rich man on a yacht

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Who is Guo Wengui, the Chinese billionaire who owns the boat Steve Bannon was arrested on?

WASHINGTON — Earlier this month, a sunburned Steve Bannon , holding a lit cigar and wearing a blue polo shirt with the collar turned up, stood in front of a camera on a yacht owned by his friend Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire.

A YouTube video shows Wengui putting his arm around Bannon as the former Trump campaign chairman denounces the Chinese government and extols the alleged benefits of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. The vessel's lavish interior gleams in the background.

On Thursday, Bannon was arrested by federal agents on that same yacht off Westbrook, Connecticut, and booked into jail on fraud charges. Though the charges appear to have nothing to do with the Chinese businessman, the arrest puts a new spotlight on Bannon's relationship with Guo, a controversial figure with his own history of legal entanglements.

Multiple people familiar with the matter tell NBC News there is a separate federal inquiry involving a company linked to both men, GTV Media Group. As The Wall Street Journal first reported Wednesday, the FBI, the New York state attorney general and the Securities and Exchange Commission are examining whether securities laws were violated during a $300 million private offering by the company this spring, the sources say. In a memo to potential investors, according to The Journal, the company identified Bannon as one of several prominent directors.

News Bannon and 3 others charged in scheme stemming from 'We Build The Wall' campaign

Last month, investigators with the Mercer Island Police Department in Washington state took an incident report from an unidentified victim who had become an investor in GTV Media Group Inc., with the promise it was launching a video-sharing platform, similar to YouTube, "that was supposed to go huge," according to an official familiar with the matter. The investor wired $500,000 to receive shares in the company by the end of May, but never received shares and wasn't able to get in contact with the reported suspect, the report stated. As of July 10, local authorities noted that no crime had been charged, and the FBI was investigating the matter.

The Mercer Island PD incident report identified the suspect as Guo Wengui, describing him as a "billionaire" based out of New York, and noted there were other victims. When Mercer Island police contacted the FBI, local investigators learned that Wengui appeared "to be a target of a large investigation personally and pertaining to his business," according to an official familiar with the matter.

Steve Bannon pictured on a yacht on Aug. 19, 2020.

When they followed up, investigators in Washington learned FBI agents had been investigating the case for about a month. "The victims that have been calling the FBI, FTC, and local police agencies have been reporting fraud for a failure to return on promised investments," the official said.

Guo's lawyer declined to comment, and Guo himself could not be reached.

Guo, who sometimes goes by Miles Kwok, is a mysterious and polarizing figure — a self-styled crusader against Chinese Communist corruption who has drawn the ire of the Chinese government but has also been sued by other Chinese dissidents. A former female employee alleges in an ongoing lawsuit that he repeatedly raped her, a charge he disputes. And a former Trump aide, Sam Nunberg, is among many who have sued Guo alleging defamation; he denies the allegations.

"Utilizing his world-wide publicity, high profile, social media accounts, and seemingly endless financial means, Defendant Guo regularly uses his public platform and power to defame and harass his enemies," Nunberg's suit says. "In this case, Guo set his sights on destroying Plaintiff Samuel Nunberg's reputation and livelihood by filing baseless litigation against him and slandering Nunberg with malicious, false lies which discredit Nunberg both personally and professionally." Nunberg's suit is ongoing.

Guo, who by all accounts made his money in real estate and securities, portrays himself in interviews and court records as an exiled whistleblower, proving an inside account of breathtaking corruption at the heart of the Chinese system.

"Guo is a pioneer of using YouTube and Twitter to fight for the rule of law, human rights, freedom and democracy in China," his lawyers wrote in court papers in a federal lawsuit in Maryland against a self-described Chinese democracy activist. "Guo has exposed widespread corruption in the Chinese Communist Party ('CCP'), multiple senior officials of the Chinese Government, and their family members."

That lawsuit itself offers an illustration of the divisions of opinion about Guo: The defendant, Hongkuan Li, a well known dissident who says he participated in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, accused Guo on social media of being a "gangster," a "communist spy puppy," "a rapist" and of "suffering from schizophrenia," Guo's lawyers wrote, charges they say are all false.

That lawsuit purports to recount Guo's history, which includes a 1989 incident he says turned him against the Chinese government.

As police sought to arrest him for supporting the Tiananmen protests, the suit says, "Two drunken policemen raided Guo's office and fired their weapons directly at his young wife, who was holding his three-month-old baby daughter. His younger brother…tried to protect Guo's wife and daughter and was shot twice in the altercation," the suit says.

Guo's brother was sent to the hospital, the suit says, but "the policemen who shot him instructed the doctors to refuse him any medical care and locked the door." As a result, he died, and Guo "vowed to become a persistent and brave advocate against the Chinese kleptocracy," the suit says.

As a New York Times magazine profile pointed out in 2018, that timeline doesn't appear to explain why Guo spent the next two decades growing rich in China through real estate development, a business that typically requires close cooperation with government officials even in democracies, let alone an authoritarian state like China. In nearly three decades after his brother's death, there is no record of Guo taking a public stand against the party he says caused it, the Times wrote.

There are darker allegations against Guo than hypocrisy, however. A lawsuit filed in New York state by a 28-year-old Chinese woman says Guo lured her to the U.S. from China to work as his assistant and then kept her prisoner for three years, repeatedly assaulting and raping her. The suit says she escaped while in London and went to the Chinese embassy, and that she filed a criminal complaint with Chinese authorities.

Guo's lawyers have denied the allegations in court papers. A lawyer for Guo told NBC News that Guo reiterated his denial of the allegations.

In a statement, the lawyer for Guo also said, “Mr. Guo is aware of the situation involving Mr. Bannon who has been a strong ally in fighting for freedom and democracy in China. Mr. Guo’s past efforts with Mr. Bannon in fighting for democracy in China had nothing to do with the We Build the Wall organization or Mr. Bannon’s activities with that organization. Mr. Guo appreciates that unlike the Chinese Communist Party, the United States of America affords all individuals accused in the United States, including Mr. Bannon, the presumption of innocence and the right for a fair trial before an impartial judge.”

In 2017, as Guo's public profile in the U.S. began to grow, a journalist from the Voice of America, a government-funded news service, arranged to interview him. The plan was to broadcast a live interview for three hours on social media, but top officials at Voice of America ordered it stopped after an hour and 20 minutes, according to documents and interviews, because they were concerned he was making unverified allegations.

Guo accused the VOA of having been infiltrated by Chinese intelligence, a serious charge that threw the agency into turmoil. But an investigation by independent journalism experts—and a separate State Department inspector general's inquiry — concluded that the decision was based solely on journalistic principles, VOA officials said. The journalist who arranged the interview, the chief of VOA's Mandarin Service, was fired.

In a 2019 tweet, the journalist, Sasha Gong, quoted Bannon as saying, "Voice of America tried to clear out all truth-tellers about China in Mandarin Service. VOA executives betrayed American people, Chinese people."

Earlier this year, a Bannon ally, Michael Pack, became the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which includes the VOA, after a long confirmation delay in his Senate confirmation.

The veteran journalists in charge of the VOA, Amanda Bennett and Sandra Sugawara — both of whom were involved in the decision to stop the Guo interview — immediately resigned.

Ken Dilanian is the justice and intelligence correspondent for NBC News, based in Washington.

Andrew Blankstein is an investigative reporter for NBC News. He covers the Western U.S., specializing in crime, courts and homeland security.

Tom Winter is a New York-based correspondent covering crime, courts, terrorism and financial fraud on the East Coast for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

Katy Tur is the host of "MSNBC Live" at 2 p.m. and a correspondent for NBC News. She is the author of the New York Times best seller "Unbelievable," about her time covering Donald Trump during the 2016 election, for which she also won a Cronkite Award.

10 of the most impressive superyachts owned by billionaires

From a sailing yacht owned by a russian billionaire industrialist to the luxury launch of the patek philippe ceo, here are the best billionaire-owned boats on the water….

Words: Jonathan Wells

There’s something about billionaires and big boats . Whether they’re superyachts or megayachts, men with money love to splash out on these sizeable sea-going giants. And that all began in 1954 — with the big dreams of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

Onassis, keen to keep his luxury lifestyle afloat when at sea, bought Canadian anti-submarine frigate HMCS Stormont after World War II. He spent millions turning it into an opulent super yacht, named it after his daughter — and the Christina O kicked off a trend among tycoons. To this day, the world’s richest men remain locked in an arms race to build the biggest, fastest, most impressive superyacht of all. Here are 10 of our favourites…

Eclipse, owned by Roman Abramovich

Built by: Blohm+Voss of Hamburg, with interiors and exteriors designed by Terence Disdale. Launched in 2009, it cost $500 million (the equivalent of £623 million today).

Owned by: Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, the owner of private investment company Millhouse LLC and owner of Chelsea Football Club. His current net worth is $17.4 billion.

