151 people are Indigenous. In 2019, it employed 425 contract workers — 150 of them northerners.

In 2017, The Washington Companies bought all shares in Dominion Diamond Inc. for a total of $1.2 billion US with a $550 million US bond from creditors.

That purchase represented a 44 per cent premium on Dominion's share price before the merger was announced.

In 2018, the union representing workers at Ekati accused Dominion of " union busting " by threatening to lay off 150 unionized employees and replace them with contractors.

The pandemic slowed business down, and in April Dominion was unable to meet a $20-million US interest payment on that bond The Washington Companies used to buy the company.

Filing for creditor protection put Ekati's financial situation on clear display through an affidavit by Dominion's chief financial officer, Kristal Kaye.

There are only two secured creditors for the mine — Credit Suisse AG, a branch located in the Cayman Islands is owed $221 million and Wilmington Trust in Delaware is owed $784 million CDN, a May 5 creditor listing for Dominion shows.

Dominion Diamond Holdings, a limited liability company, was incorporated in Delaware on Nov. 15, 2019. Its sole shareholder is Washington Diamond Investments, a company controlled by The Washington Companies, court documents show.

That deal is opposed by Dominion creditors, who say the mine's assets are devalued because of the pandemic.

Donations to youth, education, Trump

The Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation is the major philanthropic organization receiving contributions from The Washington Companies and Washington family. It is focused on philanthropy for youth and education.

Dominion Diamond owes N.W.T. businesses $13.2M — and there's no guarantee they'll get paid
N.W.T. government hoping Ekati deal will lead to reopening of mine

"By influencing young people during their formative years and providing opportunity for personal advancement through education, Dennis and Phyllis hope to create a positive and lasting impact on our culture and society," the website reads.

Washington and his wife Phyllis are also generous donors to Donald Trump's re-election campaign — giving him $1 million since the 2016 campaign.

One of Britain's richest men spotted on his 1930s superyacht in Devon

Alicia has been named for the daughter he lost in a car crash, aged 11 months old

13:57, 30 OCT 2018
Updated 12:50, 14 NOV 2018

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One of Britain's richest men has been spotted in his newly refurbished 1930's super-yacht - named after his daughter who was tragically killed.

Ian Wace, 55, who has a net worth of £505m, was spotted on board the Alicia, previously known as the Janidore.

The multi-millionaire hedge-fund manager has recently taken back the vintage vessel after it underwent a three-year refurbishment.

It was released following a christening ceremony where it was re-named in honour of Mr Wace's daughter Alicia, who died in a car crash aged 11 months alongside his son Guy, four, and wife Joanna, 34.

Images showed him getting off the vessel after it docked in Dartmouth, Devon.

The 50-metre classic yacht emerged following a major refit at the Southampton Marine yard after work began in 2015.

The ship's systems were rebuilt and the yacht underwent "major structural works".

The yard said that Alicia, which was originally launched in the 1930s as one of the eight yachts to be built by US yard Defoe, had been restored to 'the splendour of her era'.

Alicia is the third iconic super-yacht refit for the yard following Sir Charles Dunstone’s Shemara and Lord Sugar’s Lady A.

Mr Wace's boat also bears more than a passing similarity to James Dyson's 250ft Nahlin. In 2010 it also emerged from a lengthy refit and was pictured pulling in to the same Devon port.

The Nahlin, once owned by newly succeeded King Edward VIII was built in 1930 and boasted six guest staterooms with en-suite bathrooms, a special ladies' sitting room, a gym and a library.

The ship found fame when the royal chose to take his married lover Wallis Simpson on an extended cruise around Eastern Europe.

Mr Wace has now followed in James Dyson's footsteps and has had his own 1930s motor yacht professionally restored and birthed in the same port.

Mr Wace is the chief executive officer, chief risk officer, and founding partner of London's Marshall Wace hedge fund.

He became a successful businessman after witnessing the haunting death of his first wife and their two young children.

Speaking in 2011 Wace said: "The motivating force of my life was the accident.

"It's no use avoiding it - it's the elephant in the room. Something terrible happened to people very dear to me.

"It is what it is, I can't undo it. But a positive force did emerge, in Ark, and I'm happy to be part of that."

Peter Morton, the CEO of The SMS Group, described the yacht as “unquestionably beautiful” and said the launch was “a major positive milestone in another huge refit project.

