yacht history owner

What Is Yacht History Supreme? (The Fascinating Story Behind It)

For centuries, luxury yachting has been a long-time favorite among the wealthy, a symbol of their wealth and success.

Today, one yacht stands out among the rest for its sheer opulence and grandeurthe Yacht History Supreme.

This remarkable vessel has been at the center of attention for its luxurious amenities and features, as well as its mysterious owner.

This article will explore the fascinating story behind the Yacht History Supreme, from its history of luxury yachting to its recent sightings.

Get ready to explore the world of super yachts and experience the grandeur of the Yacht History Supreme!.

Table of Contents

Short Answer

Yacht History Supreme is a luxury yacht constructed by the Australian company, History Supreme.

It was designed by the British designer, Luiz de Basto, and is constructed from 100,000 kg of solid gold and platinum.

It is said to be the most expensive yacht in the world, with an estimated cost of $4.

The yacht features a master bedroom that is made from a single piece of 24-carat gold, and a sculpture of a T-Rex dinosaur made from bone-like material.

History of Luxury Yachting

The history of luxury yachting dates back centuries, when wealthy European families would use their ships to explore the world, show off their status, and even host extravagant parties.

The history of luxury yachting has evolved over time, as advances in technology have made it easier to build bigger and more luxurious vessels.

Today, luxury yachting is a billion-dollar industry, with people from all over the world investing in some of the most expensive and extravagant yachts ever built.

One of the most iconic yachts in the luxury yachting world is the Yacht History Supreme.

Built in 2011 by the Dutch-based firm, Lrssen Yachts, the Yacht History Supreme is one of the worlds most expensive and luxurious yachts.

It measures over 100 meters in length and features a gold-plated exterior, diamond-encrusted furnishings, and a helipad.

It also has a master suite, two VIP cabins, and other luxurious amenities.

The yacht is owned by an anonymous Malaysian businessman and is often seen off the coast of Monaco.

The Yacht History Supreme is a testament to the advances in technology and luxury that have been made in the world of yachting over the years.

It is a stunning symbol of the progress that has been made in the luxury yachting industry and a reminder of the importance of creating the most luxurious and opulent experiences for those who can afford it.

Yacht History Supreme Overview

Yacht History Supreme is a luxury yacht that stands out from the rest.

Built in 2011 by the prestigious Dutch-based firm, Lrssen Yachts, the vessel is one of the worlds most expensive and luxurious yachts, featuring a golden exterior, diamond-encrusted furnishings, and a helipad.

Measuring over 100 meters in length, the yacht has a master suite, two VIP cabins, and other luxurious amenities.

Its owner is an anonymous Malaysian businessman who has chosen to remain anonymous and is often seen off the coast of Monaco.

The interior of the yacht is just as stunning as its exterior.

The main deck features a luxurious salon and a dining room with an impressive glass table.

The yacht also features a gym and a sauna, as well as a private movie theater.

The upper deck is also filled with luxurious amenities, such as a bar and a jacuzzi.

The exterior of the yacht is just as luxurious and impressive.

The golden exterior is encrusted with diamonds, and the yacht also features a helipad.

The vessel is powered by two MTU diesel engines and is capable of reaching a top speed of 17 knots.

Yacht History Supreme is a symbol of luxury and extravagance, and its impressive features make it stand out from the rest.

Its golden exterior and diamond-encrusted furnishings make it one of the most luxurious yachts in the world.

Its no wonder that this yacht is often seen off the coast of Monaco, as its owner enjoys the luxury and extravagance of the vessel.

Features of Yacht History Supreme

Yacht History Supreme is a marvel of luxury and engineering, built in 2011 by the renowned Dutch-based firm Lrssen Yachts.

This luxurious yacht is an impressive 100 meters in length, and features a golden exterior, diamond-encrusted furnishings, and a helipad.

Inside, the yacht is outfitted with an opulent master suite, two VIP cabins, and other luxurious amenities.

The interior is decorated with fine woods, marble floors, and crystal fixtures.

The exterior features a large area for sunbathing, a Jacuzzi, and an outdoor bar.

The yacht also includes a spa, gym, and cinema.

The Yacht History Supreme is owned by an anonymous Malaysian businessman and is often seen off the coast of Monaco.

This impressive vessel is powered by twin MTU 20V4000 M93L engines and boasts a top speed of 16 knots.

It is equipped with the latest navigation, communications, and entertainment systems, making it the perfect choice for a luxurious, stylish getaway.

Luxurious Amenities of Yacht History Supreme

The Yacht History Supreme is truly one of the worlds most luxurious vessels.

Its golden exterior is complemented by its diamond-encrusted furnishings, making it a sight to behold.

The yacht is over 100 meters in length and boasts a master suite, two VIP cabins, and other lavish amenities.

The interior of the yacht is as luxurious as its exterior.

The master suite features a private balcony and a stunning view.

Guests can relax in the VIP cabins, which are equipped with private lounges and bathrooms.

The yacht also has a helipad, allowing for easy access to the vessel.

Other amenities include a spa with a sauna and massage rooms, a gym, a wine cellar, and an outdoor cinema.

It is one of the most expensive yachts in the world, and its luxurious amenities are sure to make any voyage a memorable one.

Whether youre looking to relax in a private balcony or enjoy a movie under the stars, the Yacht History Supreme has something for everyone.

The Yacht’s Owner

The Yacht History Supreme is owned by an anonymous Malaysian businessman, who has chosen to remain unknown to the public.

However, details of the owner have been slowly revealed as the yacht has been seen in various ports around the world.

The yacht is estimated to have cost somewhere between $4.

5 billion dollars, making it one of the most expensive yachts ever built.

This is a testament to the wealth and extravagance of its owner who, it is thought, is a successful businessman from Malaysia.

What makes the Yacht History Supreme so unique is its luxurious design and amenities.

It boasts a golden exterior, diamond-encrusted furnishings, and a helipad, which make it stand out from the rest.

It also measures over 100 meters in length, making it one of the largest yachts ever built.

Inside, the yacht features a master suite, two VIP cabins, and other luxurious amenities.

The Yacht History Supreme is often seen off the coast of Monaco and other locations around the world.

This is believed to be due to its anonymous owner’s preference for privacy and luxury.

The yacht has become a symbol of the wealth and power of its owner, who remains anonymous to this day.

The Yacht’s Grandeur

The Yacht History Supreme is truly a sight to behold.

From the outside, it is coated in a gold-plated finish, giving it a regal and luxurious feel.

The yacht is over 100 meters in length and features a master suite, two VIP cabins, and other luxurious amenities.

Its interior is adorned with diamond-encrusted furnishings, making it one of the most luxurious yachts in the world.

The yacht also has a helipad, allowing its owner to come and go in grand style.

It is the perfect combination of grandeur and luxury, making it the perfect vessel for the well-heeled traveler.

Recent Sightings of Yacht History Supreme

Yacht History Supreme has become a regular sight off the coast of Monaco, often spotted by tourists and locals alike.

Its impossible to miss, with its shining golden exterior and gleaming diamond-encrusted furnishings.

The yacht measures over 100 meters in length, and has a master suite, two VIP cabins, and many other luxurious amenities.

Its owner, an anonymous Malaysian businessman, has been seen on board numerous times, enjoying the sunshine, crystal-clear water, and the sounds of Monaco.

This yacht is often seen in the company of other luxury vessels, including mega yachts, super yachts, and even the occasional cruise liner.

Its a sight to behold, and one thats enjoyed by many who are lucky enough to witness it.

Yacht History Supreme has become an iconic symbol of wealth and luxury, and its not hard to see why.

The yachts helipad is also a popular spot for tourists to take pictures, as it provides a spectacular view of Monacos coastline.

