mega-yacht

The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties
by Paul Collier
Published 4 Dec 2018

Enron’s British equivalents are Robert Maxwell, CEO of Mirror Group Newspapers, who had once been investigated by public officials and found to be ‘unfit to run a public company’, and Philip Green, CEO of BHS, who was actually knighted. Each of them stripped their company of its pension fund, leaving thousands of employees impoverished. Maxwell stepped off the back of his mega-yacht as the scam was about to be discovered; Green still has his mega-yacht, aptly renamed by his critics The BHS Destroyer. Perhaps mega-yachts should be considered leading indicators for ‘creative’ accounting? Options 2 and 3 each have consequences that are seriously damaging for society. Major companies are run without adequate attention to the longer term; and the reported accounts of companies become untrustworthy.

Sardinia Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

There are plenty of schools offering courses and guided dives for all levels from April to October. Expect to pay roughly €40 for a single-tank dive, €420 for a PADI open-water course and €20 per day for equipment hire. Sailing Sailing in Sardinia doesn’t have to mean designer outfits and a mega-yacht on the Costa Smeralda, although that is certainly a part of it. For idyllic summer sailing, pick up a boat in Carloforte and set sail for the secluded coves of the Isola di San Pietro. To the north, the granite isles and protected waters of the Parco Nazionale dell'Arcipelago di La Maddalena are another favourite spot.

…

Each paid roughly US$25,000 for their little piece of paradise, and the coast was christened Costa Smeralda (Emerald Coast) for the brilliant green-blue hue of its waters. What a difference 50 years makes. Today US$25,000 would get you (at a push) a night in the Presidential Suite at Hotel Cala di Volpe, and billionaire jet-setters cruise into Costa Smeralda’s marinas in mega-yachts like floating mansions, and models, royals, Russian oligarchs and balding media moguls come to frolic in its waters. Bill Gates and the Sultan of Brunei, Wayne Rooney and George Clooney have all been spotted here. Starting at Porto Rotondo on the Golfo di Cugnana, about 17km north of Olbia, the Costa stretches for 55km northwards up to the Golfo di Arzachena.

…

He was Minister of the Interior when the Red Brigade (extreme-left terrorists) kidnapped and killed ex-PM Aldo Moro in 1978. 1999 The EU identifies Sardinia as one of a handful of places in Europe in dire need of investment for ‘development and structural upgrading’. 2004 Self-made billionaire Renato Soru is elected president of Sardinia. He sets the cat among the pigeons by banning building within 2km of the coast and taxing holiday homes and mega-yachts. 2008 After 36 years, the US Navy withdraws from the Arcipelago di La Maddalena. It had long divided opinion: friends pointed to the money it brought; critics highlighted the risks of hosting atomic submarines. 2009 Renato Soru is defeated in the February regional election by centre-right candidate Ugo Cappellacci. 2011 In a May referendum, 98% of Sardinians vote against nuclear power.

Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America
by David Callahan
Published 9 Aug 2010

Beyond our immediate circle of friends, family, and coworkers, nobody is paying attention to what we drive or to the square footage of our homes. If ordinary people wish to practice hypocrisy, we can do so in privacy. The rich have to contend not only with the judgment of those closest to them, but also with the broader public. All of this is occurring at a time when the luxury items that are associated with wealth—private jets, mega-yachts, and mansions—have emerged as symbols of planetary destruction. The rich are an easy target for the opprobrium of environmentalists. Yet it’s also true that the rich have historically been concerned about the environment, going back to Theodore Roosevelt, the first environmentalist president of the United States.

…

All the while, oblivious to the suffering of billions, the wealthy treat foreign countries as playgrounds, bopping around in carbon-spewing private jets to places like Cabo San Lucas, Cannes, and Dubai. In any given issue of Vanity Fair, there are stories about Johnny Depp’s private island in the Caribbean or photos of George Clooney at his villa I 103 c05.indd 103 5/11/10 6:19:28 AM 104 fortunes of change on Lake Como or mention of the billionaire-owned mega-yachts that trawl the seas. (Paul Allen’s 416-foot Octopus has been spotted as far afield as Mombasa, Kenya, while the 453-foot Rising Sun, which is jointly owned by Larry Ellison and David Geffen, has turned up in Croatia, Sardinia, and St. Maarten.) But stereotypes of the rich as either neocolonists or jet-setters gloss over the complexity of attitudes that actually hold sway in the upper class.

The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier
by Ian Urbina
Published 19 Aug 2019

Hardberger said he liked the work and that by 1998, after a four-year correspondence course through Northwestern California University, he passed the California bar exam on his first try, without sitting a single day in law school. Four years later, he founded Vessel Extractions with Michael Bono, one of his former high school history students. The firm’s jobs occasionally involved mega-yachts. More often, they were called to retrieve small- to medium-sized “tramp steamers” that trade on the spot market, where ships have no fixed schedule or ports of call, carrying goods between developing countries with poor or unstable governments. Hardberger charged clients in two stages: an initial investigation fee to research the case, and a payment if they managed to successfully repossess the vessel.

…

The stadium lights at Palau’s Asahi baseball field were switched on. Residents were asked to turn on all household lights. Some stood in the streets waving flashlights. Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, who happened to be in Palau at the time, offered up the two helicopters on his 414-foot mega-yacht, the Octopus, for search and rescue. One of Allen’s crew was instructed to fire forty-nine flares, one per minute, into the air. Losing track of the Cessna was especially agonizing for the Palauan police because they could hear the pilot, Frank Ohlinger, and the two officers who were his passengers, Earlee Decherong and Willie Mays Towai, on the radio.

…

Common cases involve ships being taken to “unfriendly jurisdictions”—ports in countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, or Haiti—where local governments are less sympathetic to foreign shipowners. In such instances, options for recovery range from bad to worse. Meacham described being sent to Havana several years earlier to take back a stolen American-owned mega-yacht being used by a prominent Cuban hotel for fishing tours. After renting the boat privately for the day and taking it into international waters, Meacham and his team informed its Cuban captain that he had a choice: return with them to the United States or take a lifeboat back to shore. The captain chose the latter.

All the Money in the World
by Peter W. Bernstein
Published 17 Dec 2008

As he wrote in his 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, “To gain and to hold the esteem11 of men it is not sufficient merely to hold wealth and power. The wealth and power must be put into evidence.” Then, as now, houses were one common extravagance. Evidence of vast wealth might also be a mega-yacht, a private jet, a string of beautiful wives, parties, art, or anything else that strikes the fancy. * * * Everyday essentials for the modern billionaire How much does it take for modern multimillionaires to keep up their lifestyle? To find out, Forbes compiles its annual Cost of Living Extremely Well Index (CLEWI).

