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The Best Sailboats for the High Seas?

At the St. Petersburg Boat Show month last month, I had the pleasure of seeing delivery skipper and author John Kretschmers presentation on what he called sailboats for a serious ocean. I have reservations about any ideal boat list, but Kretschmer, who reviews boats for Sail Magazine and whose most recent book Sailing a Serious Ocean is available in our online bookstore , has the ideal background for this sort of work, and a list like this is undeniably helpful for wannabe cruisers who need a place to start their search.

I certainly wouldnt limit my search to boats on such a list, but by paying careful attention to the pros and cons of each, you can find something that suits your own aspirations.

Here are the boats Kretschmer suggests: Contessa 32, Pacific Seacraft 34, Pretorien 35, Cape Dory/Robinhood 36, Valiant/Esprit 37, Prout Snowgoose 37, Alajuela 38, Privelege 39, Freya 39, Passport 40, Caliber 40, Baba 40, Hallberg Rassy 42, Taswell 43, Hylas 44, Norseman 447, Beneteau 456, Outbound 44, Hylas 46, Kaufman 47, Tayana 48, Hylas 49, Amel Maramu 53, and the Sundeer 60/64. For a brief capsule summary of each, be sure to check out his website.

The list is hardly definitive. There are plenty of good boats that arent featured, and some of these would be ill-matched for the wrong sailor-Kretschmer clearly pointed this out during his talk. I like how the list presents a good cross-section of the various shapes and sizes for a boat in this category. For example, Kretschmer includes the Prout Snowgoose and Steve Dashews Sundeer 60, boats that, notwithstanding their successful record at sea, fill an outlying niche.

If I were going to expand the list, one of the heavier-displacement microcruisers like those I blogged about would be a nice addition. Although I would be wary of promoting even the most formidable of this breed as well-suited for a serious ocean, John Neale of Mahina Tiare Expeditions includes one of them, the Dana 24, on his own list of recommend cruising boats . Neales much broader list of boats is accompanied by a very helpful discussion of design elements to consider.

What got me thinking about formidable cruising boats was our series of reports o n sailboat construction , focusing specifically on structural details. Although there are plenty of excellent coastal cruisers on the market, once you start talking about offshore duty, scan’tlings (the dimensions for structural components) take on far more importance.

A few years ago we touched on this subject in our Mailport section, encouraging readers to suggest their own nominees for a list of what we called at the time, tough boats, vessels that were built to take a beating, requiring minimal care and upkeep.

Here are some of the boats that were suggested from our readers: Mariner 36, Cal 34, Morgan 43, Swan 43, Bermuda 40, Island Packet 26, Mariner 47, LeComte Northeast 38, Westsail 32, Dana 24, J/35, and the CSY 44.

Id be interested in hearing of other nominees for this list, or other good resources for sailors looking for a short list of good offshore boats.

For those who are frustrated to find that their own ideal boat isn’t on anybodys list, I wouldnt be too miffed. The best line Ive heard in a while on this topic came from Steve Callahan, the author of the survival classic Adrift , who gave a presentation at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Show . When I asked Steve, who has sailed extensively on both multihulls and monohulls, what type of boat he preferred, he said, quite seriously. Well, at the end of the day, the best cruising boat is the one that you are on.

RELATED ARTICLES MORE FROM AUTHOR

On watch: this 60-year-old hinckley pilot 35 is also a working girl.

Interesting list. I am fond of Hylas of which you chose three models. However, I am suspect of their yard and construction techniques and do not have confidence that they are as strong as they are beautiful. Only one Hallberg-Rassy was selected, which is a far more robust and dry sailing boat than the Hylas. Passports make a good boat as does Cape Dory and several others on your list. Didn’t four sailors die on a Beneteau in 2018? Over all it is a decent list.

https://metro.co.uk/2018/04/25/last-pictures-doomed-yacht-cheeki-rafiki-sank-killing-four-british-sailors-7497805/

I believe this is the accident you’re talking about in which a Beneteau and it’s bolted on keel parted company.

Almost all of the sailing clubs in San Diego rent Beneteaus out. They are a decent coastal sailboat. I have a couple friends who have even made the crossing to Maui in them..not me, not ever. I consider them a living room boat. Having said that, I am certainly no expert so its just my opinion. If I am crossing an ocean I want a capable kindly strong boat with redundancy built into critical systems.

Curious to think what people think about the early 70s Swan 43 as a cruising boat for a couple with occasional guests for a round the world trip? I have an S&S 30 which is too small but I do have some bias towards their designs. Add a watermaker and some power generation and off you go… Any thoughts?

Are Motor Sailors like the Nauticats or Fishers ocean worthy ( if their pilot house windows and sliding doors are lifeboatified ? )

Walt Schulz’s Shannon 43 is a beautiful, sea kindly, comfortable and sturdy bluewater boat. Walt had not only the ICW and Bahamas in mind when he designed and built 52 of them. He designed for ocean cruising. He believes his boats should outlive him and still sailing for generations. We sailed the Chesapeake, Bahamas, Caribbean and Pacific to Australia on a Shannon 43 ketch. She took great care of us and is still turning heads.

Great article! John Kretchmer is one of my fave modern day sailors. While there is only one Crealock design on John’s list, and the Dana is added on John Neale’s list, I was surprised not to see a Crealock/ Pacific Seacraft 37 mentioned. But there are so many great serious off shore boats, it’s hard to narrow it down to 10. Here’s a few to think about. Cape George Cutter 36. Biscay 36, tradewind 35, Rustler 36, Nicholson 31 (never talked about) and 32. Seldom seen on top 10 lists, but great boats. Thanks for the article.

Great comment and interesting to note that the first four of your additions are those currently entered in the 2022 Golden Globe Race – kind of the definition of a blue water boat.

Hey! I know this is somewhat off-topic however I needed to ask. Does operating a well-established blog like yours take a massive amount work? I am completely new to writing a blog but I do write in my journal everyday. I’d like to start a blog so I will be able to share my experience and feelings online. Please let me know if you have any kind of recommendations or tips for new aspiring blog owners. Thankyou!|

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Yacht Sourcing > Unveiling the World of Superyacht: Luxury on the High Seas

Unveiling the World of Superyacht: Luxury on the High Seas

• January 30, 2024

In the world of maritime elegance, yachts, superyachts, and megayachts command attention and fascination. While the terms are often used interchangeably, each category holds distinct features that set them apart. In this article, we will delve into the definition of superyachts, explore the differences between yachts, superyachts, and megayachts, and take a peek into the opulent interiors of this luxury yacht. We have an exclusive offer for you at the end, so read on!

What is a Superyacht?

A superyacht epitomizes luxury, sophistication, and indulgence on the high seas. These floating palaces are typically privately owned by ultra-high-net-worth individuals and offer unparalleled comfort and luxury. Superyachts are characterized by length, often exceeding 80 feet, and are equipped with top-tier amenities, advanced technology, and personalized services.

Distinguishing Yachts, Superyachts, and Megayachts:

• Yacht: The term “yacht” is a broad classification encompassing various types of pleasure boats. Generally, any privately owned vessel used for leisure or cruising can be called a yacht. Yachts vary widely in size, style, and amenities, making them accessible to many enthusiasts.
• Superyacht: As the name suggests, superyachts go above and beyond the typical yacht experience. These vessels are characterized by their immense size, extravagant features, and the ability to cater to the most discerning tastes. Superyachts often boast multiple decks, helipads, swimming pools, and lavish interiors.
• Megayacht: The term “megayacht” is often used interchangeably with “superyacht,” but it generally refers to vessels exceeding 100 feet in length. Megayachts take luxury to the next level, offering even more space for amenities and customization. These floating wonders are a testament to the ultimate expression of maritime extravagance.

Superyacht Interiors:

The interiors of this luxurious vessel reflect the owner’s tastes and preferences, often featuring bespoke designs crafted by world-renowned interior designers. Common elements in superyacht interiors include lavish lounges, spacious cabins, gourmet kitchens, and entertainment areas with cutting-edge technology. Many superyachts also incorporate spa facilities, gyms, and outdoor deck spaces for dining and relaxation.

Yacht Sourcing: Your Gateway to Luxury

Yacht Sourcing stands as the premier destination for those yearning to make waves in the world of luxury yachting. As the exclusive dealer of Majesty and Nomad superyachts from Gulf Craft, renowned shipbuilders in the UAE, Yacht Sourcing offers access to some of the most prestigious vessels in the industry. Elevate your yachting experience with the epitome of craftsmanship and sophistication, ensuring your voyage is nothing short of extraordinary.

Embark on a journey of unparalleled luxury – seize the opportunity to own your Majesty or Nomad through Yacht Sourcing, where dreams set sail. Contact us now to turn your nautical fantasies into reality. Elevate your yachting experience and embrace the epitome of luxury on the open seas.

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Luxurious Sailing Yachts

The epitome of elegance: luxury sailing yachts.

Luxury sailing yachts stand as a testament to human creativity and craftsmanship. These vessels are meticulously designed and outfitted to provide the utmost comfort and sophistication to their discerning owners. From opulent cabins and spacious decks to state-of-the-art amenities, every detail is thoughtfully considered to ensure a seamless experience for those onboard.

The Charm of a Luxury Sail Yacht

A sail yacht embodies a certain romanticism that motor yachts simply cannot replicate. The gentle sway of the boat as it glides through the water, driven solely by the power of the wind, creates a sense of tranquility and oneness with nature. This connection to the elements is what makes sailing yachts particularly special to their enthusiasts.

Exploring the Most Expensive Yacht for Sale

For the mega-rich, acquiring a luxury yacht is not merely a matter of convenience but a statement of status. We will take a glimpse into the world of the most expensive yachts for sale, marveling at their grandeur and opulence, and understanding the unique features that make them worthy of their staggering price tags.

The World of Sailboats

A look into luxury sailboats.

While sailing yachts often steal the limelight, sailboats also hold their own charm. Compact, nimble, and exhilarating to sail, luxury sailboats offer a more intimate experience on the water. We will explore the allure of these graceful vessels and the adventures they offer to sailing enthusiasts.

