THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING
The first and only mate Michele has tasked me to write in her sailing blog.
As I write this we are currently at the top end of the Italian island of Sardinia, or Sardegna as the Italians call it, in the Costa Smeralda or Emerald coast area. which leads me to the subject.
Superyachts, and their extreme display of wealth, affluence, lifestyle, avarice, and it is the WOW factor to the max and I love it. It is incomprehensive to most people as to how one person can be in control of such wealth, on display here in the Mediterranean area, especially where we are here now. But it is all relative to one’s sense of normal. Michele and I feel we are so lucky and privileged to be in our position doing what we do but for us it is our normal. For plenty of others in the big world we would seem to be extremely wealthy.
For these millionaires and billionaires this life is their normal, parked next to each other and seeing who has the biggest or best boat. I bet the owner of a 50-metre boat feels less fortunate than the owner of the 80-metre boat next to him, as we sometimes feel the same when next to a bit bigger and better sailboat than ours.
It’s all part of being in the capitalist system, like it or not it is better than most other social systems. Reward for the achievers is available to everyone but it’s never going to be fair or even. Not everyone can be the world’s best tennis player.
But wow it is still mind boggling. The last week we must have passed over a dozen yachts over 100 meters in length and three over 140 meters, and all the ones down from that scale, there is no shortage of eye candy for the boating type. There is also the scale of operating these behemoths when you read into them. Operating costs usually are around 10 percent of the purchase price hence a boat costing 100 million will take 10 million a year to keep. Some can have crews exceeding 50 people with only capacity for twenty or so guests, we have had eight on our boat and don’t feel crowded, you must be able to not meet anyone all day on one of these superyachts.
We have watched these boats roll up near us and the doors drop down, from the back and sides as well. Then the tenders and toys, jet skis, SUP’s, blow up water slides, electric foil boards all come out. Awesome!! We need some of that too. Some yachts have three different size tenders usually with multiple outboards.
There are also a range of boat styles, from the beautiful, the weird and the downright ugly. Also, why not have two superyachts? One we passed had his 117- metre boat with a 69 -metre workboat following dutifully along carrying his tenders, toys and helicopter!
Jealous? A bit. Envious? A bit. Are they happy, shit yeah, but so am I. It’s all relative, we all enjoy the same view from our boats, it’s just they have better seats and cocktails.
Don’t talk about carbon footprint.