Final Thoughts

Yacht History Supreme is an impressive feat of luxury yacht engineering and craftsmanship.

Its golden exterior, diamond-encrusted furnishings, and other luxurious amenities make it one of the most expensive and luxurious yachts in the world.

Owned by an anonymous Malaysian businessman, Yacht History Supreme has been seen off the coast of Monaco and is a sight to behold.

To truly appreciate the grandeur of Yacht History Supreme, we suggest taking a trip to Monaco and seeing it for yourself.

James Frami

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

Bizarre Story of the History Supreme Yacht

You may have heard that the most expensive yacht in history is called the History Supreme. As near as I’ve been able to figure out, that’s not true. Not because the alleged $4.8 billion yacht wouldn’t be the most expensive – that’s far more than the next most expensive yacht. Instead, it’s not true because the History Supreme is not a real yacht. It doesn’t exist. But you wouldn’t know that from how the internet works.

The World’s Most Expensive Yacht

If you Google the most expensive yacht nearly all the top results, whether they are lists or single topic articles, tell you about History Supreme. Every single one of these articles uses the same four photos. Keep that in mind because it will be important in a moment.

According to the stories, which all source their information from the same place, the History Supreme was designed by a man named Stuart Hughes. Hughes is famous for elevating common things to the extravagant. He had added hundreds of diamonds to things like iPhones and iPads, turning the everyday pieces of technology into multi-million dollar pieces of art.

Hughes himself states he designed the History Supreme for an anonymous Malaysian businessman back around 2011.

What Made the History Supreme So Expensive?

Hughes is famous for his excess so he was said to have gone all out with the History Supreme. One wall feature in the master suite was said to be made from meteoric stone (as in, harvested from a meteor) and included genuine dinosaur bone shaved from a Tyrannosaurus Rex found in Arizona. The dino bones alone were priced at $89,000. There was even supposed to be a massive diamond housed in a luxury liquor bottle on display and a panoramic wall aquarium. So this ain’t your dad’s fishing boat , that’s for sure.

The big cost for the History Supreme was the solid gold and platinum. Hughes said he used 100,000 kg of precious metals to cover nearly every surface on the boat. The railings, the deck, the dining area, even the base of the boat was said to be wrapped in gold. Even the anchor was gold. And, for the record, 100,000 kg is about 220,000 pounds or 110 tons. Wow, right? Sounds like an amazing yacht.

Who Owns History Supreme?

All photos of the History Supreme came from Hughes own website and since that time, in 2011 or so, not a single other photo of the boat has been taken. No one has reported seeing the boat and no one even knows who owns the boat.

People have assumed that the owner would be a man named Robert Kuok, the richest man in Malaysia. His fortune is around $14.5 billion. If he was indeed the man who purchased this boat, it means he spent one third of all of his money on it. That’s a lot of money to invest in a single boat.

Why Is the History Supreme Fake?

At the end of the day, there is no evidence History Supreme ever existed for real. The most damning evidence is those four photographs. Some internet sleuths who were unconvinced about the story of the History Supreme realized that the boat in Hughes photos looked a lot like the Baia One Hundred, a yacht made by Italian yacht makers Baia in 2008.

The sales manager from Baia was contacted by a yachting news website back in 2011 to ask about the History Supreme. Because, in fairness, Hughes never claimed he was a yacht maker. He’s a man who makes normal things extravagant. He could have taken a One Hundred from Baia and made it into History One, right? Not so fast.

Baia’s sales manager said those photos were stolen from their website and doctored. So they were not new photos of an altered boat, but altered photos of an old boat. Moreover, and this is crucial, he also pointed out what should have been obvious to anyone working in boating news. If Hughes added 110 tons of gold to the boat, how the heck was it staying afloat?

The One Hundred has a displacement of 80 tons as is. Imagine adding an extra 110 tons of gold on top of that. There’s just no way. It would sink to the bottom like a stone. And honestly, how would that boat even work? Gold on the outside hull would get scraped off, assuming people didn’t strip it in the middle of the night. And a gold anchor? You’d risk the gold getting scraped and knocked off every time you used it. It just doesn’t make sense.

While it seems like a cool story at first, I have to say it’s just beyond reason. It doesn’t make sense. No one has seen the boat in over a decade. Only four photos exist and they seem to have been photoshopped. And, finally, science itself stands in the way of the boat even working with the sheer mass of gold that’s supposed to be on board. For those reasons, we have to call this one a straight up hoax. There is no History Supreme.

The Bottom Line

For over a decade now, numerous websites have claimed History Supreme as the most expensive yacht in the world. But since no one has seen the yacht in over a decade, the pictures are apparently photoshopped, and it’s far too heavy to even work as a boat as it’s been described by the man who allegedly made it, we’re saying that the boat is just a hoax and never existed in the first place.

My grandfather first took me fishing when I was too young to actually hold up a rod on my own. As an avid camper, hiker, and nature enthusiast I'm always looking for a new adventure.

Categories : Yachts

Angel A on December 18, 2022

I’ve read about 10 000 kg gold, not 100 000. 100k is beyond ridiculous. Even 10k is. Here’s why: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21969100

“His figure for the overall amount of gold in the world is 155,244 tonnes – 16,056 tonnes, or 10% less, than the assessment by Thompson Reuters GFMS. A relatively small disparity, perhaps, but one that at today’s prices comes to more than $950 billion.”

So 16 tonnes are 950 billion dollars… how about that? ;-))

Anon on July 8, 2023

It says 16 thousand tonnes, not 16 tonnes.

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History Supreme: The £3 Billion Gold Plated Yacht

By Ben Roberts

Intriguing reports have emerged regarding the world’s most expensive superyacht today. Worth almost ten times more than Eclipse, the largest yacht in the world, the 30.48m Gold plated superyacht, History Supreme, has now apparently hit the water.

History Supreme has been a well kept secret in the Superyacht Industry, which is understandable as the yacht itself is reportedly worth over £3 billion. Containing around 100,000kg of gold and platinum, History Supreme was designed by Stuart Hughes, the world renowned luxury designer, and took just over three years to complete.

Her hull and exterior design are both wrapped in the most sought after precious metals on the planet, coating elements of the deck, dining area, rails and even the anchor.

History Supreme also holds one of the most unique interior features to ever grace a yacht; a wall feature which is made from meteor stone and Tyrannosaurus Rex bone.

However, we feel it is highly unlikely that a superyacht adorned to this level will ever actually grace the waters, and if the reports are in fact true, it would be far better suited to a museum exhibit than a life on the ocean.

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Is the History Supreme Yacht Real?

Is the history supreme yacht real .

For most boat owners, it’s enough that their boat is sea-worthy, clean, and running smoothly. But for the designer of the History Supreme yacht, a few extras were in order. With the existence of the famous yacht under debate, we delve under the surface to find out if the boat reigns supreme, or if it’s myth is history.

Why is the History Supreme yacht so expensive?

While a lot of information about the yacht is up in the air, most agree that the high price tag is due not only to its size (a reported one hundred feet in length), but also what it’s made of. The boat is supposedly loaded with precious metals. Gold and platinum were said to be used to line the entire boat.

How much is the History Supreme yacht worth?

The boat is listed with a price tag of $4.8 billion, easily making it the most expensive yacht ever to exist. The next most expensive luxurious yacht would be the Eclipse, owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. The Eclipse mega yacht is valued at $1.5 billion, making it only a third of the value of the History Supreme.

Who owns the yacht History Supreme?

The name most often linked with the History Supreme is Malaysian businessman Robert Kuok. His fortune is currently listed as $11 billion on Forbes. If the boat is indeed real, would someone really spend over a third of their money on it?

The other name linked to the boat is the reported designer, Stuart Hughes. Hughes is best known for designing luxury gadgets such as solid gold games consoles, or black diamond iPhones. He describes the yacht on his website as having been sold to an anonymous Malaysian businessman, which may or may not be Kuok.