EOS Superyacht: A Masterpiece on Water

One exceptional sailboat that deserves special attention is the EOS Superyacht. Crafted with precision and elegance, this magnificent vessel is a sight to behold. We will delve into the details of EOS and discover what makes it an icon in the world of luxury sailboats.

Unveiling the Beauty of Other Luxury Sailboats

Beyond EOS, there is a plethora of luxury sailboats that each tells its own unique story. We will journey through a few of these stunning sailboats, appreciating their design, performance, and the delightful experiences they provide to their passengers.

Read our top notch articles on topics such as sailing, sailing tips and destinations in our Magazine .

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The Grandeur of Big Sailboats

Discovering two mast sailing vessels.

The allure of larger sailboats is unmistakable, and two mast sailing vessels showcase the grandeur of sailing on a larger scale. We will explore some prominent examples of these majestic vessels, understanding their historical significance and modern-day appeal.

Captivating Interior Photos of Sailing Yacht A

Sailing Yacht A is an architectural marvel on water, and its interiors are no exception. We will marvel at the captivating interior photos of this luxurious vessel, appreciating the blend of contemporary design and lavishness that defines its spaces.

Steve Jobs' Yacht: A Blend of Design and Technology

Beyond the world of traditional sailing yachts, we will discover the iconic yacht commissioned by Steve Jobs. This yacht seamlessly blends design, technology, and innovation, becoming a floating tribute to the late visionary.

Unraveling the Yachting Legends

The ownership of the biggest yacht in the world.

Yacht ownership is often shrouded in mystery, but we will uncover the identity of the owner of the world's largest yacht. Delving into the story behind this impressive vessel, we will appreciate the sense of prestige and accomplishment that comes with owning such a masterpiece.

Sail Tenders: A Stylish Addition to Yachts

Sail tenders, or auxiliary sailboats, are a popular addition to larger yachts, offering versatility and exploration opportunities to yacht owners. We will explore the role of sail tenders and how they enhance the overall yachting experience.

The Art of Sailing Yacht Ownership

Owning a sailing yacht is not merely about possessing a vessel; it is an art that requires passion, knowledge, and appreciation for the sea. We will discuss the joys and responsibilities that come with being a sailing yacht owner.

The Appeal of 60-Foot Yachts

The joy of sailing in a 60-foot yacht.

60-foot yachts strike a balance between intimacy and grandeur, making them a popular choice among sailing enthusiasts. We will understand the allure of these mid-sized yachts and the experiences they offer to their passengers.

Embracing the Freedom of a Sailing Yacht

Sailing yachts, regardless of their size, offer a unique sense of freedom and adventure. We will explore the joy of setting sail and navigating the open waters, away from the constraints of land-bound life.

The Experience of Sailing Yacht A's Interior

As we conclude our exploration of sailing yachts, we will revisit the luxurious interior of Sailing Yacht A, marveling once again at the elegance and sophistication that define this extraordinary vessel.

In conclusion, sailing yachts represent the epitome of luxury, elegance, and adventure on the high seas. From the opulence of luxury sailing yachts to the nimble charm of luxury sailboats, each vessel tells a unique story. The world of sailing yachts is a celebration of human ingenuity and a testament to our fascination with the sea.

So what are you waiting for? Take a look at our range of charter boats and head to some of our favourite  sailing destinations.

FAQs: Sailing Yachts Unraveled

The ownership of the largest yacht in the world is known to be in the hands of a private individual, but their identity is carefully guarded.

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Historical Summary:

“High Seas” was commissioned and built at Simms Brothers boatyard in Dorchester, Boston, Mass., in 1935. It was the first boat built under the Simms Brothers name. She was designed by the World-Famous Naval Architect John G. Alden. The vessel was originally named "Espada" (Meaning “sword” in Spanish), and was commissioned and built for Harry Warren (Salvatore Antonio Guaragna 1893-1981) the composer, lyricist, eleven-time Academy Award and three-time Oscar winner. Mr. Warren was most famously known for his songs "That's Amore" and the "Chattanooga Choo Choo" which was the first Gold Record in history. His music was featured in over 300 films. ​ The vessel was originally used by Mr. Warren as a pleasure craft and off-shore sport-fisher. She was moored at the famous Manhattan Yacht Club (New York) from 1935 to 1937. In mid-1937, Mr. Warren moved to Hollywood full-time and sold the boat to his longtime friend Lester McGill (Industrialist). The vessel remained in the New York area until November 30, 1943 (two days after the Tehran Conference between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill) when she was sold to C.P. Aubry, and moved to Newport News, VA. Fearing that the vessel would be conscripted by the US Navy Armed Small Vessel Patrol Unit, Mr. Aubry, commissioned a local captain & engineer, to pilot the boat south to Key West, Florida, in route to the Panama Canal, with a final destination of Portland, Oregon, The final destination was a private secluded boat house owned by Mr. Aubry’s former college roommate John L. Larson. The vessel left Newport News, VA on January 3, 1944, bound for Portland, by way of the newly opened Panama Canal. The trip would take sailors nearly six months. After arriving in Portland, the vessel was hidden for 2 more years in Mr. Larson’s boathouse until the conclusion of World War II. In 1946, the vessel was sold to a Mr. A.C. Watkins, and moved to Kelso, Washington where it would stay until 1988. In 1988, it sold yet again to a Mr. Dewitt Hendon and it was moved to Seattle, WA; and in 1993 it was transferred to Orcas Island under a new owner. The current owner acquired the vessel in 2017 and spent nearly three years restoring the vessel to her original condition. She now operates as a private charter vessel and can be seen cruising daily on the waters near Orcas Island. We hope you enjoyed learning the amazing history of this vessel. She is truly a one of a kind and the only known example of a 1930's Alden sport-fisher motor yacht known to be in existence!

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Yachting World

• Digital Edition

What’s the right yacht for an Atlantic crossing? The one you’ve got now

• Elaine Bunting
• May 20, 2015

What sort of yacht do you need to sail across the Atlantic? There’s no black art, says Elaine Bunting, you just need a bit of preparation

Numerically, the most common yachts for sailing across the Atlantic are ordinary production cruisers with standard kit, usually with upgrades of safety and power generation equipment. The happy truth is there’s no black art to sailing 3,000 miles downwind; the toughest part can be getting across the Bay of Biscay.

So whatever boat you have right now, the chances are that she’ll be fine for an Atlantic crossing with a bit of extra preparation. You don’t have to let waiting for the ‘right’ boat put you off going.

However, this doesn’t apply so much if you intend to complete an Atlantic circuit and sail from the Caribbean to Europe . The return route can be very tough, with a real chance of rough windward work, and a yacht that is wonderfully comfortable and spacious at anchor can slam and be very uncomfortable on the way back. Shipping back or delivery are both alternative options.

I’ve found that skippers tend to focus on equipment that adds comfort, but also complication: watermakers, generators, comms equipment. All are undoubtedly useful, but remember that every additional item adds complication, spares and service cost/time.

Apart from a sound boat, all you really need is water, food, fuel and a (paper) chart of ‘North Atlantic, Southern Part’.

Whatever else you do, don’t let those extras distract you from ensuring the integrity of the rig (including the boom and gooseneck fittings), rudder and hull. These are paramount. Rudders, in particular, are subjected to very high side loads in big following seas. I’ve seen people about to set off across the Atlantic on boats that were sporting the latest luxury kit, from ice cream makers to air conditioning, but with split pins not bent back or a clevis pin working out.

What sails are best?

The simple answer is reasonably recent, quality sails that aren’t liable to break. However expensive, good sails are worth every penny. As to what combination is best on a long downwind passage, that’s a complicated and potentially long-winded debate. Let’s just say that, for the average family crew, a smart crossing is all about consistent speed, 24 hours a day. The key is not to have downtime.

There is absolutely no need to sail hot angles downwind unless you are sailing to polars on a high-performance design. A spinnaker or code sail is great in lighter winds, but in stronger winds you will need several crew on watch at a time and if you blow the sail in a squall or a sudden reload it will be a costly choice.

There is nothing wrong with the old ‘barn doors’ arrangement of mainsail and poled-out genoa. Sure, it’s unflashy and unheroic, but it’s also easy, trouble-free and you’ll trot along in any conditions with minimal drop in speed for the occasional gybe. Just keep an eye out for chafe and be sure to set up a preventer on the boom and a foreguy topping lift and downhaul when poling out the headsail, so you can furl in quickly when that night-time squall hits (which it will).

Power planning

However much power you expect to use on an ocean crossing, you will need more. Nav lights, radar, radio scheds, autopilot, watermaker, fridge, freezer, computer, fans – you name it, they all add up. Last year, when we carried out our annual survey of ARC skippers , we found that yachts of between 46ft and 55ft had a battery capacity, on average, of 700ah, rising to 1,000ah for yachts over 56ft.

Since the design life for marine batteries is five years, it makes sense to set off with new batteries – it’s easier and may be cheaper than replacing them later. A majority of people in our survey had an extra house or domestic battery bank and one or two had boosted the battery used for their windlass.

Interestingly, when we asked about the power equation again in our follow-up survey a few months later , numerous skippers said that they had increased battery capacity yet again or planned to do so in future.

A water generator could be a useful addition

Rather than adding to machinery with a diesel generator, it’s worth looking at wind generators, solar panels and the Watt & Sea or Sea-Gen water turbines . These alternative power generation sources have advanced a lot in recent years. A larger alternator may be worth fitting too, and if only one is fitted to the engine, carry a spare.

Be prepared for gear failure

Be prepared for key equipment to fail because sooner or later it probably will. If it’s gear you normally rely on, like an autopilot or watermaker, have a contingency or a workable plan to do without. Of all the gear problems that give most stress and trouble, the most pressing is autopilot failure. That will start to put a small crew under strain by robbing everyone of rest time.

For the same reason, it’s a good idea to make sure most or all of your crew are decent helmsmen downwind in following seas. If not, spend some time on passage tutoring them.

