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A Closer Look at the $300 Million Superyacht Pelorus

Lurssen builds some of the most iconic yachts on earth. The Golden Odyssey, for example, is a beautiful superyacht they created, which is believed to belong to Prince Khaled of Saudi Arabia. The stunning light blue details make it instantly identifiable. Perhaps most well known is the Azzam. The 180-meter mega yacht is the largest in the world . Doubtless, if you want an unforgettable sailing experience, Lurssen can help make your dreams come true.

Naming Your Ship

A pelorus is the name of a piece of shipboard equipment that helps take relative bearings on distant objects. The Pelorus, built in 2003 at Lürssen’s Krogerwerft facility, gets its name from the vital tool. Not many yachts are given such practical names; in fact, most are given more fantastic or feminine names. Some ships even get punny names, but the Pelorus is downright scientific. Traditionally, ships were given feminine names. Unlike American English, in most languages, objects, like tools and boats, have gendered names. In the Mediterranean, all ships have been 'female' for centuries. This led to many ships getting female names and being called 'she' in languages where this isn't necessarily the case. Just as in English, we call boats 'she and her,' despite our gender-neutral forms.

The exact origin of this quirk is unknown, but it's believed that the association comes from early sailors. Before powered motors and even before the world was known to be a sphere, a sailor might spend months or years onboard before returning home again. Their relationships with the vessels that carried the were often more profound and more significant than their connection to their land-bound sisters, mothers, wives, or daughters. Many sailors, even now still associate ships with women. They believe each has a specific way she prefers to be handled. The 'personalities' of the vessels are often compared to female emotions, and though it's old fashioned and a bit biased, many still hold to the idea that if you don't treat your ship the way she likes, you'll suffer her wrath.

Awards & Stats

Not every yacht can be an award-winning superstar in its own right. The sleek and powerful Pelorus won two awards in 2004. She won awards for her decadent interior and one for her overall size category as well.

  • International Superyacht Society Awards 2004 Best Power 43m+
  • International Superyacht Society Awards 2004 Best Power Interior

Awards aren't the only thing that makes this particular yacht so sought after . She has many outstanding qualities. Her designers are internationally known and sought after for their expertise. Tim Heywood drew the working areas and superstructure of this beloved beauty.

The History of the Pelorus

Pelorus has had more owners than most yachts in her short life. We can't speculate on why any individual would sell such a beautiful ship, but she does get around a lot. The Pelorus has been seen and owned all over the world in her short life. When she was first commissioned, the Pelorus was intended as a replacement for another yacht, the Coral Island. However, the original Saudi Arabian owner didn't keep her. He decided to sell his beautiful commission, and after several bids, he soon received an offer he couldn't refuse. The yacht went to Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich who added a second helipad. He had her for three or four years before his circumstances changed. Unfortunately, in 2007, Roman divorced. We don't know if his ex-wife got the car or the house, but she certainly appears to have gotten the yacht. Pelorus received an update in 2007 and a few years later was resold again.

In May of 2011, David Geffen, the co-founder of Dreamworks, bought her. He enjoyed her very briefly, and the same year passed her on to the royal family of Abu Dhabi. The information on the sale came out as a part of the Panama Papers Leaks. The royals sailed the Pelorus for a further five years before they too sold her. In 2016 Chinese billionaire, Samuel Tak Lee purchased her. He's had her since that time, but who knows when the flighty Pelorus will move on to her next owner.

Decadence Personified

The inside was the handiwork of Terence Disdale (https://www.superyachts.com/directory-1520/terence-disdale.htm). He gave the Pelorus an owners suite that is entirely private even from the rest of the ship and has a full 180-degree panoramic view. The yacht is decked out (no pun intended) in a very apropos informal beach villa inspired style. Her fun and stylish features make this yacht the perfect vacation destination.

  • Two pools, one with artificial current and the other a spa-pool grace the decks so swimmers can enjoy salt-free ocean swimming. There's also a relaxing jacuzzi and a swimming platform with underwater lights.
  •  You can work out in the private Gym and then get treated at the spa.
  • Helipads and Elevators mean easy access to the ship and all its areas.
  •  The Beach Club is a great place to have a casual party.
  •  A Dance Floor for formal balls or nightclub action depending on how you want to use them
  •  Take in a show at the private cinema when you get tired of the ocean view (if that's even possible).

Cabins & Staff

The staff on the Pelorus is rotated in such a way as to keep it constantly running. With quarters for 41 staff and plenty of private cabins, this boat is ready for parties, or events whenever the owner desires. The master suite takes up the top deck, but the VIP suites are also incredible. One of the rooms has a wall that lowers to create a veranda. When you add the eight double suites as well, there are eleven cabins for the owner and guests, and it can accommodate 22 visitors comfortably.

Known for her award-winning proportions and looks as well as her ownership history, here are the details on this lovely custom yacht.

  • Length: 377.30ft /115m
  • Built | Refit: 2003 | 2007
  • Model: Custom
  • Beam: 56.43ft /17.2m
  • Gross Tonnage: 5403 Tonnes
  • Draft: 15.29ft /4.66m
  • Cruising Speed: 17 Knots
  • Top Speed: 20 Knots
  • Range: 6000 Nautical Miles
  • Materials: Steel and Aluminum

Final Thoughts

If you're in the market for a truly stunning and acclaimed superyacht, this elegant yet casual ship is probably on many wealthy bucket lists. We can't say when she'll next be up for sale, though with the Pelorus' history it does seem likely that she could be available again soon enough. For now, she's off the market, but nothing is out of reach if you have the finances. Indeed, if we could dream up a perfect ocean vacation , this would be where we'd want to hang our beach hats this summer.

Dana Hanson

Written by  Dana Hanson

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Motor Yacht

Pelorus is a 115m motor yacht custom built by Lurssen Yachts in 2003. The mega yacht’s elegant exterior lines are the work of Tim Heywood. She features interior design by Terence Disdale.

Motor yacht Pelorus has a steel hull and aluminium superstructure. With a generous beam of 17.2m, she has a spacious interior with room for up to 22 guests and 42 crew members.

In 2007 Pelorus emerged from a refit carried out by Blohm + Voss shipyard, which saw the addition of a second helicopter pad, new paint and zero-speed stabilizers.

The mega yacht also has a large pool, Jacuzzi, and numerous toys and tender on board.

Pelorus can reach a top speed of 20 knots and cruises comfortably at 18 knots. She is equipped for long-distance cruising, with a range of 6000 nautical miles at 16 knots.

In 2018 Pelorus underwent a major refit by Kusch Yachts.

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  • Interior Designer Terence Disdale View profile

Yacht Specs

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The 115-meter megayacht Pelorus, delivered in 2003, has earned a reputation for extraordinary grandeur as well as innovation. Her profile is marked by a high sheer line, giving her a powerful presence. The exterior design by Tim Heywood incorporates the four lower decks within the hull, a creative solution that allows a full-beam floor layout. Her interior has an atmosphere of beach-chic at sea, using natural materials and exotic textures. Outstanding features of Terence Disdale’s design include several terraces with doors that open out of the side of the hull for an indoor/outdoor experience that allows guests to feel truly at one with the sea.

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Pelorus Charter Yacht

NOT FOR CHARTER *

This Yacht is not for Charter*

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PELORUS yacht NOT for charter*

115m  /  377'4 | lurssen | 2003 / 2007.

Owner & Guests

Cabin Configuration

  • Previous Yacht

Special Features:

  • Elevator for convenient access
  • Impressive 6,000nm range
  • Multi-award winning
  • Cinema Room
  • Swimming pool

The multi-award winning 115m/377'4" motor yacht 'Pelorus' was built by Lurssen in Germany at their Bremen shipyard. Her interior is styled by English designer design house Terence Disdale and she was delivered to her owner in May 2003. This luxury vessel's exterior design is the work of Tim Heywood Design and she was last refitted in 2007.

