If you want a quick, on the spot, glimpse of what superyachts look like, a drive along the seafront in Palma, Mallorca, is a good place to start. You’ll get a view of a succession of them, a fabulous array of floating wealth.
If you got past security and took a closer look, you’d notice that one or two berths are empty; maybe the yachts that loiter there are away with their owners; only a very few of those superyacht parking spots are for sale.
Recently, one berth was up for grabs at a tad shy of £8m. For the berth, not for the yacht that will live there. It is a leasehold price, naturally. The yacht that will occasionally sit there would set you back maybe 20 times as much; quite possibly much, much more.
Welcome to the utterly insane world of superyachts. Their cruising reach is global; their owners rich beyond the wildest imaginings; their elegance and style the best money – and, mostly – good taste can buy. You are unlikely ever to step on one, unless you are, well, very rich – or offer something, like your internationally acclaimed singing skills (think Taylor Swift). The celebrated and famous do get invited, as a matter of course. Some even turn up.
Billionaire owners of superyachts generally like to keep a very low profile; protecting themselves behind a screen of total discretion and tight security. The point about yachts like these is that they provide both, along with the delicious frisson that you can position your ship anywhere in the world, ready for you to jet in with your family, friends and other guests: film stars, politicians, anyone who brings something extra to the party. Bling, in vault-loads, is already on board.
Skippers and crew are recruited with elaborate care: hand-picked for their (well-paid for) silence about how you conduct yourself aboard. Their rewards, apart from running these beautiful marine objets d’art and cruising the world, can be financially considerable as well. There is a story that, recently, one Arab owner gave each of the crew of his yacht a new Mercedes, after an enjoyable cruise.
Arabs from the Kingdom and from the Gulf top the list for owning the biggest, brashest, superyachts. Roman Abramovich, once best known for his ownership of Chelsea FC, was said to be miffed that his yacht, Eclipse, was knocked off the top yacht spot by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nayan, president of the UAE. His yacht, Azzam, four years in building rocked up at 590 feet long, 54 feet longer than Eclipse. It is said to have cost well over a billion (yes, that’s right, billion). To give an idea of its size, HMS Belfast in the Pool of London, is only 20 feet longer.
Azzam, and her many large-scale sisters, may not pack 6-inch guns, but be assured will have an extensive and sophisticated systems in place, against attack at sea. Abramovich’s two superyachts are rumoured to have top of the range anti-missile defences installed. It is, unsurprisingly, one aspect of this subject that no one will talk about, along with what kind of emergency escape systems are in place, or what level of security staff are carried (and their orders).
In this case, money buys deafening silence.
The whole scene has changed, though, and not just because of security issues, in the past few decades. Long ago, back in the 1980s there was an explosion in super-yachting. Then it was a first when Burgess Yachts, one of the world’s leaders in brokerage and charter for superyachts, sold Nabila for £30m (owned by Saudi billionaire, Adnan Khashoggi and named for his daughter).
Twenty years later 100 metre+ (325 feet) superyachts were commonplace and with the bigger size came unbelievably opulent interiors and concomitant massive price hikes. Superyachts have today evolved into palatial floating homes. Prices, already high, have soared to toward the stratosphere. Where once the best of these yachts could be chartered for £50,000 a week, now expect to pay £500,000.
Technology, too, is cutting edge. To take an 80-metre superyacht: it may well have garaging for a helicopter, maybe more than one - and a submarine. It will have a cinema, Jacuzzi, gym and spa, along with specialist storage for fine wine. All this takes power, but that has to be generated as silently as possible. To distribute all this greedy energy takes 165kms of cabling weighing 30 tonnes. For water, on board plant might deliver 40,000 litres a day to 50 taps, 30 showers, four baths. The Jacuzzi alone will use 6,000 litres of fresh water. There may well be more than a dozen ‘specialist’ security cameras and hundreds of sensors, checking for untoward movement as well as fire. Smoking on these yachts is usually, and for obvious reasons, totally prohibited.
Given you own one, or can afford to charter, where on earth would you go? Abramovich surprised many people when he chose one summer to cruise round the Outer and Inner Hebrides. Surprising, though, only to anyone who has not sailed these fabulously beautiful islands and coasts, with plenty of near-desert islands to explore – like Barra.
Remote, isolated, fantastic scenery, few, if any, other people get to see and, more especially, to annoy you. Most definitely no paparazzi in sight. Superyachts can be pre-positioned anywhere in the world, and they are. But the old favourites remain: the Med is still incredibly popular, notably Corsica, nearby Sardinia, the entire coastline of the Adriatic, the remoter islands (yes, they do exist) in Greece.
Further away from Europe there are islands in Caribbean, like St Lucia, Sabia, Tobago, St Eustatius, - all known for the diving. Yacht owners can show their guests the wonders of the deep in their miniature submarines (Eclipse has one), a ‘toy’ coming to be a hot favourite to have on board (so much more convenient than having to learn to dive, darling). Then there is the exquisite Exumas archipelago of 360 islands in the Bahamas, many of them privately owned
But there is the whole of the rest of the world to play in. Islands off Costa Rica beckon (think Jurassic Park, without the dinosaurs). Unsurprisingly, the south Pacific is becoming the new Caribbean. One superyacht, Hemisphere, took off on a two-year voyage around the Pacific Ocean, moving slowly and sedately toward Australia. Hemisphere is for charter, by the way; prices on application.
For the more adventurous, Alaska, the Arctic and sub-Arctic (like Ellesmere Island) even sub-Antarctica, are all accessible – at least to these vessels.
As for entertainment, in the broadest sense (think pop stars, actors, the famous and infamous), owners and their families can ask for – and will more often than not get – pretty much anyone they care to invite to come aboard for a week or two. I mean, who would say ‘no thank you’ to an invitation to sail and live aboard one of these amazing ships?
But in this regard tight security rules - and, always, discretion – rule like the autocrats who are often the owners. And so, we get snapshots, hints, of who is where and with whom, at any one time. You will rarely see these yachts in port with their owners aboard with their guests. The whole point, the true centre, of owning a yacht like this is to be where everyone else is not.
That’s why top-notch chefs are employed as part of the crew. You, as owner, can offer your guests something money literally cannot buy. Your food, cooked exclusively, and served in a setting no one else has, tonight, access to, watching the sun set, sipping drinks, utterly relaxed, cosseted and secure.
It is, in every way a world apart, if not to say a whole new planet. Of course, the problem is they exist on ours and, collectively, they are annually spewing out more carbon dioxide than some entire smaller countries.
This week: Tim was getting to grips with an FPV drone. Think VR headsets but the picture you see is running in real time, and you are in control of the entire world displayed before you, at the front of your UAV. The Avata 2 can fly at 50mph, in and out of the (real) scenery. It’s a whole new ball game, as different from conventional drone flight as a three-axis aeroplane is from a helicopter. It’s a whole lot harder too, but, hey, therein lies the rush.