If you enjoyed this….

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Yachting Monthly

• Digital edition

Hell or High Seas: a voyage around Cape Horn

• Katy Stickland
• January 18, 2021

Taylor Grieger and Stephen O’Shea faced pirates, navigated the 
Furious Fifties and came to blows during a life-changing voyage from Florida around Cape Horn

Taylor Grieger and Stephen O'Shea round Cape Horn in their Watkins 36CC, Ole Lady after a 15 month voyage from Florida to raise awareness of PTSD amongst US veterans. Credit: Taylor Grieger & Stephen O’Shea

Taylor Grieger and Stephen O’Shea share with YM’s deputy editor Katy Stickland the highs and lows of their sometimes tumultuous voyage to Cape Horn.

‘We were in Roatán, Honduras heading back to Ole Lady when a comment from Taylor about my mishandling of a line resulted in us punching each other in the face.

‘He knocked me onto my back, and I knocked Taylor off the dinghy. He didn’t stop, though. He got me in a chokehold from the water, pulling me down from below.

‘We both thought the trip was over then, that we were going to pack it in and return home. However, we came back together in the cockpit that same night. We cried a little, laughed a lot, drank even more whiskey, and finally, made a pact to not punch each other in the face again, no matter how drunk or angry we got.’

Solace in a sailing mission to Cape Horn

Sometimes voyages can test any close friendship but add post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) into the mix and it is easy to see why emotions sometimes ran high for Taylor Grieger, the skipper of the leaking 1983 Watkins 36CC, Ole Lady , and his crew Stephen O’Shea, 29.

The pair spent 15 months sailing the 36ft sloop rigged yacht from Pensacola, Florida, through the Panama Canal and down the South American coast to Cape Horn.

For Grieger, a 28-year-old retired US Navy rescue swimmer living with PTSD, the voyage was not only a personal odyssey to face his demons but to raise awareness of the difficulties veterans face moving from the military to civilian life; a battle many of them lose including four of Grieger’s friends.

‘When I got out of the military I was just this angry, mean and confused person who had ruined every relationship I had ever had and had come too close to taking my own life. The last thing I had to hold on to was this sailing trip: sailing and this old boat with too many holes were the only things I had,’ explained Grieger, who had always harboured dreams of sailing around the world.

Ole Lady made it across the Gulf of Mexico to Puerto Juarez just before Hurricane Nate passed off the Mexican coast. Credit: Taylor Grieger & Stephen O’Shea

He said sailing to Cape Horn seemed to be the ‘biggest, baddest thing in this world’ that he could do to highlight the ‘epidemic’ of veteran suicides, and to prove to himself and others that you can ‘conquer something that many people believe is unconquerable’.

The result is the documentary film, Hell or High Seas , which follows the voyage of Ole Lady and Grieger’s mistakes and struggles to shift from the pace of military to civilian life.

O’Shea, a writer and high school friend, came onboard with the project early, having reconnected with Grieger while writing a collection of short stories based upon interviews with American soldiers who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Whilst studying for his creative writing doctorate at Glasgow’s University of Strathclyde in Scotland, O’Shea acted as a sounding board for Grieger during the six months it took them to find the ideal boat.

Repairs on a budget

The ‘used and abused’ Ole Lady was discovered in a boatyard in Tampa, Florida.

‘There were cracks in the deck, she had old sails and a rusty engine, but she had a super heavy keel, a protected cockpit [and doghouse] which was high off the water, and she was really beamy, which meant she took broadside waves like a champ,’ recalled Grieger.

Having paid the $20,000 (£16,302) asking price, he plotted a rhumb line straight across the Gulf of Mexico to Pensacola and sailed straight into a forecast 30 knots to test the boat’s Cape Horn credentials.

‘It was one of the stupidest decisions I’ve ever made. I broke absolutely everything on the boat, when the first squall line hit,’ he said.

Ole Lady is a Watkins 36CC. Her protective doghouse was invaluable while sailing in the rougher seas off Chile. Credit: Taylor Grieger & Stephen O’Shea

Having limped into Pensacola, Grieger began refurbishing the yacht and ended up spending a further $50,000 (£40,756) on parts.

He had saved for the voyage while stationed out in Guam, fishing the Marianas Trench on his days off for mahi-mahi and yellow-fin tuna and selling the fish to local restaurants.

With these funds now depleting fast, Grieger learned how to make repairs via YouTube videos.

He worked on the boat at night for the next six months, having spent the day sailing charter boats to keep himself financially afloat.

Grieger admitted his naivety and lack of experience meant he spent more money than necessary on the ‘best’ parts.

‘What I didn’t know was, sailing in heavy weather, it was all going to break anyway. There is no amount of preparation that will make your boat bulletproof; the only thing that keeps you alive is your sail configuration and patience in those storms. The moral of the story is to make sure the boat’s sturdy and set sail with spares; don’t waste time and money on the best gear, top-of-the line rigging and lines because it doesn’t matter what you have – the sea will break it eventually,’ he said.

Taylor, who learnt to sail while in the US Navy, refurbished much of Ole Lady himself, learning via You Tube videos. Credit: Taylor Grieger & Stephen O’Shea

By this time O’Shea had joined him and together they continued the restoration before finally setting sail from Pensacola on 25 September 2017; Grieger still coming to terms with civilian life and O’Shea grappling with the unfamiliar, having only sailed twice, both times off the coast of Scotland.

Dwindling funds and the fear of never leaving were their justifications for setting sail in the middle of hurricane season.

Unsurprisingly it was a steep learning curve, with many incidents testing their seamanship and their courage.

When Ole Lady ’s engine seized while rounding the border between Honduras and Nicaragua in the middle of a tropical storm, the pair decided to sail for Panama: a decision that resulted in them sailing straight into the Doldrums.

‘We barely moved for an entire week,’ recalled O’Shea.

They began rationing food and water and prayed for ‘a whisper of wind’ to carry them across the Caribbean Sea to Panama.

Eventually a series of squalls came to their rescue and they made it to Colón, with only a few litres of drinking water left onboard.

Pirates and high seas

As is almost always the case when cruising, weather shaped the narrative of the pair’s adventure.

Ole Lady had been ‘stalked’ off the Colombian coast in the day by suspicious looking boats, mainly fishing skiffs ‘with no trace of fishing gear onboard’.

Grieger and O’Shea used to regularly go below deck to change clothes and hats in order to convince the suspected pirates that there were more than two men onboard.

But a nighttime boarding was the biggest concern.

Off Buenaventura this almost became a reality when the yacht was actively pursued, even though the crew used precautions such as no lights on deck and no engine.

Despite tacking several times they were unable to outrun the boat and its powerful outboard.

An evening squall allowed them to escape the ‘pirates’, providing them with enough cover to hide and avoid detection.

The Roaring Forties experience strong, often gale-force, winds throughout the year. Credit: Taylor Grieger & Stephen O’Shea

By the time Grieger and O’Shea reached Ecuador they realised a third crew member was needed.

Ole Lady wasn’t fitted with self-steering , and constantly helming while sailing into headwinds and the Humboldt Current was taking its toll on the pair.

At all costs they wanted to avoid Peru.

Now broke, they were unable to afford the $2,500 fees to clear into the country so it was necessary to sail direct from Salinas in Ecuador to Valparaíso, Chile.

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It was at this point that another veteran, John Rose, joined them.

Like Grieger, Rose was a former US Navy rescue swimmer who was also living with depression and struggling to find his place on Civvy Street.

Their passage to Chile was to test all of them.

It took 3,700 miles, most of it without an engine after their transmission broke off Isla de la Planta in Ecuador, although they were still able to charge the batteries.

It is best to sail and anchor in daylight while cruising Patagonia due to unreliable charting and narrow channels. Credit: Taylor Grieger & Stephen O’Shea

‘A lot of those days, after we got far enough south, were windy, choppy and we were fighting headwinds the entire time. Our boat took a beating. We took a beating,’ recalled O’Shea.

With little money to provision properly in Ecuador, rationing was introduced early on.

By this time, Ole Lady’ s hull had cracked, so the bilges needed pumping every four hours.

Ironically, this saved the yacht when an engine fire broke out, 600 miles offshore.

A snapped furling line was the last of the breakages before Ole Lady arrived in Valparaíso.

The inevitable repairs followed and the crew pushed on to Valdivia, where Ole Lady overwintered at Club de Yates before the final push to Cape Horn.

Cape of hope

They spent December 2018 navigating the coastline of Chile and Patagonia before entering the Strait of Magellan, the natural channel which separates South America from Tierra Del Fuego.

Initially, they planned to sail to the Beagle Channel via the open ocean, but 53-knot winds and several knockdowns in 72ft (22m) waves, which shattered the yacht’s rolling furler on the forestay, meant they had to abandon the route and instead sail south through the channels of the Strait of Magellen.

Once in Puerto Williams, it was just a four-day sail to round Cape Horn.

Passing the oceanic equivalent of Everest for climbers left Grieger crying ‘like a baby’.

The Strait of Magellan provided a sheltered route to the Beagle Channel after storms prevented an open ocean approach. Credit: Taylor Grieger & Stephen O’Shea

‘It was a pretty big day for all of us and represented the coming together of a lot of years and low moments. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put that feeling into words,’ he said.

For O’Shea seeing Cape Horn was an ‘almost mystical experience. It was real, it was within reach, and it was menacing,’ he recalled.

With Cape Horn conquered, does Grieger wish he had done anything differently?

‘Other than saving more cash, having an aluminium boat and more experience working on boats in the beginning, I can’t say I’d do much differently. There were a lot of things I messed up and learned the hard way; all of those experiences I cherish now. I know exactly what a boat can take, what you truly need and what you don’t need, and how to sail in big seas and stay alive.’

Grieger is now working towards offering sailing expeditions to others living with PTSD, believing that ‘maybe sailing can save their lives as well’.

Their first voyage is planned soon.