Guest Accommodation

Pelorus has been designed to comfortably accommodate up to 24 guests in 12 suites comprising two VIP cabins. Additionally, there are 5 staff cabins aboard. She is also capable of carrying up to 46 crew onboard to ensure a relaxed luxury yacht experience.

Onboard Comfort & Entertainment

Her features include a dancefloor, movie theatre, beauty salon, elevator, underwater lights, beach club, gym, WiFi and air conditioning.

Range & Performance

Pelorus is built with a steel hull and aluminium superstructure, with teak decks. Powered by twin diesel Wartsila (12 V 26) 12-cylinder 5,300hp engines running at 1000rpm, she comfortably cruises at 17 knots, reaches a maximum speed of 20 knots with a range of up to 6,000 nautical miles from her 380,000 litre fuel tanks at 16 knots. Pelorus features at-anchor stabilizers providing exceptional comfort levels. Her water tanks store around 100,000 Litres of fresh water. She was built to Germanischer Lloyd ✠ 100 A1 MY, ✠ MC AUT classification society rules, and is MCA LY2 Compliant.

*Charter Pelorus Motor Yacht

Motor yacht Pelorus is currently not believed to be available for private Charter. To view similar yachts for charter , or contact your Yacht Charter Broker for information about renting a luxury charter yacht.

Pelorus Yacht Owner, Captain or marketing company

'Yacht Charter Fleet' is a free information service, if your yacht is available for charter please contact us with details and photos and we will update our records.

Pelorus Photos

Pelorus Yacht

Pelorus Awards & Nominations

  • International Superyacht Society Awards 2004 Best Power 43m+ Winner
  • International Superyacht Society Awards 2004 Best Power Interior Winner

NOTE to U.S. Customs & Border Protection

Specification

M/Y Pelorus

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PELORUS Yacht – Sumptuous $250 M Superyacht

The PELORUS yacht is named after the Greek word “vast” because she is one of the largest boats in the world. 

Lurssen built the multi-award-winning 115m/377’4″ motor yacht ‘Pelorus’ at their Bremen shipyard in Germany.

Her interior was designed by Terence Disdale , an English design studio, and she was delivered to her owner in May 2003.

Tim Heywood Design created the exterior design for this luxury yacht, which was recently refurbished in 2007.

The PELORUS yacht is designed to comfortably accommodate up to 18 guests in nine suites, comprising two VIP cabins and an additional 41 crew in 20 rooms, to ensure a relaxed luxury yacht experience. 

PELORUS is currently sailing under the Cayman Islands flag, the second most popular superyacht flag state.

03008742

PELORUS yacht interior

Terence Disdale was in charge of her design, and he developed an interior that embraced the relaxed and informal ambiance of a beachside villa.

The PELORUS yacht is a highly private yacht, and very little information is known about her interior or other particular details from aboard.

The PELORUS yacht has many amenities including two helicopter landing pads, a swimming pool with artificial current, a spa pool, and an owner’s suite with 180-degree panoramic views that open to a private deck.

image 28

She is built with stunning engineering technology and features high-caliber systems, including the bowthruster, being provided with a backup.

At the same time, the control of all propulsion units is centralized in a ‘Lipstick’ that allows the yacht to be maneuvered accurately with a single joystick.

One of the most distinctive features of this luxurious mega yacht is the ‘lido’ on the top deck, which has two swimming pools and a vast sea-level platform that is created once the transom is opened.

image 29

This location gives good access to the water and an excellent ‘beach area’ where visitors may relax and enjoy the various water toys available.

Aside from that, the PELORUS superyacht includes two helicopter pads for the convenience of its owner and visitors.

Additionally, the superyacht is equipped with a spacious pool, a jacuzzi, a variety of toys, and a tender.

02862610 3

Specifications

The yacht was built with a steel hull and aluminum superstructure with a 17.2-meter beam. She has ranked the 48th largest yacht in the world with a length of 377 feet 3 inches or 115 meters and a gross tonnage of 5317.0 GT

She can reach a top speed of 20 knots, and her cruising speed is 18.0 knots for a relaxing experience.

Her maximum cruising range is 6000.0 nautical miles for long-distance cruising, with her power coming from two 5,500-hp Wärtsilä 12v 26 engines . 

The PELORUS yacht was bought for US $200 million and has an annual running cost of $15-20 million.

99156107

Pelorus Yacht Summary

the PELORUS yacht, aptly named for its grand scale, is a magnificent vessel that showcases unparalleled luxury and design.

Built by Lurssen in Germany, this multi-award-winning motor yacht boasts an impressive length of 115m and a range of exceptional features.

With an interior designed by Terence Disdale, the PELORUS offers a relaxed and inviting ambiance reminiscent of a beachside villa. Its exterior, crafted by Tim Heywood Design, features two helicopter landing pads, a swimming pool with artificial current, and a spa pool, among other amenities.

Accommodating up to 18 guests and a dedicated crew of 41, the PELORUS ensures a comfortable and opulent yachting experience.

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Exclusive pelorus private island opens on the great barrier reef.

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The setting of Pelorus Private Island in Australia's North Queensland

In order to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef, you only have to step off the sandy, coral beach. Arrival is only by helicopter or private yacht. And once there, you’re the only residents on this 988 acre island. Pelorus Private Island is the most secluded and exclusive island in Australia’s North Queensland; it opened for bookings last month.

The project began when Australian billionaire Chris Morris , founder of the financial technology company Computershare and founder/Executive Chairman of the $272 million hospitality company Morris Group, saw that there was a growing market of guests booking out the group’s Orpheus Island Lodge for private use with their friends and family. That was in line with a trend he’d seen for high net worth travelers seeking ultra luxury experiences. He acquired Pelorus in 2017 and started the development process two years ago.

The deck of the infinity pool

“Pelorus Private Island caters to guests very similar to those that enjoy the group’s superyachts on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and the Mediterranean,” explains Morris. “They are seeking the ultimate in privacy and seclusion, as well as an experience uniquely designed to their bespoke needs, very similar to the guests of the group’s superyacht business. Up until now, this was the missing gap in Morris Group’s portfolio, which also includes Morris Aviation, offering helicopter transfer and tours to the group’s guests and a recently added private jet.”

One of the five suites within the residence.

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The four main suites (a fifth suite is designed for accompanying staff) are designed in contemporary lines with natural materials-whitewashed hardwood timber, limestone, quartzite-and decorated with handmade furniture and linen fabrics. They measure 560 square feet with 258 square foot terraces all facing the Coral Sea. Elsewhere in the residence are open, light filled lounges, a dining area and an open kitchen to observe what chef Grant Logan, a veteran of high level Cape Town restaurants and superyachts, is creating from seafood brought in by local fisherman and other native ingredients. Key presentations include an Australian barbeque of local reef-caught fish such as Coral Trout, Red Emperor or Giant Trevally or freshly caught Northern Bluefin Tuna prepared sashimi-style. But given his superyacht experience, Logan is used to providing whatever guests request.

Cruising the Palm Island archipelago and the coral underneath.

Central to the appeal of Pelorus, though, according to Morris, is the range of experiences available to guests, which can be coordinated by an activities manager. They can start the day with sunrise beach yoga and a swim in the solar heated pool. Invariably, they then snorkel or dive the diverse Palm Island archipelago including a visit to the Museum of Underwater Art in which art installations have been placed on the sea floor alongside the coral,. Other activities include fishing the reef, cruising the archipelago on guided tours of the sandy cays and pristine wilderness or exploring the sea with jet skis, kayaks or paddleboards. Guests can also cruise over to Hinchinbrook Island, Australia’s largest island National Park, for hiking through dense rainforest, home to an array of flora and wildlife, to cascading waterfalls.

Mulligan Falls on Hinchinbrook Island, Queensland, Australia.