…

In a world where even islands are a dime a dozen, these floating palaces separate the haves from the have-mores. * * * Masters and Commanders When Larry Ellison sailed into the industrial port of Valencia, Spain, in 2005 to kick off the city’s multiyear America’s Cup preparations, his Rising Sun yacht was too big for a jetty that had been specially built to dock the expected megayachts. Instead, Ellison had to berth his 453-foot boat on the far side of the harbor next to the container cranes. In an effort to prevent similar embarrassment, marinas around the world are scrambling to accommodate the surge in giant yachts that has taken place in the past five or ten years. Yacht Haven Grande in U.S.

…

Allen Build Their Dream Houses,” Forbes, Oct. 19, 1992. 21. The estate even has: Matthew Symonds, “Absolutely Excessive!” Vanity Fair, Oct. 1, 2005. 22. “I’m worried, Larry”: Carrie Kirby, “Inside Look at a Billionaire’s Budget,” San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 31, 2006. 23. The following year Ellison purchased: www.powerandmotoryacht.com/megayachts/2006%2Damerica%2Dlargest%2Dyachts. 24. Vanity Fair described the interior: Symonds, “Absolutely Excessive!” 25. Allen’s boat is noted: Kiri Blakeley, “Bigger Than Yours: Billionaire Yachts,” Forbes.com slideshow. 26. And Ellison’s conspicuous spending: Adam Cohen, “Peeping Larry,” Time, July 10, 2000. 27.

Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency
by Joshua Green
Published 17 Jul 2017

Robert Mercer [$2 million]: “Contributors, 2016 Cycle” Opensecrets.org, n.d., www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgave2.php?cmte=C00575373&cycle=2016. Jared and Ivanka were yachting: Chris Spargo, “Yachting with the Enemy: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Take the Jet Skis Out and Relax on Democratic Hollywood Billionaire David Geffen’s $200m Mega-Yacht Off the Coast of Croatia,” Daily Mail (UK), August 16, 2016, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3743316/Yachting-enemy-Ivanka-Trump-Jared-Kushner-jet-ski-Croatia-Democratic-Hollywood-billionaire-David-Geffen-s-200m-boat.html. “Secret Ledger in Ukraine”: Andrew E. Kramer, Mike McIntire, and Barry Meier, “Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief,” New York Times, August 14, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html.

The Cost of Inequality: Why Economic Equality Is Essential for Recovery
by Stewart Lansley
Published 19 Jan 2012

Some of these surpluses were used to finance higher levels of personal consumption which helped fuel the global economic boom from the mid-1990s. The new oligarchs, oil sheikhs and international financiers snapped up football clubs, built mass property empires and created surging demand for luxury mega-yachts. Long waiting lists grew for the world’s fastest private jets and specialist cars. In London, where much of the new wealth was concentrated, jobs and new businesses were created in industries as diverse as property development, security and chauffeuring off the back of the personal wealth boom.

Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees
by Ben Mezrich
Published 26 Sep 2005

Monte Carlo was perhaps the wealthiest and arguably the most beautiful city in the world; a residential average per capita income in the tens of millions, with weather so good it made the rest of the world blush—nearly three hundred sunny days a year, never too hot, never cold—with streets lined with Ferraris and Porsches, almost sterile-clean streets that turned into a bizarre racetrack once a year when the city hosted the party of parties, the Formula One Grand Prix, with a harbor so crowded with mega-yachts it looked as though you could easily walk from deck to deck. “Yes, very nice views,” Anderson said, waving in the direction I was looking. Then he pointed to another one of the houses, this one literally on the peak of a craggy outcropping, with no noticeable road attaching it to the rest of the mountain.

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story
by Michael Lewis
Published 29 Sep 1999

It had broken without the slightest reaction from the computer. Seeing this, Clark said, "You could probably figure out a way to put sensors on the ropes so that you can tell when they frayed." That thoughthe might have something more to tinker withgave Clark a sense of purpose. He was perhaps the first owner of a mega-yacht who enjoyed his boat better when it was broken. Once they'd tamed the sail, the crew members, led by Jaime, threaded a new rope through the sail and hoisted it up the mast. Clark watched them work with a mixture of admiration (toward Jaime) and intrigue (that there were parts of the boat that his computers did not yet control).

Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories
by Hugh Howey
Published 2 Oct 2017

They started small, but someone would ask if I could drive a bigger boat, and I figured the general principles were the same. This was a very surreal transition in my life. I went from a half-starved kid on a twenty-seven-foot sailboat with no toilet and no shower to a clean-shaven guy in pressed uniforms who drove mega-yachts for the mega-wealthy. These boats had hot tubs on top and garages full of smaller boats in their bellies. The helms looked like spaceships, like the cockpit of a jetliner on steroids. I moved these large machines from one place to another and fixed anything that broke along the way. I had found my truck-driving job at last!

The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money
by Frederik Obermaier
Published 17 Jun 2016

In the mid-1990s, Baldernach used his shell company to open a bank account in Switzerland, and around ten years later, he opened one in Luxembourg too. Two countries renowned for the discretion of their banks. The most recent activity of the Bahamas-based company seen in our data is the sale of a luxury yacht – the nominee directors signed the associated contract. Joachim zu Baldernach had decided to buy himself an even bigger yacht, a mega-yacht tailor-made to his own specifications. By all appearances, this yacht is also held by a shell company in another tax haven. All perfectly organized by a professional family office. But is it normal to set up one offshore company here, one there, and another over there? In the world of the mega-rich, the answer is evidently: yes

Freedom
by Daniel Suarez
Published 17 Dec 2009

A blank slate--the way it should be everywhere. No interference. No taxes. No protestors. It had been a smuggling port for centuries, bringing gold into India and serving as a conduit for everything from slaves to silks. But now the coves and creeks on the coast had been turned into marinas for mega-yachts and resorts packed with sunburned Russians. First-world infrastructure and office blocks had been laid down with such vengeance in the last ten years that slow-moving pedestrians risked being paved over. What The Major liked most about the Emirates was that there was order. Everyone accepted their role.

Eternal Empire
by Alec Nevala-Lee
Published 15 Mar 2013

“That’s exactly what I intend to do.” 40 Laszlo, the bosun of the megayacht, was tired. Like most of the crew, he was young, fit, and used to hard work, but for most of the morning, he had been keeping watch over the passerelle, greeting the guests as they came and went and making sure that no one tried to sneak on board. For a while, he had flirted with one of the stewardesses, but she had been called away urgently by a passenger, so now he was alone and wondering if he could get someone else to take over. It was shortly before noon. The megayacht was berthed in the port of Yalta, where it was the largest private vessel in sight.