Key features: 162.5 metres in length / 9 decks / Top speed of 22 knots / Two swimming pools / Disco hall / Mini submarine / 2 helicopter pads / 24 guest cabins

Sailing Yacht A, owned by Andrey Melnichenko

Built by: Nobiskrug, a shipyard on the Eider River in Germany. The original idea came from Jacques Garcia, with interiors designed by Philippe Starck and a reported price tag of over $400 million.

Owned by: Russian billionaire industrialist Andrey Melnichenko, the main beneficiary of both the fertiliser producing EuroChem Group and the coal energy company SUEK. Though his current net worth is $18.7 billion, Sailing Yacht A was seized in Trieste on 12 March 2022 due to the EU’s sanctions on Russian businessmen.

Key features: 119 metres in length / 8 decks / Top speed of 21 knots / Freestanding carbon-fibre rotating masts / Underwater observation pod / 14 guests

Symphony, owned by Bernard Arnault

Built by: Feadship, the fabled shipyard headquartered in Haarlem in The Netherlands. With an exterior designed by Tim Heywood, it reportedly cost around $150 million to construct.

Owned by: French billionaire businessman and art collector Bernard Arnault. Chairman and chief executive of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods company, his current net worth is $145.8 billion.

Key features: 101.5 metres in length / 6 decks / Top speed of 22 knots / 6-metre glass-bottom swimming pool / Outdoor cinema / Sundeck Jacuzzi / 8 guest cabins

Faith, owned by Michael Latifi

Built by: Similarly to Symphony above, also Feadship. With exteriors designed by Beaulieu-based RWD, and interiors by Chahan Design, it cost a reported $200 million to construct in 2017.

Owned by: Until recently, Canadian billionaire and part-owner of the Aston Martin Formula 1 Team , Lawrence Stroll. Recently sold to Michael Latifi, father of F1 star Nicholas , a fellow Canadian businessman with a net worth of just under $2 billion.

Key features: 97 metres in length / 9 guest cabins / Glass-bottom swimming pool — with bar / Bell 429 helicopter

Amevi, owned by Lakshmi Mittal

Built by: The Oceanco shipyard, also in The Netherlands. With exterior design by Nuvolari & Lenard and interior design by Alberto Pinto, it launched in 2007 (and cost around $125 million to construct).

Owned by: Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, chairman and CEO of Arcelor Mittal, the world’s largest steelmaking company. He owns 20% of Queen Park Rangers, and has a net worth of $18 billion.

Key features: 80 metres in length / 6 decks / Top speed of 18.5 knots / On-deck Jacuzzi / Helipad / Swimming Pool / Tender Garage / 8 guest cabins

Odessa II, owned by Len Blavatnik

Built by: Nobiskrug, the same German shipyard that built Sailing Yacht A . Both interior and exterior were created by Focus Yacht Design, and the yacht was launched in 2013 with a cost of $80 million.

Owned by: British businessman Sir Leonard Blavatnik. Founder of Access Industries — a multinational industrial group with current holdings in Warner Music Group, Spotify and the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat — he is worth $39.9 billion.

Key features: 74 metres in length / 6 guest cabins / Top speed of 18 knots / Intimate beach club / Baby grand piano / Private master cabhin terrace / Outdoor cinema

Nautilus, owned by Thierry Stern

Built by: Italian shipyard Perini Navi in 2014. With interiors by Rémi Tessier and exterior design by Philippe Briand, Nautilus was estimated to cost around $90 million to construct.

Owned by: Patek Philippe CEO Thierry Stern. Alongside his Gulstream G650 private jet, Nautilus — named for the famous sports watch — is his most costly mode of transport. His current net worth is $3 billion.

Key features: 73 metres in length / 7 guest cabins / Top speed of 16.5 knots / Dedicated wellness deck / 3.5 metre resistance pool / Underfloor heating / Jet Skis

Silver Angel, owned by Richard Caring

Built by: Luxury Italian boatbuilder Benetti. Launched in 2009, the yacht’s interior has been designed by Argent Design and her exterior styling is by Stefano Natucci.

Owned by: Richard Caring, British businessman and multi-millionaire (his wealth peaked at £1.05 billion, so he still makes the cut). Chairman of Caprice Holdings, he owns The Ivy restaurants.

Key features: 64.5 metres in length / Cruising speed of 15 knots / 7 guest cabins / Lalique decor / 5 decks / Oval Jacuzzi pool / Sun deck bar / Aft deck dining table

Lady Beatrice, owned by Frederick Barclay

Built by: Feadship and Royal Van Lent in 1993. Exteriors were created by De Voogt Naval Architects, with interiors by Bannenberg Designs. She cost the equivalent of £63 million to build.

Owned by: Sir David Barclay and his late brother Sir Frederick. The ‘Barclay Brothers’ had joint business pursuits including The Spectator , The Telegraph and delivery company Yodel. Current net worth: £7 billion.

Key features: 60 metres in length / 18 knots maximum speed / Monaco home port / Named for the brothers’ mother, Beatrice Cecelia Taylor / 8 guest cabins

Space, owned by Laurence Graff

Built by: Space was the first in Feadship’s F45 Vantage series , styled by Sinot Exclusive Yacht Design and launched in 2007. She cost a reported $25 million to construct.

Owned by: Laurence Graff, English jeweller and billionaire businessman. As the founder of Graff Diamonds, he has a global business presence and a current net worth of $6.26 billion.

Key features: 45 metres in length / Top speed of 16 knots / Al fresco dining area / Sun deck Jacuzzi / Breakfast bar / Swimming platform / Steam room

Want more yachts? Here’s the handcradfted, homegrown history of Princess…

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Superyachts and bragging rights: why the super-rich love their ‘floating homes’

An academic spent six years studying the lavish boats of multimillionaires. Her conclusion: showing off the owners’ wealth and status matters more than travel

A s conspicuous displays of wealth go, the mooring of Motor Yacht A – owned by Russian tycoon Andrey Melnichenko – last month on one of the most striking spots on the Thames, next to D-day warship HMS Belfast by Tower Bridge, was hard to top. One of the world’s largest superyachts, the Philippe Starck-designed, 119-metre (390ft) white vessel – which features three swimming pools, a helipad and bombproof glass – embodies an exclusive lifestyle that is highly visible but inaccessible to all but the global financial elite and their entourage.

But Melnichenko, who made his £9.2bn fortune in coal and fertilisers, has put the distinctive boat up for sale after upgrading to the £347m, 143-metre Sailing Yacht A, believed to be similarly named to ensure it is listed first in shipping registers. His new vessel, which features three carbon masts more than 90 metres tall with a sail area greater than a standard football pitch, is the tenth-largest superyacht in the world. It propels him into the premier league of private yacht owners alongside fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich, whose 162.5-metre Eclipse is currently the second-largest.

The Chelsea football club owner’s spectacular £724m vessel, which made headlines last summer when it briefly moored on the river Clyde in Scotland, far from its usual cruising grounds, is believed to feature two swimming pools (one of which has an adjustable depth that allows it to be converted into a dancefloor), an exterior fireplace, a leisure submarine, armour plating, bulletproof windows, a missile defence system and an anti-paparazzi shield designed to dazzle digital cameras.

But one British academic has managed to penetrate this elusive milieu. Emma Spence has spent the last six years researching the industry, has crewed on superyachts around the world and shadowed a yacht broker in the tax haven of Monaco, observing how the boats are deployed to establish a pecking order among the super-rich. The researcher is completing a PhD on the superyacht scene and says the vessels are unique among prestige assets: unlike private jets they are not a useful mode of transport; unlike art and property, they always depreciate in value. Instead, as one owner told her, what makes a yacht desirable is that it “allows the super-rich to perform their wealth status”.

Superyachts are defined as boats with hulls that measure longer than 24 metres at the waterline and that require a professional crew to operate. With basic annual maintenance and operation costs expected to be 10% of the original purchase price, ownership is the preserve of multi-millionaires and billionaires.

In a forthcoming book on the lifestyles of the super-rich, Spence explains how merely possessing these elite craft is not enough to enhance the profile of the super-rich; how and where the yacht is used is equally important. This is why most owners and charterers of the luxury vessels prefer to go to prominent ports with bars and restaurants where they can guarantee an audience of super-rich peers. Her research focused on the Côte d’Azur, the centre of the superyacht scene, where hundreds of luxury vessels line the docks in Saint-Tropez, Nice, Antibes, Cannes and Monaco, the most prestigious port in the Mediterranean.

Among the owners she witnessed projecting their status were billionaire retailer Sir Philip Green, who took delivery of his third superyacht – the £100m, 90-metre Lionheart, his second boat to bear that name – earlier this year. While she was crewing on a yacht belonging to somebody else in Saint-Tropez in 2013, Green came on board without invitation. “He walked up on the aft deck in board shorts and a T-shirt – standard super-rich attire, as casual as you can be,” she says. “The grownup children [of the owner] and friends all immediately stood to attention until he told them it was OK to sit down. I’ve never seen anyone else command that respect on someone else’s yacht.”

