sky yacht one

Simple Flying

Sky yacht one: the embraer lineage 1000 with a wonderfully nautical concept cabin.

Eddie Sotto designed the unique interior.

Embraer recently revealed several new design concepts for one of its flagship business jets, the Lineage 1000E . These five new concepts were developed exclusively for the Lineage 1000E by world-class designers. The five concepts are called the Kyoto Airship, Skyacht One, Skyranch One, Manhattan, and Hollywood Airship . Let's take a closer look at the large business jet and one of the unique interior concepts, the Skyacht One.

The ultra-large business jet

Embraer developed the Lineage 1000E from one of its successful regional airliners, the Embraer 190 . The Brazilian-based manufacturer first flew the type for the first time on October 26th, 2007, and was granted certification from Brazil's National Civil Aviation Authority (ANAC) and Europe's European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in 2008. In early 2009, the aircraft received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) from early 2009, and Embraer delivered its first Lineage 1000E on May 7th, 2009. Since then, Embraer has delivered nearly 30 of the aircraft to many civil operators. It is also used in the Brazilian Air Force and the Pakistan Navy.

As mentioned earlier, the type is developed from the Embraer 190, a regional jet aircraft. However, Embraer installed additional fuel tanks at the bottom of the aircraft, near the cargo hold space, to increase the aircraft's range. Its range nearly doubled with this addition, giving it a total range of 4,600 nautical miles (5,300 miles). The aircraft has a maximum speed of Mach 0.82 (629 miles per hour) and a service ceiling of 41,000 feet.

Embraer created the Lineage 1000E to include large interior spaces. The cabin can be broken into five sections with a cargo area, bedroom, or restroom with running water. The cross-section of the interior reaches nearly nine feet wide and has a height of six feet seven inches. Depending on the configuration, this large interior can hold up to 19 passengers.

New design concept

Embraer recently revealed several new design concepts for its unique aircraft. One of the listed concepts was called the Skyacht One, designed by experimental designer Eddie Sotto. The Skyacht One is designed to look like a yacht that can fly. It includes a handpainted mahogany exterior that mimics a ship's hull. The vertical stabilizer is painted to match this unique design.

The first step into the cabin is through what Sotto calls the Chartroom Entry. This area includes a planetary clock and a mural inspired by the 15th Century Ducal Palace's Studiolo of Italy. Additionally, the foyer area includes bulkhead walls resembling wood planks and other custom hardware.

The second section of the Lineage 1000E is titled the Conference Room. This area is fitted with white leather seats among mahogany paneling. The Conference Room is equipped with brass, gold, silver, and platinum analog controls to adjust the features of the interior. Other specific features include brass window bezels and leather sunshades to accent the windows.

The main cabin includes a large Chesterfield Sofa and a nearby media center. More mahogany wood paneling surrounds the windows and accents the furniture pieces. Tabletops in the main cabin are lined with Shagreen "Stingray" skin. The unique interior includes SkyPorts, which are small windows that run the length of the cabin. Accent lights are utilized throughout the mahogany paneling that provides adjustable lighting.

Towards the rear of the Lineage 1000E is the aircraft's master suite, which Sotto calls the Captain's Quarter. This unique bedroom includes a ring of SkyPorts on the ceiling, a flat-screen monitor facing the bed, and several reading lights. Maps inspired the Cellarius carpeting, and Macassar was used for the walls. An Armillary Sphere emblem is inlaid on a secret sliding door that leads to the master bathroom.

The master bathroom features a unique faucet that was inspired by throttle controls. An interesting gauge is the main feature of the faucet and displays the temperature of the water. A bronze mirror is fitted over the walnut and brass sink. The countertops are topped with green Malachite. Other accents included various aspects of spotlighting, mahogany walls, and brass fittings.

Sotto obviously got the inspiration for the Skyacht One from the idea of a flying yacht. However, Sotto was further inspired by the works of George Whittell Jr. The Lake Tahoe, California resident acquired a Thunderbird motor yacht to match his Douglas DC2 plane. Sotto saw the work of matching the beautiful yacht to Whittell's favorite aircraft and was further inspired by the complimentary styles. This led to the development of the Skyacht One for the Embraer Lineage 1000E.