Inside the History Supreme yacht

Other features of opulence on the boat include a T-rex bone mounted on the wall of the master bedroom, along with meteor rock features. The whole interior is decked out with gold and platinum. The dining area, the deck itself and even the boat’s anchor are said to be either solid gold, or gold-lined.

Does the History Supreme really exist?

While it’s been long discussed online and in boating circles, it seems unlikely the golden yacht actually exists. Whether a deliberate hoax in the industry, or just a rumour that got out of hand, it seems likely that the boat isn’t real. The few existing photos appear to be fake or doctored, and the reported weight of the boat, given all that precious metal, is around 100,000kg.

Any yacht owner worth their salt could tell you that a boat of that weight would struggle to stay afloat, let alone get you from coast to coast.

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And if you have any questions about getting a boat out onto open water in the UK, check out our guide to find out what you need to know before you get started.

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History Supreme Yacht Most Expensive: Exploring the Ultimate Luxury Vessel

The History Supreme yacht is a marvel in the world of luxury and wealth, often touted as the most expensive yacht ever built. At an astounding $4.8 billion, this gold-plated superyacht is said to have been purchased by an anonymous Malaysian businessman after taking three years to complete with over 220,462 pounds of precious metals used in its construction source . Measuring 30.48 meters in length, this opulent vessel stands as a symbol of ultimate extravagance, surpassing even the largest yacht in the world, the Eclipse.

However, despite its reputation and jaw-dropping price tag, the existence of the History Supreme yacht is shrouded in controversy. Reports have surfaced stating that the yacht is not actually a real vessel source . The internet is rife with conflicting information, raising questions about the authenticity of this luxurious superyacht and leaving enthusiasts to ponder over its true nature.

Regardless of the uncertainty that surrounds the History Supreme, its legendary status and the sheer extravagance of the materials used in its alleged construction have undoubtedly captivated the world's attention. Whether real or simply a myth, the History Supreme yacht continues to be a fascinating topic of discussion for yacht aficionados and luxury enthusiasts alike.

History Supreme Yacht Overview

Design and features.

The History Supreme yacht, designed by renowned luxury designer Stuart Hughes, is one of the most exclusive and lavish vessels in the world. This stunning creation took over three years to complete and boasts many exquisite details[^( https://www.superyachts.com/news/story/history-supreme-the-andpound3-billion-gold-plated-yacht-1351^ )]. Designed with an emphasis on luxury and extravagance, it includes a variety of opulent amenities catering to the needs and desires of the world's elite.

Some of the standout features in the History Supreme yacht include a lavish dining area, meticulously crafted railings, and an impressive deck area for leisure and relaxation. With every inch of the yacht crafted to perfection and attention to detail, it ensures a truly unparalleled experience for its guests[^( https://www.boatsafe.com/yacht-history-supreme/^ )].

Materials Used

What sets the History Supreme yacht apart from other vessels is its extensive use of precious metals. An astounding 100,000 kg of gold and platinum were utilized in its construction, setting a new benchmark for opulence in the world of yachting[^( https://www.superyachts.com/news/story/history-supreme-the-andpound3-billion-gold-plated-yacht-1351^ )]. This extraordinary use of precious metals extends to nearly every surface on the boat, from the railings and deck to the dining area and even the anchor[^( https://www.boatsafe.com/yacht-history-supreme/^ )].

Purchased by an anonymous Malaysian businessman, the History Supreme yacht holds the title of the most expensive yacht ever sold[^( https://atlanticyachtandship.com/the-midas-touch-4-8-billion-history-supreme-most-expensive-yacht-ever-sold/^ )]. With its staggering use of 220,462 pounds of precious metals and unparalleled attention to detail, it is easy to see why the History Supreme yacht has garnered such acclaim and interest in the world of luxury yachting.

Record-Breaking Price

Factors of supreme value.

The extravagant History Supreme yacht holds the title of the most expensive yacht in the world, with a staggering price tag of $4.8 billion . One of the key factors contributing to its supreme value is the abundance of precious metals used in its construction.

Renowned luxury designer Stuart Hughes designed the History Supreme, employing over 100,000kg of gold and platinum in its creation. The construction process took more than three years to complete, and the result is a breathtaking vessel that stands alone at the pinnacle of luxury.

Some of the extravagantly luxurious features of the History Supreme include:

Gold-plated rooms
Base of the boat, deck, and dining area adorned with precious metals
More than 220,462 pounds of gold and platinum materials

Comparison to Other Luxury Yachts

The History Supreme's incomparable price tag sets it in a league of its own, significantly surpassing even the most luxurious and expensive yachts on the market. By way of comparison, the fifth most expensive superyacht in the world is the Dubai , which has an estimated value of $400 million - a fraction of the History Supreme's monumental price.

In addition to the unmatched value of the precious metals used in the History Supreme, the exclusivity associated with owning the world's most expensive yacht and the remarkable design elements by the acclaimed Stuart Hughes place this vessel in a truly unique category of unparalleled luxury.

Ownership and Origin

Current owner.

The current owner of the History Supreme yacht is Malaysian businessman Robert Kuok . Kuok, a self-made billionaire, runs the Kuok Group, an international corporation with operations all around the world. He reportedly spent a third of his $12.8 billion fortune when he paid $4.8 billion for the History Supreme.

Manufacturer and Designer

The History Supreme yacht is a product of extraordinary craftsmanship and design. It was designed by Stuart Hughes , a world-renowned luxury designer. The project took just over three years to complete, and it is reported to be worth over £3 billion.

Built with around 100,000 kg of gold and platinum, the yacht is truly one of a kind. The precious metals are used to cover nearly every surface on the boat, including the railings, the deck, the dining area and even the base of the boat. The anchor is also made of gold .

The sheer amount of precious metals used in the construction of this magnificent yacht justifies its title as the most expensive yacht in the world.

Controversies and Criticisms

Environmental concerns.

One of the primary criticisms surrounding the History Supreme yacht is its potential environmental impact. The vessel is said to be plated with around 100,000kg of gold and platinum , which raises questions about the sustainability of using such vast quantities of precious metals. Extraction of these metals often leads to environmental degradation, including deforestation and pollution.

Access and Usage Limits

Another controversy related to the History Supreme yacht is the access and usage limitations. As a vessel worth billions of dollars, it's likely that only a select few individuals will be able to enjoy it. The exclusivity of the yacht is often met with criticism, as it highlights the stark differences between the extremely wealthy and the rest of society.

Moreover, the fact that the yacht has been rarely seen since its unveiling has led to speculation and skepticism around its legitimacy and existence. The lack of public access and the secretive nature of its whereabouts have only fueled concerns and criticisms, making the History Supreme yacht a controversial figure in the world of luxury vessels.

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The Midas Touch: $4.8 Billion History Supreme Most Expensive Yacht Ever Sold

We’ve seen some opulent yachts, but the 100-foot History Supreme takes the gold-encrusted cake. Stuart Hughes, a British purveyor of luxury gadgets, took a break from his role as an iPad alchemist to create the $4.8 billion superyacht, covered in platinum and gold from bow to stern.

Purchased by an anonymous Malaysian businessman, History Supreme is the most expensive yacht ever sold, according to Luxury Launches. The Daily Mail reports that the impressive vessel took three years to complete and used over a staggering 220,462 pounds of precious metals. Everything – from the base of the boat, to the deck, dining area, rails and anchor – were decked out in gold and platinum.