The perma-tanned Topshop tycoon recently finished a two-month Mediterranean cruise with his wife, Tina, leaving their daughter, Chloe, on board in Monaco, where yacht owners and industry insiders gathered last month at the world’s most prestigious yacht show to size up one another’s nautical assets. “The family’s got a permanent berth there and I’ve docked alongside him for many years,” says Spence. “One time, years ago in Monaco, a ‘rival’ crew climbed on board in the night and changed the boat’s name with tape to Lion Fart.”

Some yacht owners are attracted to tourist resorts in the French Riviera because an integral part of their lifestyle is projecting their privilege beyond their elite peer group, Spence adds. “You have this tension between the privacy that yachts and the sea afford against this desire to see and be seen,” she says. “Tourists remind the super-rich of their wealth and their social status. In Saint-Tropez, you have hundreds of people on the docks as the yachts come in. The guests sit there on the aft deck. Most of these people you wouldn’t know if you passed them in the street. They’re not celebrities. But when they finally descend [ashore] there’s still this awe.”

Spence saw how a group of young men who were children of superyacht owners often encourage this fascination with their way of life. “Each night, they’d go to big clubs, such as the VIP Rooms in Saint-Tropez or Gotha in Cannes, spend £5,000, £10,000 on a table and buy huge bottles of Dom Pérignon with sparklers,” she says. “There’s a group of young women that spends the day going from one port to the other, getting entry to these clubs and schmoozing these wealthy young men. The women come on board the boats, go up to the top deck and ask for champagne. They’re all drunk and you’re trying to explain at 3am that they can’t wear stilettos on board.”

While in the clubs of the Côte d’Azur, uber-wealthy heirs might lavish money on these hangers-on, but back on their parents’ yachts, their attitude changes. “On board, it’s the parent’s stack of wine – it’s not something to be given away,” says Spence. “The older son of one owner came down to check I was serving the cheapest champagne. You downgrade from vintage Dom to Veuve Clicquot – from 100 euros a bottle to 30 euros.”

The super-rich also use their yachts to control the level of access they grant to those outside their wealthy circle, says Spence. For example, some exploited maritime law to get rid of the young women they brought back from the clubs. In the morning, they would go to bed and order the yacht to leave port, knowing the crew would have to remove any stragglers before they set sail. “If you’re in port then you can have as many people on board as you want but at sea you can only have 12 passengers, unless you have large-yacht certification,” says Spence. “The owner’s sons would just slink off to their cabins leaving a few random women dotted around the yacht. It’s awkward when these people think they’re going to stay and spend the week partying on a yacht and then they’re unceremoniously kicked off.”

The symbiotic relationship between superyacht owners and crew is not as one-sided as it might appear. During the Monaco Grand Prix, securing the most prestigious berth on the T-jetty – the first row of yachts on the race start line – is reliant on the captain’s contacts, not the owner’s, says Spence. “It’s knowing who to pay extra to for the privilege. It’s a reflection of the owner’s status, but it’s done via the connections of the crew. If your captain speaks fluent French and has worked in the industry for years, then they’ll have much a better chance of getting into a prominent position in the port.”

“The whole industry is completely gendered,” says Spence. “The interior crew are women and the deck crew are male. I’ve come across two female captains in six years of researching the industry, and I know of two chief stewards who are female. The women retire because owners don’t want them in the interior of a boat after a certain age – late 30s and you’re off.”

The majority of owners buy superyachts secondhand via brokers and refit them to their tastes. Camper & Nicholsons put the global number of yachts of at least 30 metres at 4,476, with 268 sold via brokers last year at a total cost of $2.68bn (£2.18bn), or an average of $10m. They estimate that 222 yachts of over 30 metres have been bought worldwide so far this year. The next step up is to buy or commission a “series yacht” from a shipyard, which will have the same cabin configuration, exterior style and machinery across the line, but the owner will dictate the furniture and furnishings. The top tier are custom-designed by naval architects and can take shipyards several years to complete.

Peter Thompson, a broker at Monaco-based Thompson, Westwood and White Yachts, says eastern European oligarchs and Gulf royals dominate the 100-metre-plus superyacht market, also known as gigayachts.

The primary factor behind the increasing size of superyachts is the growing wealth of the super-rich. The number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals, with net assets of at least $30m, rose by 61% between 2005 and 2015 to 187,468 worldwide, according to the latest wealth report by estate agent Knight Frank . Of these, Credit Suisse calculates that the number worth at least $100m rose from 30,000 in 2010 to 44,900 in 2015 , while those with assets above $500m increased from 2,800 to 4,500 in the same period.

Broker Simon Goldsworthy, of luxury yachting specialists Camper & Nicholsons, says: “The client who 15 years ago would have been satisfied with a 40-metre [yacht], which would then have been one of the largest yachts in the bay, is now surrounded by dozens of yachts of 60-70 metres, and this plants the seed that he really ought to upgrade.”

Innovative design has also played a part – there are things you can fit onto a 60-metre yacht that you simply can’t fit on to a 40-metre one, such as infinity pools, helipads, cinemas, dive rooms, and so on. Evan K Marshall, a London-based superyacht designer, says many of his clients’ yachts are more expensive, and far more personalised, than their homes. “Within the circles of friends who own vessels, there is a healthy competition,” he says. “If someone says: ‘Oh, I’ve just ordered an 80-metre,’ his friend’s going to be on the phone to his broker: “Listen, I’m thinking of building an 85-metre!” We love that.”

Among Marshall’s most prolific clients is the Brooklyn automotive tycoon John Staluppi, who names his boats after James Bond films. Last year, he ordered his 19th superyacht, the 66-metre Spectre, due to be delivered by the Italian Benneti shipyards in 2017. Thompson, who was involved in many of the projects, says Staluppi gets a new superyacht every 18 months to three years, compared with a client average of every five to seven years. “The first one I did was The World is Not Enough, then he sold that and bought Quantum of Solace, then he sold that and bought Casino Royale, then Diamonds are Forever. Right now we’ve got Skyfall and there’s Spectre on the way. He loves the creation side of it. But he doesn’t travel a lot. He uses them as floating homes.”

In the French Riviera, many owners flip between staying on board their yacht or in their luxury villas or mansions, says Spence. “They would have a fully staffed house and the boat doing exactly the same thing, 20 minutes’ drive away. You’d both be on call, so you wouldn’t know when the owner would turn up at the house or the boat. So you would have a system that the staff at the house would call ahead to the boat, and the owners would appear 10 minutes later and you’d just happen to have fresh towels and scented water waiting for them.”

In recent years, a growing number of superyacht owners and charterers, particularly those under 40, have cruised further afield than the “milk run” of Mediterranean resorts to remote routes, including the Arctic Northwest Passage, fuelling demand for designer icebreakers, such as the SeaExplorer range. William Mathieson, editorial director of the Superyacht Group, says this trend for “expedition yachts” is due to an emergent younger super-wealthy class – from heirs to dotcom billionaires – “who want to chase an elusive experience”. Although some owners might pursue remote and exotic adventures, he suspects that for others it will become the yachting equivalent of the Chelsea tractor.

While Spence says this trend partly reflects that yachting still involves romanticised notions of escape, it is also rooted in owners’ preoccupation with bragging rights.

She crewed on one yacht that was sailing around the world; the owners would just fly in when it reached a certain port of call. “They would leave it in the Med then fly down to Mauritius, then would fly back again when it’s in India,” she says. “You’re really using it as a floating hotel. They would eat meals on board and pop off to do a bit of shopping.

“Having their yacht in far-removed locations is a social statement in itself, even if they do not make it on board themselves. Even mooring your yacht on the Thames is conspicuous in that it is far removed from the south of France where all the other yachts are.”

Superyachts in the harbour at Monte Carlo.

The world’s top five superyachts

1. Azzam Built: 2013. Owner: believed to be Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan , the emir of Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates. Cost: estimated to be $400m. Length: 180 metres. Special features: Her interior is believed to be in a relaxed French Empire style.

2. Eclipse Built: 2010. Owner: Roman Abramovich. Cost: £724m. Length: 162.5 metres. Crew: 70. Special features: Three-person leisure submarine, two swimming pools, one of which has an adjustable depth feature that allows it to be converted into a dance floor, a missile defence system, and an anti-paparazzi shield that fires light beams to target and disrupt digital cameras.

3. Dubai Built: 2006. Owner: Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the emir of Dubai and the prime minister of the UAE. Cost: estimated to be $400m. Length: 162 metres. Crew: 88. Special features: The royal yacht features a circular staircase with glass steps that change colour, a mosaic swimming pool and a landing platform for a Blackhawk helicopter.

4. Dilbar Built: 2016. Owner: Alisher Usmanov, Russian billionaire and one of Arsenal football clubs’s main shareholders. Cost: $452m (estimate). Length: 156m. Special features: 41,000sq ft of living space and two helipads.

5. Al Said Built: 2008. Owner: Sultan Qaboos bin Sa‘id Al Saïd of Oman. Cost: Unknown. Length: 155m. Crew: 154. Special features: Concert hall that can accommodate a 50-strong orchestra, a helipad and a cinema.

Running costs

The annual operation costs: 10% of the original purchase price. For a 71-metre yacht, fuel usage is 500 litres an hour (an average of $400,000 per year), according to Towergate Insurance.