About the crew

Credit: Taylor Grieger & Stephen O’Shea

Taylor Grieger, 28 (left), and Stephen O’Shea, 29, met while on the swim team at A&M Consolidated High School in College Station, Texas.

After graduating the pair went in very different directions and lost touch for six years.

Taylor joined the US Navy as a rescue swimmer. He learnt to sail in 2011-12 while stationed in San Diego.

Stephen ( www.stephenjoshea.com ) went into academia, completing a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

They reconnected in Guam, where Taylor had been stationed. Stephen had also just finished From the Land of Genesis, a collection of short stories based on interviews with American soldiers who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, which was published in October 2020.

Taylor currently works with Sailing Angels, a non-profit charitable organisation which offers sailing trips for veterans.

He also runs Cape Horn Tequila to raise funds for the American Odysseus Sailing Foundation, which provides sailing expeditions for veterans and first responders living with PTSD ( www.amodsailing.org )

Their documentary about their Cape Horn voyage, Hell or High Seas can now be streamed online at: www.hellorhighseas.com

Enjoyed reading Hell or High Seas: a voyage around Cape Horn?

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The Best-Riding Center Console Boats for Rough Water

• By Heather Steinberger
• Updated: April 7, 2020

We’ve all been there. A headwind pipes up, and choppy, rough seas dance between you and your destination. You throttle up; you throttle back. You try to help your boat find its comfort zone, and you do your best to quarter the waves.

Inevitably, though, there are those stomach-dropping lurches and the slamming that clenches your muscles and rattles your dental work. Despite your best efforts, you can’t ignore the bangs down below, the ones that make the hull shudder. The ones that make you fervently hope that everyone involved with building this boat did a good job.

That’s a rough ride, even for a rough water boat. And it has happened to all of us, so let’s be honest. Not every boat can provide a soft, smooth ride in snotty conditions, no matter what the glossy brochures say.

We asked three prominent boat designers, and their answers provided much food for thought — regarding how to choose a vessel that’s going to provide a smooth ride, best boat for rough seas, the compromises and trade-offs inherent in your choice, and whether a smooth ride is even what you should be looking for in the first place.

Comparing Displacement and Planing Boat Hulls

Dave Gerr founded New York City-based Gerr Marine Inc. in 1983. He’s designed a broad range of recreational boats and commercial vessels, both monohull and multihull. When it comes to designing a soft-riding hull, he immediately pointed out that there are different sets of criteria for displacement hulls and planing hulls.

Displacement hulls, he noted, don’t pound the way a planing hull will, so they automatically provide a softer ride. To maximize this, designers need to ensure three things: a good roll time, good heave characteristics and deadrise forward.

“For the roll time, we have a formula,” Gerr said. “Every boat has a natural roll period, which is 1 to 1.1 seconds times the boat’s beam in meters. If it’s slower than that, you’ll get that drunken motion. If it’s faster, it’s going to feel snappy and uncomfortable.”

For example, a boat with a 6.7-foot beam ideally should have an approximately two-second roll time. And, Gerr added, a reasonable deadrise forward will make the vessel even more comfortable.

The formula for heave, however, is more complicated. It involves the weight of the boat and the water plane area. The lighter the boat is, and the greater its water plane area, the greater the heave motion will be.

“A wide boat with a large water plane will bounce up and down violently,” Gerr said, “but if you have a small water plane compared to the boat’s weight, that heave will be slow. If it heaves too slowly, you’ve got a wet boat.

“You want to have your roll time and heave in the target region, and then add that deadrise forward,” he continued, “so you won’t have pounding in chop.”

For a planing hull this is hard to achieve. By nature, these hulls are snappy and heave more while trolling or drifting; planing cancels that out, but you can still pound.

“What you really want is more deadrise,” Gerr said. “Just remember: The greater the deadrise, the slower the boat [for the same weight and engine]. That deep-V hull is going to need more power.”

A designer, he said, has to juggle power and what is good deadrise on a boat for optimum comfort.

“You put a deep, high deadrise at the forefoot to get the boat to lift its bow out of the water, or you’ll have steering problems,” he said. “You design it so it planes higher, and then you control it with trim tabs so you won’t trip over that forefoot.”

Deadrise is a difficult thing to visually assess at a boat show or in a dealer’s showroom, so how can a boater ascertain if a soft ride was a design priority? Gerr said the length-to-beam ratio is a dead giveaway.

“A long, slender hull is going to have a softer ride, as long as the designer got the roll time right,” he stated. “A wide, shallow hull isn’t going to perform as well. And if you’ve got a high superstructure, you’re going to have increased roll and handling problems.”

Of course, less displacement means it’s a smaller boat inside. You’re going to have to go longer to get the same live-aboard space as that shorter, wider, taller boat next door, but the good news is that your boat is going to be faster and more fuel-efficient than the fat, high version of the same length.

If you are talking deadrise, Gerr said he likes to see a minimum of 17 degrees for offshore boats, although he observed that’s still a bit shallow. Deep-V hulls are considered to be 21 degrees or more. Consider this if you’re looking for the best deadrise for rough water.

“I’d say look for a deadrise of more than 20 degrees,” he advised, “and a length-to-beam ratio on the waterline that is greater than 3.5 to 1. Those two characteristics give you a pretty good idea that the design is intended for a soft ride.”

How Does a Boat Hull Handle in Following Seas?

Michael Peters founded Sarasota, Florida-based Michael Peters Yacht Design (MPYD) in 1981. Originally specializing in high-speed boats and offshore racing, MPYD now brings its fusion of performance and aesthetic standards to a wide variety of boat designs. When asked about the search for the perfect soft-riding boat, Peters laughed.

“Think of these ideals: soft-riding, dry and fast,” he said. “Now, pick two.”

The softer-riding a boat is, the wetter it is, because it doesn’t confront the wave. Rather, it splits it. If you want to knock the water down and push it away, then you’ll feel the impact. Boaters clearly need to consider these trade-offs when seeking a soft-riding vessel, but Peters has a more important cautionary tale to share. It’s natural to think of head seas and a soft-riding hull together in the same scenario — but what happens when the boat turns around?

“That’s a different story,” Peters said. “Following seas can pick up the stern, and the sharp angle and deadrise can cause the boat to bow-steer and broach. That’s a much more dangerous situation. It’s uncomfortable to hit the seas on the nose, but it won’t kill you. Boats go out of control in following seas, not head seas.”

Simply put, a hull that is too pointy forward and too flat aft will have an increased risk of broaching. Boaters should look for a hull with deadrise spread evenly — no extremes, such as a professional offshore racing boat’s sharp deadrise throughout the hull. The best boat hull for rough seas must be able to handle following seas.

“If you’re going to have fine forward sections, you’ll balance the hull by putting a lot of deadrise aft,” Peters explained. “You’re looking for recovery, a bow that doesn’t plunge and that can regain its buoyancy in a following sea.

“In our forward sections, we always run a convex section that’s puffed out,” he continued. “Some curvature helps dissipate wave energy and impact. Concave sections look like they’ll provide a softer ride, but they actually focus the energy.”

Peters’ advice to boaters is twofold. First, avoid those extremes. They’re not necessary for most recreational boaters. And second, make sure you have a good grasp of where and how you’re going to use the boat. An offshore cruising boat might not be the best choice for a river or inland lake.

“Lakes can be much harder for running a boat than the ocean, where you have long swells rather than steep, breaking seas,” Peters said. “Just make sure you’ve planned for the worst conditions you’ll run in, not the best, and never, ever sign a contract without running the boat in the intended conditions.”

Some boats, he said, are not designed to be the best boat . Sometimes the goal is to provide the best accommodations for the hull’s length and beam, which can mean creating a vessel that has a lot of windage, high freeboard, a high center of gravity and a very wide beam for its length.

“We don’t get to design the best boat in all cases,” Peters said. “No perfect boat? No kidding. But every boat appeals to somebody. One guy might love this particular boat, and he wants that 6-foot-4-inch headroom, while another guy is going to hate the compromises.”

“You always have to be aware that the more you emphasize space, the less boat it’s going to be,” he warned. “And it’s counterintuitive, but what looks good might not be good at all.”

Peters also advised inquiring about a preferred design’s origins. Was it designed in-house at the boatbuilding facility? Was it designed by a naval architect? What are his or her credentials?

“Some people might not care, but it will help you better understand the design,” he said. “With a car, we accept that all the engineering is done correctly, and we can choose our favorite based on appeal alone. With a boat, you should think about engineering and stability calculations, not just styling.”

Finally, Peters noted that good hull designs stand the test of time. With most major advancements taking place in hybrids, like stepped hulls and multihulls, the average boat owner is going to be looking at hull designs that haven’t changed much in 20 or 30 years. And that’s OK.

“Most people just want a good family boat,” he said. “I’d say stay in the middle. The hull should look familiar. That hull from 30 years ago is still a good hull.”

A Boat’s Soft Ride is Subjective

Peter Granata, owner of Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina-based Granata Design , has been designing boats since the early 1970s. With a number of award-winning designs and patented ideas under his belt, he’s firm in his conviction that the soft-ride discussion really shouldn’t be about the boat. It’s about the people involved.

“First of all, the hull ride is felt rather than measured,” he said. “And, it’s based very much on your own individual perception of what the boat looks like and what you expect it to deliver, plus your experience up to that point. It’s very subjective.”

Soft can be a relative term. A boater who is downsizing from a 60-foot yacht to a 30-foot pocket cruiser might find the smaller boat has the worst ride he’s experienced to date, whereas a boater jumping up from a 16-footer will say that 30-footer provides the best ride he’s ever had.

The most important questions a boater can ask, Granata said, are: How well does this design meet its intended purpose, and what can it do for me?

He provided a wakeboard boat as an example. The expectation is for thrills, not the softness of the ride.

“Soft ride is certainly a measurement when it comes to boat design, but it’s not the only one,” he said. “A designer should manage the ride aspect to meet the customer’s expectation. Does the boat do what it’s intended to do?”