Protecting the surroundings and minimizing environmental impact is a major element of this project, from the all-solar operation of the residence providing a self-sustainable energy supply to a fund to help preserve the reef. The Reef Keepers Fund, created by Morris Group, supports organizations working to safeguard the reef including the Forever Reef Project , an initiative to collect living specimens of the world's coral species and preserve them in a living ‘coral ark’. The area near Pelorus Private Island was selected due to the diversity in species of coral. The same coral which guests of the island can freely observe.

Laurie Werner

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By SuperyachtNews 04 Nov 2020

Superyachts facilitate conservation and scientific research

The pelorus foundation pairs yachts with marine scientists and conservation groups to conduct vital research….

Image for article Superyachts facilitate conservation and scientific research

Pelorus is known in the industry for designing bespoke experiential expeditions to superyacht clients that seek to transform their perspective of the world and impact on the planet. The team behind the company has recently announced the launch of The Pelorus Foundation – a new conservation charity with a mission to protect, preserve and promote at-risk wildlife and environments, a mission in which its superyacht clients can play a significant role.

Working in partnership with scientists and conservation groups, The Pelorus Foundation wants to tackle core sustainability issues around the world. Recognising the unique opportunity that superyachts have to enable the advancement of ocean access, marine research and global knowledge to enhance the ocean’s prosperity, the foundation is pairing marine scientists and conservation experts with private yachts to conduct vital research.

Geordie Mackay-Lewis, co-founder of Pelorus and director and trustee of The Pelorus Foundation, explains that Pelorus has been encouraging its superyacht clients to include a conservation element in their expeditions for some time now. “Three years ago, we decided to make it a mandatory obligation for all our clients to see if there was any push back, and the result was that basically everyone wanted to take part in conservation in some way,” he explains. “Most recognised that these initiatives increase the experiential value and make the whole trip that much more interesting and purposeful.”

“We found it was a reoccurring theme that scientists are trying to get to remote places, but don’t have the platforms to conduct their work or even get there...”

As a result of the positive response from its clients, the Pelorus team started speaking to more scientists and conservation groups around the world to work out who needed what and what the priorities were. “We created two heat maps of where support needs to be given and where all the yachts are going, which didn’t marry up too much,” Mackay-Lewis adds. “But that is perfect for Pelorus because we are always trying to pioneer new cruising grounds for our clients.”

One of Pelorus’ first yacht conservation initiatives began when a superyacht client commissioned an expedition to the Red Sea, to Eritrea and Sudan, where very few superyachts have ever been. With an abundance of marine life, but a lack scientific data surrounding it, the trip provided the perfect opportunity for Pelorus and the client to provide much-needed conservation support. Working with research group Coastal Oceans Research and Development (CORDIO), Pelorus was able to create a new ocean check system to provide a ‘snapshot’ of the health of the sea’s ecosystems, the data from which will be used to influence policy and management systems throughout the region.

“We found it was a reoccurring theme that scientists are trying to get to remote places, but don’t have the platforms to conduct their work or even get there,” continues Mackay-Lewis. “With Pelorus providing the logistics to enable yachts to visit remote destinations, we have the unique opportunity to link that up with the scientists and conservation groups that need to go there. These initiatives were something that we were already doing, but now we are formulating it into a registered charity where we can promote it properly and raise funds so that, even if an owner or charter client doesn’t want to pay for a project, we’ve got the funds to step in and facilitate it so that the opportunity is never missed.”

The yacht conservation initiatives supported by The Pelorus Foundation will be chosen based on a balance of what projects are most urgent and what is achievable from a yachting perspective. Next year, for example, Pelorus has organised for some clients to charter two iconic explorer yachts in the Antarctic and take part in an whale conservation programme during the charter. Working with Dr. Ari Friedlander, the project will aim to understand whale biology, ecology, and the impacts of climate change and human disturbance around the Antarctic Peninsula.

“The brief for the trip was to deliver the quintessential Antarctic itinerary, but with their own ‘Blue Planet’ experience, which includes some groundbreaking scientific research...”

“The brief for the trip was to deliver the quintessential Antarctic itinerary, but with their own ‘Blue Planet’ experience, which includes some groundbreaking scientific research, with scientists on board the support vessel and a camera team to capture the research as well as the extraordinary wildlife and scenery,” Mackay-Lewis explains. “We chose to work with Dr. Ari Friedlander because his goals aligned with what the client wanted to experience and see.”

Mackay-Lewis admits, however, there is a certain frustration at seeing how much more research needs to be done in the Antarctic and believes that the superyacht industry needs to play a bigger role in helping to support this. “There are a dozen capable superyachts visiting the region every season that could carry out all of the required research if they all took part,” he says. “We would like to try and gently persuade the rest of the industry, as well as the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, to make it a mandatory obligation for yachts cruising in the area to do some form of scientific research during their time there.”

The foundation has identified many more opportunities for yacht conservation initiatives around the world, from shark nursery research in the Galapagos Islands, to scientific marine data collection in the Mozambique Channel – essentially anywhere that marine scientists and conservation groups want to go but don’t have the resources to do so. “Hopefully, The Pelorus Foundation will help set an example to the industry that yachts should be more involved in conservation, and others will follow suit,” concludes Mackay-Lewis. “It’s a tall order but, if more get involved, yachting might even start to create a better reputation for itself.”

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These New Yacht Trips Retrace the Steps of Real-Life Pirate Treasure Hunts

You can search for booty off the coasts of sardinia, indonesia and antigua., demetrius simms, demetrius simms's most recent stories.

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If you’ve ever wanted to storm the high seas in search of buried treasure, now’s your chance.

On Pelorus’s new Adventure Treasure Hunt Holidays , you and your friends and family can charter luxury yachts off the coasts of Sardinia , Indonesia or the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda. Once you’re there, you’ll participate in immersive excursions created in collaboration with Luxury Treasure Hunts. Each experience is based on the routes of historical seafarers, and they’re designed to entertain explorers of all ages.

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The adventures span from one to three days and are led by a team of storytellers, actors, screenwriters, prop makers and former Hollywood producers. These stage-crafted experiences will take you underwater, through dense jungles and across beaches only a few have visited. Clues and riddles will be shared with explorers to solve, and if you need assistance, a “games guide” will be on-hand to help locate the treasures and solve mysteries. Most of the experiences will take place on yachts and near the shores of each tropical destination.

Pelorus Treasure-Hunt Yacht Experiences Sardinia

One of the Pelorus yachts for charter in Sardinia  Pelorus

In Sardinia, for example, you can charter a sailing yacht, such as the Halcyon , and embark on a “historically accurate quest” to find Captain John Rackham’s fabled lost treasure. (Each adventure includes access to other experiences. In this case, once you’ve found the treasure, you can also snorkel, go wine tasting and even golf on the Italian island.) In Indonesia, meanwhile, you can book a traditional Phinisi yacht—like the Lamima or Dunia Baru —that’ll lead you to a treasure hunt in Komodo National Park .

Pelorus Treasure-Hunt Yacht Experiences Treasure

A coin found during one of the experiences  Pelorus

In Antigua and Barbuda, you’ll retrace the footsteps of the swashbucklers who inspired  Pirates of the Caribbean films. Perolus suggest chartering sailing yachts like Eros , which sleeps 12, or a James Bond-esque alternative known as the Okto motor yacht.

This isn’t the first time the luxury travel company has curated such experiences. Its most recently launched experience takes yacht owners and guests on a Bond-themed treasure hunt in Greenland where explorers solve clues and use abandoned radar stations as overnight campsites. But the treasure hunts not only offer warmer climates, they also up the ante on the experiences themselves.

“We now have the capability to bring even more realistic narratives to life, adding to the already high return on experiential value we strive to achieve for all our clients,” says CEO and founder Geordie MacKay-Lewis in a statement. “The Mediterranean, Caribbean and Indonesian treasure hunts are only the beginning as we develop new locations worldwide.”

The experiences start at €28,000 ($28,606)—but the memories might be harder to put a pricetag on.

Click here for more images of the experiences.