He said: “The project has seen the best of British design, innovation and engineering and we now look forward to a successful period of trials pre-handover."

“Today’s launch is a major positive milestone in another huge refit project for The SMS Group, all our colleagues and all our suppliers.

"It’s big, big news.

"As a company, we are genuinely thrilled to have had the inspiration and support of another truly exceptional British businessman; and whilst the project has been challenging the end result is simply outstanding.

"MY Alicia is unquestionably beautiful.

“MY Alicia, MY Shemara and MY Lady A were all managed by SMS in a totally transparent and honest way – working directly with the owner.

"This ensures the very best value for money and complete control of the project; owners are therefore, masters of their own destiny, which is so very important to all those involved.

"In this case, it was the owner’s vision that has inspired the growth and creation of a business as opposed to just another project; we’re extremely grateful and look forward to very many future successful projects.”

The christening of MY Alicia was caught on camera by Jacek Prawdzik, who also shared many pictures of the boat on social media.

On deck two other boats can be seen, one a motorboat and the other by sail, and a tender is located towards the front of the vessel.

As per tradition, a bottle of champagne was broken on the hull - although it took a few attempts for the bottle to its target. There was also a well-stocked bar at the event.

Alicia is now expected to head for the Mediterranean and join modern and classic yachts for the 20th Les Voiles de Saint Tropez in September.

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An illustration of the exterior of superyacht Sybaris

Bill Duker discusses creating his custom superyacht Sybaris

To celebrate _ Sybaris _being named Sailing Yacht of the Year at the World Superyacht Awards 2017 , we bring you this interview from our archive, in which Duker gave us the inside story on the build of the Perini Navi yacht.

Superyacht owner Bill Duker was always the man with a plan – until, as he tells Stewart Campbell and Sacha Bonsor, a health scare forced his life philosophy to change. The upside? A new 70 metre ketch, Sybaris , from which he will live every day to the full.

Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans, goes the famous John Lennon lyric. It’s a line that rings true for lawyer-turned-software mogul and multiple yacht owner Bill Duker, after being told he might die before seeing one of his life’s dreams – owning a 70 metre sailing yacht – realised. “When I heard it (cancer) was in my lymph nodes, the worst bit was thinking that I couldn’t make plans,” he recalls, as we cluster around a saloon table on the big Perini Navi Perseus3 at the Monaco Yacht Show. “I’m somebody who has always lived with a plan.”

A week after his diagnosis in 2009, he made two resolutions: to ensure every single day is lived according to the plan; and to have a lot of fun. “From that moment forward, from after that first week, every day I get out of bed and ask myself what I’m going to do to have fun today,” he says. He beat the cancer, and judging from the smile on his face as he talks about his new superyacht project, he’s having the time of his life. The boat is Sybaris , a 70 metre ketch currently in build at Perini Navi ’s Viareggio yard. When it’s launched in 2015 it will become one of the biggest sailing yachts on the planet, and immediately one of the most iconic boats afloat. In the meantime, he’s got the 52 metre Feadship Rasselas to play on. “The Feadship was not a passion,” he says. “It was just for fun. The Feadship was, ‘I can’t wait any more for my boat to be built!’”

His new-found philosophy is perfectly embodied in the sailing yacht’s name. For those who skipped classics at school, Sybaris was the name of a Greek settlement in ancient Italy known for its hedonism, feasts and excesses, represented in modern parlance by the word sybarite. “For Sybarites, living was important. And this boat is more than self-indulgent, it is everything we’ve always wanted. We’re giving ourselves something far beyond anything I could have imagined as a kid,” Duker says.

Boats of his childhood imagination were the working type. The son of a longshoreman from upstate New York, he grew up modestly, with some of his earliest boating memories born on the docks of Albany, where he was apprenticed in his father’s job. “We used to joke when I was a kid that working at the docks was the longshoreman scholarship. You know, I was brought down to the docks to work when I was 13 years old,” he says. “I grew up there. I wasn’t supposed to be there at 13, but my father was a union guy and the union guys took care of their kids and that was the only way the kids could make enough money to go to school.”

"Sybaris is more than self-indulgent, it is everything we've always wanted. We're giving ourselves something far beyond anything I could have imagined as a kid."

It was only later, as a successful lawyer, that Duker’s thoughts turned to spending time on yachts for pleasure. In 1992 he found himself working with a colleague from California and made any excuse to head to San Francisco on the weekend, where the two of them would go sailing. “One day he said to me, ‘We oughta buy a boat together. A big boat’,” Duker remembers. He loved the idea, so they bought Coconut , a 24.4 metre Dynamique sailing yacht.