The idea is that ride is less important than function, based on customer priorities. If you’re headed offshore and a dry ride is your No. 1 priority, you’ll want to make sure the hull has enough flare to ensure that the water follows the hull and travels outboard rather than over the deck. If you’re an angler, you might look for hull cutaways in the right spots to support the design’s self-bailing characteristics. Bass anglers seek extra buoyancy forward to support their weight.

With “dockominiums,” deep deadrise is unnecessary because owners place a higher priority on stability at rest, accommodations and space for entertaining. And with water-sports boats, the wake is all-important. Without that, the hull is worthless.

“We get so wrapped up in the specifics of hull generation that we forget someone has to buy it and spend time in it,” Granata said. “A designer has to know how the boat will be used, and you do as well. The boat is for you, not for the guy who made it.”

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Offshore Yachts: The Art of Luxury and Safety on the High Seas

Worth Avenue Yachts is proud to represent Offshore Yachts as a leader in the sales of offshore yachts. With nine recent Offshore yachts sold, including Honore, Sierra Fox, Veronica K, Tango Nuevo, Sierra Fox, One Last Time, Our Girl, Coda, Happy Heart and more, we know that these boats are truly something special.

A Brief History

Offshore Yachts have a rich history dating back to World War II when the US Navy was looking for alternative construction materials due to steel shortages. Founder Richard O. Hunt pioneered the use of laminated fiberglass in the construction of auxiliary navy boats and went on to build the first laminated fiberglass pleasure cruisers in 1948. Ten years later, his sons joined him in the business, and Offshore Yachts was born.

One of the keys to Offshore’s success has been its commitment to safety, comfort, convenience, and performance. In the 1960s, the company sought out legendary naval architect William Crealock, one of the world’s leading authorities on performance cruising boats, to help achieve these goals. Crealock’s “deep fore foot” designs led to Offshore’s very successful high-speed Marauder series, which were built from the 1960s into the 70s. His designs are masterful realizations of the yachter’s abstract needs in physical form. In 1983, Crealock extended the deep-fore-foot design to the first Offshore 48, a boat that is the direct progenitor of the current line of cruisers, now reaching 92 feet. Today, designs are created by Doug Sharp, who continues the form, function, and style begun by Crealock.

Design Elements that Set Offshore Yachts Apart

One of the signature elements of Offshore design is the deep forefoot, which allows for a sharp entry that cuts cleanly through rough seas, offering a smooth, controlled ride and virtually eliminating slap and pounding. Offshore owners frequently report feeling confident in proceeding when other craft are turning back to the docks. In addition, the immense core strength structure of Offshores, combined with the finely detailed, sensual elegance of the interior/exterior, provides an uncommon feeling of luxurious safety. A generous beam offers liberal space for comfortable accommodation.

Offshore hulls derive their amazing strength from being molded as a single integral unit. The construction molds are equally admired for their aesthetic features, including built-in facet lines, insets (vs. cutouts), and their clarity and flaw-free smoothness of surface. This attention to detail is often skipped by other manufacturers.

Offshore Yachts Today

Today Offshore has evolved from a long history of refinement, materials development, and customer inputs and experiences. As of the newest Offshore 80, now nearing construction completion, the company has built over 300 yachts. Offshores are almost always semi-custom crafts, perfectly tailored to the owner’s requirements, and so the company’s half-century plus of know-how is critical in making them successful creations.

What Owners and Experts Have to Say About Offshore Yachts

Because of their quality and high reputation, Offshores have tremendous liquidity. As an owner, you have a built-in exit strategy and a lower overall ownership investment. In one recent quarterly survey of brokerage sales, thirteen yachts ranging in size from 48’ to 66’ were sold, as opposed to three yachts from our top three competitive brands. This says just about all you need to know.

If you’re considering purchasing a yacht, we urge you to ask Offshore owners, shipyard owners, captains, professional yacht brokers, surveyors and yacht club members this simple question, “What do you think of Offshore yachts?” The answers will surely be overwhelmingly positive, and if not, we want to hear about it. At Worth Avenue Yachts, we’re proud to represent Offshore Yachts and their commitment to excellence.

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Exploring the High Seas: A Season of Unforgettable Yacht Charters

• Sailing and Yachting
• Jonathan Pillet
• July 24, 2024

The allure of the open sea, combined with the luxury of a yacht, creates an irresistible draw for many seeking the ultimate vacation experience. This summer, the yachting season was filled with adventures, challenges, and unforgettable moments that highlighted the unique lifestyle of those who traverse the world’s most beautiful waters.

Beginning the Season with Enthusiasm

The start of the yachting season is always filled with anticipation and excitement. Crews prepare to welcome guests from around the globe, each looking to experience the unparalleled serenity and luxury that only a yacht can offer. This year, the season kicked off with a charter that set the tone for what was to come. The journey began in the picturesque waters of Croatia, known for its stunning coastlines and historic sites.

The first charter welcomed a delightful American couple, marking their first experience on a luxury yacht. The couple’s enthusiasm and kindness made the initial voyage not only a journey across the sea but also a heartwarming human experience. Despite some early challenges, including adjustments within the crew, the spirit of adventure and cooperation prevailed, ensuring a successful start to the season.

Encountering Challenges Along the Way

As with any adventure, the path was not always smooth. The dynamic nature of yachting, combined with high expectations and the complexities of managing a floating luxury hotel, led to inevitable challenges. Crew changes, unpredictable weather, and the occasional demanding guest tested the resilience and adaptability of the team.

However, these challenges were met with professionalism and a deep commitment to guest satisfaction. Each hurdle was an opportunity to learn and grow, further bonding the crew as they worked together to deliver an exceptional experience for their guests.

Memorable Guests and Unique Experiences

Throughout the season, the yacht hosted a variety of guests, each bringing their own unique expectations and excitement to the voyage. From celebrities seeking privacy and indulgence to families looking to explore new cultures and landscapes, the diversity of guests added richness to the crew’s experience.

One particularly memorable charter involved a well-known American personality and his family. Their vibrant personalities and willingness to dive into the yachting lifestyle made their stay particularly enjoyable. The crew’s ability to cater to their needs while still maintaining a high level of service was a testament to their skills and dedication.

Reflections on a Season Well-Spent

As the summer season drew to a close, reflections on the past months brought a sense of accomplishment and nostalgia. The crew had not only provided unforgettable experiences for their guests but had also grown individually and as a team. The bonds formed during these intense months of living and working together created a family-like atmosphere, making the goodbyes at the season’s end bittersweet.

The yacht is now preparing for its next adventure, heading to the Caribbean for the winter season. The promise of new guests, exotic destinations, and continued adventures keeps the spirit of the crew high, ready to tackle whatever the next season may bring.

For those inspired by the tales of luxury, adventure, and the open sea, exploring the world of yacht charting might just be the next great adventure. And for all your marine tourism needs, from snorkeling gear to exotic tours, NEBIBO Deals and NEBIBO’s Shop offer a wide variety of options to enhance your travel experiences.

Remember to check out the original article for more insights into a summer of yacht charting here .

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7 New Dayboats That Bring Superyacht-Style Design to the High Seas

Think of them more as day yachts., kevin koenig, kevin koenig's most recent stories.

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A dayboat is exactly what it sounds like—a vessel to spend the day on before retiring to somewhere else to spend the night. Traditionally it’s a European style of boating, relegated to boats in the 30- to 50-foot range. But in the last few years, thanks to a flood of new owners, the dayboat market has seen big design changes and enormous growth—literally. The boats keep getting larger to the point where many should be rightfully be called day yachts . The trend started with the HCB Custom 65 . The boat, Estrella , was a monster center-console design, powered by six outboards totaling more than 3000 hp. That 2018 launch set a new standard for dayboats.

But the new generation of maxi-sized dayboats aren’t limited to utilitarian center consoles. The 77-foot Wajer that former quarterback Tom Brady purchased last year is a good example of a more yacht-like design, while the 115-ft. Vanquish Veloce VQ115 is an even more dramatic case.

These new designs, all with large staterooms, show how much the definition of dayboat has changed from smaller open boats. The intent of the design is now as important as the form—to maximize exterior space, and with it, the number of guests who can come on board to enjoy a day on the water. There are the usual salons, galleys and heads, but the focus is the exterior, or in most cases, the blending of the interior and exterior through large glass doors that slide and conceal to connect inside and out.

Here are seven of the largest, newest dayboats on the water today.

Vanquish VQ115 Veloce

Vanquish’s VQ115 Veloce is the largest dayboat on this list. The 115 has an aluminum hull, and with triple 2,650-horsepower MTU Rolls-Royce V16s matched to surface drives, Vanquish says it can hit speeds of 50 mph. The VQ115 has two separate tender garages: one for a VQ16 and the other a VQ11, both bearing a resemblance to the mothership. A Jacuzzi on the boat’s foredeck is sure to be a popular at anchor, while the aft cockpit connects to an open-arrangement salon via sliding glass doors. That arrangement puts the day in day yacht. A boat this size will be able to accommodate four crew members.

Scout 670 LX

Currently under build in South Carolina, the Scout 670 LX will be the largest center console ever built when it debuts at the 2024 Miami International Boat Show. With five 600-horsepower Mercury outboards, this Scout should see top speeds close to 60 mph. Three different versions of this boat will be made available, including an LXF (luxury fish), LXC (luxury cruiser), and LXS (luxury sport). The boat was designed in conjunction with superyacht design studio Harrison Eidsgaard. It will be constructed in carbon-fiber epoxy. The forepeak master will have its own en suite—a design breakthrough for vessels of this type.

When you’re the greatest quarterback of all time, and also find yourself back on the singles scene in your early 40s, what better way to re-acclimate yourself than a hot boat? And that’s exactly what Tom Brady bought for himself. The Wajer 77 is a Dutch-built dayboat with one of the most beautiful sterns in yachting. It has a 40-mph top speed and cruising range of over 400 miles. Wajer’s trademark walkaround design opens up the alfresco entertainment options onboard, meaning the boat can ferry large numbers of guests comfortably to the sandbar and back. The boat also has three staterooms, plus crew accommodations for two, as you might expect from a dayboat this large.