Docking costs: $350,000; insurance: $240,000; maintenance and repairs: $1m per year; crew wages: $1.4m.

Crew salaries

Captain: €9,000-€12,000 per month on a yacht of 40 metres, rising to more than €15,000 on vessels longer than 70 metres, now commonly known as mega-yachts. Junior deckhand or a junior steward: €2,000-€2,500 per month.

Life and style
Luxury goods sector
Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan

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Superyachts and the Super Rich

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Superyachts, like the billionaire class, shouldn’t exist. We need to institute a global wealth tax, shut down tax havens, and, yes, take their boats.

The superyacht Lady Lau in the port of Bonifacio, Southern Corsica, France. Myrabella / Wikimedia Commons

Hedge fund billionaire Daniel Loeb recently found himself in hot water after it was discovered that his superyacht had damaged Belize’s fragile barrier reef. Operators of the Samadhi — Buddhist for “a state of meditative consciousness and enlightenment” — had anchored the superyacht to live corals at the Lighthouse Reef Atoll, a Unesco World Heritage site.

Loeb was apologetic and promised to help fix the damaged reef. But the incident speaks volumes about the global billionaire class, whose fortunes grew by 25 percent last year. Today, the twenty-six richest people have more wealth than the world’s poorest 3.8 billion. What are the super-rich doing with all this money? For one thing, they’re buying boats.

Here are four things we can learn about the super-rich from their superyachts.

1. They Live in Their Own World

There are nearly five thousand superyachts (boats longer than thirty meters) sailing the world’s seas. But unless you’re a billionaire, a friend of a billionaire, or a pirate, you’ve probably never even seen a superyacht, let alone stepped foot on one.

On board these floating palaces are the uber-rich — the high-net-worth individuals who run the world. These individuals pull the levers of the global economy, but they are, for the most part, hidden from ordinary people, moving from their luxury high-rises to their private planes to their enormous boats.

This closed and relatively small network of elites is demonstrated and solidified through the consumption and display of luxury goods. The billionaires — from Saudi oil tycoons to Russian oligarchs to Silicon Valley tech royalty — meet at the Monaco Yacht Show to compare mast size, trade tips on how to protect a Picasso from saltwater damage, and form business partnerships.

2. They Are Above the Business Cycle

Manufacturing output is declining in a growing number of countries around the world, but yacht production is going strong. Superyacht orders have grown year over year for the past five years, and yacht builders in Britain, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands expect to see 20 percent growth in the coming decade. The .01 percent aren’t blown off course by economic headwinds.

In fact, when the business cycle goes south, and ordinary people are sucked into its maw, the super-rich often benefit. While the UK’s British Home Stores chain tanked, and 20,000 pensioners were set adrift, Topshop tycoon Philip Green was at his leisure on his £100 million superyacht Lionheart .

Superyacht owners have also proven themselves worthy pirates. Jho Low — the financier who siphoned $4.5 billion from the Malaysian government — bought himself at $250 million boat that he called “Tranquility.”

3. They Don’t Care About the Planet

As the planet alternates between burning and flooding, more and more wealthy people have expressed their concern. They sign up for the Giving Pledge. They start foundations. They donate money to save the polar bears. They also buy bigger and bigger boats. The number of boats longer than 60 meters — 364 — has doubled in the past decade. Russian oligarch Farkhad Akhmedov’s £350 million superyacht (which he has been desperately trying to keep out of the hands of his ex-wife, Tatiana) has two helipads, a swimming pool, a mini submarine, and nine decks.

Ever attuned to changing tastes, however, yacht designers are now touting “sustainable yacht design.” The world’s first environmentally friendly superyacht is being built — a $644 million hydrogen-powered yacht complete with infinity pool, helipad, and gym. For the millennials who purportedly care about experiences more than things, yacht designers are building solar-powered “explorer” yachts that can break through arctic ice and travel for weeks without a refuel.

4. They Should Pay a Lot More in Taxes

The superyachts at this year’s Monaco Yacht Show alone were worth a combined $2.7 billion. Superyacht owners spend upward of $750 million for their boats. They hire dozens of people to crew them, spending between $5 and $10 million a year to cruise from one hotspot to the next. But money is no object for these billionaires. Indeed, it seems to fall into their laps through windfalls like the Trump tax cuts , which fueled a number of fresh superyacht purchases.

Superyachts also serve as handy floating tax havens. As the Paradise Papers investigation showed, elites go to great lengths to avoid paying taxes on their luxury purchases. Superyachts have the advantage of being mobile, making it much easier to evade the tax man. Big boats are also a good place to hide other, smaller luxury purchases, like artwork and jewelry.

Superyachts encapsulate everything wrong with our for-profit system — as billions struggle to survive, and the planet tumbles toward ecological catastrophe, the world’s richest people sail away, sheltered from the rough seas of capitalism.

These superyachts, like the billionaire class, shouldn’t exist. We need to institute a global wealth tax, shut down tax havens, and, yes, take their boats.

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The Haves and the Have-Yachts

By Evan Osnos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two people standing on city sidewalk on hot summer day.

In recent months, Øino has seen some of his creations detained by governments in the sanctions campaign. When we spoke, he condemned the news coverage. “Yacht equals Russian equals evil equals money,” he said disdainfully. “It’s a bit tragic, because the yachts have become synonymous with the bad guys in a James Bond movie.”

What about Scheherazade, the giant yacht that U.S. officials have alleged is held by a Russian businessman for Putin’s use? Øino, who designed the ship, rejected the idea. “We have designed two yachts for heads of state, and I can tell you that they’re completely different, in terms of the layout and everything, from Scheherazade.” He meant that the details said plutocrat, not autocrat.

For the time being, Scheherazade and other Øino creations under detention across Europe have entered a strange legal purgatory. As lawyers for the owners battle to keep the ships from being permanently confiscated, local governments are duty-bound to maintain them until a resolution is reached. In a comment recorded by a hot mike in June, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national-security adviser, marvelled that “people are basically being paid to maintain Russian superyachts on behalf of the United States government.” (It usually costs about ten per cent of a yacht’s construction price to keep it afloat each year. In May, officials in Fiji complained that a detained yacht was costing them more than a hundred and seventy-one thousand dollars a day.)

Stranger still are the Russian yachts on the lam. Among them is Melnichenko’s much maligned Motor Yacht A. On March 9th, Melnichenko was sanctioned by the European Union, and although he denied having close ties to Russia’s leadership, Italy seized one of his yachts—a six-hundred-million-dollar sailboat. But Motor Yacht A slipped away before anyone could grab it. Then the boat turned off the transponder required by international maritime rules, so that its location could no longer be tracked. The last ping was somewhere near the Maldives, before it went dark on the high seas.

The very largest yachts come from Dutch and German shipyards, which have experience in naval vessels, known as “gray boats.” But the majority of superyachts are built in Italy, partly because owners prefer to visit the Mediterranean during construction. (A British designer advises those who are weighing their choices to take the geography seriously, “unless you like schnitzel.”)

In the past twenty-two years, nobody has built more superyachts than the Vitellis, an Italian family whose patriarch, Paolo Vitelli, got his start in the seventies, manufacturing smaller boats near a lake in the mountains. By 1985, their company, Azimut, had grown large enough to buy the Benetti shipyards, which had been building enormous yachts since the nineteenth century. Today, the combined company builds its largest boats near the sea, but the family still works in the hill town of Avigliana, where a medieval monastery towers above a valley. When I visited in April, Giovanna Vitelli, the vice-president and the founder’s daughter, led me through the experience of customizing a yacht.

“We’re using more and more virtual reality,” she said, and a staffer fitted me with a headset. When the screen blinked on, I was inside a 3-D mockup of a yacht that is not yet on the market. I wandered around my suite for a while, checking out swivel chairs, a modish sideboard, blond wood panelling on the walls. It was convincing enough that I collided with a real-life desk.

After we finished with the headset, it was time to pick the décor. The industry encourages an introspective evaluation: What do you want your yacht to say about you? I was handed a vibrant selection of wood, marble, leather, and carpet. The choices felt suddenly grave. Was I cut out for the chiselled look of Cream Vesuvio, or should I accept that I’m a gray Cardoso Stone? For carpets, I liked the idea of Chablis Corn White—Paris and the prairie, together at last. But, for extra seating, was it worth splurging for the V.I.P. Vanity Pouf?

Some designs revolve around a single piece of art. The most expensive painting ever sold, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi,” reportedly was hung on the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s four-hundred-and-thirty-nine-foot yacht Serene, after the Louvre rejected a Saudi demand that it hang next to the “Mona Lisa.” Art conservators blanched at the risks that excess humidity and fluctuating temperatures could pose to a five-hundred-year-old painting. Often, collectors who want to display masterpieces at sea commission replicas.