…

But she couldn’t help but wonder. Because according to the file, it meant: I’m not responsible for what you’ve heard. 37 “This is the finest yacht I’ve ever seen,” Rahim said, looking out at the view from the sun deck. “Tarkovsky wanted something special. Fincantieri had just begun to move into megayachts, so they were eager to show off, but commissions had fallen through after the downturn. Tarkovsky acquired a ship that was under development when the buyer withdrew, but it still took three years to complete.” Maddy thought briefly of what else Tarkovsky had been doing three years ago, when their paths had nearly intersected, and wondered if this yacht was a part of the same story.

The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Published 15 Mar 2015

Nowhere is trust more important than in politics and the public sphere. There, we have to act together. It’s easier to act together when most individuals are in similar situations—when most of us are, if not in the same boat, at least in boats within a range of like sizes. But growing inequality makes it clear that our fleet looks different—it’s a few mega-yachts surrounded by masses of people in dugout canoes, or clinging to flotsam—which helps explain our vastly differing views of what the government should do. Today’s widening inequality extends to almost everything—police protection, the condition of local roads and utilities, access to decent health care, access to good public schools.

Londongrad: From Russia With Cash; The Inside Story of the Oligarchs
by Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley
Published 22 Jul 2009

The boat leapfrogged Abramovich overnight into the ranks of the super-yacht owners, up there with Microsoft’s Paul Allen, with Oracle founder and racing yachtsman Larry Ellison, and with Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. You might think that owning one of the world’s most impressive super-yachts would be enough even for an oligarch, but a few months later in 2003, in conditions of the utmost secrecy, Abramovich completed another deal, one that propelled him into the ‘mega-yacht’ league. In October 2003 he took possession of Pelorus, which, at 377 feet, made it the tenth-largest private yacht in the world. The boat had been commissioned by a Saudi Arabian businessman, Sheikh Modhassan, but Abramovich spotted it and made the Saudi a multi-million-pound offer he couldn’t refuse.

The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age
by James Crabtree
Published 2 Jul 2018

“Our country has come through four or five hundred years of slavery, right from the Mughals to the Portuguese, then to the British,” he told me once, as we sat in his office in midtown Mumbai. “Our people were suppressed for more than maybe eight hundred years…That is changing.” That change of style manifested itself most clearly in a new culture of bling, as India’s once-dowdy business families began investing in a familiar panoply of luxury cars, private jets, and mega-yachts. Few things then demonstrated their success more clearly than an outlandish new family home, an area where Mukesh Ambani once again proved to be the pioneer: the first Bollygarch to display his wealth via a building no one could reasonably ignore. Not every Bollygarch built themselves a defining new pad: Jindal, for instance, lived in a spacious old bungalow in the heart of New Delhi, while also keeping a giant ranch-style home on the edge of town, with stables for his dozens of thoroughbred horses.

Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
by Rory Sutherland
Published 6 May 2019

A friend who had been invited to spend a week on a luxury yacht explained why they are so popular with megalomaniacs: ‘You can invite your friends to join you on holiday, then spend the week treating them like you are Captain Bligh.’ If you have the most magnificent villa in the world, there is still the risk that your friends and rivals might hire a car and wander off on their own: on a megayacht, however, they are your captives.* One problem (of many) with Soviet-style command economies is that they can only work if people know what they want and need, and can define and express their wants adequately. But this is impossible, because not only do people not know what they want, they don’t even know why they like the things they buy.

…

*A film where, to be completely honest, the premise is more interesting than the execution. *Occasionally, ads playing to this idea have run. ‘Small penis? Have we got a car for you!’ said one Canadian advert for a Porsche dealership (before I imagine Porsche stripped it of its franchise). *If you are not a megalomaniac, do not buy a megayacht. A friend of mine organised the sale of them for many years: he said that the main lesson he learned about yachts is that, above a certain minimum, the pleasure they provide is in inverse proportion to their size. Also, a very large yacht can only be moored in a few harbours, meaning that you will often end up moored next to a yacht even larger than your own.

Caribbean Islands
by Lonely Planet

Taxis travel to and from Havensight regularly (US$6 per person). Yacht Haven Grande SHOPPING COMPLEX Next door to Havensight is this marina and chic shop complex. Gucci and Louis Vuitton headline the tony roster, along with a hookah bar and several waterfront bistros where you can sip cosmos and watch mega-yachts drift in to the dock. A farmers’ market (www.growvi.org; 10am-2pm, 1st & 3rd Sun) with produce and crafts sets up on the grounds on the first and third Sunday of the month. Festivals & Events International Rolex Cup Regatta REGATTA (www.rolexcupregatta.com; late Mar) World-class racing boats gather.

…

Above the water, a jumble of streets cling to the hill that splits the city in two, lined by a picturesque mishmash of colorful post-hurricane rooftops, crumbling warehouses, grand old stone churches and an imposing fort. The main commercial centre is on the other side of the hill, with the modern Esplanade shopping mall at the water’s edge along the main road, Bruce St. South of the Carenage, on its way to the resorts at Grand Anse, the road sweeps around the Lagoon, where a forest of masts and megayacht hulls mark the upmarket Port Louis marina. Sights Fort George FORT (Church St; admission EC$5; 6am-5pm) Grenada’s oldest fort was established by the French in 1705 and is the centerpiece of the St George’s skyline. The police headquarters now occupies the interior, but you can wander freely among the stone structure, explore the dank tunnels and climb to the top to see the cannons and a bird’s-eye view over the town and the hills of the Grand Etang Forest Reserve.

…

Its balcony dining room is a pleasant place for a roti or a nice plate of seafood or callaloo lasagne. The Wednesday lunch buffet (noon to 3pm; EC$25) is a good deal, too. Victory Bar & Grill RESTAURANT $$ (Port Louis Marina; mains EC$20-60; lunch & dinner; ) Located in the upmarket Port Louis marina, with tables overlooking boats and the occasional megayacht. It’s busy with happy yachties eating fresh salads, burgers and seafood brochettes. The atmosphere is fun, and the food is great. Foodland SUPERMARKET (Lagoon Rd; 7:30am-8pm Mon-Thu, to 10pm Fri & Sat) A well-stocked and well-maintained grocery store; has an ample selection of local favorites and imported goodies.

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions
by Greta Thunberg
Published 14 Feb 2023

To reduce ecological impacts on the scale required, it recommends ambitious government action to drive systemic change, including ‘choice editing’ and providing universal basic services. Policymakers can do much more with regulation, taxes and incentives to ‘edit out’ harmful consumption options that are not compatible with 1.5°C lifestyles. In the realm of transport, for example, this could include phasing out private jets, mega-yachts, fossil-fuelled cars, short flights and frequent-flyer rewards. At the same time, policymakers must, of course, ‘edit in’ far better alternatives – from excellent rail networks and electric-car-sharing schemes to dedicated bike and bus lanes – so that the sustainable choice becomes the everyday easy option that is accessible and affordable to all.