The partnership lasted for about a year before Duker struck out on his own, buying the 32.5 metre Ron Holland-designed Shanakee . But even then, in 1995, when 32 metres was a seriously big boat, his ambitions weren’t satisfied. “The idea for Sybaris has been in my mind since then. My son West and I would sit on the back of Shanakee in the evenings and draw the boat of our dreams. I can’t tell you how many boat drawings there are. We talked about how big the boat would be, who was going to be on the boat, where we would go with it…” he says, fondly. Throughout our conversation West’s name keeps appearing and it’s obvious Duker is devoted to his only son.

It’s a professional and filial relationship – West works as the director of marketing at Duker’s software company, and partnered with his dad on the designs for superyacht Sybaris . The dream to build big is a shared one, a joint father and son longing, which started to become a reality during various regattas in the 1990s and particularly on one trip sailing in the Caribbean. “We were competing and started seeing bigger boats. And then we got a chance to get on board the (48.5 metre) Vitters Thalia in the Caribbean. Suddenly we had a sense that there were much larger boats out there and that you could do so much more with a bigger boat. They’re so monumental. This gave West and me a feeling of creativity and that really drove us.”

It took the better part of a decade, however, before Duker was ready to sign terms with a shipyard – and then came the cancer hammer-blow. Once in the clear, however, the plans could really gather momentum. “The boat kept growing in order to bring the lines down and make it look as sleek as it does. We thought it’d be a 56 metre, but then I started thinking that it had to be special, it had to be different. And there are already 10 or 11 or so 56 metres; I didn’t want hull number 12. I wanted something people could see from half a mile away and say, ‘Hey, there’s Sybaris ’,” Duker says.

The exterior design was done in collaboration: Philippe Briand for the naval architecture and PH Design with input from West and Bill for the exterior. If you’ve never heard of PH Design, that’s because it doesn’t do yachts – it does residences. The studio has worked with Duker on his homes and such is his faith in it, he had no qualms tasking it with creating the look for his 70 metre yacht. Was it a risk? “It’s not risky to hire somebody I trust with everything,” Duker says. “We’ve known each other for so long that I only have to have a short conversation about what I want and they know exactly what I’m thinking. Every time I have an idea, PH Design makes it better. And I can’t say no to them. When they bring something to me, I say, ‘Wow, we have to do that!’”

PH Design also drew the superyacht's interior, and if the exterior of Sybaris was designed to be iconic, what’s inside was designed to inspire. It’s the same with all of Duker’s projects, whether it’s the glass box on top of a building in New York City, his 1920s property on the water in Miami (“the prettiest house on Miami Beach”) or his big estate in upstate New York on 300 hectares – each of them have interiors that, he says, “give people something to talk about”. A big part of that is the art – and Duker has an enviable collection. He started amassing it in the 1980s, and it features pieces from Frank Stella, Rodin and Jean Dubuffet. He’s still collecting for the new yacht, which has been designed to act as a sort of gallery.

“The interior is minimal, but not minimalist,” Duker says. “And every piece of furniture on board is art – every turn of the corner is art! I don’t think it’s possible to give a higher level of detail.” The renderings of Sybaris give you an impression of how big a part art and design play in the interior. More modern New York loft than boat, Sybaris ’s owner won’t have any worries about conversation stalling over dinner. But with a Briand hull, a lightweight carbon fibre rig, and an estimated top speed of 17 knots – giving it regatta-winning potential – the yacht has plenty of sailing chops, too.

From conception to realisation, the superyacht will have taken 44 months to build – almost four years of intense, gratifying planning. I am concerned about what will happen when Duker’s boat is delivered – will he run out of plans? I needn’t have worried: “We’re going around the world,” Duker says. “I’m taking five years and doing my first circumnavigation. Part of the plan is to take on a local expert wherever we are in the world, so we can spend the evenings talking about where we’re going, what the history, geography, culture and politics are like in a particular area. We’re going to learn as we go around the world.”

But it would be naive to think he doesn't have something else up his sleeve. “You asked me if I was excited about delivery,” Duker says. “To some extent I am, but I have already started thinking about the next boat, and how it will be different. Like I said, it’s the planning that is important, making that dream happen. There’s a poem I wrote recently about it. I write crazy Dr Seuss-like poems. It takes five minutes and I do it every day,” he says, reciting one.