Pelorus Treasure-Hunting Yacht Experiences Slide Cover

Demetrius Simms is a digital staff writer at Robb Report. After starting their career in PR, they transitioned to freelance writing in 2020. Their work has now appeared in lifestyle and culture…

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Putin taunts the West with 'first ever' visit to remote ice-covered 'frontier region' just 55 miles from the US - as Zelensky tries to drum up war support in Lithuania

  • Chukotka is Russia's easternmost region, sharing a maritime border with Alaska

President Vladimir Putin  has arrived for his first-ever presidential visit to Chukotka in Russia 's Far East - just 55 miles from the US state of Alaska . 

Putin arrived in Anadyr, the local capital of the Chukotka region this morning after flying from Moscow some nine time zones away. 

Chukotka is the easternmost region of Russia, with a maritime border on the Bering Strait with Alaska.

The Russian president was met in Anadyr by a motorcade and was whisked away in a limousine amid frigid temperatures of -28C. 

It's the closest he has come to US soil since he met with President  Barack Obama in New York City in 2015.

Chukotka is so close to Alaska that Roman Abramovich - the ex-Chelsea FC owner - was reported to fly to Anchorage in Alaska for lunch when he was the governor of the region from 2001 - 2008.

Putin's visit comes at a time when US-Russian relations are at their lowest ebb in decades amid the war in Ukraine and a growing East-West divide. 

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today landed in Lithuania as part of an unannounced trip to the Baltic states to drum up more support for the conflict. 

Global war for control of the ARCTIC: Climate change is unlocking untapped natural resources, new trade routes... and a new international conflict that RUSSIA is already winning  

The three Baltic states - all former Soviet republics which are now EU and NATO members - are among Ukraine's staunchest allies.

'Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are our reliable friends and principled partners. Today, I arrived in Vilnius before going to Tallinn and Riga,' Zelensky said on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

'Security, EU and NATO integration, cooperation on electronic warfare and drones, and further coordination of European support are all on the agenda,' he said.

The Baltic tour marks Zelensky's first official trip abroad this year.

In Lithuania, a key donor to Ukraine, Zelensky said he will hold talks with the president, prime minister and the speaker of parliament, and meet with the Ukrainian community.

The visit comes as other Kyiv allies waver on fresh aid, nearly two years into Russia's invasion.

Ukraine has come under intense Russian shelling in recent weeks, retaliating with strikes on Russia's border city of Belgorod.

Zelensky has urged allies to keep military support flowing and held in-person talks with officials from the United States, Germany and Norway last month.

But an EU aid package worth 50 billion euros ($55 billion) has been stuck in Brussels following a veto by Hungary, while the US Congress remains divided on sending additional aid to Ukraine.

Following his trip to Chukotka, Putin is expected to visit several regions in the Russian Far East to boost his re-election campaign amid the war with Ukraine, which has seen more than 300,000 Russians killed or maimed.

He is due to stand in March, seeking another six years in the Kremlin.

The only Kremlin leader ever to travel to Chukotka previously was Dmitry Medvedev in 2008.

Putin's trip sees him escape a wave of ugly protests in western Russia over hundreds of thousands of people scraping by in freezing conditions due to breakdowns in communal heating supplies.

In Elektrostal, Moscow region, desperate residents say they have had no communal heating - which Russians routinely expect the state to supply usually through piped hot water - for the entire winter so far.

'We have been without heating since [9 October],' one resident said in a video circulating on Telegram.

'It is impossible to be in our homes… We are freezing! We are freezing! We are freezing!' they said. 

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Stepping On Board Italy’s Largest Sailing Yacht Sybaris

By Ben Roberts

The launch of a new yacht often signifies the realisation of a dream. For Bill Duker, that dream is 20 years in the making. From the days of sitting with his son drawing their dream yacht, to working with the finest designers and builders to make it happen. This is Sybaris, one man’s dream turned Italy’s largest sailing yacht.

Shortly after her technical launch and mast stepping operations, we arrived at the Perini Navi Group ’s Picchiotti shipyard in La Spezia to step on board the 70 metre ketch during her official launch ceremony.

This is Perini Navi’s most advanced project since the creation of the Maltese Falcon, which was launched at Perini Navi's Turkish facilities in 2006 and still stands as their largest yacht to date.

The subtle nature of Sybaris , even with her imposing 72 and 61 metre main and mizzen masts, is astounding. The performance under sail has the makings of a cutting-edge classic, and the resounding core of her creation is to house art, while becoming a masterpiece herself.

“We wanted to build a boat that combined great art in the interior, put it in a setting that the interior of the boat itself was a piece of art, and then set that interior within a superyacht that was also a masterpiece. Not only a masterpiece of beauty, but a masterpiece of performance.” Explains Sybaris Owner Bill Duker during the ceremony.

Style & Performance Drawn by the Perini Navi Technical Design studio, with considerable input from Bill Duker's team, Sybaris is sleek, sculpted and a notable evolution of the Perini Navi style with a less pronounced sheer line and more vertical bow.

Philippe Briand’s extensive experience was injected to optimise the naval architecture and make the most of the incredible 5,842m2 sail plan. This pedigree combination of designer, builder and architect has created a comfortable and stylish vessel which brings sailing back to the hands of the owner through cutting-edge technology..

A first for Perini Navi, Sybaris is equipped with two variable speed generators that supply power to the ship’s main grid, and stores excess energy in battery packs. This technology makes Sybaris a silent runner, allowing those on board to navigate and use battery power for hours without the smells and sounds of the diesel generator.

“As Perini Navi’s second largest sailing yacht launch to date, Sybaris raised numerous technical and aesthetic challenges, ” says Burak Akgül, Managing Director of Sales, Marketing & Design. “But where there’s a will there’s a way, and the result is a uniquely beautiful sailing yacht that pushes the boundaries of design in every conceivable way.”

Life Under Sail On deck, Sybaris provides an unprecedented amount of space. Her giant fly bridge measures up to 117m2 and reflects the truly sophisticated lifestyle inside and out. The exterior spaces lead seamlessly into the interiors, with PH Designs imbuing the yacht with an effortlessly cool demeanour in what is the studio’s first ever yacht project.

Titanium is a running feature throughout the yacht, formed by specialist craftsmen - brought in from the world of F1 - to create everything from exterior railings, leading into the striking interior ceilings and fixtures found across Sybaris.

The interior itself, matches the style and demeanour of Sybaris perfectly. The open plan-layout provides unbroken space which is filled with custom-designed furniture, storage and decorations which provide a clean, modern style that acts as a muted backdrop to the bold works of art from the owners private collection, set to be installed in the coming weeks.

Instead of built-in credenzas, for example, the 151m2 main salon features sculpted pillars milled from solid titanium to support ‘floating’ travel trunks clad with alligator skin. “The effect is modern with a remote reminiscence of Old World travel,” says founder of PH Design, Peter Hawrylewicz. “The allure lies in the confluence of these two temperaments.”

A dramatic sculptural feature is the central staircase leading down to the lower deck and up to the fly bridge. Made of titanium with glass balustrades and treads of bleached American oak, the Class-approved laminated glass panels alone weigh over 600 kg each, requiring reinforced beams fore and aft of the stairwell to support the structure.

To blur the boundary between the inside and outside environments, the titanium ceilings panels in the main salon continue through the glass sliding doors into the aft cockpit and softly bounce the illumination from the LED lighting recessed within.

The same reasoning has been applied to the flooring, where the extra-wide planks of teak in the cockpit are mirrored in the oak floorboards of the main salon. This is just one area which perfects the theme of the minimalist materials used, principally titanium, bleached oak and Bianco Assoluto marble with hints of bronze in the custom-built furnishings.

This is a yacht built for the pursuit of pleasure, with each design and construction party working under the vision of Bill Duker, who commented: “It’s been for me more than a creation of a high performance yacht, more than the creation of a beautiful piece of art, it’s been the thing that’s bound me and my son.”