The exorbitant price tag is also the result of the lavish master bedroom, adorned in platinum with a wall feature that is made from meteoric stone and a genuine T-Rex dinosaur bone. It is rumored that Robert Kuok purchased the superyacht, worth 10 times the amount Roman Abramovitch (previous title holder for world’s most expensive yacht) paid for the Eclipse megayacht. Kuok is one of only three Malaysians with a net worth of $5 billion or more, according to Forbes billionaire’s list . If the purchase price is accurate, “the most likely buyer is Robert Kuok , the richest man in Malaysia, with a net worth of $12.5 billion,” reports Business Insider .

We may not have any gold-fringed yachts for sale , but Atlantic Yacht & Ship features a wide variety of yachts and boats for sale that will suit even the most distinguishing tastes. Check our listings and contact a sales rep today to tour any vessel at 1-888-230-0439.

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Boat of the Week: How This Classic, 90-Year-Old Superyacht Was Restored to Her Former Glory

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The 90-year-old yacht is being restored to its former glory

Interior designer Nathan Hutchins is more used to renovating historical buildings than classic yachts. But when the owners of the 1930s yacht Marala commissioned him to undertake the boat’s extensive renovation, he couldn’t refuse.

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The Haves and the Have-Yachts

By Evan Osnos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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A Closer Look at the $4.8 Billion History Supreme

Most of us do not wish for much money; a million dollars is enough to make us turn our lives around, but there are always people who are looking for more. While you are praying for a car, another wants a private jet; while you are looking for more space in your garage, another is preparing to buy an entire house. We are not equal, and that is the reason why when you hear that someone is willing to buy a yacht for $4.8 billion, you have to ask who it is. A yacht that goes by the name "History Supreme" has you thinking that it contains lots of history either in its construction or decorations yet the only thing historical about the $4.8 billion yacht is the use of extinct bones. Stuart Hughes made the headlines eight years ago with the declaration that he had taken three years to complete building History Supreme, so we had to learn more about it.

Why be valued so highly?

Multi-billionaires have competed against each other to see whose yacht is the longest and when we think that we have found the winner another boat is made and it outshines the rest. History Supreme was not about being the longest; it only was going to be 100 feet long, but the materials used to make it would ensure that no other yacht ever came close to its price. Manufacturers value their products depending on the cost of production and for Stuart, the boat which he also claimed the buyer had given him free rein to make, the construction meant going all out hence the astronomical price. History Supreme was reportedly made from:

Precious metals

As little girls boast of wearing nothing but gold-coated earrings since any other will cause them to have allergic reactions, they already feel like they own the world with their jewelry all because it has a touch of gold. Well, imagine owning a vessel whose base is made from solid gold. The anonymous businessman who bought the History Supreme took pride in owning a yacht whose base was made from gold; a thin layer is formed to coat its entire base, according to Stuart Hughes.

The sleeping quarters were allegedly made from platinum and together, both the platinum and gold used weighed 100,000 kilograms. As if that is not enough of the costly expenses, holding down the vessel was an anchor also made from precious metals while the railings, dining area, and deck also were constructed from precious metals, according to Luxury Launches.

Bones of an extinct animal

The moment you learn that something no longer exists, you can be sure that finding it is going to be nearly impossible and when you do, the value will be too high for you to afford probably. Such is the case with the History Supreme, which only a multi-billionaire would dare think about buying. Stuart allegedly used the bones of an extinct dinosaur named "Tyrannosaurus Rex" or simply "T. Rex." Why anyone would choose to have the bone shavings of a carnivorous dinosaur in their bedroom is a question that only Stuart can answer given that he supposedly came up with the design.

Meteoric stone

Stuart was looking to outdo renowned yacht designers when he said that History Supreme also contained Meteoric stones in the construction of the walls of the main sleeping quarters. The significance of having meteoric stones is still about driving the price of History Supreme upwards. Although Stuart did not reveal the exact meteoric stones used, maybe the fact that they are rarer than gold and a pound could be worth as much as $1 million is enough to make us believe that History Supreme is worth every penny included in its high cost.

Time spent constructing it

Everyone values their time differently; Josh Turner sang that time is love, but to a businessman, time is money. Stuart valued his time so much that he must have factored in the three years spent constructing History Supreme in the price when he quoted the £3 billion cost.

Too good to be true

In 2011, mainstream media went into a frenzy with the news that Stuart Hughes was going to make the most expensive in the world after Stuart claimed the project had been commissioned from an anonymous Malaysian businessman. The cost of the project was £3 billion according to Stuart Hughes and at such an amount is was apparent that someone somewhere was ready to splurge on a luxurious yacht, but the question remained as to who the mysterious buyer was.

As always when questions are unanswered, curiosity gets the better of us as we wonder if what we are being told is the truth or fabricated stories. Business Insider had assumed that the billionaire who bought the yacht was Robert Kuok but later discovered that the businessman whose net worth stood at a staggering $12.5 billion at the time, had deconstructed his Hong Kong mansion to avoid displaying his wealth. Now, that is not the behavior of someone who would spend $4.8 billion on a yacht.

We are always warned that if it sounds or looks too good to be true, it usually is, and in this instance, that was the case. Upon investigations, it was discovered that the whole project was but a hoax which the media had been gullible enough to believe in without doing their due diligence before reporting the lies to the public. It is shocking how far people are willing to go to make a name or themselves because Stuart Hughes was desperate enough to be noticed. According to Yacht Harbour, he went to the website of Baia Yachts and took pictures from there which he used to try and fool the public into believing he was making the most expensive yacht worldwide.

Our instincts should, however, have told us that billionaires are not interested in having a connection with the extinct animals by building a yacht with their bones. It is all about ego and for a billionaire a yacht should be something that gives him personal satisfaction, like Roman Abramovich's Eclipse which he had built to eclipse every other boat in the sea with regards to length.

Written by Dana Hanson

Related articles, a closer look at david and victoria beckham's yacht seafair.

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A closer look at tankoa's t500 tethys, a closer look at x-yachts new x49e electric sailing boat, check out camper and nicholsons international's 120 ft tecnomar superyacht "lucy", sirena's new fully customizable 78-foot yacht, what boat characteristics make it a yacht.

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History of the Yacht

By: American Sailing Sailing History

When does a boat become a yacht? One answer has always been, you can tell a yacht when you see one. But, It really has nothing to do with size of the boat, weight of the boat, its style, sleeping quarters, heads, tillers, or a wheel. A yacht is a boat that was designed for the express pleasure of its owner.

The yacht is an invention of the 14th century Dutch. The Dutch used small, fast boats for chasing smugglers, pirates and criminals. Rich ship owners and merchants began using these small “ jaghts ” to sail out to celebrate their returning merchant ships. It quickly became chic to use these “ jaghts ” to take friends out just for pleasure.

“ Mary ” was presented to King Charles II by the Dutch in 1660.

Charles II of England spent 10 years in exile in Holland before he was returned to the English throne in 1660. His return to the throne was celebrated by the city of Amsterdam, presenting him with a luxurious 60’ yacht including a crew of 20. Her name was Mary. He took great pleasure in sailing her up and down the Thames. He studied navigation and even naval architecture and he built approximately 20 yachts during his lifetime. It can be said that he was the world’s first yachtsman. His enthusiasm for yachting was contagious and his brother James, Duke of York, joined him and also became an avid yachtsman as well.

As always when there are two sailboats on the water a race ensues. Soon the first organized regatta was planned as a 40-mile race on the Thames. It took place in 1661 between Katherine , Charles’s newly constructed yacht and Anne , the Duke of York’s new yacht with Charles himself at the helm Katherine won and a new sport was born.

Yachting stayed the Sport of Kings for over a century, but by the 1800s yachting had grown to included participants of more than just the crown heads of Europe. The worlds wealthiest had joined in. Yacht Clubs were forming. The first yacht club in the world, called the Cork Water Club , was established in Ireland in 1720, followed the Lough Ree Yacht Club in 1770 (again in Ireland), and the Starcross Yacht Club in 1772 in England.