It opens: “I’ve lived my life by having dreams,” and ends: “Dreams are not just for the night, they give hope to live and fight.” There’s Lennon again: you may say he’s a dreamer, but he’s not the only one…

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The Famous Info

Guy gansert bio, wiki, age, height, family, ex-wife, the golden bachelorette, salary, and net worth.

Guy Gansert is an American TV personality and ER Doctor appearing as one of the contestants in The Golden Bachelorette SN 1.

Guy Gansert Biography

Guy Gansert is an American TV personality and ER Doctor appearing as one of the contestants in The Golden Bachelorette SN 1. The Golden Bachelorette SN 1 premieres on September 16, 2024.

Guy Gansert Career

Gansert joined the University of Nevada, RenoU in January 1978 when he finished his high school education. In May 1982, he graduated with a Bachelor Of Science degree in Zoology and Animal Biology. There, he was involved with the Omega Xi Fraternity. Next, he attained an MD from the institution’s School of Medicine in May 1986. In July 1986, he joined the University of Louisville School of Medicine where he did his Emergency Medicine Residency Program until June 1989.

Gansert works as a physician at Northern Nevada Emergency Physicians. Before that, he worked as the chief of staff at Renown Regional Medical Center for 3 years. Further, he was a medical director of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Renown Regional Emergency Room from 1994 to 2005. He has worked in the medical field for nearly 4 decades.

Guy Gansert Age

Gansert was born on May 8, 1958, in the United States Of America. He is 66 years old as of 2024. Gansert celebrates his birthday every May 8th as evidenced by his Instagram post on May 8, 2022, captioned “I want to thank everyone who reached out to wish me a Happy Birthday. But, my real present was my youngest son…”

Guy Gansert Height

Gansert stands at an approximate height of 5 feet and 7 inches.

Guy Gansert Family

Gansert has 8 siblings including three sisters as evidenced by his Instagram post on August 6, 20242, captioned “My three wonderful sisters and I visiting Wildwood, New Jersey.” On May 15, 2023, he wished his mother a happy Mother’s Day via his Instagram account stating that she had 8 children in 10 years. Even so, he has not disclosed more information about his parents, especially his father.

Guy Gansert Dating/Ex-Wife

Gansert is single and searching for love through ABC’s The Golden Bachelorett e. He was previously married to Nevada politician, Heidi Seevers Gansert. They had two daughters named MacKenzie and Kirsten, two sons named Glenn and Han, and a grandson, Idan Jacob Agam before their divorce.

MacKenzie is married to Mati. She gave birth to Idan on August 19, 2023, at 12:20 pm in Atlanta, Georgia as evidenced by Gansert’s Instagram post on September 6th where he congratulated her for the safe delivery. MacKenzie works at a corporate law firm and graduated from Georgetown Law in 2019. In September 2021, Kirsten graduated from Oxford University with her MBA. On September 28, 2021, he congratulated her for her accomplishment via his Instagram account.

Glenn graduated from the University of San Diego. Hank graduated from the University of Utah in Computer Science and a Mathematics minor in 2022. On May 8, 2023, he expressed his pride in Hank’s accomplishment via his Instagram account. He plans to hike Mount Kilimanjaro this fall, wants the Dallas Cowboys to win a Super Bowl, and is a Beatlemaniac.

Guy Gansert Net Worth

Gansert has an estimated net worth ranging between $500K – $3 Million which he has earned through being a TV personality and ER Doctor.

Guy Gansert Salary

Gansert earns an annual salary ranging between $40,000 – $ 110,500.

Guy Gansert The Golden Bachelorette

Gansert appears as one of the contestants in The Golden Bachelorette SN 1, premiering on September 16, 2024. The Golden Bachelorette is a spin-off of The Bachelorette with the difference being in its cast of senior citizens as the contestants.

The inaugural season of The Golden Bachelorette follows leading lady, Joan Vassos . She was announced as the leading lady at the Disney Upfronts presentation in N.Y.C. on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, following her self-elimination during week 3 of The Golden Bachelor after learning that her daughter was experiencing pregnancy complications.