We look forward to bringing you more on the interior of Sybaris in a dedicated interview with her designers, more about the journey of Sybaris’ creation and a closer look on board during her debut at the upcoming Monaco Yacht Show in September.

"It’s been for me more than a creation of a high performance yacht, more than the creation of a beautiful piece of art, it’s been the thing that’s bound me and my son." Bill Duker - Owner of Sybaris

"It’s been for me more than a creation of a high performance yacht, more than the creation of a beautiful piece of art, it’s been the thing that’s bound me and my son."

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Step aboard 230-foot sailing superyacht Sybaris, owned by William Duker

The same owner as the newly listed $65M Apogee penthouse

A goliath sailing veseel out at sea

The reason William Duker just listed his Apogee penthouse (for $65 million) in Miami Beach is to travel around the world on his marvelous sailing superyacht.

Meet the 230-foot Sybaris, which is currently docked near the Miami Beach Marina off Terminal Isle. Launched in May, it is one of the largest sailing yachts on earth, and came to life after Duker beat cancer, per Boat International .

He set out to build a statement vessel.

“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.

Check out Duker’s favorite features.

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A glimpse of the S/Y Sybaris – the 70m sailing yacht with the Best Interior this year

Inside S/Y Sybaris – the 70m sailing yacht with the Best Interior this year.

Perini Navi 70m S/Y Sybaris won “Best Interior Award” at 2016 Monaco Yacht Show. From 28 September to 1 October 2016, the 26th Monaco Yacht Show celebrated the best that Superyachts have on offer with 34,000 participants from around the world.

Delivered to her owner, American Bill Duker, earlier this month Sybaris sailing yacht is the latest addition to Perini Navi’s fleet of 61 superyachts . Designed and built by Perini Navi, with input from Philippe Briand on the hull lines and sail plan, the 70m ketch is the largest sailing yacht ever built in Italy (877 GT) and second in the Perini Navi fleet to the iconic Maltese Falcon (88m).

Combining Perini Navi’s continuous research into new technical solutions, the original design was thoroughly revisited and has resulted in an extraordinary yacht, one which captures the advanced engineering and styling that define a Perini Navi. The 70m S/Y Sybaris was presented with the ‘Best Interior’ award for her stunning interiors masterminded by PH Design of Miami.

The brand new sailing yacht built by the Italian shipyard was awarded for the design and bespoke work made on her interior areas made by the yacht designers Peter Hawrylewicz and Ken Lieber. The award was given on stage to her owner Bill Duker.

“A Perini is not only a yacht, it is a style of life and Sybaris proves this,” commented Fabio Boschi, President of Perini Navi on the occasion of the press presentation onboard Sybaris.

Perini Navi also showcased the 38m S/Y Dahlak. Both Sybaris and Dahlak feature Perini Navi’s latest generation sail handling and stored power systems.

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Bill Duker Luxury Yacht – Sybaris

Luxury Sailing Yacht Sybaris is a 70 m / 229′8″ sailing vessel. She was built by Perini Navi in 2016.

With a beam of 13.24 m and a draft of 4.54 m, she has an aluminium hull and aluminium superstructure. She is powered by MTU engines of 1930 hp each. The sailing yacht can accommodate guests in cabins and an exterior design by Philippe Briand.

best sailing yacht

Commissioned for serial yacht owner Bill Duker, Sybaris is one of the largest yachts built by Italian yard Perini Navi to date, second only to the 88 metre Maltese Falcon.

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Luxury Sailing Yacht Sybaris Awards

Monaco Yacht Show 2016 – Best Interior

Show Boats Design Awards Best Interior Layout & Design

Show Boats Design Awards Best Lighting Design

Show Boats Design Awards Newcomer of the Year PH Design

Her carbon-fiber rig includes two masts, which measure 72 and 62 metre’s respectively. Naval architecture, exterior design and sail plan optimization are all by Philippe Briand, while her interiors were styled by PH Design. Accommodation is for 12 guests, split across six cabins, and her total interior volume of 870 gross tonne’s also allows for a crew of up to 11.

sybaris

Luxury Sailing Yacht Sybaris Interior

deck

The subtle nature of Sybaris, even with her imposing 72 and 61 metre main and mizzen masts, is astounding. The performance under sail has the makings of a cutting-edge classic, and the resounding core of her creation is to house art, while becoming a masterpiece herself.

cockpit and captain working place of a expensive sailing yacht

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Rich Guy Yachts Just Keep Getting Longer

“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,” american yachtsman bill duker said..

The $300 million Amadea, linked by the United States to billionaire Russian politician Suleiman Kerimov, a target of sanctions, was impounded on arrival in Fiji in April at Washington’s request.

In case you need an even stronger indication that normal people are being taken for a ride in late-stage capitalism: historic inflation is being accompanied by a worldwide boom in the number of billionaires. All these new members of the ultra wealthy are buying super, mega and “giga” yachts to set them apart from land-based poors.

There are so many deeply incredible and infuriating pieces of information from this New Yorker story about the world of private yachts that I’m going to encourage you to spend time reading the whole in-depth piece. Here’s a few bits that caught my eye, like describing a different kind of embarrassment of riches: having too small a yacht.

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.

Or this portion, describing the amount of both pollution and wealthy self-awareness generated by these giants:

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.”

But what these big-ass boats really represent to their ultra-wealthy owners is the largest waste of money possible, or as Silicone Valley CEO put it, ““absorb the most excess capital.”

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.”

Check out the whole story to see how the other side lives. It might motivate you to sharpen up the old guillotine blades while you’re at it.

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The Haves and the Have-Yachts

By Evan Osnos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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Bill Duker Wikipedia, Software, Billionaire, Yacht, Miami, Net Worth

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By sayyed ayan

Published on: September 20, 2023

Bill Duker Wikipedia, Software, Billionaire, Yacht, Miami, Net Worth

Table of Contents

Bill Duker Wikipedia, Software, Billionaire, Yacht, Miami, Net Worth – Bill Duker is a name you might not have heard of, but he’s a man with a lot going on in his life. He’s a lawyer, a businessman, and a philanthropist, all rolled into one. Let’s take a closer look at the different aspects of his life.

Bill Duker Wikipedia, Software, Billionaire, Yacht, Miami, Net Worth

Bill Duker Early Life & Family

Bill Duker wasn’t born into a regular family. He grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, where the world of business was a common topic at the dinner table. This early exposure to business had a profound impact on young Bill. He was fascinated by the intricacies of running a business and was determined to make his mark in this world.

Bill Duker Education

To make that mark, Bill knew he needed a solid education. He completed his Bachelor of Arts (BA) from a prestigious university, setting the foundation for his future success. However, he didn’t stop there. Bill’s ambition led him to Harvard Law School, where he excelled academically, graduating with honors. His academic achievements paved the way for a promising career in law.

Bill Duker Professional Life

Bill Duker’s journey in the professional world has been marked by hard work and determination. He started his career as a lawyer, working at different firms before deciding to take the entrepreneurial route. He founded Amici LLC, a company that provides support and services to businesses. This step into the business world was a significant one for Bill, and it opened up new avenues for him to explore.

Bill Duker Personal Life

In his personal life, Bill Duker is a man deeply in love with his wife, Sharon. Their relationship is a source of strength for both of them, helping them weather even the toughest storms. Bill often speaks of Sharon as his soulmate, and their bond is evident in the way they support and care for each other. For Bill, Sharon is the light of his life, and he cherishes every moment they share.

Bill Duker Yearly Earnings, Monthly Income, and Salary

Bill Duker’s annual income is approximately $15 million, translating to a monthly income of around $1.2 million. On a daily basis, he earns roughly $41,000. These figures might seem staggering, but they reflect the demands and expenses that come with a career in law. Bill’s dedication to his work and his commitment to justice are what drive these earnings.