Cowes Castle became the headquarters of the Royal Yacht Squadron around 1858.

Probably the most famous of all the English yacht clubs the The Royal Yacht Squadron was founded on June 1, 1815 in the Thatched House Tavern in St James’s, London as The Yacht Club by 42 gentlemen interested in yachting.

Across the pond the New York Yacht Club (NYYC) was started on July 30, 1844 when John Cox Stevens invited eight friends to his yacht Gimcrack , anchored in New York Harbor. They formed a syndicate to build a yacht with the intention of taking her to England and making some money competing in yachting regattas and match races. They choose to build a Pilot style Schooner to represent the club; at the time there was no faster design!

Pilot Schooners would lie at anchor in the inner harbor of New York City and wait for the behmoth square rigged Clippers carrying goods between America and Europe. The Pilot Boats purpose was to guide the huge square riggers that would appear at the entrance to New York Harbor’s Verazno Straights, to a berth in the City. The Schooners had to be fast to make a living. First one to the cargo ship got the job second got nothing.

The syndicate contracted with master schooner designer George Steers for a 101 ft (30.78 m) schooner which was christened America and launched on the 3 of May 1851. America crossed the Atlantic on her own bottom that year and challenged all of England’s fastest yachts to a match race. No yachts were willing to race her. Finally, America joined a free-for-all on Friday, August 22, around the Isle of Wight, racing against 15 yachts of the Royal Yacht Squadron in the club’s annual 53-nautical-mile (98 km) race around the Isle of Wight. Finishing 8 minutes ahead of its closest rival. America had won the Royal Yacht Squadron’s “ Hundred Guinea Cup “, later called the America’s Cup in honor of the yacht that won it.

The Yacht America

Watching the race was Queen Victoria, who supposedly inquired, “ Which is first? ” Told it was America , she asked, “ Which is second? ” “ Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second, ” was the reply. Or so the story goes. The NYYC defended that trophy from 1870-1983. This has been described by journalists as “ the longest winning streak in sports “.

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Lifestyle , Superyachts

History Supreme mystery: ‘Most expensive yacht in the world’ costs $4.8b but nobody has seen it

Published on Apr 19, 2022 at 1:53PM (UTC+4)

by Brandon Livesay

Last updated on Jun 16, 2022 at 4:54PM (UTC+4)

The History Supreme cruising on calm ocean waters.

The History Supreme is ‘made with 100,000kg of gold and platinum’, has a feature wall made of T-Rex bone and meteorite, and includes a bottle of booze with an 18.5-carat diamond on it.

Well that’s how the story goes.

Oh, and it reportedly costs $4.8 billion.

It’s one of the biggest boating myths going, a concept yacht so impressive that it made world headlines .

But no one has ever seen it and internet sleuths think it never existed.

So here’s the story of the History Supreme.

When you think of the most expensive yacht in the world, a 30m vessel is not what springs to mind.

The floating cities that park off Monaco are upwards of 100m in length. The Azzam is the longest yacht in the world at 179m.

But they’ve got nothing on the extravagance of what’s claimed to be inside History Supreme.

READ MORE: The biggest superyacht in the world – worth $735m – has been seized

The History Supreme back deck is covered in gold and platinum.

How did they come up with a $4.8 billion boat?

Let’s start with the 100,000kg of gold and platinum that builder Stuart Hughes’ website claims was used in construction.

Even the hull of the boat is said to be wrapped in a layer of gold.

Inside the yacht you’ll find… more gold.

The feature wall in the sleeping quarters is made of a T-Rex bone and meteorite.

The creator of the History Supreme, Hughes , says “all features including deck, dining area, rails, anchor, [are] made from precious metals”.

The sleeping quarters have a feature wall “made from meteoric stone with genuine dinosaur bone shaved in from the raptor T-Rex”, Hughes’ website says.

Hughes is known for wrapping objects in gold and diamonds, most famously iPhones.

So this makes sense. But he’s not known as a boat builder. And despite several interviews with news outlets saying it was real, nobody has spotted this beast in the wild.

Who owns the History Supreme?

Similar to the boat itself, it’s a bit of a mystery. We know Stuart Hughes claims to have built the luxury yacht for a Malaysian businessman.

But armchair detectives think they know who that businessman is.

The rumours are it belongs to Robert Kuok, founder of the Shangri-La hotel and resorts chain.

Kuok is the richest person in Malaysia and Forbes estimates his worth at a cool $12.6 billion. But this doesn’t quite add up either. Why would a billionaire spend nearly $5b of his $12b fortune on a boat?

But even more mysterious is where the boat is.

It’s not been sighted at the major ports billionaires tend to hang out at.

And some yachting message boards believe the images are taken from another similar concept yacht.

So what does it all mean?

As a concept, it’s incredible. Is it real? There’s no evidence to say it was built other than the Hughes website saying it took three years to build.

Inside the History Supreme is an elegant dining area.

Tags - Lifestyle , Most Expensive , Yacht

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10 of the biggest yachts at this year's Palm Beach International Boat Show

The Palm Beach International Boat Show returns to West Palm Beach's waterfront from March 21-24 — bringing with it some of the largest, most luxurious yachts in the world.

The Super Yacht Show Palm Beach features a range of boats that are longer than 100 feet, including 18 that are longer than 151 feet.

Here's a look at 10 of the biggest boats that visitors to the show can experience up close.

Come Together

This 197-foot behemoth with a price tag that starts at $59.95 million makes it the most expensive boat for sale at the 2024 Palm Beach International Boat Show.

Come Together provides plenty of space and amenities to do as its name suggests and bring more than a dozen people together for an adventure at sea, according to its listing on the show's website.

It was built in 2022 by Amels and features a hybrid propulsion system. The interiors were done by Winch Design of London, with materials including Jerusalem limestone, light matte oak and walnut, and bronze. The ship's six cabins can house up to 14 guests, the listing said.

A 27-meter sun deck features a Jacuzzi with a sunbathing area, gym equipment, sheltered bar and wind-protected dining table.

You can find Come Together in the water at Ramps C and D.

Hospitality

Want to buy the 164-foot Hospitality? The price starts at $29.75 million, according to the yacht's listing on the boat show's website.

The Westport-built vessel was first constructed in 2011 and refit in 2021. It has seven cabins that can accommodate 16 guests. That includes a primary suite and a VIP suite. It also features a sun deck with a hot tub and sunbathing area.

The ship has traveled "to some of the world's most remote places with an impressive 4,000+ nautical mile range," its listing said.

You can find Hospitality in the water at Ramp E at the show.

The 155-foot Ancora was just completed in August by manufacturer Mengi Yay, its listing said. It is being presented by Fraser Yachts.

Ancora was built for charter use and has a master suite with a private balcony, plus four staterooms including two doubles and two convertibles, allowing for up to 10 guests, the listing said.

Summer charter rates with Fraser run from about $282,000 per week in the western Mediterranean Sea to about $260,000 per week in the winter in the Caribbean, according to Fraser's website .

You can find Ancora in the water at Ramp 2.

Next Chapter

This Benetti-built vessel is 180 feet and 6 inches and was built in 2003 with a refit in 2022, the listing said.

Next Chapter's six cabins — including a split-level master suite with an observation lounge and private study — can accommodate up to 13 people. It features a Jacuzzi, gym and beach club, and is built for charter use, the listing said.

The price starts at $19.9 million, and the ship is being presented at the show by The International Yacht Co.

Next Chapter will be in the water at Ramp E.

For $21 million, you can be the new owner of the Feadship-built Berilda, a 155-foot yacht built in 2001 and refit in 2020-21, according to its listing.

The yacht has "the highest pedigree with a documented history of excellent owners and meticulous care," the listing said. That ownership includes Royal Swedish Yacht Club member Sten Tegner, and Richard and Leslie Fairbanks.