American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History
by Casey Michel
Published 23 Nov 2021

You then tell the banker to transfer, say, $100 million into this new account (plus an additional $10 million for the Kazakhstani dictator’s son-in-law, as a gesture of appreciation for him and his family).16 A few minutes, a few phone calls, and it’s done. Your name isn’t attached anywhere, and international investigators or the few remaining independent journalists in the country will never be able to trace it to you. But your money is there: waiting to be transformed into mansions and megayachts, Picassos and private jets, skyscrapers and stadiums and sprawling tracts of land. Waiting to be bounced around into other new accounts elsewhere, or into anonymous trusts abroad, or anywhere else you’d like it to go—especially in a country like the U.S., which has let these shell companies effectively do whatever they’ve wanted to for years.

…

He immediately commissioned Kusch Yachts, a German boat-builder, to draw up plans for a 200-foot custom yacht—one that would have, à la Kolomoisky, a shark tank aboard, in addition to a movie theater, restaurant, and fingerprint-operated doors. Total price tag: $380 million.24 While the designs for Teodorin’s new megayacht (code-named “Project Zen”) were finalized, he also sought out smaller options.25 He picked up multiple performance racing boats from a dealer in Fort Myers, Florida, going for about $1 million apiece—and coming without any requirements from the sellers to inquire about the source of the money. These so-called go-fast boats topped out at almost 200 miles per hour—and could go even faster when tricked out with helicopter engines, which he reportedly demanded.26 But it wasn’t always smooth.

Lonely Planet Pocket Barcelona
by Lonely Planet and Anthony Ham
Published 31 Aug 2012

The Real Deal Refugees from fashionable food in search of a hearty feed and a bottle of cold turbio (a cloudy and pleasing white wine) huddle on the communal benches at Can Maño (Carrer del Baluard 12; lunch & dinner Mon-Sat; Barceloneta) and get stuck into raciones (plate-sized serves) of all sorts of seafood. A long-lived, no-nonsense family business, it generally attracts queues. A Waterfront Stroll Maybe it’s a good thing the Metro doesn’t reach the beach at La Barceloneta, obliging you to walk down the sunny portside promenade of Passeig de Joan de Borbó . Megayachts sway gently on your right as you bowl down a street crackling with activity and drawing a cross-section of Barcelona society. The Last Fisherfolk In these days of commercial fishing fleets, it’s reassuring to find a city of Barcelona’s size and prestige still carrying out fishing in the old way.

The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice
by Julian Guthrie
Published 31 Mar 2014

Dressed and feeling half human again, Larry headed out with Craft for single scoops of vanilla ice cream. Then they boarded Larry’s Gulfstream jet for Antigua, where his family was waiting. Larry slept for eighteen hours straight, not even waking during refueling in Hawaii. In Antigua, with his family around him, Larry relaxed on the deck of his megayacht Katana—named after the samurai sword—and reflected on his pyrrhic victory. Larry told his nephew Jimmy Linn; his daughter, Megan; and his son, David, that he didn’t view Sydney-to-Hobart as a win. “There was no sense of triumph, at least for me,” Larry said, noting how Ted Turner famously quipped after a serious storm hit the Fastnet race off the southern coast of England, “What storm?”

…

So Larry decided he would have Holmberg do the starts and helm the downwind legs and he would drive the upwind legs. Sailing manager John Cutler and most of the guys on the A boat, who didn’t like their billionaire boss parachuting in and changing things, had a different idea. They wanted Holmberg to drive all of the time and Larry to watch the races from the comfort of his megayacht. The Louis Vuitton Cup begins with two round-robins. Each of the nine challenging teams races each of the others once in the first round-robin and once again in the second round-robin. Oracle BMW Racing started strong in the first round-robin. In the first race, Oracle was up against the Prada-sponsored Italian team, Luna Rossa, which had won the Louis Vuitton Cup in 2000 but had lost in the America’s Cup to Team New Zealand.

The Rough Guide to Jamaica
by Thomas, Polly,Henzell, Laura.,Coates, Rob.,Vaitilingam, Adam.

Errol Flynn Marina and Navy Island 116 Port Antonio has long been recognized as having one of the loveliest natural harbours in the world, and the entire waterfront of the West Harbour has undergone a massive multimillion-dollar redevelopment, the Errol Flynn Marina (T 715 6044, W www .errolflynnmarina.com). Opened to great acclaim in 2002 by former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, it’s designed to appeal to mega-yachts and (as yet nonexistent) small cruise ships, with state-of-the-art docking facilities, elegant landscaped gardens, a pool, and gift shops in pastel-coloured wooden buildings. You’ll also find a Devon House ice-cream parlour here, along with a good restaurant and tour company offices. Perhaps controversially, the entire development is secured behind enormous gates, with security guards vetting all comers; the atmosphere is no doubt refreshing after Port Antonio’s street bustle, but ghettoizing the yachties just seems to reinforce age-old divisions. 

Isn't That Rich?: Life Among the 1 Percent
by Richard Kirshenbaum and Michael Gross
Published 9 Jun 2015

Barths, where certain people I know are already making plans to send down their yachts well in advance (it’s first come first serve for a slip) and will pay whatever it takes to be front and center with those who need to be front and center. Sounds like forced fun to me. Champagne toasts, caviar dreams, megayachts, and jerks who can’t tolerate jerk spices; it couldn’t sound less appealing. Jamaica is indeed a filter, and I think I’m going to have a house here. And the best news of all is that Jerome and his wife won’t want to come. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To my beautiful and wonderful children, Talia, Lucas, and Georgia.

The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America
by Mehrsa Baradaran
Published 7 May 2024

Between $10 to $32 trillion is currently hiding offshore in tax havens, which leaves those of us with nonsheltered incomes paying most of the tax burden.1 The majority of the federal government’s revenue—over 83 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office—comes from income and payroll taxes paid by working Americans, while only 8 percent comes from corporations.2 The rising tide has helped the wealthy escape the confines of national responsibility. Perhaps no industry boomed during the pandemic as much as the production and sale of megayachts for billionaires—megayachts being the only way a hundred-billionaire can distinguish himself from a mere ten-billionaire. “The market been absolutely roaring,” said a market researcher for the industry, which was worth $10 billion in 2022.3 That same year, the World Bank reported that 700 million people were living in extreme poverty, up 70 percent from prior years.

Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty
by Peter Singer
Published 3 Mar 2009

If that sounds generous, think of it this way: If Ellison never earned another dollar, he could give away $39 million every year for the next six hundred years and still have more than $1 billion as a cushion for his old age.9 Vitellius, the Roman emperor, dined on the brains of thousands of peacocks and the tongues of thousands of flamingos. Today we regard that as evidence of moral depravity. We could say the same about those who own these megayachts. If that seems a harsh judgment (“No flamingos died in the making of this yacht”), consider first the incredible extravagance involved in buying and maintaining such vessels. Now that you have the figures, do the sums for yourself and calculate how many women’s lives could have been restored by surgery to repair their fistulas, how many blind people could have been enabled to see, and how many children could have been saved from dying from malaria for the cost of building Rising Sun or Octopus, and for the cost of running either each year.

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
by Marc Goodman
Published 24 Feb 2015

Business was good at Megaupload, and the firm generated an estimated $25 million a year from online ads and an additional $150 million in fees paid by users who wanted to steal their downloadable content more quickly. These profits allowed Kim Dotcom to enjoy a wildly opulent lifestyle down under in a $24 million mansion, with sixty acres of manicured lawns and its own tennis courts and golf course. Some of Kim Dotcom’s other possessions included a helicopter, a mega-yacht, fifteen Mercedes, a Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupé (MSRP from $474,600), and a Swedish horsehair Hästens bed, custom-made at a cost of $103,000. Piracy is indeed a profitable business. DRUGS As we saw with Silk Road, illicit and prescription drugs of every type are available in the digital underground in quantities ranging from individual use to bulk dealer-to-dealer sales.

Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World
by Nick Bostrom
Published 26 Mar 2024

In principle, such measures could preserve the rankings of everybody involved and achieve the same relative outcomes at a reduced price of sweat and toil.17 But failing such coordination, we may continue to work hard, in order to keep up with all the other people who continue to work hard; and we’re stuck in a billionaire’s rat race. You just cannot afford to slack off, lest your net worth remain stuck in the ten digits while your neighbor’s ascends into the eleven… Imagine standing on the deck of your megayacht, SV Sufficiens. You are gliding across the ocean, making good headway with your date, who is suitably impressed. You inch closer in preparation for a kiss, and… next moment you’re bobbing ignominiously up and down in the wake of your colleague’s gigayacht, NS Excelsior, as it roars past you. There he is, at the aft of his far grander vessel, grinning patronizingly down at you and waving his stupid sea captain’s hat!

…

All the preceding discussion of whether people will continue to work rests on one assumption: that there would still be work for people to do. More precisely, our discussion has presupposed that the income one could earn by selling one’s labor remains significant compared to the income one derives from other sources, such as capital holdings and social transfers. Recall the billionaire with the megayacht: no matter how badly he envies the decabillionaire’s gigayacht, he would not continue selling his labor if the most he could make is the minimum wage or some other amount that is trifling compared to what he makes from his investments (or compared to what he can afford to spend for the rest of his life by slowly drawing down his savings)

Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs―A True Story of Ambition, Wealth, Betrayal, and Murder
by Ben Mezrich
Published 13 Jun 2016

The vessel beneath his feet was certainly impressive; comfortable, well-appointed cabins with room enough for five couples, a crew of at least sixteen, not including the bodyguards and the private chefs, parked in a secluded stretch of blue-on-blue water in the shadow of the exclusive playland island of Antigua. But it wasn’t one of the true behemoths that would one day become synonymous with lifestyles of extreme wealth: the megayachts, with their multiple helipads, glass-bottomed swimming pools, lit-up disco floors, built-in pizza ovens, even submarines. But Berezovsky wasn’t going to quibble about which shade of heaven he’d stepped into. The journey from Moscow to Antigua had been long and exhausting, and now that his bare feet were finally touching nautical wood, he could finally come as close to relaxing as his frenetic nature allowed.

How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
by Steven Johnson
Published 28 Sep 2014

But Boys’s crossbow experiment suggested that there was one more twist in the story of this amazingly versatile material: using glass for its strength. By the middle of the next century, glass fibers, now wound together in a miraculous new material called fiberglass, were everywhere: in home insulation, clothes, surfboards, megayachts, helmets, and the circuit boards that connected the chips of a modern computer. The fuselage of Airbus’s flagship jet, the A380—the largest commercial aircraft in the skies—is built with a composite of aluminum and fiberglass, making it much more resistant to fatigue and damage than traditional aluminum shells.

Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs and the Greatest Wealth in History
by Ben Mezrich
Published 26 May 2015

The vessel beneath his feet was certainly impressive; comfortable, well-appointed cabins with room enough for five couples, a crew of at least sixteen, not including the bodyguards and the private chefs, parked in a secluded stretch of blue-on-blue water in the shadow of the exclusive playland island of Antigua. But it wasn’t one of the true behemoths that would one day become synonymous with lifestyles of extreme wealth: the megayachts, with their multiple helipads, glass-bottomed swimming pools, lit-up disco floors, built-in pizza ovens, even submarines. But Berezovsky wasn’t going to quibble about which shade of heaven he’d stepped into. The journey from Moscow to Antigua had been long and exhausting, and now that his bare feet were finally touching nautical wood, he could finally come as close to relaxing as his frenetic nature allowed.

Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption
by Ben Mezrich
Published 20 May 2019

One girl, two beds over, had been featured in the inflight magazine tucked into the airplane seat magazine holders of the Iberia Airlines flight they’d hopped from Barcelona to the Spanish island. Maybe she’d arrived at Blue Marlin by way of the long, fashion runway–like wooden path that led directly from the center of the beach club to the sea, where the tenders and Jet Skis shuttled guests back and forth between the hotspot and the megayachts parked farther out in the protected bay. Each new arrival warranted whispers, but nobody reached for cell phones. At Blue Marlin, even the most famous people in the world were simply part of the scenery. “If whatever you’re selling can help our deposit make its way over the Atlantic to our villa’s landlord, I’m all ears,” Tyler said, shifting his attention from the wooden runway, where a pair of Italian Instagram stars strolled by on impossibly high Louboutins.

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
by Michael Lewis
Published 2 Oct 2023

The customers might panic and pull out all their money. But once they realized that there was nothing to panic about, they’d return, and their money would too. Ramnik had always wanted to walk to work, and now he did. He left his place (Cube 1B) and strolled around the Albany marina, past the sleeping megayachts. They all had names that sounded like inside jokes or bad puns. Special K. Pipe Dream. Fanta Sea. It was curious how few people were ever around. Even in the day, there were more boats than people; at night, the entire resort felt vacant. It was a place where rich people bought homes they didn’t need because that’s what rich people were supposed to do.