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​​The World’s First “Air Yacht” Would Sail in the Sky and Sea (With Zero Emissions)

By Jessica Cherner

Yachts and private planes make for luxurious ways to zip from one place to another, but recently, a businessman based in Germany and Italian designer Pierpaolo Lazzarini discovered what happens when they combine boats and jets: the ultra-sleek sky yacht. Equipped with eight counter-rotating electric engines powered by super-lightweight batteries and solar panels, the nearly 500-foot-long yacht can traverse the sky (and sea) at 60 knots for more than two days straight with zero emissions. Plus, aside from its full-electric mobility, the air yacht is sustainable in other ways too: It will be built entirely from carbon fiber, which is as high-strength as it is lightweight.

The 500-foot futuristic vessel comprises three main parts: a central compartment with a living room and dining area flanked by two inflatable helium blimps that house 10 suites.

Lazzarini’s design looks like something out of the future: a spacious living room and dining area housed within the sky yacht’s central torpedo-shaped structure that’s connected via eight carbon bridges (four on each side) to two 150-foot-long blimps. And the blimps that contain a whopping 14,125,867 cubic feet of helium that keep the vessel high in the sky, flanking the main compartment, aren’t just there to elevate the jet: Between the two, there are 10 guest suites, all of which boast 360-degree views.

The two balloon-like compartments on either side of the impressive vessel comprise an inflatable base that allows the innovative machine to float atop the water surface when the owner is in the mood to sail the sea versus the sky. Though being able to choose which medium makes the most sense for specific destinations sounds like an ideal way to travel, the sky yacht is, unfortunately, still quite a ways off from replacing typical ships and planes. 

The enormous sky yacht is too big to simply park at a marina while its guests climb aboard, so it comes equipped with a retractable staircase.  

For the private owner who commissioned the estimated $627,511,500 sky yacht, however, his new mode of transportation is the way of the future. In fact, Lazzarini has promised that a first-scale model prototype will lift into the air later this year, and a collection of slightly varying designs (of different lengths) is currently in the early phases of both engineering and prototyping. So, perhaps we’ll all be passengers onboard a boat that flies before the end of the decade.

By Noelann Bourgade

By Zoë Sessums

By Jocelyn Silver

By Zoey Goto

• हिंदी मराठी বাংলা

Embraer’s Skyacht One: Easily The Most Luxurious Jet Ever Flown

Last year, we were lusting over Bombardier’s Global 7000 jet for its swanky interiors and luxurious settings; and this year, a Brazil-based aircraft manufacturer unveiled the Skyacht™ One–the ultimate airliner for a billionaire’s airport apron.

From mahogany finished exteriors to uber-luxurious upholstery, here is an inside view of this charter plane that could be yours if you had $83 Million in your bank account.

All images via Skyachtone

Read iDiva for the latest in Bollywood, fashion looks, beauty and lifestyle news.

Offering innovative luxury to clients, the Skyacht™ One jet is based on the Embraer's Flagship Lineage 1000E jet, which is one of the classic designs highlighting the manufacturer’s ‘State of the Art’ craftsmanship. The Skyacht™ One, however, takes this avant-garde design story notches higher with vintage interiors created by the Los Angeles-based Sotto Studios.

Spread across 4000 cubic feet inside, the luxury jet features a chartroom, a conference room, a cocktail bar, master suite and a gorgeous shower and bath, just like one of those ritzy sea liners of the Brit-elites.

The interiors of the jet flaunt mahogany wood finished furnishing, hand-stitched leather and velvet upholstery with brass panelling and gilded fixtures as knobs. The Chartroom features a planetary Clock embedded in a 15th century mural and bejewelled control buttons engraved with gold, silver platinum and brass.

We love the main cabin the most, not only for the LCD screen, the inlaid brass and the wood cabin, but the chesterfield sofa and the cocktail bar make this space ideal for mid-air high tea.

While the main cabin is mindboggling, the master suite will surely get you weak in the knees. Macassar walls, 14th century star maps, silk cellarius carpeting, signature armillary sphere and a kingsize bed with covers worth million, is what you will find in this room. The bathing area is another marvellous creation with a walnut and gold sink, adjustable spotlight, green Malachite shower and vintage fornasetti accessories that will make the elitist skip a heartbeat.

Calling it a yacht that can fly, the 84-foot long airliner is surely on our ultimate lust list for 2016. We can’t wait to see who will own it.