The current owner bought Berilda in 2021 and has sailed across the Atlantic Ocean twice and through Europe, New England, the Bahamas and the Caribbean, the listing said. The yacht features six cabins for up to 14 people and quarters for a crew of up to 10.

Berilda will be in water at Ramp C.

Liberty, built by Trinity, is 187 feet and 2 inches, according to its listing. The yacht is designed for entertaining, the listing said, with social spaces including a dance floor.

Liberty was built in 2012, with work including a paint job, main engine rebuild, new generators and 10-year survey completed since 2018. The price starts at $24.75 million and the ship is being shown by The International Yacht Co.

The yacht has six cabins for 12 guests, with additional capacity for 13 crew, the listing said.

Named simply W, this 188-foot Feadship yacht is being shown by its manufacturer, according to its listing.

The vessel, originally launched as Larisa in 2013, had a major refit in 2020 and was renamed at that time, the listing said. W's owner changed the livery and antifouling, among other alterations, over the past 10 months, the listing said.

W will be in the water at Ramp C.

Priced at $20.9 million and being shown by exhibitor FGI Yacht Group, the 164-foot Tsumat was built by Trinity in 2012 and refit last year, according to its listing.

The exterior was designed by Geoff Van Aller. The interior by Ramón Alonso features leather, suede, marble and walnut, with onyx floors.

There are six staterooms for up to 12 guests and housing for a 10-person crew, the listing said.

Tsumat will be in the water at Ramps 2 and D.

The Nita K II is about 171 feet and was built by Amels in 2004, the listing said. It's priced starting at $23.9 million and presented by Merle Wood & Associates.

A refit in 2021-22 included an overhaul of the main engines and generators, and a 20-year Lloyd's class special survey was completed earlier this year, the listing said.

The interior was designed by Alberto Pinto and Laura Sessa, and the yacht can accommodate up to 12 people in five staterooms, plus room for 14 crew members in seven cabins, the listing said.

Nita K II will be in the water at Ramp D.

If it tells you anything about the level of luxury aboard the BG Charade, this 157-foot yacht was built by Feadship in 1990 for the late Paul Allen of Microsoft, the listing said. Under Allen, the BG Charade completed three circumnavigations and served as the honeymoon venue for Bill and Melinda Gates.

A technical and cosmetic refit was completed in 2016 and included new generators, rebuilt engines, new teak on the exterior and a complete electrical system update, the listing said.

BG Charade has six cabins for up to 12 guests, plus accommodations for up to 10 crew, the listing said.

The yacht will be in the water at Ramp 7.

Bonus: Talisman C

The epically long — 231.6 feet — and super-luxurious Talisman C, built by Turquoise in 2011, will be shown by Burgess Yachts in the water at Ramps D and E.

What: Palm Beach International Boat Show.

When: Noon to 7 p.m. March 21, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. March 22 and 23, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 24.

Where: West Palm Beach waterfront.

Cost: General admission is free for ages 6 and younger with purchase of an adult ticket, $17 for a one-day ticket for ages 6-15, $33 for a one-day ticket for ages 16 and older, and $60 for a two-day adult ticket. VIP experiences start at $390 for a Windward single-day ticket.

Information: pbboatshow.com

Epic video footage captures Lamborghini yacht owner screaming ‘I will kill you’ at marina employee

Updated: Mar. 20, 2024, 5:51 p.m. |
Published: Mar. 20, 2024, 5:44 p.m.

A screenshot of the yacht and its owner, Ajay Thakore. Screenshot

EmilyAnn Jackman | [email protected]

Talk about a bizarre scene that could’ve been pulled straight from a movie.

The owner of a $3.4 million Lamborghini yacht threatened a private dock employee after he was informed that he couldn’t be there, CBS8 reported back on March 11.

The story begins with Joseph Holt, a 21-year-old employee at Marriot Marina in San Diego, where he told CBS8 that he saw the yacht sailing into the private dock Sunday afternoon. Apparently, the owner, identified as Ajay Thakore, attempted to pick up another person at the dock.

“I told him respectfully that he couldn’t be there, and I honestly was hoping to have a conversation with him about his cool boat,” Holt said to the news outlet.

“But yeah, it completely went the other way,” Holt added.

Captured on a video that was posted to YouTube by @SM-wc9eq on March 10 was an embarrassing verbal confrontation between Holt and Thakore, in front of a host of onlookers.

A dark blue Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 can be seen sailing out of a dock. Standing on the end of the yacht was a man sporting a gray shirt, jeans, and a cap.

The man seen in the video footage was seemingly the local business owner and philanthropist, screaming at the young man as the yacht sailed away.

Thakore was seen threatening his life, shouting at Holt, saying, “I will kill you, you know I will kill you!” He can be heard repeating himself multiple times in the video.

Thakore can be seen pounding his fists on his palm and pointing his thumb down, and telling Holt, “To your face!”

This caused Holt, who is standing on the dock, to respond with hoisting his middle finger in the air, directed at Thakore. Thakore’s screams can be heard echoing through the arena.

“It escalated immediately. It was 0 to 100 immediately,” he said to the outlet.

“I really was trying to restrain myself from getting fired from my job or stepping out of line. The only thing I did was give him the bird,” he added.

Holt said Thakore went as far as to take $100 bills from his wallet and throw the money at him, which landed in the water, and even dropped his pants and mooned him.

“[He] started to make gestures to everybody watching and me. You can’t act that way in public. It’s just not ok. Especially threatening my life, at the very least. There were women and children there. That’s the most important part,” Holt told the news outlet.

Unfortunately, the lewd act wasn’t caught on video.

“I’m a minimum wage worker, he was commenting on that, on my status just because of my job. He was saying I’m nobody, I’m nothing, I work a silly job. He said that he knows people, he has connections, he can change my life and ruin it,” Holt said.

The San Diego Harbor Police reported to the scene 10 minutes later.

Thakore, who goes by the name Ace Rogers on Instagram and TikTok and has a LinkedIn page stating that he’s the CEO of Doctor Multimedia, a healthcare marketing firm based in San Diego, had his public relations team provide a statement to CBS8, saying that he regrets the altercation.

“What started as a minor misunderstanding escalated into an argument, and I apologize for my actions and to those who witnessed the unfortunate exchange,” the statement said.

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The owner of a $3.4 million Lamborghini yacht screamed 'I will kill you' and threw $100 bills into the water when told he couldn't use a private dock

The owner of a Lamborghini yacht threatened a private dock employee, per CBS8.
The employee said Ajay Thakore mooned and threw cash at him after being told he couldn't use the dock.
Thakore, the CEO of Doctor Multimedia, issued an apology through his public relations team.

The owner of a $3.4 million Lamborghini yacht threatened a private dock employee after being told he couldn't be there, the San Diego-based broadcaster CBS8 reported on March 11.

Joseph Holt, a 21-year-old employee at Marriot Marina in San Diego, told CBS8 that he spotted the yacht sailing into the private dock. The owner, whom CBS8 identified as Ajay Thakore, tried to pick another person up at the dock, Holt said.

"I told him respectfully that he couldn't be there, and I honestly was hoping to have a conversation with him about his cool boat," Holt told CBS8.

In a YouTube video posted by @SM-wc9eq on March 10, a dark blue Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 is seen sailing out of a dock. A man in a gray T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and a cap was shown standing on the yacht. The man appeared to be Thakore, per CBS8.

Thakore was shown shouting at Holt. "I will kill you, you know I will kill you!" he can be heard saying multiple times in the video

Thakore was later shown pounding his fist on his palm and pointing his thumb down before telling Holt: "To your face!" Holt was shown responding by pointing his middle finger at Thakore.

