One reason for the increased demand for yachts is the pandemic. 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. “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. 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. The rugged look is a trend “explorer” vessels, equipped to handle remote journeys, are the sport-utility vehicles of yachting. 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.Īt 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. According to Spence, people judged to have insufficient buying power are quietly marked for “dissuasion.”įor the uninitiated, a pleasure boat the length of a football field can be bewildering. One colleague resorted to binoculars, to spot a passerby with a hundred-thousand-dollar watch. 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. For greeters from elsewhere, Palm Beach is a challenging assignment. 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).
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. On the docks, brokers parse the crowd according to a taxonomy of potential. 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? 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.įor the small, tight-lipped community around the world’s biggest yachts, the Palm Beach show has the promising air of spring training. 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. A typical offering: a two-hundred-and-three-foot superyacht named Sea Owl, selling secondhand for ninety million dollars.
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. In the Victorian era, it was said that the length of a man’s boat, in feet, should match his age, in years. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
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