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Skyacht One: Fly aboard the most luxurious flying yacht in the world

• 2 minute read
• February 17, 2016

Skyacht One is now renowned as the most luxurious “flying yacht” in the world. At first, it was just a challenge to the designer Eddie Sotto: he had to create something unique. That is how Skyacht One was born, transposing the elegance and refinement of a yacht into a plane.

The Lineage 1000 E

To give birth to this unique interior, the Skyacht One was built in partnership with Embraer, the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer. This one has offered to Sotto an remarkable plane for his project: the Lineage 1000 E.

This aircraft and its 116m2 can reach 800km/h as a cruising speed and also has 8519 km autonomy. These great achievements will allow Sotto to rein his imagination concerning the Skyacht One ’s interior design.

Upon request, the luxurious and refined Skyacht One design can be adapted to any other aircrafts, smaller or bigger. Now let’s focus on this unique and unseen design.

Noble materials and luxurious design

The Skyacht One can offer a great number of luxurious amenities thanks to its huge area such as: conference room, main cabin with a grand sofa, cocktail bar, dining room and master suite with 4K screen and adjoining bathroom.

The finishes are carefully designed and first-choice materials were selected: teak, woodwork and hand painted “trompe l’oeil” mahogany “hull”, gold and platinum. The interior is made with high quality leather, inside marquetry is inspired by Italian 15 th century expertise and brass ceiling-lights have been inserted.

Many mythical objects from the navigation world have been integrated to Skyacht One as armillary spheres, Arabs Sextant, or a planetary clock from Ducal Palace’s Studiolo, Fornasetti rug…and the result is stunning! A smart lightening system changes the lights colours according to your desires and to the different moments of the day.

This flying vessel is a true treasure specially built by a refinement lover for private, comfortable and grandiose flight lovers. If your want to travel in the most luxurious aircraft in the world, you can buy the Skyacht One for the amount of $83 millions.

More luxurious private aircrafts in our AEROSPACE category

Copyright © Sottostudios/Embraer

Discover Skyacht One

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Top 5 private jets designed by yacht designers

Project mayfair.

Winch Design may be best known in the yachting world for creating masterpieces including Madam Gu , Inoui and Al Mirqab but the studio has design credits which span far more than these magnificent floating palaces. In 2015 it unveiled Project Mayfair , a line of private jets inspired by the elite London district it’s named for. Based on a semi-custom yacht model, each jet begins with a basic design but can be completely customised via a flexible layout and personalised interior design.

Sky Yacht One

Less a private jet by a yacht designer than a private jet that takes all its design cues from yachts , Sky Yacht One was created by LA-based design firm Sotto Studios as a reimagining of an Embraer Lineage 1000E. Inspired by Thunderbird , the yacht designed by John Hacker in 1939 for George Whittell Jr., Sky Yacht One features mahogany ‘decking’, Fornasetti carpets, Reidel crystal and a custom StarClock inspired by traditional naval navigation techniques.

Another private jet project by Winch Design but with an utterly different feel, Atlas aims to bring back the glamour of the golden age of air travel with a focus on utter indulgence. Dark polished wood bookcases complement butter-soft leather chairs, fine crystal and luxury tableware while super soft beds are finished with the finest linens to turn air travel from a chore back into an experience to be enjoyed and savoured.

Bombardier Global 5000

As well as penning the elegant lines and interiors of some of the world’s largest yachts including Pelorus , Al Salamah and Tatoosh , Terence Disdale has also lent the talents of his design studio to Bombardier’s popular Global 5000 business jet. This sleek gunmetal grey craft features an interior of cool cream leather, modern marble furniture and high-tech finishes such as touch screen entertainment centres attached to every seat.

Boeing 747-800

Famous among yachties for designing beautiful sailing yachts including Obsession II , Biniziyad and Apache , along with some wild superyacht concepts , PierreJean Design Studio has also created interiors for some very luxurious private jets. With a portfolio that contains no fewer than 13 private jet concepts, the stand out is undoubtedly the Boeing 747-800 which features huge living areas in a cool cream and brown colour palette, large TV screens integrated into the walls of the plane and even a spiral staircase leading to a cinema-style entertainment space.

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• Superyachts

SKY Yacht – Classy $40 Million Superyacht

The SKY yacht is a superyacht built and delivered in 2010 by Heesen in the Netherlands and she is the largest full-displacement yacht ever built by the Dutch shipbuilding company. 