Early Retirement Extreme
by Jacob Lund Fisker
Published 30 Sep 2010

For instance, the eating list ranges from roadkill and dumpster diving, to industrially processed "food," to gourmet meals and fine dining. Clothing ranges from going naked to owning just one set of clothes, to owning massive wardrobes full of shoes and tailor-made suits. Transportation ranges from walking barefoot to driving a "hooptie," to private airplanes and megayachts. Health ranges from being strong (physically and mentally), to being on prescription medicines, to being entirely dependent on advanced medical infrastructure. Time ranges from being a galley slave, to working 8-10-hour days in a tolerable job, to doing what you want, which may or may not include what is otherwise classified as work.

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice
by Jamie K. McCallum
Published 15 Nov 2022

Capitalist societies like ours have a ready-made solution to labor shortages: raise wages. If you want a yacht but you are only willing to pay $5,000 for one, that doesn’t mean there’s a yacht shortage. There’s just a shortage of yachts at that price. If you were willing to pay, say, $500 million, you’d have a yacht surplus, or just one of Jeff Bezos’s megayachts. The same principle applies to the labor market. When wages rise, workers will enter the labor market and the labor shortage will disappear. It’s theoretically possible that workers could demand wages so high that employers could not afford to pay them. But that’s not happening. Real wages for everyone but the most affluent have barely improved in decades.

Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World
by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope
Published 17 Sep 2018

Those dictators had been crude—Abacha had sent trucks to loot cash from the central bank—but this was simply a more sophisticated way of taking money, one conducted under the noses of Goldman Sachs. Leissner wasn’t the only one interested in boats. Even as his scheme was starting to unravel, Low was making his biggest purchase yet. There was one asset he didn’t yet possess: a megayacht. Since the previous year, Oceanco, a Dutch builder of custom yachts, had been constructing a three-hundred-foot vessel for Low, complete with a helicopter landing pad, gymnasium, cinema, sauna, and steam room. This wasn’t going to match the Topaz, but it was still one of the most luxurious yachts in the world, and Low would be spared the ignominy of renting again from Sheikh Mansour and other tycoons.

Discover Greece Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

Bougasta (custard pie) ALAN BENSON/LONELY PLANET IMAGES © Hydra Everyone approaches Hydra ( Click here ) by sea. There is no airport, there are no cars. As you sail in, you find, simply, a stunningly preserved stone village, white-gold houses filling a natural cove and hugging the edges of surrounding mountains. Then you join the ballet of port life. Sailboats, caïques and megayachts fill Hydra’s quays, and the harbourside cafes are a people-watching potpourri. Here, a mere hour and a half from Athens, you’ll find a great cappuccino, rich naval and architectural history, and the raw seacoast beckoning you for a swim. FUNKYFOOD LONDON - PAUL WILLIAMS/ALAMY © Local Architecture CORFU TOWN Venetian-era pastel-coloured mansions. ( Click here ) CAPTAINS’ HOUSES Impressive 17th-century buildings with sea views. ( Click here ) TOWER HOMES Traditional houses nestled in the mountains. ( Click here ) PELION VILLAGES White-washed half-timbered homes with overhanging balconies. ( Click here ) Halkidiki Northern Greece’s ‘three fingers’ stretch out in the Aegean, where the Halkidiki peninsula ( Click here ) combines great beaches, nightlife, camping spots and some serious history.

Blood and Oil: Mohammed Bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power
by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck
Published 14 Sep 2020

The Serene hosted a premium event for VIPs, including Fang Fenglei, a Chinese financier with strong ties to the communist rulers in his country, and Mukesh Ambani, the tycoon who ran India’s biggest company. Tahnoon bin Zayed, the Abu Dhabi national security advisor, arrived in his own yacht and spent time with Mohammed on the Serene. Rumayyan rented his own megayacht, Ecstasea, to host meetings, including with Carla DiBello and a business partner. Cocktails in hand, they played ping-pong. The singer John Legend gave a private concert on Sindalah Island, which belonged to Egypt until Mohammed demanded the country hand it over in exchange for financial aid two years earlier.

Billionaires' Row: Tycoons, High Rollers, and the Epic Race to Build the World's Most Exclusive Skyscrapers
by Katherine Clarke
Published 13 Jun 2023

By all accounts, he could afford it. Rolling in money from a series of oil extraction contracts his company had inked with the Nigerian government, Aluko landed on the global stage with a bang in the early 2010s. He was spotted partying with the actor Leonardo DiCaprio and lounging in the sun on the top deck of his 210-foot megayacht, which he named the Galactica Star. The tabloids speculated that he was dating the supermodel Naomi Campbell after the two were photographed arm in arm leaving a posh restaurant in Paris, he in a red fedora and she in skyscraper heels, then later taking in a winter-wonderland-themed Christmas attraction in London’s Hyde Park.

Madoff: The Final Word
by Richard Behar
Published 9 Jul 2024

There must be something wrong with me to be able [to handle] the pressure. I woke up every morning for sixteen years—certainly the last eight or nine of it—feeling I’m not coming out of it. I was hoping for some kind of miracle. The only time I relaxed was on weekends, when I was on my boat.” (His biggest: an eighty-eight-foot megayacht aptly named Bull, which had a life-saving buoy named “Bullship.”) This struck me as odd. Mafia hitman Nicky “the Crow” Caramandi—the guy who ratted out Bernie’s pal Scarfo—once told me that he hated to fly because “I think of all the rottenness I’ve done in my life when I’m on a fucking plane. All the evil.”

Lonely Planet Greek Islands
by Lonely Planet , Alexis Averbuck , Michael S Clark , Des Hannigan , Victoria Kyriakopoulos and Korina Miller
Published 31 Mar 2012

ALAN BENSON / LONELY PLANET IMAGES © Hydra 10 Everyone approaches Hydra (Click here ) by sea. There is no airport, there are no cars. As you sail in, you find, simply, a stunningly preserved stone village, white-gold houses filling a natural cove and hugging the edges of surrounding mountains. Then you join the ballet of port life. Boats – sailboats, caïques and mega-yachts – fill Hydra’s quays and a people-watching potpourri fills its ubiquitous harbourside cafes. Here, a mere hour and a half from Athens, you’ll find a great cappuccino, rich naval and architectural history and the raw seacoast beckoning you for a swim. DIANA MAYFIELD / LONELY PLANET IMAGES © Corfu Town 11 The story of Corfu Town (Click here) is written across the handsome facades of its buildings.