With an axe bow and a reverse-rake windshield, mirrored by a reverse-rake windscreen on its flybridge, the Pardo Endurance 60 conjures up the profile of a stylish workboat. But it is built for play. Its walkaround design couples with foldout terraces in the cockpit to open up the deck space for entertaining. A hydraulic swim platform aft holds a tender for easier beach access, or it can double as a beach club. The Pardo has twin 600-horspower Volvo Penta D8s matched to IPS drives, making it easy to dock and maneuver at slow speeds. The boat runs the low-to-mid-20-mph range.

Bluegame 75

Unveiled last year at the Cannes Yachting Festival, the Bluegame 75 is the first edition in a line of multihulls the Italian builder plans to release. Bluegame is known for its innovative designs, and this boat was penned in conjunction with Bernardo Zuccon and Piero Lissoni with a hullform that mimics an America’s Cup chase boat. The 75 will also be able to carry up to 56 solar panels to minimize its carbon footprint. The interior layout is intended to maximize the boat’s natural beaminess. Open arrangements the norm particularly on the lower deck, where an unorthodox salon lies at sea level, and the upper deck is fully open for social events.

Zeelander 7

The 66-foot Zeelander 7 is this Dutch yard’s new flagship. Zeelanders all have similar lines as well as high levels of fit and finish. The boat has a foldout beach club from its transom, with a generous amount of tumblehome. A four-stool bar at the bulwark separating the cockpit and salon complements a dining settee in the aft section of the cockpit. The boat’s fully enclosed salon has nearly 360-degree worth of windows. This boat can reach 40 mph at top end.

From Brazil comes the Okean 80, a boat clearly built for a party. Like its smaller sisters, the builder’s flagship has foldout terraces to port and starboard on its main deck. Also on the main deck is a pane of smart glass between the helm and salon that can become see-through or opaque at the touch of a button. Up top, the 80’s flybridge features a wetbar and modular furniture. A beach club at the hydraulic swim platform is partially recessed into the transom for shade, a design trait which adds a sense of gravitas to the space.

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High Seas Yacht Service

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• Overhauling the Running Gear on an Iconic Fort Lauderdale Riverboat Attraction

The “old fashion sternwheeler” was recently hauled at LMC and our team of running gear mechanics was called upon to overhaul her running gear from shafts to seals, props and rudders as part of routine maintenance.

After performing a full running gear inspection, we pulled the shafts, props and dropped the rudders. We also installed and aligned a new babbit bearing on her shaft. Babbit bearings are known for their resistance to galling and are often used in the marine applications for vessels of this type. As part of the overhaul, we will also remove and re-install the shaft and shaft muff couplings, supply a new Tides Marine shaft seal system and four new cutless bearings.

Our in-house machine shop, Straight Line Marine, will straighten both the port and starboard main shafts as well as the tailshafts. We will then lap the props back on the shafts as well as fit, face and lap the port and starboard couplers.

Work on the rudders required us to disconnect the tie bar and tiller arms. Once the rudders were out of the vessel, we replaced the rudder packing and stuffing box hardware. Our final step will be to do a full engine alignment to ensure smooth, vibration-free cruising.

Once the work is complete and the old gal is launched again, she will be ready to delight visitors to and residents of “the Venice of America” for years to come.

from → Props , Rudder System , Shaft Seal Systems , Shaft Systems , Straight Line Marine , Tide Seals

• Upgrading the Wartsila Shaft Seal System as Part of a Running Gear Overhaul

Optical Scope Alignment check for accuracy

When a 126’ Oceanco Motor Yacht was hauled at LMC, we were hired to perform an extensive overhaul on the vessel’s running gear. Since it had been a while since the running gear was inspected, we first performed a laser deck target before she was pulled out of the water. This is a necessary step in order to ensure that the vessel is blocked correctly for future alignment work.

As part of the overhaul, we removed the shafts, props, stern tube and dropped the rudders. This particular yacht had an older Wartsila EL shaft seal system which was difficult and expensive to maintain. For this reason, we upgraded the shaft seal system to a Wartsila PSE model. Because of space constraints and the different dimension of the two systems, we needed to work with a local aluminum welding contractor to modify the stern tubes in order to accommodate the new shaft seal system. These seals also need to be installed on the centerline of the shafts so we performed an optical scope alignment from the main struts and transmission to the stern tube to ensure exact placement.

Because of excessive wear on the main strut Thordon bearings, we removed the bearings so our in-house machine shop, Straight Line Marine , could cleaned them up before re-installing back into the vessel. Our machine shop also straightened the shafts, lapped the propellers and fit, faced & lapped the port and starboard couplers.

Once all the prep work was completed, we re-installed the propellers and propeller shafts along with the rudders, aligned the engines and performed a final laser deck targeting procedure to ensure that the vessel would not experience any vibrations under way.

Upgrading a Wartsila shaft seal system takes an experienced team, the right tools and precise coordination with outside contractors to make sure the job is done right.

from → Lapping , Optical Scope Alignments , Shaft Seal Systems , Shaft Systems , Stern Tubes , Wartsila Shaft Seals

• When Time is of the Essence, High Seas Delivers Results

As you can imagine, most of the boat yards in South Florida were booked for the days following the boat show leaving this Captain with little options of getting the work done quickly. And forgoing the work for a long trip south was not an option.  Get it done or cancel charters.  We worked with Lauderdale Marine Center to “squeeze” the yacht into the haul out schedule a couple of days after the show ended.

Once hauled, our team sprang into action. While still in the blocking process, the High Seas team started pulling the props.  The next day the shafts were out of the vessel and on the way to the machine shop.  Fortunately, our machine shop, Straight Line Marine , is located on site at Lauderdale Marine Center.  No loss of time calling for a truck to load and transport to an outside facility.   Within a short period of time, the machine shop went to work on straightening. With a little overtime, the shafts were ready to install a day later.

We also found Thordon bearings that were damaged and needed to be replaced.  Since this was suspected during our first meeting at the boat show, we ordered Thordon material and it was on-hand before the vessel hauled.  Thordon bearings require custom machining to fit the vessel.  Our machine shop got it done while the shafts were being straightened.

We then re-installed the shafts and props, did an optical scope alignment and sea trial and sent the yacht on her way in a matter of days so she could make her charter.

This Captain found himself in a tight spot but working with Lauderdale Marine Center to fit this 164-footer into the schedule, hard work on the part of the High Seas and Straight Line Marine teams, a machine shop on-site and ready to go and the dedication to customer service that is the foundation of our company, this yacht is on her way to making a charter guests’ dream vacation come true.

from → Optical Scope Alignments , Props , Straight Line Marine , Thordon Bearings , Vibration Problems

• Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show is Right Around the Corner.

from → Cutlass Bearings et al , Engine and Shaft Alignments , Optical Scope Alignments , Props , Rudder System , Shaft Seal Systems , Shaft Systems , Straight Line Marine , Strut Alignment , Vibration Problems

• Re-powering the World’s Largest Sport Fishing Boats

We recently had the opportunity to work on the world’s largest sport fishing boat, a 144’ Trinity. The yacht was recently sold and her new owner had her hauled at Lauderdale Marine Center for a complete refit including new engines (repower). The vessel originally had old Paxman engines that were removed by cutting a large hole in the side of the boat and replaced with new MTU engines.

A job of this size requires precision coordination with other contractors at LMC who handle engine rigging and removal, welding, plumbing, painting and full MTU service commissioning.

For our part, we first performed a laser deck targeting procedure to block the vessel properly for hull work and future alignments. We then removed the running gear from the boat so our machine shop could straighten the shafts, lap fit face couplers and propellers and ABS crack test the shafts.

Next, we performed an optical scope alignment of the remote transmissions to the shaft line and used Chockfast® to hold the transmissions in place. Working closely with the aluminum fabricators and MTU engine plans, our team made sure that the new engine beds and stringers were in the right position and the right height for the new engines and engine mounts. The next step was to install the new engine mounts on the engines and rough align the engines with the transmissions using lasers for final engine room fabrication.

Our machine shop, Straight Line Marine, then machined the new sole plates for the engine mounts. We also installed Gieslinger torsional couplings between the engines and transmissions and provided all new bearings and shaft seals.

Once the vessel was launched, we did a final laser alignment of the engines to the transmissions and used Chockfast to place all engine mounts into position.

The vessel is now ready to take her owners far and wide in search of big game fish.

from → Engine and Shaft Alignments , Optical Scope Alignments , Props , Shaft Systems , Straight Line Marine

• Strut Alignment using Cardan Shafts

Once we removed the cardan shafts from the boat, we sent them to a company in the Mid-West where they inspected and replaced where needed the needle bearings in the universal joints (U-joint) and balanced the shafts. Balancing cardan shafts takes a highly-specialized piece of equipment.

It is very important to balance the cardan shaft to eliminate the possibility of torsional vibrations. Torsional vibrations are caused by two things: the u-joint operating angle at the “drive” end of the drive shaft and the orientation (phasing) of the yokes at each end of the drive shaft. A torsional vibration is a twice per revolution vibration. It will cause the drive shaft, “downstream” of the front U-joint, to “speed up” and “slow down” twice per revolution. That means that the engine producing a constant speed of 3,000 RPM can actually be attached to the drive shaft that is changing speed 6,000 times per minute. The amount of that change in speed, called the magnitude, or size of the change, is proportional to the size of the angle at the drive end of the drive shaft, or the amount of misalignment between the yokes at the drive and driven end of your drive shaft. Torsional vibrations are serious vibrations that can cause the shaft to bend and potentially break.

When a drive shaft is assembled, its inner components usually consist of a slip yoke on one end and a tube yoke on the other end, and they are usually assembled in relation to each other. This is called PHASING. Most drive shafts are assembled with their yokes in line, or “IN PHASE”. A drive shaft that is “in phase” and has the correct operating angles at the drive end of the shaft does not create a torsional vibration. Drive shafts that are NOT in phase will vibrate with the same twice per revolution vibration as a drive shaft with incorrect operating angles.