On the ranking of the largest yachts in the world, she is listed as number 854th.  

SKY yacht interior

The SKY yacht interior was penned by Mojo Stumer Associates, the luxury architecture firm based in Long Island. 

Her timeless and minimal styling helps create an elegant and pleasant atmosphere. SKY is decorated with carbon fiber and steel detailing, and features a neutral color palette, with brown, white, grey, and black hues. 

She was designed to accommodate up to 10 guests in five luxurious cabins, comprising one master suite, two double rooms, and two twin rooms plus two Pullman. 

The master suite is located forward on the main deck and each stateroom has its own private shower room. SKY is also capable of carrying 12 crew members on board in separate cabins. 

This stunning superyacht is also equipped with a gym, jacuzzi, swimming platform, air conditioning, media movie server, WIFI, satellite phone, and TV. 

Her octagonal spa pool is one of the main luxuries SKY has to offer to any guest. 

SKY yacht exterior

The SKY yacht features exterior design by Frank Laupman from Omega Architects and naval architecture by Heesen. 

She has a steel hull and aluminum superstructure with teak decks. SKY is also equipped with a stabilization system and “at anchor stabilizers” that help reduce the rolling motion effect. 

Her toys include water skis, kayaks, wakeboards, kiteboard equipment, snorkeling gear, and spearfishing gear, to mention a few. 

SKY yacht specifications

The SKY yacht is 50.5m long with a beam of 9.6m, a draft of 3.2m, and a volume of 655 GT.

She is powered by 2 MTU engines (3,650HP), which give her a cruising speed of 12.0 knots and a maximum speed of 14.5 knots with a range of 3,200 nautical miles.

She can store up to 80,000 liters of fuel and 20,000 liters of water on board. 

SKY is built to comply with MCA and Lloyd Registration, as well as Yacht Engaged in Trade (YET) Registration. According to some websites, SKY was last refitted in 2021. 

Her summer cruising locations are in France, Monaco, and Corsica, during the winter she cruises in the Maldives.  

She is currently available for private charter, her price is around $40 million and the annual running costs is estimated at $4 million. 

The seasonal charter rate is 245,000 EUR (low rate) and 266,000 EUR (high rate: July, August and special events). Consider this price per week plus expenses. 

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A look at the most expensive superyachts at the Palm Beach yacht show and their insane features, from basketball courts on deck to ice baths and saunas

• The Palm Beach International Boat Show kicks off later this week.
• Eight megayachts are expected to be on display for would-be buyers and charter customers.
• These are the show's biggest yachts — and how many millions of dollars they are going for.

The Palm Beach International Boat Show — the yacht world's flashiest event stateside — is returning this year with over 800 boats for both deep-pocketed potential owners and window shoppers to peruse.

While it's impossible to know what exactly will be on display until the show begins on Thursday, it's expected that eight megayachts — generally defined as ships over 60 meters long — will be docked at the show and at nearby marinas like the Rybovich Marina in the ritzy Florida town.

Some of these are for sale at eye-popping prices, but others are available to charter in case you fancy living like a billionaire for a week or two this summer (and if you have six figures to spare on a vacation).

These are the eight biggest yachts that will be at the Palm Beach International Boat Show and nearby marinas, in size order.

Nero: 90.1 meters

Price: From $497,000 a week (charter) Standout features: Pizza ovens, beauty salon, massage room, resistance pool

Reportedly owned by Irish billionaire Denis O'Brien, Nero is modeled after J.P. Morgan's 1930s ship , and was built in 2007 and updated in 2021.

She now boasts a gym on her sundeck with multiple cardio machines and a beauty salon, and has an on-board beautician for manicure, pedicure, hair, and massage needs. There's also an upgraded movie theater, two new pizza ovens, and both a pool and a jacuzzi.

For those who want to go overboard, she has more than a dozen toys, including a waterslide, Jet Ski, and flyboard.

Victorious: 85 meters

Price: From $876,600 a week in the summer and $950,000 a week in the winter Standout features: Hammam (Turkish bath), wine cellar, wood-burning fireplace, children's playroom

Victorious brings a party vibe to the yacht show. With a beach club on board, a wine cellar, a cigar clubroom , multiple bars, and a lounge with a piano, the vessel is made for entertaining. Plus, there's a playroom and movie theater to entertain the kids.