Bill Duker Wikipedia, Software, Billionaire, Yacht, Miami, Net Worth

Bill Duker Age, Height, and Weight

Bill Duker is currently 68 years old. He stands at 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs around 78 kg. His age and experience make him a seasoned lawyer who has assisted numerous people with their legal issues. His height and weight are just numbers; what truly defines Bill is his kindness and his willingness to help those in need.

Business Ventures

Amici LLC is just one of Bill Duker’s business ventures. He has also been involved in other businesses, including a software development company and a real estate investment firm. These ventures speak to his versatility and ability to navigate diverse industries. It’s clear that Bill has an entrepreneurial spirit and a knack for making smart business decisions.

Bill Duker Philanthropy

Beyond his professional success, Bill Duker is also known for his philanthropic endeavors. He’s a man with a big heart and a strong belief in giving back to the community. He’s donated to numerous charities and causes, demonstrating his commitment to making the world a better place. Bill understands the importance of using his wealth and influence for the greater good.

Bill Duker Wikipedia, Software, Billionaire, Yacht, Miami, Net Worth

Bill Duker Social Media Accounts

In conclusion, Bill Duker is a multi-talented individual who has made a name for himself in the worlds of law, business, and philanthropy. His journey from a family of entrepreneurs to a successful lawyer and entrepreneur is a testament to his hard work and determination. Moreover, his dedication to justice, love for his wife, and commitment to giving back to the community make him a well-rounded and admirable figure. While his net worth and income are impressive, they are merely a reflection of his dedication to his various pursuits. Bill Duker is a man who exemplifies the power of determination, education, and a giving heart.

Who is Bill Duker, and what does he do?

Bill Duker is a lawyer, businessman, and philanthropist. He is involved in various business ventures, including founding Amici LLC, and he’s known for his commitment to justice and charitable contributions.

What is Bill Duker’s net worth?

Bill Duker’s net worth is estimated to be $3 million.

How much does Bill Duker earn annually, monthly, and daily?

Bill Duker earns around $15 million annually, which translates to approximately $1.2 million per month and about $41,000 per day. However, it’s important to note that lawyers often have substantial expenses.

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New cape coral yacht club designs: most on council like a coastal, key west vibe.

bill duker new yacht

Given three different design options for the new Yacht Club Community Center , most of the Cape Coral City Council is leaning toward a coastal, Key West-flavor architecture.

At a committee of the whole meeting on Wednesday, the city sought direction from the council on a design direction for the outside of the community building.

"It's a concept, just like we do with anything else, and as we are designing, things may come up that we want to shift and be nimble (on)," said Cape Coral City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn.

James Pankonin with Kimley Horn, a consulting firm focusing on public and private developments, presented the information about the look of the community building.

Cape Coral's Yacht Club Community Park, which includes a yacht basin, tennis courts, a swimming pool, a ballroom, and a beach, has been a popular attraction and staple for the city since the 1960s but is set to undergo major renovations after Hurricane Ian delayed the original plans .

The current plans include a new two-story community center to replace the ballroom, removing the tennis courts, rearranging the area to accommodate a four-story parking garage, a new restaurant, and a new resort-style pool.

The city is also preparing for the demolition of the Yacht Club and its facilities in April as it awaits permits.

No estimates could be provided for the price of the new building.

"It will really come into how much of certain materials are needed and construction methods," Ilczyszyn said.

The city will have that information once they have 30% of the construction design.

Two public meetings for the designs are planned for April 2 and May 7.

After getting public input, the city will vote to amend its contract with Kimley Horn to approve all these changes.

The plan is to have these changes approved or introduced before the summer hiatus.

Previous Coverage Demolition of Cape Coral's Yacht Club slated for April will cost almost $1 million

Cape Coral community news Courtyards of Cape Coral South sets bingo fundraiser for residents still affected by Ian

New Designs for the Yacht Club building

John Bryant with Sweet Sparkman Architecture and Interiors, a Sarasota-based design firm, said the goal with the new designs was to maintain the experience of the original Yacht Club.

The majority of the council preferred option one.

Design one:

Bryant described the first option as "coastal vernacular" and similar to the park buildings at Lake Kennedy and Yellow Fever Creek.

"So it's sort of informed by the current architectural work in 2024," Bryant said. "Kinda Key West."

Councilmember Dan Sheppard and Mayor John Gunter preferred option one.

Gunter said the design was the most pleasing for him.

Councilmember Keith Long liked option one and said he liked the Key West aesthetic.

Councilmember Tom Hayden liked option one.

Design two:

Option two is more informed by the current Yacht Club and would have a stone base and mid-century feel to it, according to Bryant.

"There's certainly opportunity to kind of further develop this option to have even more of the existing Yacht Club feel, but a different vibe, feel than option one," Bryant said.

He also said option two might be more expressive the closer they try to recreate the aesthetic of the old ballroom building.

Councilmember Jessica Cosden liked design two as it incorporated design elements of the old building though she lamented how similar it looked to the first design.

"I wish we could have done more, but I know it's hard with a two-story building, to make it look the same as a very unique one-story building.

Councilmember Bill Steinke said two would be his choice as well, but was wary of additional maintenance of natural wood products used in the design.

"As long as we can bring that aesthetic and keep the maintenance down, number two would be my choice," Steinke said.

Councilmember Robert Welsh said he could go either way, but he liked the look of two.

Design three:

This would be more contemporary and modern.

"Even with a more contemporary language, you can still have warmth, incorporating some wood elements and stone elements," Bryant said.

None of the council members expressed any favorability for the third design.

Inside the new community center

The Community Center will have an additional 10,000 square feet for a total of 47,000 square feet, a history room to remember the first ballroom building on the first floor, and more rooms for civic and community use on the first floor.

Additionally, the new ballroom has shifted slightly as the balcony area on the second floor has been expanded to wrap around the top of the building.

bill duker new yacht

Moscow Mayor Reports Shooting Down of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

In a recent announcement on his Telegram channel, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin revealed that an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flying towards Moscow was shot down by air defense forces in the city district of Elektrostal, Moscow Oblast. According to preliminary information, there were no casualties or damage caused by the falling debris of the UAV.

Mayor Sobyanin further stated that emergency service specialists are currently working at the scene of the incident. This development comes after reports on the night of November 19th that air defense systems had destroyed a Ukrainian UAV over the Moscow region. The air defense forces successfully intercepted and shot down the unmanned aircraft in the Bogorodsky city district. Prior to this, Mayor Sobyanin had also reported the successful defense against an attack by a UAV heading towards Moscow.

It is worth noting that Russia has recently developed a new system for counteracting drones. This system aims to suppress the capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles in order to ensure the safety and security of Russian airspace.

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bill duker new yacht

Danneskjold owner: 'Crew ran for their lives in shipyard fire'

Related articles.

The owner of the 32m sailing yacht Danneskjold has spoken exclusively to BOAT International after his yacht was destroyed in a fire at a shipyard in Newport, Rhode Island.

Owner Bill Duker said his crew were forced to “run for their lives” when a fire engulfed Danneskjold  and 30m Ocean Alexander 100 superyacht  Drinkability at the Hinckley Yachts yard in Portsmouth.

“They are very shaken – it all happened very fast,” he said, adding that at least one person was injured in the incident.

Both boats have been declared a total loss.

It is understood that the fire, which began on the morning of Friday, December 10, originated on Drinkability , which was in a travel lift while shipyard staff worked on the bottom of the boat. Danneskjold , which was at the yard undergoing maintenance work, was positioned alongside Drinkability .

While there has not yet been an official announcement about the cause of the fire, fingers have been pointed at the proximity of propane heaters to some hay bales, which were nearby Drinkability .

Duker said he was informed about the fire by a member of crew. “I got a call saying, ‘the boat’s gone. It’s consumed by fire – it’s a total loss.’”

He added that his first concern was for his crew. “For us, it’s a financial issue but for them, it’s their home and their jobs and all the plans they had made,” he said. “We’ve assured them that we’ll make sure they’re ok.”