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire
by Brad Stone
Published 10 May 2021

Suggests Bezos’ Phone Was Hacked Using Saudi Crown Prince’s Account,” Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-n-experts-say-hacking-of-bezoss-phone-suggests-effort-to-influence-news-coverage-11579704647 (January 26, 2021). they gamboled in the western Mediterranean Sea: Ben Feuerherd, “Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez Get Cozy on Mega Yacht in Italy,” Page Six, August 31, 2019, https://pagesix.com/2019/08/31/jeff-bezos-and-lauren-sanchez-get-cozy-on-mega-yacht-in-italy/ (January 26, 2021). wearing a pair of stylish multicolor swim trunks: Priya Elan, “Dress Like a Tech Bro in Kaftan, Sliders, Gilet… and Jeff Bezos’s Shorts,” The Guardian, November 2, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/nov/02/jeff-bezos-shorts-tech-bro-fashion (January 26, 2021).

…

A few days later, they watched the Wimbledon men’s finals from the Royal Box, three rows behind Prince William and Kate Middleton. In August, they gamboled in the western Mediterranean Sea on the super yacht of mogul David Geffen. There were also trips to Solomeo, Italy, for a summit organized by luxury designer Brunello Cucinelli and to Venice, aboard the mega yacht of Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg. During these trips, Bezos was repeatedly photographed wearing a pair of stylish octopus-print multicolor swim trunks, inadvertently igniting a fashion trend. For two decades, Bezos had remained singularly focused on Amazon and his family, with Blue Origin and space travel capturing his only scraps of time left.

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
by Nick Bostrom
Published 3 Jun 2014

Third, not all possible costly displays are intrinsically valuable or socially desirable. Many are simply wasteful. The Kwakiutl potlatch ceremonies, a form of status competition between rival chiefs, involved the public destruction of vast amounts of accumulated wealth.33 Record-breaking skyscrapers, megayachts, and moon rockets may be viewed as contemporary analogs. While activities like music and humor could plausibly be claimed to enhance the intrinsic quality of human life, it is doubtful that a similar claim could be sustained with regard to the costly pursuit of fashion accessories and other consumerist status symbols.

Greece Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

Nikola Nastasic / Getty Images © Top Experiences Hydra Everyone approaches Hydra by sea. There is no airport, there are no cars. As you sail in, you find, simply, a stunningly preserved stone village with white-gold houses filling a natural cove and hugging the edges of surrounding mountains. Then you join the ballet of port life. Sailboats, caïques and mega-yachts fill Hydra’s quays and a people-watching potpourri fills the ubiquitous harbourside cafes. Here, a mere hour and a half from Athens, you’ll find a great cappuccino, rich naval and architectural history, and the raw sea coast beckoning you for a swim. Konstantinos_K / Getty Images © Top Experiences Knossos Rub shoulders with the ghosts of the Minoans, a Bronze Age people that attained an astonishingly high level of civilisation and ruled large parts of the Aegean from their capital in Knossos 4000 years ago.

Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
by Zeke Faux
Published 11 Sep 2023

Number Go Up is an instant-classic: Liar’s Poker for the era of digital monkey tokens, written with a sensibility that meets our absurd moment in time.” —Kit Chellel, co-author of Dead in the Water “Number Go Up is a dizzying safari of the surreal, hilarious, can’t-make-it-up insanity of the crypto boom. Racing across the globe from the Bahamas to Italy to Cambodia, Zeke Faux takes readers behind the velvet rope and onto the mega yachts and multimillion-dollar tropical compounds of the billionaire crypto schemers, hustlers, and evangelists who may all be headed to prison—but are having a riotously good time turning the financial world upside down.” —Joshua Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Devil’s Bargain “Number Go Up is funny, enraging, racy, and profound.

…

” * * * — PIERCE TOLD ME that Chakra was not his personal ship. Like-minded crypto fans could buy an NFT (non-fungible token, a kind of one-off crypto asset), then stay on the yacht when they pleased as it traveled from the Caribbean to Art Basel in Miami, the Monaco Grand Prix, and the Cannes Film Festival. He described it as “the first mega yacht club for the crypto community” and a floating home for crypto superheroes. “We’re the Avengers,” he said. “It’s the Avengers ship.” I realized I had walked in on a presentation for a timeshare that I would pay money not to join. It was also not the best setting for a long conversation. My tour guide soon sent me back downstairs.

Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World
by Anupreeta Das
Published 12 Aug 2024

A customized Gulfstream G8 runs around $100 million, according to David Friedman, who cofounded a firm called Wealth-X in 2010 to provide wealth data to luxury companies, real estate companies, and others trying to sell products to high-net-worth individuals. An Airbus Corporate Jet (ACJ) can start at $100 million, and a Boeing business jet is similarly priced. Mega yachts can cost as much as $500 million. “It’s a smaller group of people driving more influence through their purchasing power,” he said. “A $100 million price tag means that most likely you will need to tackle someone with greater than a billion in net worth to have that amount of liquidity.” Friedman also cofounded WealthQuotient, which aims to map out networks of the wealthy that can help firms pitching services to them to win referrals.

…

The philanthropist, a leading voice on climate change, owns at least two customized jets that fly him around the world, often to deliver lectures on how to combat global warming. Gates has said he buys carbon offsets from a company equal to his footprint. Unlike private planes, which are often used for business travel, mega yachts—essentially floating mansions—appear to be little more than advertisements for billionaire profligacy. At more than 417 feet in length, Koru, the luxury schooner custom-made for Bezos, is like the average cruise ship you might see lazily skimming the surface of a river, dotted with dozens of tourists, rather than a private boat.

The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen
by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Published 14 Jul 2015

There, you can become Kittitian by buying into a share of a villa worth $400,000, which entitles you to several weeks occupancy; or by purchasing plots of land and holding on to them for at least five years, at which point you can re-sell the land (with a fresh passport attached) to someone else. And if your mega yacht happens to be pining for a new port, you can obtain citizenship by buying a marina berth. (Price tag: $1.5 to $3 million.) In downtown Basseterre, even abandoned lots come with seductive offers: “13050 Sq. Ft; Duty Free, Citizenship by Investment, and other Concessions apply,” read a sign on a yellow shed not far from the port.

Elon Musk: A Mission to Save the World
by Anna Crowley Redding
Published 1 Jul 2019

Peter Thiel and Elon Musk at the X.com corporate headquarters on Oct. 20, 2000. (Photo by AP Photo/Paul Sakuma.) In July 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion. Elon pocketed $180 million after taxes. People were asking Elon what he was going to do next. Remote island, palm trees? No. String of islands and mega yacht to trot between them? No. Spend his money on his every whim? No. Years later he explained his choice like this. “The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing sounds like the worst. That sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers,” he said. “I’d be super-duper bored.”60 He didn’t need to retreat into early retirement.