If you’ve just put half a billion dollars into a boat, you may have qualms about the truism that material things bring less happiness than experiences do. But this, too, can be finessed. Andrew Grant Super, a co-founder of the “experiential yachting” firm Berkeley Rand, told me that he served a uniquely overstimulated clientele: “We call them the bored billionaires.” He outlined a few of his experience products. “We can plot half of the Pacific Ocean with coördinates, to map out the Battle of Midway,” he said. “We re-create the full-blown battles of the giant ships from America and Japan. The kids have haptic guns and haptic vests. We put the smell of cordite and cannon fire on board, pumping around them.” For those who aren’t soothed by the scent of cordite, Super offered an alternative. “We fly 3-D-printed, architectural freestanding restaurants into the middle of the Maldives, on a sand shelf that can only last another eight hours before it disappears.”

For some, the thrill lies in the engineering. Staluppi, born in Brooklyn, was an auto mechanic who had no experience with the sea until his boss asked him to soup up a boat. “I took the six-cylinder engines out and put V-8 engines in,” he recalled. Once he started commissioning boats of his own, he built scale models to conduct tests in water tanks. “I knew I could never have the biggest boat in the world, so I says, ‘You know what? I want to build the fastest yacht in the world.’ The Aga Khan had the fastest yacht, and we just blew right by him.”

In Italy, after decking out my notional yacht, I headed south along the coast, to Tuscan shipyards that have evolved with each turn in the country’s history. Close to the Carrara quarries, which yielded the marble that Michelangelo turned into David, ships were constructed in the nineteenth century, to transport giant blocks of stone. Down the coast, the yards in Livorno made warships under the Fascists, until they were bombed by the Allies. Later, they began making and refitting luxury yachts. Inside the front gate of a Benetti shipyard in Livorno, a set of models depicted the firm’s famous modern creations. Most notable was the megayacht Nabila, built in 1980 for the high-living arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, with a hundred rooms and a disco that was the site of legendary decadence. (Khashoggi’s budget for prostitution was so extravagant that a French prosecutor later estimated he paid at least half a million dollars to a single madam in a single year.)

In 1987, shortly before Khashoggi was indicted for mail fraud and obstruction of justice (he was eventually acquitted), the yacht was sold to the real-estate developer Donald Trump, who renamed it Trump Princess. Trump was never comfortable on a boat—“Couldn’t get off fast enough,” he once said—but he liked to impress people with his yacht’s splendor. In 1991, while three billion dollars in debt, Trump ceded the vessel to creditors. Later in life, though, he discovered enthusiastic support among what he called “our beautiful boaters,” and he came to see quality watercraft as a mark of virtue—a way of beating the so-called élite. “We got better houses, apartments, we got nicer boats, we’re smarter than they are,” he told a crowd in Fargo, North Dakota. “Let’s call ourselves, from now on, the super-élite.”

In the age of oversharing, yachts are a final sanctum of secrecy, even for some of the world’s most inveterate talkers. Oprah, after returning from her sojourn with the Obamas, rebuffed questions from reporters. “What happens on the boat stays on the boat,” she said. “We talked, and everybody else did a lot of paddleboarding.”

I interviewed six American superyacht owners at length, and almost all insisted on anonymity or held forth with stupefying blandness. “Great family time,” one said. Another confessed, “It’s really hard to talk about it without being ridiculed.” None needed to be reminded of David Geffen’s misadventure during the early weeks of the pandemic, when he Instagrammed a photo of his yacht in the Grenadines and posted that he was “avoiding the virus” and “hoping everybody is staying safe.” It drew thousands of responses, many marked #EatTheRich, others summoning a range of nautical menaces: “At least the pirates have his location now.”

The yachts extend a tradition of seclusion as the ultimate luxury. The Medici, in sixteenth-century Florence, built elevated passageways, or corridoi , high over the city to escape what a scholar called the “clash of classes, the randomness, the smells and confusions” of pedestrian life below. More recently, owners of prized town houses in London have headed in the other direction, building three-story basements so vast that their construction can require mining engineers—a trend that researchers in the United Kingdom named “luxified troglodytism.”

Water conveys a particular autonomy, whether it’s ringing the foot of a castle or separating a private island from the mainland. Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, gave startup funding to the Seasteading Institute, a nonprofit group co-founded by Milton Friedman’s grandson, which seeks to create floating mini-states—an endeavor that Thiel considered part of his libertarian project to “escape from politics in all its forms.” Until that fantasy is realized, a white boat can provide a start. A recent feature in Boat International , a glossy trade magazine, noted that the new hundred-and-twenty-five-million-dollar megayacht Victorious has four generators and “six months’ autonomy” at sea. The builder, Vural Ak, explained, “In case of emergency, god forbid, you can live in open water without going to shore and keep your food stored, make your water from the sea.”

Much of the time, superyachts dwell beyond the reach of ordinary law enforcement. They cruise in international waters, and, when they dock, local cops tend to give them a wide berth; the boats often have private security, and their owners may well be friends with the Prime Minister. According to leaked documents known as the Paradise Papers, handlers proposed that the Saudi crown prince take delivery of a four-hundred-and-twenty-million-dollar yacht in “international waters in the western Mediterranean,” where the sale could avoid taxes.

Builders and designers rarely advertise beyond the trade press, and they scrupulously avoid leaks. At Lürssen, a German shipbuilding firm, projects are described internally strictly by reference number and code name. “We are not in the business for the glory,” Peter Lürssen, the C.E.O., told a reporter. The closest thing to an encyclopedia of yacht ownership is a site called SuperYachtFan, run by a longtime researcher who identifies himself only as Peter, with a disclaimer that he relies partly on “rumors” but makes efforts to confirm them. In an e-mail, he told me that he studies shell companies, navigation routes, paparazzi photos, and local media in various languages to maintain a database with more than thirteen hundred supposed owners. Some ask him to remove their names, but he thinks that members of that economic echelon should regard the attention as a “fact of life.”

To work in the industry, staff must adhere to the culture of secrecy, often enforced by N.D.A.s. On one yacht, O’Shannassy, the captain, learned to communicate in code with the helicopter pilot who regularly flew the owner from Switzerland to the Mediterranean. Before takeoff, the pilot would call with a cryptic report on whether the party included the presence of a Pomeranian. If any guest happened to overhear, their cover story was that a customs declaration required details about pets. In fact, the lapdog was a constant companion of the owner’s wife; if the Pomeranian was in the helicopter, so was she. “If no dog was in the helicopter,” O’Shannassy recalled, the owner was bringing “somebody else.” It was the captain’s duty to rebroadcast the news across the yacht’s internal radio: “Helicopter launched, no dog, I repeat no dog today”—the signal for the crew to ready the main cabin for the mistress, instead of the wife. They swapped out dresses, family photos, bathroom supplies, favored drinks in the fridge. On one occasion, the code got garbled, and the helicopter landed with an unanticipated Pomeranian. Afterward, the owner summoned O’Shannassy and said, “Brendan, I hope you never have such a situation, but if you do I recommend making sure the correct dresses are hanging when your wife comes into your room.”

In the hierarchy on board a yacht, the most delicate duties tend to trickle down to the least powerful. Yacht crew—yachties, as they’re known—trade manual labor and obedience for cash and adventure. On a well-staffed boat, the “interior team” operates at a forensic level of detail: they’ll use Q-tips to polish the rim of your toilet, tweezers to lift your fried-chicken crumbs from the teak, a toothbrush to clean the treads of your staircase.

Many are English-speaking twentysomethings, who find work by doing the “dock walk,” passing out résumés at marinas. The deals can be alluring: thirty-five hundred dollars a month for deckhands; fifty thousand dollars in tips for a decent summer in the Med. For captains, the size of the boat matters—they tend to earn about a thousand dollars per foot per year.

Yachties are an attractive lot, a community of the toned and chipper, which does not happen by chance; their résumés circulate with head shots. Before Andy Cohen was a talk-show host, he was the head of production and development at Bravo, where he green-lighted a reality show about a yacht crew: “It’s a total pressure cooker, and they’re actually living together while they’re working. Oh, and by the way, half of them are having sex with each other. What’s not going to be a hit about that?” The result, the gleefully seamy “Below Deck,” has been among the network’s top-rated shows for nearly a decade.

Billboard that resembles on for an injury lawyer but is actually of a woman saying I told you so.

To stay in the business, captains and crew must absorb varying degrees of petty tyranny. An owner once gave O’Shannassy “a verbal beating” for failing to negotiate a lower price on champagne flutes etched with the yacht’s logo. In such moments, the captain responds with a deferential mantra: “There is no excuse. Your instruction was clear. I can only endeavor to make it better for next time.”

The job comes with perilously little protection. A big yacht is effectively a corporation with a rigid hierarchy and no H.R. department. In recent years, the industry has fielded increasingly outspoken complaints about sexual abuse, toxic impunity, and a disregard for mental health. A 2018 survey by the International Seafarers’ Welfare and Assistance Network found that more than half of the women who work as yacht crew had experienced harassment, discrimination, or bullying on board. More than four-fifths of the men and women surveyed reported low morale.