Duker, who only bought Danneskjold at the end of October , added that he hadn’t even had the chance to step on board. “I never spent a night on the boat.”

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bill duker new yacht

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.

Art-loving, sailing-obsessed yacht owner Bill Duker has poured his life's passions into Sybaris. Marilyn Mower tours this ground-breaking and life-changing 70 metre ketch. "When my son, West, was about seven years old, I bought a Palmer Johnson sailing yacht named Shanakee. We would go sailing and imagine what our perfect yacht would be like.

Bill Duker, owner of the newly launched 70m sailing yacht Sybaris, discusses his original vision for the project as well as his favourite features on board.F...

The yacht was built for Bill Duker. Who is Bill Duker? He is a former New York lawyer, who later founded Amici LLC. He was born in 1954. He is married to Sharon. They have a son named West. Duker was the owner of the sailing yacht Sybaris and the Feadship motor yacht Rasselas. He sold Sybaris in 2018. Amici

Video: Serial yacht owner Bill Duker discusses superyacht Sybaris. The Perini Navi sailing yacht Sybaris, one of the largest superyachts at the 2016 Monaco Yacht Show, was launched earlier this year. The 70 metre ketch is an instant icon and the biggest yacht to ever have been built in Italy. This incredible sailing yacht was commissioned by ...

The launch of a new yacht often signifies the realisation of a dream. For Bill Duker, that dream is 20 years in the making. From the days of sittin...

The same owner as the newly listed $65M Apogee penthouse. By Josh Baumgard Dec 2, 2016, 10:50am EST. Sybaris is the reason William Duker is selling his $65M penthouse. via Boat International. The ...

Bill Duker (image by Justin Ratcliffe) "This is obviously an exciting time for us," said American owner Bill Duker in La Spezia. "Sybaris is a project that started a very long time ago when my son and I would sit in the aft cockpit of the boat we then had, Shanakee, and talk about the boat of our dreams. Over the past 20 years that dream ...

The brand new sailing yacht built by the Italian shipyard was awarded for the design and bespoke work made on her interior areas made by the yacht designers Peter Hawrylewicz and Ken Lieber. The award was given on stage to her owner Bill Duker. "A Perini is not only a yacht, it is a style of life and Sybaris proves this," commented Fabio ...

Mega Yacht. Luxury Sailing Yacht Sybaris is a 70 m / 229′8″ sailing vessel. She was built by Perini Navi in 2016. With a beam of 13.24 m and a draft of 4.54 m, she has an aluminium hull and aluminium superstructure. She is powered by MTU engines of 1930 hp each. The sailing yacht can accommodate guests in cabins and an exterior design by ...

But as I learned during a recent chat with Bill Duker in Monaco—the proud owner of this 230-foot-long, two-masted technological and architectural marvel—the awards the yacht might win hardly ...

Owned by software tycoon Bill Duker, the yacht was created by PH Design with a contemporary, minimalist and avant garde design showcasing and lighting Duker's modern art collection.

Offering serious, practical and theoretical advice, alongside experiences, the magazine continues to deliver indispensable reading for new or existing superyacht owners. Bill Duker, who we're delighted to feature on the cover, is owner of 70m Perini Navi Sybaris, launching in 2015. Passionate about the build process as much as he is excited ...

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 ...

Bill Duker Yearly Earnings, Monthly Income, and Salary. Bill Duker's annual income is approximately $15 million, translating to a monthly income of around $1.2 million. On a daily basis, he earns roughly $41,000. These figures might seem staggering, but they reflect the demands and expenses that come with a career in law.

As first yacht interior design commissions go, 70 metre sailing yacht Sybaris is quite the debut performance. Peter Hawrylewicz, co-founder of PH Design, takes us inside the creation of Bill Duker's beautiful yacht and expands on his design ethos.. I was shocked when Bill Duker asked us to design his Perini Sybaris.He'd been a client for years but we'd never done a yacht and there were ...

Offering serious, practical and theoretical advice, alongside very real experiences from owners, the magazine continues to deliver indispensable reading for those new to ownership, or for existing owners. Bill Duker, who we're delighted to feature on this issue's cover, is owner of 70m Perini Navi Sybaris, due for launch in 2015. Passionate ...

Sunreef Yachts. It's obvious the new facility is an important part of Sunreef Yachts' global expansion strategy that will not only strengthen the company's presence in the Middle East, but ...

Given three different design options for the new Yacht Club Community Center, most of the Cape Coral City Council is leaning toward a coastal, Key West-flavor architecture.. At a committee of the ...

A mega-yacht seized by U.S. authorities from a Russian oligarch is costing the government nearly $1 million a month to maintain, according to new court filings. The Justice Department is seeking ...

Find company research, competitor information, contact details & financial data for !company_name! of !company_city_state!. Get the latest business insights from Dun & Bradstreet.

Your source for the latest news at home and abroad

Majesty Yachts • 33.05 m • 10 guests • $6,450,000. Owner Bill Duker said his crew were forced to "run for their lives" when a fire engulfed Danneskjold and 30m Ocean Alexander 100 superyacht Drinkability at the Hinckley Yachts yard in Portsmouth.

Ukrainian military had 64 combat engagements with Russian forces near Synkivka of Kharkiv region, south to Terny and Vesele of Donetsk region, Klischiyivka and Andriyivka of Donetsk region, near Novobakhmutivka, Avdiyivka, Syeverne, Pervomayske and Nevelske of Donetsk region, Heorhiyivka, Pobyeda and Novomykhaylivka of Donetsk region, Staromayorske of Donetsk region, at the east bank of Dnipro ...

Constructing a new custom house is a huge and multifaceted undertaking, so it's important to find custom house builders in Elektrostal', Moscow Oblast, Russia you can trust to bring your vision to life, as well as keep the process under control from start to finish. Although a construction job is never without surprises and challenges ...

IMAGES

  1. Pelorus Yacht

    pelorus yacht new owner

  2. Iconic yachts: The story behind Lürssen's 114.5m superyacht Pelorus

    pelorus yacht new owner

  3. BILLIONAIRE David Geffen's Pelorus Yacht

    pelorus yacht new owner

  4. PELORUS Yacht • Samuel Tak Lee $200M Superyacht

    pelorus yacht new owner

  5. Billionaire David Geffen's 300 Million Dollar Pelorus Yacht Aerial View

    pelorus yacht new owner

  6. SAMUEL TAK LEE: Billionaire Property Developer, and Owner of Pelorus

    pelorus yacht new owner

VIDEO

  1. Pelorus in Hamburg

  2. PELORUS Super Yacht

  3. OPO AND PELORUS JACK NEW ZEALAND 1912 &1956

  4. OPERA yacht

  5. Luxury Super 'PELORUS' Yacht

  6. PELORUS

COMMENTS

  1. SAMUEL TAK LEE: Billionaire Property Developer, and Owner of Pelorus

    In recent news, it has been reported that Samuel Tak Lee is the current owner of the luxurious superyacht Pelorus, which measures 377 feet and is one of the largest yachts in the world. The yacht was previously owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and was later sold to David Geffen before being acquired by Tak Lee.

  2. The story behind Lürssen's 114.5m superyacht Pelorus

    The original owner of Pelorus was a Saudi businessman who already owned a 72 metre motor yacht that he wanted to extend. Designer Tim Heywood was commissioned to investigate this possibility but could not find a really satisfactory result and instead proposed a new yacht of 85 metres. Extra features were added until the overall length reached 114.5 metres, making it the 11th largest yacht in ...

  3. Pelorus (yacht)

    Pelorus: Owner: Sammy Tak Lee: Port of registry: Hamilton, Bermuda: Ordered: 1999: Builder: Lürssen: Yard number: ... Pelorus is a luxury yacht and is 115 metres (377 ft) in length. ... and allowed Terry to honeymoon with his new wife, Toni Poole, on the yacht in 2007.

