Super-size my superyacht: the quest for bigger boats and gadgets
Wealthy owners want vessels equipped to carry Rolls-Royces, helicopters and submarines
Anyone can get lost on a boat. But to get lost in one, you need to be on a superyacht.
On a blustery midsummer day in Falmouth, Cornwall, the epicentre of the UK superyachting industry, I am casting around an interminable carpeted corridor looking for an unlocked door. If it leads to a guest room I’m pretty sure I’m on the second floor (of five). If I enter a massage room (there are two), any of the lounges (three), a kitchen (four), one of the TV rooms (three, including the cinema), a dining room (two), the spa or the gym, then I’ll have to rethink.
Everywhere, clues torment me. I can’t be in the crew quarters — too much brass, the carpet is too thick and there is no call, surely, for a hand-painted ceiling mural of a medieval navigator’s map for those below stairs. There is no sound of the engineers clanging around in the engine room (which takes up two floors and is bigger than most London houses). The lift would help me orientate — I entered it through a lobby with a massive chandelier — but there is no sign of it now.
These days, getting lost on board a superyacht is becoming a more common hazard. In 2015, the footloose super-rich spent just over €3bn on new superyacht commissions, almost 40 per cent up on the figure from two years earlier, according to Boat International Magazine. A total of 254 vessels were sold last year, more than a third higher than the 184 shifted in 2010.
Problems of internal navigation stem in part from yachts’ ever-increasing size. As you might expect, this is a world where length matters. Today there are 4,975 superyachts in existence — typically defined as boats longer than 30 metres — according The Superyacht Group, almost 60 per cent more than a decade ago. Yet the number of boats longer than 60 metres — 364 at present — has doubled over the same time.
Even these headline numbers do not capture the sprawling dimensions of the floating private empires being fashioned in yards such as Falmouth.
Longer boats need to be wider in order to stay stable, and their greater weight means they sink deeper — even if no more decks are added above water. Just as a cube’s volume increases drastically with any gain in its length, so does that of a superyacht, says James Roy of naval architects BMT Nigel Gee. So, while the inside of a 60-metre boat might comprise about 1,000 gross tonnes (the favoured volume measure), a 160 metre boat could be more than 12 times that figure.
ing out how not to spill it — or its bathing guests — on a rolling sea. Meanwhile, on the floor below, engineers have just cracked how to ensure guests feasting in the principal dining room are not disturbed by the entertainment in the adjacent cinema room.
Consideration must also be given to the crew. Unlike on land, their responsibilities extend to keeping their masters alive, a fact which in no way shifts their lowly status.
“You need to maintain two parallel worlds that never meet,” says Pascale Reymond, a veteran of almost three decades designing superyachts. Observing the requirements of propriety — “be seldom seen and never heard” — while cooped up together in a few cubic metres for months on end can begin to grate on crew members. “The rows can be spectacular,” confides Captain L, a seasoned superyachting captain, speaking on strict condition of anonymity.
More usually, though, it is the guests letting off the fireworks. Captain L once had to charter a plane on behalf of a client in the Bahamas just to track down the right brand of mineral water from a neighbouring island. On other occasions, unreasonable requests reflect unfamiliarity with the milieu. Once in a gale-force storm an indignant passenger came to the bridge to ask him to do something about the comfort of the ride. He looked to the sea, furrowed his eyebrows and bellowed “Calm ye!”
Employing a small army of engineers, naval architects and interiors gurus is not for the faint of wallet. A basic rule of thumb is €1m for every metre of superyacht to be built. However, that formula works only up to 60 metres, apparently. After this, exponential volumes — remember your cube — play havoc with the equation. And that is before you have spent on the wallpaper, fixtures and fittings. The best interiors cost roughly €30,000 per sq metre, perhaps 10 times more than on land, reckons Dickie Bannenberg of London designers Bannenberg and Rowell. German and Italian yards might do it for half that sum, he adds, while Turkish yards can pitch in as low as €6,000.
However, cutting corners on build costs soon becomes a false economy, warns Alasdair Locke, a Scottish energy entrepreneur and yacht owner. Leaving aside the fact that you might not want to surrender your family to the vagaries of an engine failure in the middle of the Atlantic, the maintenance costs will soon come back to haunt you. “After seven years you’ll have to throw the engine away and start again.”
Locke favours Dutch engineers. Don’t expect the red carpet, he says, but they are a highly competent lot. “The Italians will take you for a slap-up meal but you’ll come back to see the engineers hastily stuffing a bundle of electric wires behind a panel,” he says.
Superyachts’ ever-increasing length is great for headlines. Yet it is the boom in adventure yachting that is the most enthralling trend. The uber-wealthy, just like the rest of us, are succumbing to the lure of adventure travel. And if you can bring your integrated floating spa, a 30ft walk-in wardrobe and two dozen staff with you, why not?