Karine Rayson worked on yachts for four years, rising to the position of “chief stew,” or stewardess. Eventually, she found herself “thinking of business ideas while vacuuming,” and tiring of the culture of entitlement. She recalled an episode in the Maldives when “a guest took a Jet Ski and smashed into a marine reserve. That damaged the coral, and broke his Jet Ski, so he had to clamber over the rocks and find his way to the shore. It was a private hotel, and the security got him and said, ‘Look, there’s a large fine, you have to pay.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, the boat will pay for it.’ ” Rayson went back to school and became a psychotherapist. After a period of counselling inmates in maximum-security prisons, she now works with yacht crew, who meet with her online from around the world.

Rayson’s clients report a range of scenarios beyond the boundaries of ordinary employment: guests who did so much cocaine that they had no appetite for a chef’s meals; armed men who raided a boat offshore and threatened to take crew members to another country; owners who vowed that if a young stew told anyone about abuse she suffered on board they’d call in the Mafia and “skin me alive.” Bound by N.D.A.s, crew at sea have little recourse.“We were paranoid that our e-mails were being reviewed, or we were getting bugged,” Rayson said.

She runs an “exit strategy” course to help crew find jobs when they’re back on land. The adjustment isn’t easy, she said: “You’re getting paid good money to clean a toilet. So, when you take your C.V. to land-based employers, they might question your skill set.” Despite the stresses of yachting work, Rayson said, “a lot of them struggle with integration into land-based life, because they have all their bills paid for them, so they don’t pay for food. They don’t pay for rent. It’s a huge shock.”

It doesn’t take long at sea to learn that nothing is too rich to rust. The ocean air tarnishes metal ten times as fast as on land; saltwater infiltrates from below. Left untouched, a single corroding ulcer will puncture tanks, seize a motor, even collapse a hull. There are tricks, of course—shield sensitive parts with resin, have your staff buff away blemishes—but you can insulate a machine from its surroundings for only so long.

Hang around the superyacht world for a while and you see the metaphor everywhere. Four months after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the war had eaten a hole in his myths of competence. The Western campaign to isolate him and his oligarchs was proving more durable than most had predicted. Even if the seizures of yachts were mired in legal disputes, Finley, the former C.I.A. officer, saw them as a vital “pressure point.” She said, “The oligarchs supported Putin because he provided stable authoritarianism, and he can no longer guarantee that stability. And that’s when you start to have cracks.”

For all its profits from Russian clients, the yachting industry was unsentimental. Brokers stripped photos of Russian yachts from their Web sites; Lürssen, the German builder, sent questionnaires to clients asking who, exactly, they were. Business was roaring, and, if some Russians were cast out of the have-yachts, other buyers would replace them.

On a cloudless morning in Viareggio, a Tuscan town that builds almost a fifth of the world’s superyachts, a family of first-time owners from Tel Aviv made the final, fraught preparations. Down by the docks, their new boat was suspended above the water on slings, ready to be lowered for its official launch. The scene was set for a ceremony: white flags in the wind, a plexiglass lectern. It felt like the obverse of the dockside scrum at the Palm Beach show; by this point in the buying process, nobody was getting vetted through binoculars. Waitresses handed out glasses of wine. The yacht venders were in suits, but the new owners were in upscale Euro casual: untucked linen, tight jeans, twelve-hundred-dollar Prada sneakers. The family declined to speak to me (and the company declined to identify them). They had come asking for a smaller boat, but the sales staff had talked them up to a hundred and eleven feet. The Victorians would have been impressed.

The C.E.O. of Azimut Benetti, Marco Valle, was in a buoyant mood. “Sun. Breeze. Perfect day to launch a boat, right?” he told the owners. He applauded them for taking the “first step up the big staircase.” The selling of the next vessel had already begun.

Hanging aloft, their yacht looked like an artifact in the making; it was easy to imagine a future civilization sifting the sediment and discovering that an earlier society had engaged in a building spree of sumptuous arks, with accommodations for dozens of servants but only a few lucky passengers, plus the occasional Pomeranian.

We approached the hull, where a bottle of spumante hung from a ribbon in Italian colors. Two members of the family pulled back the bottle and slung it against the yacht. It bounced off and failed to shatter. “Oh, that’s bad luck,” a woman murmured beside me. Tales of that unhappy omen abound. In one memorable case, the bottle failed to break on Zaca, a schooner that belonged to Errol Flynn. In the years that followed, the crew mutinied and the boat sank; after being re-floated, it became the setting for Flynn’s descent into cocaine, alcohol, orgies, and drug smuggling. When Flynn died, new owners brought in an archdeacon for an onboard exorcism.

In the present case, the bottle broke on the second hit, and confetti rained down. As the family crowded around their yacht for photos, I asked Valle, the C.E.O., about the shortage of new boats. “Twenty-six years I’ve been in the nautical business—never been like this,” he said. He couldn’t hire enough welders and carpenters. “I don’t know for how long it will last, but we’ll try to get the profits right now.”

Whatever comes, the white-boat world is preparing to insure future profits, too. In recent years, big builders and brokers have sponsored a rebranding campaign dedicated to “improving the perception of superyachting.” (Among its recommendations: fewer ads with girls in bikinis and high heels.) The goal is partly to defuse #EatTheRich, but mostly it is to soothe skittish buyers. Even the dramatic increase in yacht ownership has not kept up with forecasts of the global growth in billionaires—a disparity that represents the “one dark cloud we can see on the horizon,” as Øino, the naval architect, said during an industry talk in Norway. He warned his colleagues that they needed to reach those “potential yacht owners who, for some reason, have decided not to step up to the plate.”

But, to a certain kind of yacht buyer, even aggressive scrutiny can feel like an advertisement—a reminder that, with enough access and cash, you can ride out almost any storm. In April, weeks after the fugitive Motor Yacht A went silent, it was rediscovered in physical form, buffed to a shine and moored along a creek in the United Arab Emirates. The owner, Melnichenko, had been sanctioned by the E.U., Switzerland, Australia, and the U.K. Yet the Emirates had rejected requests to join those sanctions and had become a favored wartime haven for Russian money. Motor Yacht A was once again arrayed in almost plain sight, like semaphore flags in the wind. ♦

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The extravagant life of Gianluca Vacchi, the Italian millionaire with an 11 million-strong Instagram following who now has his sights set on acting

50-year-old multimillionaire entrepreneur Gianluca Vacchi is not your average Instagram star — he's certainly done things his own way.

Having retired from a career in business, the silver-haired, tattooed Italian took social media by a storm last year when a video he posted of himself dancing on holiday with his partner at the time went viral.

He has since gained a huge Instagram following — over 11 million — with whom he shares his outrageously lavish lifestyle aboard private jets, yachts, and fast cars.

Business Insider spoke to Vacchi after he'd just touched down in Italy to wish his mother a Merry Christmas.

Scroll down for a sneak peek inside the extravagant world of Gianluca Vacchi.

This is 50-year-old Gianluca Vacchi, the multimillionaire entrepreneur known to most people because of the lavish lifestyle he shares with his 11 million-strong Instagram following.

Business Insider caught up with Vacchi just after he'd just touched down in Italy to wish his mother a Merry Christmas before he jetted back to Miami to spend Christmas Day and New Year's Eve in the sunshine.

Vacchi shot to social media fame about a year and a half ago when he shared this video of himself dancing to Ricky Martin with his partner at the time Italian model Giorgia Gabriele while on holiday. It went viral.

Saturday afternoon fever😄 @jogiorgiajo @ricky_martin #gvlifestyle #mordidita #rickymartin A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Jul 23, 2016 at 7:04am PDT Jul 23, 2016 at 7:04am PDT

The couple posted a series of videos in which they performed synchronised dances during the summer of 2016. They were viewed millions of times.

Vacchi told Business Insider his life so far can be be divided "very clearly" into two parts: the first one being his life "under the working point of view" which lasted until he was 45.

Turkey 🇹🇷 here i am...let's enjoy! #gvlifestyle A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Jun 25, 2017 at 12:07pm PDT Jun 25, 2017 at 12:07pm PDT

Vacchi said he went into the "family businesses" at the age of 25 after finishing his studies in economics. Along with his cousin, he took on some of his family's companies which were in need of deep restructuring and then once he'd turned them around, listed them on the stock exchange.

At 29, he said he decided to become a shareholder instead, and went into private equity, buying and selling companies in different sectors. And at one point had his fingers in pies across 12 or 13 different sectors.

"At 45 I realised that the world didn't have anything to give me anymore," he told BI. "I'm not interested in accumulating money at all any more, I'm only interested in what's moving my curiosity."

Miami for one day..tomorrow heading towards Europe and thursday back to Miami ... @laneus_world #gvlifestyle A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Nov 19, 2017 at 8:46pm PST Nov 19, 2017 at 8:46pm PST

Vacchi said that while he no longer manages companies he still considers himself to be an entrepreneur as a shareholder. For example, he still owns a stake in his family's Bologna-based conglomerate IMA, which manufactures machines for the processing and packaging of pharmaceuticals and other products.

What really piqued his interest was the world of social media. Now, his Instagram account is a platform where he shows off his flamboyant personality through an array of brightly-coloured tailored suits, velvet slippers, and impressive pyjama collection.