For tamer charter clients, Victorious has a suite of wellness features such as a gym, massage room, beauty salon and hammam — perhaps a custom request of her owner, Turkish businessman Vural Ak.

She also boasts a treasure trove of water toys, including Jet Skis, jetsurfs, inflatable kayaks, and scuba equipment.

Casino Royale: 72 meters

Price: TBD Special Features: Infinity pool, helipad, private jacuzzi

Purchased and refitted by car dealer magnate John Staluppi last year, Casino Royale is the latest of his James Bond-inspired yachts (he's also owned an Octopussy and a Skyfall, among others).

Casino Royale has a helipad that turns into a dancefloor, an infinity pool, and a wellness center with a gym and sauna. The owner's cabin has its own deck, which features a private bar and jacuzzi.

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However, the boat's price isn't listed, and while she's not necessarily officially for sale, that might change depending on who's prepared to buy, Mr. Bond.

Talisman C: 70.6 meters

Price: $60 million (or from $567,000 a week to charter) Special features: Massage and beauty room, private library

Likely the largest yacht for sale (not just charter) at the show, the Talisman C is a 2011 six-bedroom boat. The owner's cabin comes with an en suite bathroom, dressing room, private library, and crystal chandeliers.

Amenities include a gym, a beauty room, oversized jacuzzi, and a fully equipped bar. Her crew of 19 includes a trained masseuse, and the toy room comes equipped with a wakeboard, eFoil , and WaveRunners.

Joy: 70 meters

Price: From $650,000 a week Special features: Disco club, basketball court, onboard fitness instructor

Superyacht Joy testifies to the fact that owners want as many on-board experiences as they can get.

There's an expansive suite of fitness features, including a basketball court (don't shoot that hoop too hard!), a personal trainer on staff, boxing equipment, and a handful of machines. For post-workout winddowns, there's a spa with a steam room and onboard masseuse. And for entertainment, there's both an outdoor and indoor cinema, and a disco club.

Triumph: 65.4 meters

Price: From $707,600 a week in the summer and $650,000 a week in the winter Special features: Sauna, helipad, banana boat

This 2021 superyacht is named after Triumph motorcycles — a reported favorite of her rumored owner, British businessman Chris Dawson — and even has one on display as an art piece in the upper deck's lounge. The primary suite is 1,400 square feet and has its own study , and there's a sauna, an indoor-outdoor gym, a helipad, and a massage room spread among her six decks.

She boasts an "armada of water toys," including two kinds of Jet Skis, electric water bikes, and a banana boat.

Seanna: 64.5 meters

Price: $54,000,000 (or from $462,000 a week to charter) Special features: marble foyer, movie room, sundeck pool

The recently refurbished Seanna is available for sale and charter.

Her indoor-outdoor gym is on sea level so that passengers can take a dip after a session with the onboard personal trainer. There's also a sundeck pool, a helipad, a two-room massage facility, and, for the more cerebral guests, a library with an electric fireplace.

There are a number of toys on board, including a popular water trampoline and two WaveRunners.

Come Together: 60 meters

Price: $65,000,000 Special Features: DJ and videographer on board, ice bath, sauna

Next-to-new yacht Come Together is looking for a new owner after doing charters during the 2023 season.

The Beatles' influence is evident beyond the yacht's name, with guitars dotting the sky lounge and a crewmember who doubles as a DJ. There's also an outdoor cinema and bar for entertainment and an ice bath and sauna for the day after the party. The owner's suite has a private study and lounge, and each guest cabin has its own ensuite.

The sale includes a number of toys, like Jet Skis, kayaks, and Seabobs.

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Opinion Guest Essay

An Idyll on the Shores of a Toxic Lake

Supported by

Text by Jaime Lowe

Photographs by Nicholas Albrecht

Ms. Lowe is the author of, most recently, “Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires.” Mr. Albrecht is a photographer based in Oakland, Calif.

• March 29, 2024

There are two ways to experience the town of Bombay Beach, Calif., as a visitor: gawk at the spectacle or fall into the vortex. Thousands of tourists cruise through each year, often without getting out of their cars to see decaying art installations left over from an annual mid-March gathering of artists, photographers and documentarians known jokingly as the Bombay Beach Biennale. When I went to the town for the first time in 2021, I was looking for salvation in this weird desert town on the Salton Sea south of Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park. I dropped in, felt vibes and left with stories. I stared at the eccentric large-scale art, posted photos on Instagram of ruin porn and a hot pink sign on the beach that said, “If you’re stuck, call Kim.” I posed in front of a mountain of painted televisions, swung on a swing over the edge of the lake’s retreating shoreline and explored the half-buried, rusted-out cars that make up an abandoned ersatz drive-in movie theater. On that trip, it felt as if I were inside a “Mad Max” simulation, but I was only scratching the surface of the town.