"I really was trying to restrain myself from getting fired from my job or stepping out of line. The only thing I did was give him the bird," Holt told CBS8.

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California yacht owner threatens to kill dock worker in vicious showdown, cali yacht owner threatens to kill dock worker drops pants for rude salute, 95 3/13/2024 8:09 am pt.

A California yacht owner's vicious beef with a dock worker has reached death-threat levels -- and their exchange was caught on camera and included a nude, and very rude, gesture!

Check out the clip ... it all unfolds when San Diego entrepreneur Ajay Thakore swings by the swanky Marriott Marquis Marina in his rare $4.5M Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 yacht to pick up one of his employees -- but things boil over when dock worker Joseph Holt tells him he can't be there.

Thakore, the CEO of medical advertising firm Doctor Multimedia, flips out on Holt big time ... and starts spewing threats like, "I will kill you, you know I will kill you, I will kill."

And it doesn't stop there -- as Thakore's pulling out of the harbor, he drops trou to make a full frontal salute in Holt's direction. Stay classy, San Diego!

Holt's only retaliation was flipping the bird, and he later told CBS8 that was all he could do to keep his cool and avoid escalating the situation.

Holt says parts of the altercation were not captured on camera, and he adds ... Thakore not only threatened to kill him, but also claimed to have connections who could totally mess up his life.

Holt also says Thakore pulled out $100 bills and tossed them at him, even chucking some in the water.

BTW, Thakore's done some backpedaling since the ugly exchange -- he now says, "The interaction that occurred yesterday was regrettable. What started as a minor misunderstanding escalated into an argument, and I apologize for my actions and to those who witnessed the unfortunate exchange."

Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media.

FWIW ... One of Thakore’s employees claims the whole thing began because other dock workers blocked him from boarding the yacht.

Oh, and if that fancy Lambo yacht looks familiar -- it's the same one Chuck Liddell recently tumbled off just last month. Now it's famous AND infamous!

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Who is Ajay Thakore? San Diego Lamborghini Yacht owner threatens dock worker in viral video

A n Indian-origin California business owner Ajay Thakore recently made headlines when he reportedly threatened a dockyard worker at San Diego's Marriott Marina after the latter refused to let the former park his $4.5 million Lamborghini Yacht, as per Times Now News.

The video of the incident has now gone viral online. While the face of the man threatening the dock employee saying "I will kill you!" multiple times remains unclear in the footage, many media outlets, including the New York Post confirmed it was Ajay Thakore, who has previously been part of similar confrontations.

Apart from threatening to kill the dock worker, the man in the video also flashed at the latter, as the yacht moved away from the marina. In the wake of this incident, here's looking at who Ajay Thakore is.

Ajay Thakore also goes by the name Ace Rogers

According to Daily Mail, Ajay Thakore also goes by the name Ace Rogers and he is a wealthy businessman and philanthropist based in San Diego, California. He is the CEO of Doctor Multimedia, a local medical marketing agency, and Gopher Media LLC.

He has previously faced similar controversy in 2021 when he was accused of harassing the employees of a La Jolla pizza joint called American Pizza Manufacturing. Its founder Andrew Melone alleged back then that it all started with Thakore defaming the take-and-bake pizza establishment on social media.

However, things escalated when the Indian-origin business owner reportedly parked two of his cars directly in front of the eatery, blocking its entrance, with texts, "Take N Bake Pizza Sucks" glaring on top of it.

Melone also claimed that an airplane flew over the locality with the banner reading, "Just Say No to Take N Bake Pizza." Not only that but Ajay Thakore reportedly involved another pizzeria in the area Carino's, with planes displaying messages like "Carino's Pizza is Better than Take N Bake."

Additionally, Thakore and his companies filed a $10 million lawsuit against Andrew Melone and his public accusations, claiming that they were "exercising their First Amendment Rights" and protesting against discrimination. The owner of the pizzeria countersued, alleging Thakore had persistently harassed him and his company. The two civil lawsuits are still underway.

Exploring the recent controversy surrounding Ajay Thakore

On the afternoon of March 10, 2024, Ajay Thakore's multimillion-dollar Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 yacht was not allowed to park in the Seaforth Boat Rental lot in San Diego's Marriott Marina. He was reportedly there to pick up an employee. The video of the incident has now gone viral.

It shows a man standing on the edge of the yacht threatening to "kill" the worker identified as Joseph Holt, as per CBS 8. Later, as the boat moved away from the dock, the former dropped his pants and made inappropriate gestures toward the 21-year-old employee. The harasser even threw $100 bills at the guy which fell into the water.

Holt told reporters that he "respectfully" told the driver not to park in the private space and was hoping to have a "conversation" with him about his "cool boat," when "it completely went the other way."

"I really didn't know how to process it. I really was trying to restrain myself from getting fired from my job or stepping out of line. The only thing I did was give him the bird," Holt stated.

The employee also mentioned how Thakore berated him for his minimum wage labor and called him a nobody who did nothing on a "silly job." The expensive boat owner allegedly threatened to have him fired using his "connections" and ruin his life.

The dock worker further continued,

"He had dropped his pants and started to make gestures to everybody watching and me. You can't act that way in public. It's just not okay. Especially threatening my life, at the very least. There were women and children there. That's the most important part."

In contrast, Ajay Thakore's public relations team told CBS 8 that the "interaction" was "regrettable."

"What started as a minor misunderstanding escalated into an argument, and I apologize for my actions and to those who witnessed the unfortunate exchange," the statement added.

Later, Ajay Thakore's employee Jason, whom the former was supposed to pick up during the fiasco, also issued a clarification via his boss' Instagram (@acerogersceo). He said that he was not allowed to get aboard, and was asked to "stand back" and even "forearmed" which is when Thakore allegedly "flipped" as he was protective of him, his fiancé, and his other employees, tagging it as a long-drawn misunderstanding.

In the caption of the post, it was Ajay Thakore who seemed to issue a statement:

"As a leader, I defend my own fiercely with everything I have, and I will never apologize for that. You can choose to believe that I just pulled up to the dock and started yelling, or you can realize that a lot happened before the cameras were rolling and that it takes two sides to escalate a situation."

Notably, in the aftermath of the incident, Port of San Diego Harbor Police were called in, who arrived 10 minutes after Ajay Thakore's boat left the marina. Joseph Holt told the news outlet that the officers didn't take his complaints seriously and were even laughing at him.

The department responded by telling CBS 8 that they were called in to deal with a "possible intoxicated vessel operator" who had departed the area before they got there and that they were unable to do anything with. The statement went on to say that a report had been made and that the police had spoken with the complainant and witnesses.

Who is Ajay Thakore? San Diego Lamborghini Yacht owner threatens dock worker in viral video