Attila #gvlifestyle A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Jul 16, 2016 at 12:07pm PDT Jul 16, 2016 at 12:07pm PDT

"I wasn’t old enough not to be interested in the ways of dialogue between young people, and the ways of being entertained by young people," he said. He set his sights on understanding the way social media works and says it became "clear" that it was something he could be a part of.

Now, he likes to think of himself as a "global entertainer and celebrity."

Run towards the target and never give up! Do always what you wanna do and not what others are expecting you to do! Life is yours! #gvlifestyle #gvrules A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Nov 7, 2017 at 6:45am PST Nov 7, 2017 at 6:45am PST

"It used to be that the first thing people did was look at the newspaper, now they wake up and go on Instagram," he said. "People are more interested in other peoples' lives than their own. It is very strange, but it's like that."

Vacchi trains for over an hour each day, no matter where he is in the world, and often shares his workouts with his followers.

Morning training ..bum bum tam tam😉 #gvlifestyle A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Dec 20, 2017 at 4:14am PST Dec 20, 2017 at 4:14am PST

He has even published his own self-congratulatory book entitled '#Enjoy.'

Give color to your life #gvlifestyle A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Aug 13, 2016 at 11:55am PDT Aug 13, 2016 at 11:55am PDT

In the book, which came out in 2016, he writes about his decision to retire at 45, after his 20-year career.

His ostentatious lifestyle — known by the hashtag #gvlifestyle — certainly divides opinion, but one thing's for sure — a scroll through his feed is hugely entertaining.

Leaving Miami towards Ibiza and Madrid.. #gvlifestyle A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Nov 20, 2017 at 1:14pm PST Nov 20, 2017 at 1:14pm PST

The endless glamorous settings and parties — where you might catch him spinning vinyl with an anklet-adorned foot or doing a back flip off a yacht — make for compulsive viewing.

Dancing is a big part of his life, though he says he has never taken a dance class. "It's in my blood," he said.

Typical look for a favela dance🕺🕺 Ps can't stop dancing even while texting on serious matters 😂 #gvlifestyle @luca_rubinacci A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Dec 12, 2017 at 7:06am PST Dec 12, 2017 at 7:06am PST

Vacchi's dancing posts, often performed to Brazilian Baile Funk or Latino music, are still popular with his followers — and it's fair to say some are pretty infectious.

Dancing, he said, reflects just another portion of the philosophy on which he bases his lavish lifestyle and attracts people.

"You can do serious stuff even if you have an ironic or funny take on life," he said. "I do it spontaneously, if I listen to music it's just natural to me wherever I am, whoever I'm with."

Vacchi's Instagram is peppered with shots of him posing on private jets, of which he said: "I’m not scared of showing myself on a jet — if I do it's because I deserve to do it."

Breakfast..towards Zurich #gvlifestyle A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Nov 24, 2017 at 12:01am PST Nov 24, 2017 at 12:01am PST

He told Business Insider that he likes to ride on private jets because they offer "more flexibility, more speed, and more comfort."

Asked about the obsession with the private jet lifestyle made popular by the likes of "Rich Kids of Instagram" and celebrities, he responded: "People are aiming [to have a] better quality of lifestyle, but what people often don't understand is that a picture [of someone] on a private jet is usually the result of something that you have done many years earlier."

Vacchi said while people out there project a different life online than their reality, that's not him. It's important to him and his young following that he is "coherent, with no mask or filter. I just show myself as I am."

"I never stay more than one week in the same place," he said. "For me being one week in the same place is already something strange, in the past it was different but now I'm constantly travelling."

Ready for the season in Miami😉 #gvlifestyle #followingthesun A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Oct 30, 2017 at 2:57pm PDT Oct 30, 2017 at 2:57pm PDT

And he always travels with plenty of Louis Vuitton and Mulberry luggage.

While he is often on the go, his two main bases are in Italy and Miami.

He told Business Insider: "All of my houses are different, depending on where they're located."

And this also applies to his outfit choices. "I have no one style, it all depends on my mood that day. It's the same with music [I play]."

Above, he's pictured in his "red passion suite" at his base in Milan.

Miami has also served as a base for him to launch his DJ career, and this year Vacchi released his first ever single, 'Viento.'

Great night at @miaclubbing @nicolazucchi #gianlucavacchi A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Sep 3, 2017 at 5:30am PDT Sep 3, 2017 at 5:30am PDT

"I enjoy all kinds of music, deep house, Brazilian music," he told Business Insider — though you won't catch him playing techno as that doesn't match his "joyful" mood. "I don't want [to play] very flat boom boom boom music, I prefer strong drops."

Above he's pictured DJing at Mia Club. He'll play at Wall nightclub on Miami Beach on New Year's Eve, after which he'll probably fly to Colombia, then possibly the Bahamas.

In August 2017, Vacchi made headlines under less desirable circumstances. There were reports that he had had some of his assets seized to service debts.

Smile therapy... #gvlifestyle @effek A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Aug 23, 2017 at 7:03am PDT Aug 23, 2017 at 7:03am PDT

The Independent cited reports from Italian tabloid Quotidiano which said Vacchi had had assets and shares seized over a £9.5 million (€10.5 million) debt.

The reports prompted some to react with delight on social media, mocking his flaunted life of luxury.

Yet he continues to show off a hedonistic lifestyle.

Strange pink animals in the swimming pool at H2o.. @ginevramavilla #gvlifestyle A post shared by Gianluca Vacchi (@gianlucavacchi) on Aug 19, 2017 at 8:34am PDT Aug 19, 2017 at 8:34am PDT

Vacchi averages hundreds of thousands of likes per photo on Instagram and millions of views of his videos, but the comments he receives are mixed.

Some are awestruck fans who post endless congratulatory emojis asking for more context on where he is, what he's doing, and who he's with, while others appear outraged at the extent of the extravagance lifestyle that he projects.

Either way, Vacchi doesn't appear to respond to many of them, good or bad.

Gianluca Vacchi – the silver influencer who dances in his pants for a living

By Stuart McGurk

Image may contain Skin Human Person Tattoo and Arm

Imagine Jeff Goldblum crossed with a biker gang. Gianluca Vacchi is the silver fox of Instagram, a 51-year-old Italian playboy millionaire and a man with so many tattoos he looks, from a distance, like a treasure map has sprouted limbs.

If his Instagram following was a country, which would it be?

With 11.5 million followers, Vacchi would be Belgium (pop. 11.49m).

What might I know him from?

Primarily, blogs like this which write about people like him. He has been described, variously, as a “multimillionaire entrepreneur” (Business Insider), a “hedonism-loving playboy” (the Independent ), a “billionaire” (the Evening Standard ) and a “self-made multimillionaire” (Yahoo). These descriptions are only slightly undermined by the fact that a) he doesn’t currently have a job, b) his hedonism seems to solely consist of dancing in his pants, c) he’s not a billionaire and d) he inherited his millions from the family business, which he then sold.

His internet fame began when he posted a video in 2016 showing him dancing by a pool with a model while he wore what appeared to be a ruthlessly shanghaied handkerchief around his waist.

Crucially, despite his middle age and salt-and-pepper hair , this displayed the abdominal “V lines” of a man who regularly does the kind of gym workout that would get you arrested in public.

He became the internet’s silver influencer of choice: to paraphrase Gay Talese on Frank Sinatra, the influencer who does not feel old, who makes old men feel young, who makes them think that if a sex Santa trust-fund millionaire with sex abs can do it, that it can be done.

What’s his latest ‘project’?

Glad you asked, as Vacchi has parlayed his internet fame into... well, different internet fame. Notably, a music video in February called "Trump-It". Was this, you ask, a scathing satire regarding the leadership and morality of the 45th president of the United States ? No, it was a music video where the entirety of the lyrics – and I’m not making this up – are “Let's go! / Let's go! / Let's go! / Let's go! / Let's go!” .

The video consists of Vacchi waking up in an all-white penthouse, watching an army of models in all-white bikinis waggle their bits, doing some light air DJing, and dancing on a yacht with only minimal movement from his arms or feet, in the style of a hostage trying to escape from a sack.

It was not a success, but try not to feel too bad for him. The Evening Standard recently named Vacchi as the fourth most influential fashion Instagrammer, earning up to $16,750 for a single post. Though they did also call him a billionaire, so maybe take that with a pinch of salt.

Instagram content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

And what’s this ’gram about?

This, my friends, is the lesser-spotted “no-look” ’gram. While many influential Instagrammers will agonise over the perfect pose and kindest lighting, getting everything just so for that smouldering glance towards toward internet posterity, the “no-look” shot is for those who like to pretend their lifestyle is so full and hectic and downright ka-ray-zey that they literally have no time to look at the camera while the photo is being taken.

The pioneer of the no-look crazy lifestyle ’gram is, of course, Instagram id Dan Bilzerian , who is far too busy throwing women into swimming pools from nearby rooftops or shooting semiautomatic weapons into the sky to look straight down the lens.

Vacchi has taken this technique and made it his own: take it quickly , every shot seems to say, I need to go and dance in my pants somewhere!