Gansert is prepared to put himself out there and meet someone to share the rest of his life with. Charismatic, self-assured, and romantic, he seeks an intelligent and funny woman. Rejecting the “grumpy old man” stereotype, he wants to prove that even older men have a zest for life. He really believes in chivalry and wants to make Joan feel cherished. Gansert competes against 23 suitors including

William “Bill” Hernandez
Robert “Bob” Kilroy
Charles “K” King
Charles “L” Ling
Daniel “Dan” Roemer
Ralph “RJ “

American billionaire and owner of Harbor Freight stores just took delivery of this 384-feet long megayacht. The $350 million vessel has seven decks, a pool, and a yoga studio it uses AI to stabilize the mammoth yacht on rough seas.

There are not many photos of the ship; considering it’s a relatively new release, it is telling from some aspects of styling, such as the flared bow and the sculpted forward sections of her upper decks, that the stern slopes to form an expansive swim platform, suggesting the presence of a well-appointed beach club. As per Megayacht News , Infinity has more than one helipad, a five-meter circular swimming pool surrounded by seating, an indoor/outdoor alfresco dining room on the upper deck, and an entertainment lounge.

Vanishing Millions? Centibillionaire Jeff Bezos had pledged $100 million post-Maui wildfire. Five months have passed, and let alone the rest, even the $15.5 million that has been disbursed is now baffling beneficiaries and officials, who are unsure where it has gone.

The aptly named Pink Shadow allows you to explore the oceans in utmost style. Available for charter at $510,000 per week, this vessel, inspired by Amazonian adventure dramas, offers a Tahitian beach club, a Habana room with a humidor, and an array of exciting toys and tenders.

The world-renowned broker who is selling climate-crusader Bill Gates’ $645 million hydrogen-powered megayacht was so impressed by the vessel’s technology that he invested millions of dollars in a cleantech startup that is working on decarbonization and struck gold.

Mark Zuckerberg’s $300 million megayacht Launchpad and support vessel caused a sensation amongst beachgoers after mooring near the Italian island of Elba

This is the watch with which Anant, the son of Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, wowed Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. And, get this: it’s worth $4.6 million, and it’s not even the second most expensive watch he owns.

In a desperate bid to avoid getting his crown jewels seized, Roman Abramovich is moving his $1.3 billion superyachts Eclipse and Solaris out of the reach of European authorities.

Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man sold his rather humble and tiny New York condo for $9 million

Meet the taxi driver turned billionaire who swiped his American Express credit card to buy a $170 million painting. With the reward points alone, he and his family can travel first class free for their lives.

Who owns this $700 million megayacht? European authorities are struggling to find the owner of this 460 feet long vessel that has two helipads, a large pool, and four fabulous decks.

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COMMENTS

John Christodoulou
Christodoulou lives in Monaco with his wife and four children. [3] For his 40th birthday, he acquired a private jet and, when he turned 50, Christodoulou increased the size of his yacht from 50 metres to 74.5 meters. [14] He has a $50 million 74m yacht, Zeus, previously owned by Aidan Barclay. [28] He is a supporter of Omonia Nicosia football ...
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John Christodoulou
Real Time Net Worth. as of 9/13/24. Reflects change since 5 pm ET of prior trading day. ... He owns a 245-foot-yacht, Zeus, which features decks made of teak wood. Related People & Companies.
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78m. 42. Gianluigi Aponte. Gianluigi Aponte. Amo. 47m. All yacht owners are 'rich', but some are richer than others. For example, when a wealthy person is able to purchase a US$ 10 million yacht. His net worth is probably between US$ 50 million and US$ 100 million.
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To many of us, it seems TheYachtGuy appeared overnight - suddenly there he was, top of our Instagram feeds, aboard yet another superyacht. For Alex Jimenez, the man behind the handle, it was 10 years of hard work and dedication. We caught up with Alex to find out how he made it into the superyacht spotlight. Q1.
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10 of the biggest superyachts owned by billionaires
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.
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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 ...
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Dennis Washington, 86, is the wealthiest man in Montana, with a net worth of $6.1 billion US. He is the majority interest owner of The Washington Companies, which made a $166 million offer on the ...
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The boat is Sybaris, a 70 metre ketch currently in build at Perini Navi 's Viareggio yard. When it's launched in 2015 it will become one of the biggest sailing yachts on the planet, and immediately one of the most iconic boats afloat. In the meantime, he's got the 52 metre Feadship Rasselas to play on. "The Feadship was not a passion ...
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Guy Gansert Bio, Wiki, Age, Family, Ex, The Golden Bachelorette
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