Understanding the intricacies of the various components found in many mega-yachts ensures that the job gets done and gets done right.

from → Uncategorized

• Aligning Struts After a Grounding

When a 120’ Ferretti was hauled at Lauderdale Marine Center, the captain hired us to perform shaft straightening in our machine shop, Straight Line Marine   and a strut alignment on the yacht as a result of a recent grounding. The ship had significant vibration issues that needed to be addressed.

To finish the re-installation of the struts, we use CHOCKFAST® ORANGE to fill the gaps between the strut installation and the hull of the boat.  CHOCKFAST is an engineered epoxy chocking material that is used to cast-in-place permanent machinery supports for all sizes and types of main engines and marine auxiliary equipment. Because it conforms precisely to any surface profile, CHOCKFAST eliminates the machining of foundation and mounting surfaces as well as the fitting of the old-style steel chocks.

This yacht is now ready to get back on the open seas for new adventures and smooth sailing.

from → Ferretti , Shaft Systems , Straight Line Marine , Strut Alignment , Vibration Problems

• Need Running Gear and Hydraulic Work Done on your Yacht – Work with Us

A 106’ Westport yacht was recently hauled at Lauderdale Marine Center for a variety routine maintenance projects including shaft work, bearing replacements and an overhaul on several hydraulic systems. To streamline the process and help the captain and crew better manage the project, they contracted with both High Seas Yacht Service for the running gear portion and High Seas Hydraulics to handle the hydraulics work.

In addition to the routine maintenance on the stabilizer systems, we flushed the entire hydraulic system using the simple drain, filter, fill approach commonly referred to in our shop as a DFF. This type of flush is more of an “oil change” and is part of routine maintenance. It is not appropriate where a more serious condition such as water, metal particles or other contaminants are found in the oil. The process calls for draining the hydraulic tank, changing out the filters and refilling the tank with hydraulic fluid.

From running gear to hydraulics, our teams at High Seas Yacht Service and High Seas Hydraulics, make easy work of maintaining the systems that make your vessel safe and operating smoothly.

from → Cutlass Bearings et al , Shaft Seal Systems , Shaft Systems , Straight Line Marine , Westport

• Eliminating Engine Vibrations – Is a Strut Alignment the Answer?

We recently worked on a 96-foot Ferretti yacht that had run aground and was experiencing considerable engine vibrations. Our field technicians with High Seas Yacht Service inspected the boat and found that the shafts were bent and one of the struts was bent and out of alignment. After pulling the props and shafts, we sent the shafts off to our machine shop, Straight Line Marine for straightening. Once the shafts were back in true, we sent them back to the vessel for re-installation after performing a full strut alignment on the vessel.

Strut alignments are complex and require special tools and experienced mechanics. Once a strut is removed from the boat it is a major repair and should only be done by specialist in this field.

We begin the process with an optical scope alignment for precision measurements of the misalignment. In order to align the strut, it must be removed or dropped from the bottom of the boat. All strut bolts are removed and a considerable force is applied to break the bond between the strut and the hull. Proper equipment and safety are a major concern since some struts can weigh hundreds of pounds.

Once removed, the strut pad and hull pockets must be ground clean in preparation for installation. Extra jacking holes are drilled and tapped in the four corners of the strut pads to help with fine tuning adjustments. Once preparation is complete, the strut is hung back in its original place and the optical scope is once again used for precision alignment of the strut cutlass bearing.

When the strut is properly aligned, we use ChockFast to inject into the gap between the hull and strut to form a perfect fit with the bottom of the hull.

A strut alignment is typically a one-time project for any vessel unless it is driven hard aground. A properly aligned strut will free-up an engine to provide a smooth ride for comfort and higher speed with lower fuel consumption. For more details on performing a full strut alignment, click here .

from → Engine and Shaft Alignments , Ferretti , Optical Scope Alignments , Straight Line Marine , Strut Alignment

• Taking Care of our Valued Customers

When a 112-foot Westport yacht returned to Lauderdale Marine Center, our running gear team dropped in on the vessel for a courtesy visit and health check. The ship was in the yard last year and we did a full running gear job including shaft work and alignment.

Checking Tolerances

Since the yacht was back on the hard, our team checked the cutlass bearing clearance on the shafts to ensure that the shafts were properly aligned. The tool we used to perform this task is called a feelers gauge which are an assortment of fine thickened strips with marked thickness which are used to measure gap width or clearance between the shaft and the cutlass bearings. We also visually inspected the bearing seals.

Feelers Gauge

We were happy to report back to the captain that everything checked out properly and the running gear work that we performed last year was holding true. When you engage High Seas Yacht Service, you can rest assured that we will stand by our work and go that extra mile to keep our valued customers sailing smoothly.

from → Cutlass Bearings et al , Engine and Shaft Alignments , Shaft Systems

All in a day’s work for High Seas Yacht Service.

Poor engine and strut alignment leads to unwanted vibrations, loss of power, reduced fuel economy and accelerated wear on bearings and transmissions.

To schedule an inspection while you are in the Fort Lauderdale area or compare notes on a technical question, call or email Chris. 954-975-8220 [email protected].

• Watch this video of a High Seas technician performing a scope alignment on a 49 foot EastBay.

Good background reading

• Deck Targeting
• Shaft Weld-overs
• Optical Scope Alignment – the Basics
• Video Alignments
• In vs. Out of Water Alignments
• Strut Alignments
• Cutlass Bearing “Float” Alignment
• How Much Does My Boat Weigh?

Check out our recent work

High seas is a member of these marine organizations:.

• American Boat Builders and Repairers Association, Inc.
• Florida Yacht Brokers Association
• Marine Industry Association of South Florida
• Mariners Club

Official Service Center for:

• Aquadrive anti-vibration systems
• Max Prop automatic feathering props
• Tides Marine SureSeal dripless shaft seals

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The Haves and the Have-Yachts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.”

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.

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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Luxury Yacht Fashion: Dressing for the High Seas in Style

When it comes to cruising the high seas in ultimate luxury, it’s not just about the yacht—it’s also about the fashion. From chic resort wear to elegant evening attire, dressing for a yacht excursion is an art form that combines sophistication with practicality.

Whether you’re lounging on the deck, dining under the stars, or exploring exotic ports of call, carefully curating your yacht outfits will make this trip even more exciting, while keeping you Instagram-ready at all times.

Here are some tips for dressing your best and making a stylish statement aboard your sailing adventure in St. Thomas.

Embrace Nautical Chic

Nautical style  has long been synonymous with timeless elegance and maritime sophistication. To embody the spirit of the sea, incorporate classic nautical elements into your wardrobe, such as crisp white shirts, navy blue stripes, and anchor motifs. You can also choose tailored blazers, Breton tops, and deck shoes for a polished yet relaxed look that seamlessly transitions from day to evening on board.

Protect Yourself from the Sun

While soaking up the sun is a highlight of any yacht trip, protecting yourself from harmful UV rays is essential. Incorporate stylish sun protection into your yacht fashion with wide-brimmed hats, oversized sunglasses, and lightweight cover-ups that shield your skin from sun rays without compromising style.

Additionally,  choose UPF-rated clothing  and accessories for added sun protection, and be sure to apply sunscreen regularly to exposed skin to prevent sunburn and premature aging.

Opt for Lightweight Fabrics

When packing for your sailing trip to St. Thomas, prioritize lightweight and breathable fabrics that keep you cool and comfortable in the Caribbean heat. Choose yacht outfits made from linen, cotton, and lightweight blends that allow air to circulate and prevent overheating, ensuring you stay fresh and stylish throughout your maritime adventures.

Also, pack lightweight dresses, shorts, and trousers in breathable fabrics that offer both style and comfort for exploring onshore destinations and lounging on deck.

Pack Versatile Pieces

Maximize your wardrobe options with versatile pieces that can be mixed and matched to create a variety of stylish looks for your yacht trip. Pack neutral-colored separates such as tailored shorts, flowy skirts, and lightweight trousers that can be paired with different tops and accessories for effortless day-to-night transitions.

Choose versatile swimwear that doubles as chic bodysuits for exploring onshore destinations and lounging on deck, allowing you to make the most of your maritime adventure in style.

Embrace Resort Wear

Capture the essence of island living with resort-inspired yacht outfits that exude laid-back luxury and effortless elegance. Choose flowy maxi dresses, relaxed linen shirts, and breezy kaftans in vibrant tropical prints and colors that reflect the beauty of St. Thomas. Accessorize your resort wear with statement pieces such as oversized straw hats, beaded sandals, and shell jewelry that add a touch of tropical glamour to your ensemble, perfect for lounging on deck or exploring the island’s picturesque beaches and villages.

Dress for Evening Elegance

Transition seamlessly from daytime adventures to evening elegance with sophisticated eveningwear that reflects the refined ambiance of yacht life in St. Thomas. Opt for lightweight sundresses, linen suits, and tailored trousers paired with elegant sandals or loafers for a chic yet relaxed evening look.

Add a touch of glamour with statement jewelry, silk scarves, and lightweight shawls that elevate your outfit for sunset cocktails and gourmet dinners onboard, ensuring you look and feel your best as you enjoy the luxurious amenities of your yacht.

Prioritize Comfort and Functionality

While style is essential, comfort and functionality are paramount when dressing for a sailing trip to St. Thomas. Choose clothing and footwear that allow you to move freely and comfortably on deck, whether lounging in the sun, exploring onshore destinations or participating in water sports activities.

Make sure to choose non-slip boat shoes, quick-drying swimwear, and lightweight layers that offer protection from the elements while maintaining ease of movement and breathability, ensuring you stay comfortable and stylish throughout your maritime adventure.

Don’t Forget the Details

Complete your yacht fashion ensemble with attention to detail, from coordinating accessories to grooming essentials that ensure a polished appearance. Pack a stylish beach bag to carry your essentials, including sunscreen, sunglasses, and a beach towel, while adding a touch of flair to your outfit.