I returned in December to try to understand why Bombay Beach remains so compelling, especially as extreme weather — heat, hurricanes and drought — and pollution wreak ever more intense havoc on it. Summer temperatures can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit, tremors from the San Andreas Fault strike regularly, bomb testing from nearby military facilities can be heard and felt, and the air is so toxic from pesticide use, exhaust fumes, factory emissions and dust rising from the retreating Salton Sea that one study showed asthma rates among children in the region are three times the national average. By the end of the decade, the Salton Sea, California’s largest inland body of water, at about 325 square miles, may lose three-quarters of its volume; in the past 20 years, the sea’s surface area has shrunk about 38 square miles .

But people who live in Bombay Beach stay because the town offers a tight-knit community in the midst of catastrophe. Though its residents contend with environmental adversity on a daily basis, they’re also demonstrating how to navigate the uncertain future we all face — neglect, the fight for scarce resources, destruction of home, the feeling of having no place to go. They are an example of how people can survive wild climate frontiers together.

The 250 or so town residents live in the low desert on the east shore of the Salton Sea, which formed in 1905 when the then-flush Colorado River spilled into a depression, creating a freshwater lake that became increasingly saline. There used to be fish — mullet and carp, then tilapia. In the 1950s and ’60s, the area was marketed as a tourist destination and was advertised as Palm Springs by the Sea. More tourists visited Bombay Beach than Yosemite. There were yacht clubs, boat races and water skiing. It became a celebrity magnet: Frank Sinatra hung out there; so did the Beach Boys and Sonny and Cher.

Eventually, as agricultural runoff kept accumulating in a body of water with no drainage, it became toxic and created a lake with salinity that is now 50 percent greater than that of the ocean. In the 1980s, dead fish washed up on the sand, car ruins rusted in the sun, tires rotted on the shore. Tourism vanished. But some in the community hung on. One way to define Bombay Beach is through environmental disaster, but another way is as an example of how to live through disaster and how to live in general.

Candace Youngberg, a town council member and a bartender at the Ski Inn, remembers a very different Bombay Beach. When she was growing up in the 1980s, she’d ride bikes with neighborhood children and run from yard to yard in a pack because there were no fences. But over time, the town changed. With each passing year, she watched necessities disappear. Now there’s no gas station, no laundromat, no hardware store. Fresh produce is hard to come by. A trailer that was devoted to medical care shut down. In 2021, 60.9 percent of Bombay Beach residents lived below the poverty line, compared with the national average of 12.6 percent.

As painful as it was to witness the town of her youth disappear and as deep as the problems there go, Ms. Youngberg admits that adversity bonded those who stayed. She wanted to return Bombay Beach to the version of the town she remembered, to recreate a beautiful place to live year-round, not just in winter, not just during the art season, not just for the tourists posing in front of wreckage. She wanted people to see the homes, the town, the community that once thrived thrive again. With the art came attention and the potential for more resources. She got on the Bombay Beach Community Services District, a town council, and started to work toward improvements like fixing the roads and planting trees to improve air quality.

It might just be that Bombay Beach is a small town, but when I visited last winter, there was something that felt more collaborative, as though everybody’s lives and business and projects overlapped. I’m not sure the community that’s there now started out as intentional, but when fragmented groups of people come together as custodians of an enigmatic space, responsible for protecting it and one another, community is inevitable. Plus, there’s only one place to socialize, one place to gossip, one place to dance out anxiety and only about two-thirds of a square mile to wander. Whether you like it or not, your neighbors are your people — a town in its purest form.

When I was there, I walked the streets with Denia Nealy, an artist who goes by Czar, and my friend Brenda Ann Kenneally, a photographer and writer, who would shout names, and people would instantly emerge. A stranger offered a handful of Tater Tots to Czar and me in a gesture that felt emblematic: Of course a complete stranger on an electric unicycle would cruise by and share nourishment. I was given a butterfly on a stick, which I carried around like a magic wand because that seemed appropriate and necessary. I was told that if I saw a screaming woman walking down the street with a shiv in her hand, not to worry and not to make eye contact and she’d leave me alone; it was just Stabby. There was talk of the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on the beach, the weekly church sermon led by Jack the preacher (who is also a plumber), a potluck lasagna gathering.