In this shot, Vacchi tells us, he is about to travel to Miami (“Miami see you soon”) followed by his trademark hashtag (#gvlifestyle). So preoccupied is he by this that he has seemingly been forced into this shot much like one tries to take a picture of the family pet: waggle its favourite squeaky toy just off camera in the hope it’ll look your way long enough, take the picture and then decide it’ll do when you realise the squeaky toy was too much to the left.

For this shot I’m imagining someone waving a stick with bras tacked to the end and shouting, “Vacchi! Vachhi! Look, bras! Bras, Vachhi! They're your favorite!"

And, much like that shot of the much-loved family pet, who cares if you don’t get them looking directly at the camera : just look how happy the little fella is!

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Rich Man, Bad Yacht

By Gail Collins

Aug. 18, 2010

“I started with absolutely nothing and I have lived the American dream,” Jeff Greene, a Senate candidate and billionaire, told a small crowd in one of Miami’s poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhoods this week.

It was not entirely clear how the cheering audience found this information.

But Greene kept repeating it. Like almost all the really, really rich people running for office this year, he regards his story as the core of his campaign. His policy message (jobs, jobs, jobs) and his prescriptions for the American economy (education, infrastructure repair, home weatherization) are pretty much what the Democrats have been pushing in Washington for the last two years.

But Barack Obama doesn’t have a $24 million house and a 145-foot yacht.

“I’m a regular middle-class kid who achieved the American dream,” Greene reminded his listeners.

Greene popped up out of nowhere earlier this year, prepared to “spend what it takes” to grab the Democratic nomination in the U.S. Senate race in Florida to go to Washington and do for America what he has done for his bank account.

Once again, voters are being asked to decide whether the cure for their problems lies in a person who is long on money and short on listening skills. After Greene talked about jobs, jobs, jobs, an unemployed landscaper came up and asked what he would do about the horrific crime rate in the neighborhood.

“Crime is directly related to jobs,” said Greene.

A woman with respiratory problems wanted to know about housing.

“Jobs, housing these are basic needs.”

Being the rich candidate is not without its burdens. For one, there’s the matter of that yacht, the Summerwind. Greene might see himself as an upstanding family man, but his yacht is bad, bad, bad. It’s an embarrassing, headline-making connection the Levi Johnston of boats.

The government of Belize says Summerwind tore up a part of a national coral reef with its anchor, but Greene denies knowing anything about it. The yacht went to Cuba, apparently breaking the American embargo. Greene says that was just for emergency repairs, and, anyway, he spent the downtime visiting Cuban synagogues.

Former employees keep telling reporters about wild parties. There are claims that one involved “naked drunken people everywhere.” Greene says these are fantasies cooked up by disgruntled former workers, or reporters trying to blame him for the lifestyle of some of the yacht’s “colorful guests.”

Clearly, the Summerwind has a life of its own, cruising around the globe, burning 50 gallons of fuel an hour, throwing orgies for B-list celebrities while Greene is home reading. It played host to Lindsay Lohan, who Greene claims he’s barely met. It took Mike Tyson on a Black Sea cruise that culminated in a drug-and-sex romp in Amsterdam, but Greene was only around for the part where they visited an 11th-century monastery in Ukraine.

Florida’s primary is Tuesday, and Greene is engaged in mortal combat with Kendrick Meek, a four-term congressman. Greene (white, wealthy) insists Meek (black, yachtless) is the insider in the race, and he does have a point. Meek’s House seat was basically deeded to him by his mother, former Representative Carrie Meek. At a rally in Miami this week, Carrie reminded the audience that her son had been a highway patrolman “out there on the dangerous streets” without mentioning that he had spent the bulk of his time in uniform working for the governor’s security detail.

Meek seems to be getting by with a lot of help from his friends. Bill Clinton was the star attraction at his rally, and the former president assured the crowd that they would never be disappointed in Kendrick “because he’ll grow every day.” (Clinton specializes in this kind of mini-compliment. On the subject of Barack Obama, Clinton said: “This is my professional opinion. I believe he has done a much better job than he gets credit for.”)

So Meek’s candidacy is all about connections, while Greene’s is all about money. Their policies are pretty similar, so the whole fight has devolved into character assassination. This week when Greene held a “block party” in Meek’s Liberty City district, he referred to the congressman dismissively as “a perfectly nice fellow.” This was quite a step up from his most recent TV ads. (“Kendrick Meek: Corrupt.”)

Greene has promised that if he wins, he’ll give his Senate salary to Florida charities, and many of the most ardent supporters at the event seemed to be hoping to get on that list. Others were lured in with a barbecue, a face painter for the kids and some bands. The theme was to collect canned goods for the hungry, but Greene bought all the cans.

He learns his fate on Tuesday. For Summerwind, I’m thinking the future involves a trip to rehab. Then maybe a reality show for Yachts Gone Wild.

Nicholas D. Kristof is off today.

Miami Beach real estate investor under investigation for firing shotgun from waterfront home

MIAMI (WSVN) - An investigation is underway after a man was seen on video firing his shotgun off a boat at his Miami Beach home.

It was a real blast on Thursday at the high-end Lakeview section on Miami Beach.

Video obtained exclusively by 7News showed the man, identified as Patrick Carroll, firing his shotgun causally on the boat while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.

Carroll is real estate investor who lives in a $16.5 million waterfront mansion.

The 44-year-old, according to law enforcement sources, was firing those shots from a boat that was docked at his home.

In a second video, a second long-gun was also seen. The footage was initially posted on Carroll’s Instagram account, which is now being used in an investigation by the Miami Beach Police Department, who learned about the Bayside shooting session by concerned neighbors.

Police told 7News that officers arrived at Carroll’s home Thursday before being told by him that he was only firing blanks. They also said that a second call was made about Carroll over the weekend, but police have not provided those details.

7News went to Carroll’s home Monday afternoon to get his side of the story, but those at his home didn’t say if he was home or if he would comment on the incident.

When crews returned to his home Monday night, two dogs, a doberman and a Belgian Malinois, were released and roamed the neighborhood without any leashes.

Police were called to the scene.

Carroll eventually came out of his home and said that he was firing blanks from the shotgun and that he was making a gun safety demonstration video.

“I was doing a demonstration. I was doing a demonstration on gun safety,” Carroll said. “Using blanks.”

When confronted about the constant police presence at his home, Carroll claimed he has not done anything wrong and left the scene.

On his Instagram account over the weekend, Carroll seemed to address the gun-play.

“I will slow down the posts,” he said. “Most of the negative things out there about me, and, I think, you know, people, you know think badly about me. They just get the wrong impression.”

Carroll has a significant online presence with over a million Instagram followers.

“I’m a loud guy, I’m 6’4, 220 [pounds]. I’m a big guy, right?” Carroll said in an Instagram post. “The mistake I made on Instagram, you know, if you call it a mistake, is just posting too much content. I’m hyper, I’m ADD. It’s just because, my life is [expletive] awesome.”

Carroll has been in trouble with the law in the past. He is being sued for allegedly spitting at a Wynwood restaurant manager’s face.

He also has open criminal cases for battery, which includes a 2022 arrest at Gold Rush gentleman’s club in Miami. 7News obtained surveillance video from the club during that incident. According to police and victims, Carroll was screaming profanities and racial slurs.

Neighbors at the Lakeview community said that they’ve been calling police for several days.

Police told 7News that their investigating remains active.

No arrests have been made and no charges have been filed.

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Bezos is building a large (127-meters) sailing yacht, complete with 75-meters support vessel. The yacht is known as project Y721. Since he is the world's richest man, he is also the world's rich yacht owner. Bill Gates. Bill Gates is building a large yacht in the Netherlands.
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Owned by: Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, the owner of private investment company Millhouse LLC and owner of Chelsea Football Club. His current net worth is $17.4 billion. Key features: 162.5 metres in length / 9 decks / Top speed of 22 knots / Two swimming pools / Disco hall / Mini submarine / 2 helicopter pads / 24 guest cabins.
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The super-rich also use their yachts to control the level of access they grant to those outside their wealthy circle, says Spence. For example, some exploited maritime law to get rid of the young ...
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WASHINGTON — Earlier this month, a sunburned Steve Bannon, holding a lit cigar and wearing a blue polo shirt with the collar turned up, stood in front of a camera on a yacht owned by his friend Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire.. A YouTube video shows Wengui putting his arm around Bannon as the former Trump campaign chairman denounces the Chinese government and extols the alleged benefits of ...
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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.
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The endless glamorous settings and parties — where you might catch him spinning vinyl with an anklet-adorned foot or doing a back flip off a yacht — make for compulsive viewing. Advertisement
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Opinion
Rich Man, Bad Yacht. By Gail Collins. Aug. 18, 2010. 270. MIAMI. "I started with absolutely nothing and I have lived the American dream," Jeff Greene, a Senate candidate and billionaire, told ...
Miami Beach real estate investor under investigation for firing shotgun
MIAMI (WSVN) - An investigation is underway after a man was seen on video firing his shotgun off a boat at his Miami Beach home. It was a real blast on Thursday at the high-end Lakeview section on ...

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