Lonely Planet Western Balkans
by Lonely Planet , Peter Dragicevich , Mark Baker , Stuart Butler , Anthony Ham , Jessica Lee , Vesna Maric , Kevin Raub and Brana Vladisavljevic
Published 1 Oct 2019

Even more incongruous is the rest of the tasty menu: Balkan seafood and meat grills, pasta and pizza. oOneITALIAN€€€ (%067-486 045; www.facebook.com/jettyone; Porto Montenegro; mains €10-22; h8.30am-midnight) This singular brasserie has one of the most expensive views in the country, gazing over trillions of euros’ worth of megayachts. The service is a match for the lovely location and the menu is as jet-setting as the clientele – flitting between French, Russian, Indian and American but excelling in Italian. It also does excellent Western-style breakfasts (from €6). ByblosLEBANESE€€€ (%063-222 023; www.byblos.me; Porto Montenegro; mains €16-18; h8am-1am) Byblos’ interior is heavy on atmosphere – all lanterns and elegant exotica – while the outdoor ‘Mezze and Shisa Terrace’ is a billowy hideaway of posh private tents; it’s a shame that the toilets don’t meet the same standards.

2034: A Novel of the Next World War
by Elliot Ackerman and James Admiral Stavridis
Published 15 Mar 2021

“Their unpredictability makes them very dangerous. What will Russia do if the United States acts? Your leaders have a great deal to lose. Everywhere I look I see wealthy Russians.” “Wealthy Russians?” Kolchak laughed. “There is no such thing.” Farshad didn’t understand. He mentioned their ubiquitous mega yachts in the Mediterranean and Black Seas, their ostentatious villas on the Amalfi and Dalmatian coasts. Whenever Farshad traveled abroad and he saw some resplendent thing—a villa, a boat, a private jet idling on the tarmac, or a woman bejeweled beyond measure—and he asked to whom it all belonged, the inevitable response was always some Russian.

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class
by Joel Kotkin
Published 11 May 2020

Living Standards,” Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-lower-u-s-living-standards-1442876463; EU Energy Poverty Observatory, “Energy Poverty in Germany—Highlights of a Beginning Debate,” European Commission, July 9, 2014, https://www.energypoverty.eu/news/energy-poverty-germany-highlights-beginning-debate; EU Energy Poverty Observatory, “Measure Energy Poverty in Greece,” European Commission, 2016, https://www.energypoverty.eu/publication/measuring-energy-poverty-greece. 37 Austin Williams, The Enemies of Progress: The Dangers of Sustainability (Exeter: Societas, 2008), 20–22, 25; Mariah Haas, “Google summit on climate change attended by stars in private jets, mega yachts slammed as ‘hypocritical,’” Fox News, August 2, 2019, https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/google-summit-attended-by-hollywood-stars-slammed-as-hypocritical. 38 Christopher Caldwell, “Europe is a continent in crisis—where lo-vis people now wear hi-vis jackets,” Spectator, January 3, 2019, https://spectator.us/europe-continent-high-vis-jackets/; Christophe Guilluy, Twilight of the Elites: Prosperity, the Periphery, and the Future of France, trans.

All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art
by Orlando Whitfield
Published 5 Aug 2024

I first met Thomas in Venice in early 2015 when we were both there for the Biennale, Venice’s biannual festival of contemporary art, international grandstanding and competitive Negroni drinking. It was the first time I’d been to the Biennale and right away I wished I hadn’t come. Private jets were nose to tail at the airport and the Venetian lagoon was choked with sinister mega yachts. That evening a colleague went to party on a boat belonging to a family of Israeli former-arms-dealers-turned-arts-philanthropists who have enthusiastically been washing their bloody reputation in the sweat of young artists’ hard work for decades now. At the dinner, my friend sat down next to a woman with the priceless skin of taut, plasticised youth, whose opening conversational gambit, in a pinched voice of indeterminate origin, was to ask, ‘Tell me, did you fly here commercial?’

Fodor's California 2014
by Fodor's
Published 5 Nov 2013

The best surf-gear source is HSS Pierside, across from the pier, staffed by true surf enthusiasts. | 300 Pacific Coast Hwy. | 92648 | 714/841–4000 | www.hsssurf.com Newport Beach 6 miles south of Huntington Beach, PCH. Newport Beach has evolved from a simple seaside village to an icon of chic coastal living. Its ritzy reputation comes from megayachts bobbing in the harbor, boutiques that rival those in Beverly Hills, and spectacular homes overlooking the ocean. Newport is said to have the highest per-capita number of Mercedes-Benzes in the world; inland Newport Beach’s concentration of high-rise office buildings, shopping centers, and luxury hotels drive the economy.

Frommer's Mexico 2009
by David Baird , Lynne Bairstow , Joy Hepp and Juan Christiano
Published 2 Sep 2008

Each villa features an indoor whirlpool and a fully functional kitchen with everything from champagne glasses to sauté pans. Guests can opt to shop for food at the onsite market—which has prices comparable with the nearby Mega supermarket—or request a personal chef to come cook for them. Attractions Just when you thought you were running out of places to park your megayacht, the Grupo Questro officially opens the $50-million Marina at Puerto Los Cabos (www.marinapuertoloscabos). The marina is the centerpiece of the master-planned Puerto Los Cabos community east of downtown San José de Los Cabos and is predicted to bring tourist traffic to rival that of the bustling marina in Cabo San Lucas.

Spain
by Lonely Planet Publications and Damien Simonis
Published 14 May 1997

Downstairs opens out to a too-cool-for-school restaurant (sandwiches €5, mains €15 to €20) and lounge bar. Up to seven buses run here daily from Palma via Felanitx (€5.15, 1¾ hours). Cala d’Or to Cala Mondragó Once a quaint fishing village, Cala d’Or is now an overblown big-dollar resort. Its sleek marina is lined with glistening megayachts and the surrounding hills are crowded with blindingly whitewashed villas. Plenty of lifestyle, little substance. Immediately south of Cala d’Or (and virtually joined to it by urban sprawl) is the smaller and more tranquil Portopetro. Centred on a boat-lined inlet and surrounded by residential estates, it has a cluster of harbourside bars and restaurants, and a couple of small beaches nearby.

Greece
by Korina Miller
Published 1 Mar 2010

Kassiopi’s strategic headland was an outpost of Corinth and saw Roman and Venetian settlement. Nero is said to have holidayed outrageously here, while today, British politicians have been guests at the Rothschild estate that lies south of Kassiopi behind the best constructed walls in Corfu, while the mega ‘yacht’ of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska has been known to drop anchor offshore. Nero would have been beside himself with excitement. In Kassiopi’s main street, opposite the church of the Blessed Virgin, steps climb to the ruins of the Venetian castle, which was being renovated at the time of writing.