Last year Ms. Kenneally created a trash fashion show/photo series for the Biennale in which she created couture designs out of trash collected from the beach, enlisted regulars in town to model the outfits, then photographed them. (She exhibited a similar series at this year’s festival as well.) The work was a way to showcase the people and the place. Jonathan Hart, a fireworks specialist who slept on the beach, posed like a gladiator; a woman who normally rode through town with a stuffed Kermit the Frog toy strapped to her bike was wrapped in a clear tarp and crown, looking like royalty emerging from the Salton Sea. The environment was harsh, the poses striking. Each frame straddled the line between glamour and destruction but also showcased a community’s pride in survival. Residents were undaunted by the armor of refuse; in fact, it made them stronger. The detritus, what outsiders might think of as garbage, became gorgeous. The landscape that is often described as apocalyptic became ethereal and magical. And that’s because it is.

On my second day, we went down to the docks at noon, and I found myself sitting on a floral mustard couch watching half a dozen or so people taking turns riding Jet Skis into the sun. The sun was hot, even though it was the cool season. Time felt elastic. Mr. Hart told me that he and some friends had fixed up the water scooters to give everyone in town the chance to blow off some steam, to smile a little. It had been a rough couple of months in the region. In preparation for Hurricane Hilary, which hit Mexico and the southwestern United States last August, 26 volunteers made 200 sandbags and delivered them door to door. Neighbors helped secure as many structures as possible.

Most media outlets reported that the hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm because that’s the weather system that hit Los Angeles, but it was close to a hurricane in Bombay Beach, with winds hitting 60 miles per hour, and most properties were surrounded by water. Roofs collapsed or blew away entirely. “When faced with something like that, they were like, ‘Boom, we’re on it,’” Ms. Youngberg told me. They were together in disaster and in celebrating survival.

It reminded me of the writer Rebecca Solnit’s book “A Paradise Built in Hell,” which considers the upside to catastrophe. She finds that people rise to the occasion and oftentimes do it with joy because disaster and survival leave a wake of purposefulness, consequential work and community. Disasters require radical acts of imagination and interaction. It seemed that because Bombay Beach lived hard, surviving climate catastrophes like extreme weather on top of everyday extremes, it celebrated even harder. It seemed that in Bombay Beach there’s enough to celebrate if you just get through the day, gaze at the night sky and do it all again in the morning.

A lot of the residents who live there now arrived with trauma. Living there is its own trauma. But somehow the combination creates a place of care and physical and emotional presence. People experience life intensely, as one. It’s a town that is isolated, but in spite of a loneliness epidemic, it doesn’t seem so lonely to be there. I felt unexpected joy in what, from everything I’d read from afar, was a place that might as well have been sinking into the earth. I felt so safe and so happy that if we had sunk into the earth together, it wouldn’t have felt like such a bad way to go.

On my last night in Bombay Beach, I went to the Ski Inn, a bar that serves as the center of all social activity. I’d been in town for only two days, and yet it felt as if I’d been to the Ski Inn a million times, as if I already knew everyone and they knew me. A band was playing, we danced and drank, and I forgot about the 8 p.m. kitchen cutoff. The chef apologized, but he’d been working since 11:45 a.m. and had already cleaned the grill and fryer. He’d saved one mac and cheese for the bartender, and when she heard I hadn’t eaten, she offered to split it with me, not wanting me to go hungry or leave without having tried the mac and cheese.

Bombay Beach is a weird place. And this was an especially weird feeling. I had been instantly welcomed into the fold of community and cared for, even though I was a stranger in a very strange land.

I realized I didn’t want to leave. There were lessons there — how to live with joy and purpose in the face of certain catastrophe, how to exist in the present without the ever presence of doom. Next time, I thought, I’d stay longer, maybe forever, and actually ride a Jet Ski.

Jaime Lowe is a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan and the author of, most recently, “Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires.” Nicholas Albrecht is a photographer based in Oakland, Calif. His first monograph, “One, No One and One Hundred Thousand,” was the culmination of a multiyear project made while living on the shores of the Salton Sea.

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