  4. PELORUS Yacht • Samuel Tak Lee $200M Superyacht

    The yacht's owner is billionaire Samuel Tak Lee. Tak Lee is a billionaire based in Hong Kong, he is the Chairman of Prudential Enterprises, active in property development. He listed her for sale in September 2022. Her asking price is EUR 185 million, which is more or less $200 million.

  5. A Closer Look at the $300 Million Superyacht Pelorus

    A Closer Look at the $300 Million Superyacht Pelorus. Lurssen builds some of the most iconic yachts on earth. The Golden Odyssey, for example, is a beautiful superyacht they created, which is believed to belong to Prince Khaled of Saudi Arabia. The stunning light blue details make it instantly identifiable. Perhaps most well known is the Azzam.

  6. DAVID GEFFEN: Discover his Life and Legacy

    The Pelorus Yacht Geffen is also known for owning the yacht Pelorus , which he sold to Hong Kong-based billionaire Samuel Tak Lee . However, Geffen currently owns the impressive Rising Sun yacht , which is estimated to be worth over $400 million and boasts luxurious amenities such as a movie theater, spa, wine cellar, and helicopter landing pad.

  7. Owner

    As owners continue to look further afield for the ultimate superyacht experience, SuperyachtNews sat down with the founders of Pelorus, Geordie Mackay-Lewis and Jimmy Carroll, to discuss their new venture. The pair, who first met while serving in the British Army, launched Pelorus a year and a half ago to deliver bespoke experiential expeditions to superyacht clients.

  8. 115.0m Pelorus Superyacht

    Motor yacht Pelorus has a steel hull and aluminium superstructure. With a generous beam of 17.2m, she has a spacious interior with room for up to 22 guests and 42 crew members. In 2007 Pelorus emerged from a refit carried out by Blohm + Voss shipyard, which saw the addition of a second helicopter pad, new paint and zero-speed stabilizers.

  9. Bespoke superyacht Pelorus, custom-built for the ultimate in luxury travel

    Pelorus. The 115-meter megayacht Pelorus, delivered in 2003, has earned a reputation for extraordinary grandeur as well as innovation. Her profile is marked by a high sheer line, giving her a powerful presence. The exterior design by Tim Heywood incorporates the four lower decks within the hull, a creative solution that allows a full-beam floor ...

  10. Pelorus Yacht

    In the world rankings for largest yachts, the superyacht, Pelorus, is listed at number 53. She is the 22nd-largest yacht built by Lürssen Yachts. Pelorus's owner is shown in SYT iQ and is exclusively available to subscribers. On SuperYacht Times, we have 51 photos of the yacht, Pelorus, and she is featured in 44 yacht news articles.

  11. 115m Lürssen superyacht Pelorus for sale

    The 115-metre Lürssen superyacht Pelorus is now for sale with Dominic Millman at Burgess.. Pelorus is a 5,403-gross-tonne motor yacht delivered in 2003 with three of the most distinguished names in yachting behind her design and build: Lürssen, Tim Heywood and Terence Disdale.DNV classed, she was the 11th largest yacht in the world and the flagship of the Lürssen fleet when she first hit ...

  12. Astonishing 377-Foot Apex Superyacht Pelorus For Sale

    This extraordinary yacht measures an impressive 115 meters (377.3 feet) in length and boasts a substantial 5,403 gross tonnage. She was meticulously crafted with a steel hull and aluminum superstructure and delivered by the esteemed shipyard Lurssen in 2003. PELORUS is a true testament to the artistry and craftsmanship of the yachting world ...

  13. PELORUS Yacht

    The multi-award winning 115m/377'4" motor yacht 'Pelorus' was built by Lurssen in Germany at their Bremen shipyard. Her interior is styled by English designer design house Terence Disdale and she was delivered to her owner in May 2003. This luxury vessel's exterior design is the work of Tim Heywood Design and she was last refitted in 2007.

  14. PELORUS Yacht

    The PELORUS yacht is named after the Greek word "vast" because she is one of the largest boats in the world. Lurssen built the multi-award-winning 115m/377'4″ motor yacht 'Pelorus' at their Bremen shipyard in Germany. Her interior was designed by Terence Disdale, an English design studio, and she was delivered to her owner in May 2003.

  15. Exclusive Pelorus Private Island Opens On The Great Barrier Reef

    Jason Ierace. In order to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef, you only have to step off the sandy, coral beach. Arrival is only by helicopter or private yacht. And once there, you're the only ...

  16. SuperyachtNews.com

    The yacht conservation initiatives supported by The Pelorus Foundation will be chosen based on a balance of what projects are most urgent and what is achievable from a yachting perspective. Next year, for example, Pelorus has organised for some clients to charter two iconic explorer yachts in the Antarctic and take part in an whale conservation ...

  17. PELORUS yacht for sale (Lurssen, 114.5m, 2003)

    Lurssen €185,000,000. The iconic PELORUS is an apex superyacht of unquestionable pedigree. She is a 115m (377.3ft) motor yacht of 5,403GT, with a steel hull and aluminium superstructure custom-built to DNV-GL classification and delivered by Lurssen in 2003. She was designed by two of the world's most celebrated yacht designers with sweeping ...

  18. Onboard Lürssen's 115m superyacht Pelorus for sale

    The 115-metre superyacht Pelorus for sale stands out from the crowd with an onboard nightclub, wellness centre and four pools. ... See more. New to Market Onboard Lürssen's 115m superyacht Pelorus for sale. Written by Sophie Spicknell. 16 Feb 2023 | 14:15. Loading... Newsletter. Subscribe. ... Yachts. See All. Sailing Yachts ...

  19. Luxury Yacht Transformation: Ace to Eye, A Tale of Personalization

    Story by Dana Phio. • 13m • 1 min read. One man's personalized luxury yacht may not suit another's tastes, not due to inferior quality, but because it fails to resonate with the new owner ...

  20. Inside the MASSIVE Pelorus Superyacht!

    Inside the MASSIVE Pelorus Superyacht!Hi there, and welcome to The Limtedless Luxury! The Pelorus superyacht is a 115m motor yacht custom built by Lurssen Ya...

  21. Pelorus's New Yacht Trips Retrace the Steps of Real-Life Pirates

    On Pelorus's new Adventure Treasure Hunt Holidays, you and your friends and family can charter luxury yachts off the coasts of Sardinia, Indonesia or the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda.

  22. ולדימיר גוסינסקי

    ולדימיר גוּסִינסקי (ברוסית: Владимир Гусинский‏; נולד ב-6 באוקטובר 1952) הוא איל-הון ואיש עסקים יהודי-רוסי-ישראלי.הוא ידוע בתור המייסד של תאגיד התקשורת מדיה - מוסט המחזיק בערוץ העצמאי ntv, העיתון סבודניה, תחנת הרדיו הדי ...

  23. Putin taunts the West with 'first ever' visit to remote ice ...

    Chukotka is so close to Alaska that Roman Abramovich - the ex-Chelsea FC owner - was reported to fly to Anchorage in Alaska for lunch when he was the governor of the region from 2001 - 2008.

  24. bill duker new yacht

    The same owner as the newly listed $65M Apogee penthouse. The reason William Duker just listed his Apogee penthouse (for $65 million) in Miami Beach is to travel around the world on his marvelous sailing superyacht. Meet the 230-foot Sybaris, which is currently docked near the Miami Beach Marina off Terminal Isle.

  25. Mechel Steel Used to Build Moscow Metro's New Stations

    Mechel Steel Used to Build Moscow Metro's New Stations Mechel Group's steel trading company Mechel Service has supplied Moscow Metro with over 4,000 tonnes of steel rolls since the beginning of this year. Most of those supplies, such as rebar, rolled flats and beams, were produced by Mechel Group's Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant. ...

  26. Merryweather owner to open YachtSea in Butchertown this summer

    Mar 20, 2024. A nautical-themed bar and restaurant is set to open in Butchertown this summer. YachtSea will be located at 111 N. Wenzel in Butcher Block, a development by Andy Blieden. The new ...