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Inside The $8,000,000,000 Most Expensive Super Yachts
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What Is Yacht History Supreme? (The Fascinating Story Behind It)
Yacht History Supreme is a luxury yacht constructed by the Australian company, History Supreme. It was designed by the British designer, Luiz de Basto, and is constructed from 100,000 kg of solid gold and platinum. It is said to be the most expensive yacht in the world, with an estimated cost of $4. 5 billion.
Bizarre Story of the History Supreme Yacht
Rogers, AR 72756. Phone: (479)339-4795. Email: [email protected]. You may have heard that the most expensive yacht in history is called the History Supreme. As near as I've been able to figure out, that's not true. Not because the alleged $4.8 billion yacht wouldn't be the most expensive - that's far more than the next most expensive ...
History Supreme: The £3 Billion Gold Plated Yacht
History Supreme has been a well kept secret in the Superyacht Industry, which is understandable as the yacht itself is reportedly worth over £3 billion. Containing around 100,000kg of gold and platinum, History Supreme was designed by Stuart Hughes, the world renowned luxury designer, and took just over three years to complete.
Is the History Supreme Yacht Real?
The next most expensive luxurious yacht would be the Eclipse, owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. The Eclipse mega yacht is valued at $1.5 billion, making it only a third of the value of the History Supreme. Who owns the yacht History Supreme? The name most often linked with the History Supreme is Malaysian businessman Robert Kuok.
The Creation And Legacy Of History Supreme Yacht
The History Supreme Yacht is adorned with over 100,000 kilograms of gold and platinum, making it a true masterpiece of craftsmanship. The sheer amount of precious metals used in the yacht's adds to its allure and exclusivity. Furthermore, the yacht's value is enhanced by its unique design and luxurious amenities.
History Supreme Yacht Most Expensive: Exploring the Ultimate Luxury
Ownership and Origin Current Owner. The current owner of the History Supreme yacht is Malaysian businessman Robert Kuok. Kuok, a self-made billionaire, runs the Kuok Group, an international corporation with operations all around the world. He reportedly spent a third of his $12.8 billion fortune when he paid $4.8 billion for the History Supreme.
The Midas Touch: $4.8 Billion History Supreme Most Expensive Yacht Ever
Purchased by an anonymous Malaysian businessman, History Supreme is the most expensive yacht ever sold, according to Luxury Launches. The Daily Mail reports that the impressive vessel took three years to complete and used over a staggering 220,462 pounds of precious metals. Everything - from the base of the boat, to the deck, dining area ...
The Curious Case of History Supreme, the $4.8 Billion Yacht Made of
It is estimated at $6.4 million and, according to some reports, it comes with the History Supreme. Another piece of work from the designer / jeweler available with the superyacht is a luxury ...
Meet the Man Who Probably Just Spent $4.8 Billion on a Solid Gold Yacht
Jul 20, 2011, 11:49 AM PDT. Courtesy Stuart Hughes. An anonymous Malaysian businessman just dropped an incredible $4.8 BILLION on a solid gold yacht. Advertisement. That's 10 times the amount ...
Billionaire Businessman Herb Chambers Talks About Owning One ...
Herb Chambers' 263-foot-long award winning yacht Excellence underway in the Med. Guillaume Plisson for Abeking & Rasmussen. Superyacht owners are often, um, how should we say, pretty aloof. And I ...
This 90-year-old Superyacht is Being Restored To Its Former Glory
The current owners, who purchased the yacht in the summer of 2018, are only the fifth in Marala's 88-year history.But the modifications made over time have "interrupted the elegance" of ...
HERB CHAMBERS: The Billionaire Behind The Herbert ...
He is the owner of the yacht Excellence and has in fact owned many yachts, all with the same name. Herb Chambers' yacht Excellence is an 80-meter motor yacht designed by Andrew Winch Design. Excellence has a distinctive reverse bow and boasts sleek lines and a modern silhouette.
The Age of the Superyacht
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 ...
I Dynasty: Creating the most complex yacht in history
Building one of the most complex yachts in history was not what Richard Hein, founder of Monaco-based studio The A Group, originally intended, but with I Dynasty, that is exactly what he achieved. Designing for a client who wanted to cruise regularly with more than 12 in his party, Hein faced a choice: design the 100-metre-plus motor yacht to ...
The Superyacht Directory
The Superyacht Directory. The Superyacht Directory is the world's largest database of private luxury yachts, with over 12,000 megayachts listed. It's the most authoritative place to find everything you need to know about superyachts - including new builds, historic vessels and the most famous boats of all time.
A Closer Look at the $4.8 Billion History Supreme
A yacht that goes by the name "History Supreme" has you thinking that it contains lots of history either in its construction or decorations yet the only thing historical about the $4.8 billion yacht is the use of extinct bones. Stuart Hughes made the headlines eight years ago with the declaration that he had taken three years to complete ...
History of the Yacht
A yacht is a boat that was designed for the express pleasure of its owner. The yacht is an invention of the 14th century Dutch. The Dutch used small, fast boats for chasing smugglers, pirates and criminals. Rich ship owners and merchants began using these small " jaghts " to sail out to celebrate their returning merchant ships.
The Top 40 of the World's Richest Yacht Owners • 2024
42. Gianluigi Aponte. Gianluigi Aponte. Amo. 47m. All yacht owners are 'rich', but some are richer than others. For example, when a wealthy person is able to purchase a US$ 10 million yacht. His net worth is probably between US$ 50 million and US$ 100 million.
History Supreme mystery: 'Most expensive yacht in the world' costs $4
Who owns the History Supreme? Similar to the boat itself, it's a bit of a mystery. We know Stuart Hughes claims to have built the luxury yacht for a Malaysian businessman. But armchair detectives think they know who that businessman is. The rumours are it belongs to Robert Kuok, founder of the Shangri-La hotel and resorts chain.
Sunreef Yachts history: The Legacy of Yachting
The creative spark and driving force of the Sunreef Yachts shipyard is Francis Lapp - the company's Founder and CEO. Born in France in 1958 Francis Lapp began his business activity in the domains of electric power and construction. After occupying managerial positions in the industry's major companies he endeavored to found his own.
Superyacht
Azzam, at 180.6 metres (592.5 ft) the longest superyacht, as of 2020 A, at 142.8 metres (468.5 ft) the largest "sail-assisted" motor yacht, as of 2018. A superyacht or megayacht is a large and luxurious pleasure vessel. There are no official or agreed upon definitions for such yachts, but these terms are regularly used to describe professionally crewed motor or sailing yachts, ranging from 40 ...
10 superyachts at this year's Palm Beach International Boat Show
The yacht has "the highest pedigree with a documented history of excellent owners and meticulous care," the listing said. That ownership includes Royal Swedish Yacht Club member Sten Tegner, and ...
Mark Zuckerberg's $300M Megayacht 'Launchpad' Arrives in the U.S
The first reports about Zuckerberg's desire to become a superyacht owner began making the rounds in late 2023 and were eventually confirmed at the beginning of March 2024 - though never ...
Epic video footage captures Lamborghini yacht owner ...
The owner of a $3.4 million Lamborghini yacht threatened a private dock employee after he was informed that he couldn't be there, CBS8 reported back on March 11.
The superyacht world is speculating that Mark Zuckerberg just ...
The yacht world is speculating that her owner is Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Here's what we know about the luxury vessel. In the world of superyachts, privacy is the most valuable asset. It can be ...
Yacht Owner Screamed 'I Will Kill You' at Marina Employee, Report Says
The owner of a $3.4 million Lamborghini yacht threatened a private dock employee after being told he couldn't be there, the San Diego-based broadcaster CBS8 reported on March 11.. Joseph Holt, a ...
California Yacht Owner Threatens to Kill Dock Worker in Vicious ...
A California yacht owner's vicious beef with a dock worker has reached death-threat levels -- and their exchange was caught on camera and included a nude, and very rude, gesture! Skip to main ...
Lamborghini Yacht Owner Throws Tantrum, $100 Bills Into Water, After
In a shocking display of entitlement and aggression, the owner of a $3.4 million Lamborghini yacht, Ajay Thakore, found himself at the center of controversy after a heated altercation with a dock employee in San Diego. The incident, which unfolded at the Marriott Marina, saw Thakore engaging in threatening behavior, including verbal threats and physical gestures, towards 21-year-old dock ...
Who is Ajay Thakore? San Diego Lamborghini Yacht owner threatens ...
A n Indian-origin California business owner Ajay Thakore recently made headlines when he reportedly threatened a dockyard worker at San Diego's Marriott Marina after the latter refused to let the ...
Former Seattle Mariners' Ace on Wrong Side of Spring Training History
Former Seattle Mariners' ace Marco Gonzales surrendered three home runs on Wednesday night to New York Yankees' slugger Giancarlo Stanton, putting himself on the wrong side of spring training history.