Pay attention to grooming and skincare, keeping hair and nails neat and hydrated with nourishing treatments and protective styling products that withstand the sea breeze and sun exposure, ensuring you look effortlessly chic from bow to stern.

Elevate Your Look with Makeup

Enhance your fashion ensemble with makeup that complements the natural beauty of St. Thomas while providing sun protection and long-lasting wear . Opt for lightweight, waterproof formulations that withstand the elements and keep you looking fresh and radiant throughout your maritime adventures.

Start with a high SPF tinted moisturizer or BB cream to even out your skin tone and provide sun protection, followed by a touch of bronzer or cream blush to add a sun-kissed glow to your complexion. Define your eyes with waterproof mascara and a swipe of neutral eyeshadow for a subtle yet polished look that withstands the sea breeze and saltwater spray. Finish with a hydrating lip balm or tinted lip gloss to keep your lips soft and supple, adding a hint of color and shine.

With the right makeup essentials, you can enhance your yacht fashion look and feel confident and beautiful as you sail the azure waters of St. Thomas.

Express Your Personal Style

Above all, let your personal style shine through and express your individuality through your yacht fashion choices. Whether you prefer classic elegance, bohemian chic, or contemporary cool, tailor your wardrobe to reflect your unique personality and preferences. Experiment with colors, prints, and silhouettes that make you feel confident and comfortable, allowing you to enjoy your yacht trip to the fullest with style and grace.

Confidence is Key

Ultimately, the most important accessory you can wear is confidence. No matter what you choose to wear on your yacht trip, wear it with confidence and poise, knowing that you look and feel your best. Embrace the carefree spirit of island living, relax, and enjoy every moment of your maritime adventure in style, creating memories to last a lifetime aboard your luxurious yacht in the breathtaking beauty of St. Thomas.

At Summerwind Sailing Adventures, we specialize in curating unforgettable luxury sailing trips in  St. Thomas  to the captivating destination of St. Thomas. Our exquisite yacht, Summerwind, offers unparalleled comfort and elegance, accommodating up to 10 guests with ease. Whether you’re seeking a private sunset cruise to bask in the golden hues of twilight or a week-long excursion exploring the pristine waters and hidden treasures of St. Thomas, our experienced crew is dedicated to ensuring your experience exceeds expectations.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to indulge in the ultimate sailing adventure on Summerwind. Contact us today to rent a yacht to St. Thomas  and board on the journey of a lifetime.

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Another Icon-of-the-Seas-Style Megaship? Make That 3 More.

Royal Caribbean and other companies are aggressively building over-the-top ships. “Today’s cruisezillas make the Titanic look like a small fishing boat,” noted one sustainability specialist.

By Ceylan Yeğinsu

The Icon of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship, drew as much criticism as excitement when Royal Caribbean launched it earlier this year, but the ship has been a hit among cruise goers. Now the cruise line is adding to its fleet of megaships.

The company already has two Icon Class ships on order — Star of the Seas, which will be launched in 2025, and a third ship that has not yet been named but will be delivered in 2026. It now has plans to order a fourth ship, set for a 2027 launch, with options for a fifth and sixth. The new ships build on the market response to Icon of the Seas, said Jason Liberty, president and chief executive of Royal Caribbean Group, announcing the agreement to build the new ships.

“Since its debut, Icon has exceeded our expectations in both guest satisfaction and financial performance,” Mr. Liberty said in a statement on Tuesday.

The 250,800-ton ship, which can carry nearly 8,000 people, has eight “neighborhoods” packed with amenities that include a 55-foot waterfall, six water slides and more than 40 restaurants, bars and entertainment venues.

Royal Caribbean’s announcement comes as the cruise industry reports record demand, attracting new customers with attractively priced packages that often include food, beverages and activities. In 2023, cruise travel exceeded 2019’s 29.7 million passengers by some two million, with 31.7 million passengers. This year, that number is expected to reach 34.7 million, according to Cruise Lines International Association, the industry’s trade group.

Responding to the demand, Royal Caribbean launched four new ships this year and has seven more on order. Other major cruise lines, like Carnival, Norwegian and MSC, are also launching next-generation vessels through 2027. The trend has drawn criticism from environmental groups, who warn that the number and scale of the ships undermine the industry’s commitment to a more sustainable future.

The world’s largest cruise ships are now twice as big as they were in 2000, according to a report by Transport and Environment , a Brussels-based advocacy group for clean transport and energy. If vessels continue to grow at their current rate, the biggest ships in 2050 will be eight times larger than the Titanic, with a capacity to carry nearly 11,000 passengers, the report found.

“Today’s cruisezillas make the Titanic look like a small fishing boat. How much bigger can these giants get?” said Inesa Ulichina, the sustainable shipping officer at Transport and Environment. “The cruise business is the fastest growing tourism sector and its emissions are quickly getting out of control.”

Based on the current fleets of its member lines, CLIA said, there is a strong balance of cruise ship sizes. Many cruise lines argue that their larger vessels are being built more efficiently in line with their sustainability goals, with features to make them compatible with cleaner fuel sources like methanol.

The Icon of the Seas has several features designed to minimize the ship’s carbon footprint, including a waste management system that converts onboard waste into energy and an advanced purification system that is designed to treat all wastewater onboard.

“Achieving net zero is not something any one company can do alone,” Mr. Liberty said, speaking last month at a Decarbonization Summit hosted by Royal Caribbean Group and the not-for-profit Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping. “It requires collective problem solving, creative thinking, and a willingness to have tough conversations.”

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2024 .

An earlier version of this article misstated how soon the biggest cruise ships could be eight times larger than the Titanic, if they continue to grow at their current rate. It is 2050, not 2025.

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Ceylan Yeğinsu is a travel reporter for The Times who frequently writes about the cruise industry and Europe, where she is based. More about Ceylan Yeğinsu

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Icon Class Ships: Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas has been a hit among cruise goers. The cruise line is adding to its fleet of megaships ,  but they have drawn criticism from environmental groups.

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Royal caribbean’s utopia of the seas is a monument to cooperation.

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This aerial picture taken on July 11, 2024 shows Royal Caribbean's "Utopia Of The Seas," billed as ... [+] the world's largest cruise ship, docked at Port Canaveral in Cape Canaveral, Florida. (Photo by Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo / AFP) (Photo by MIGUEL J. RODRIGUEZ CARRILLO/AFP via Getty Images)

Coco Cay, Bahamas – Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas cruise ship had its maiden voyage just last month. Construction of what exceeds 1,100 feet in length took place in Saint-Nazare, France, but it’s more realistic to say that this monument to the vastness of the human imagination was produced around the world. And that’s no insight.

What’s so big, what’s so fast, and what defies description in consideration of the myriad of features on board speaks to something that’s well beyond the capacity of Saint-Nazare’s inhabitants to create. And that’s not only not an insight, it’s also not an insult of those who live and work in Saint-Nazare.

When it’s remembered that something as basic as a pencil is a brilliant consequence of impressive amounts of global cooperation, what can be said about the almost tiring vastness of the Utopia of the Seas? Really, how to describe that which moves so fast on the ocean, but that entertains thousands of passengers of varying interests all day and night for three and four-day excursions? If Amazon is “the everything store,” Utopia is the everything ship full of endless eating, swimming, sporting, and entertainment options. Which is a description that most certainly insults the ship’s vastness. Better to just check it out, ideally in person (particularly if you have very generous in-laws), but at least online. Then marvel. In particular, marvel at the incredibly sophisticated blending of global effort, parts and knowledge that was necessary to create the Utopia in five short years.

In his uneven but at times wildly insightful 2011 book Adapt , Tim Harford wrote about an individual who set out to build a rather prosaic toaster oven all on his own. Ok, not so fast with prosaic and toaster. As Harford noted, an ordinary model “has more than 400 components and sub-components, made from nearly 100 different materials,” after which consider all the components, sub-components, and materials that go into the making of those 400 components, sub-components, and materials. It wears you out just thinking about it, and this is but a toaster oven.

Needless to say, the end result of this individual endeavor was a much-less-than-sleek looking toaster oven that soon enough wasn’t one. It broke. Harford’s essential point was that an individual could spend his life constructing a toaster that wouldn’t measure up to the cheapest version on sale at retailers, and that likely wouldn’t last long as is.

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Contemplate the limits of the individual working alone relative to the Utopia of the Seas. To then say that it’s a spectacular product of staggering amounts of globalized cooperation of man and machine insults statement of the obvious. It also raises the obvious question of the why behind embrace of tariffs and other barriers to the allegedly dirty word that is “globalization.” Utopia of the Seas rejects such anti-progress thinking.

That’s because there’s quite simply no way the Utopia of the Seas would exist absent mostly free global trade. Not a chance. Not only would the cost of the Utopia’s production in a parts and labor sense soar exponentially if it were constructed in autarkic fashion, it’s arguably even truer to say that limits of human knowledge within any one country would make construction of something so vast an utter impossibility.

Interesting about all this is that the Utopia of the Seas set sail during a summer in which Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are battling it out for the right to be president of the United States. As part of their battle, both are telling voters they’ll employ tariffs aimed at substantially raising the cost of cooperation for individuals and machines the world over. In Harris’s case, she likely just doesn’t know that it literally “takes a world” to create any market good. In Trump’s case, the fact that his last name can be found on buildings around the world signals that he intimately knows what Harris doesn’t.

Despite this, both candidates have made their support of tariffs about protecting the typical worker. A walk of the Utopia of the Seas (more than a few Make America Great Again caps were spotted by yours truly) calls such a stance into question. Jeff Bezos’s yacht is 417 feet to Utopia’s 1,100+ feet, but the working-men and women on Bezos’s Koru are working .

On the Utopia of the Seas they’re playing in a fashion that even people like Bezos couldn’t have imagined not terribly long ago, not to mention the 2,000+ that the Utopia employs. Royal Caribbean’s latest (but certainly not its last) creation is a reminder that free trade doesn’t just bless workers with plenty at prices that continue to decline, it can also lay claim to substantial work opportunities as a consequence of people working together without regard to country origin.

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