What are you going to do today? Take the dog for a walk? Roast a chicken? Check your LinkedIn feed? This is what I can do today.
I can take an electric surfboard to St Martin airport and catch a private jet to Palm Beach, Florida, for lunch, and still be back in time for a sunset cocktail party on “my” £170 million superyacht in the Caribbean. I can fly in my favourite DJ from Ibiza for the soirée, if I want. The time difference means he won’t be late. If I prefer to stay local, the captain can sail to St Barts for lunch and later I can take an 18m tender to a secluded beach for a barbecue lobster dinner. Between meals I can practise my golf swing, hitting biodegradable balls off the yacht’s helideck towards an inflatable hole bobbing on the waves.
When I fancy a swim I can ask the 33-strong crew to use booms to create a private pool in the ocean off the stern, with weighted nets to keep out jellyfish. Rinsing off the salt is easy in the freshwater glass-panelled infinity pool on the rear deck. If that sounds a bit energetic I can enjoy a sauna and hammam, followed by a massage on a platform that folds out over the sea from the side of the boat. At any time the chef and sommelier will prepare whatever I fancy from the kitchen or the teppanyaki bar and wine cellar.
It is 8am and 28C in Simpson Bay, just off the west coast of St Martin, one of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean, and I have three days ahead of me on board Carinthia VII. (Not the toughest gig, I grant you, but come along for the ride.)
“Welcome to another world,” says Captain Luca Mosca, who greets me as I step onto the swim deck at the stern. Mosca, 62, is from San Remo, Italy, so we cannot start the day without “an Italian breakfast”. Over an espresso, he sets out a few do’s and don’ts. The owner does not want his name mentioned: “He does not want to show off.” (Good luck with that, with a boat as big and well-known as Carinthia VII.) The captain’s job “is to make the impossible possible, so if you want something, just ask me”, he says. “It helps that I am Italian,” he adds with a knowing smile. And bare feet or trainers only. “We can’t damage the teak decking.”
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Superyachts are the ultimate status symbol because they are the most “extreme extravagance”, James Bond tells me shortly after I board. Yes, that’s his real name. He’s a specialist charter broker at Fraser Yachts, which arranges and manages charters for the world’s most luxurious vessels. Over a glass of water — not, alas, a vodka martini — Bond, 39, explains that large cruisers such as Carinthia VII cost about £850,000 a metre to build and more than £8 million a year to maintain as they shuttle between the Maldives, the Caribbean and the Med.
As with most status symbols, the higher the price of boats and charters rises, the more demand increases. The market has seen a record spike in the past 12 months — up by as much as 300 per cent compared with 2019 — “thanks to Covid, carpe diem and social media”, explains Mark Duncan, director of marketing and business development at Fraser Yachts. “Covid made us all realise how important being with family and friends is. At the same time, social media coverage of yachts has introduced more people than ever to the incredible possibilities on offer.”
Carinthia VII is in particular demand among the super-rich because “it is a hidden gem”, says Stewart Campbell, the editor-in-chief of Boat International. One of seven vessels commissioned by the Hortens — an Austrian family with a dark past, more of which later — it has been a strictly family affair ever since it first set sail in 2002. Only relatives and close friends were allowed on board. But after Heidi Horten, the matriarch, died in 2022, the vessel was sold for an undisclosed sum and, following a multimillion-pound refit, the new owner agreed to put it out for charter. Even the super-rich need help covering costs.
It is easy to be sniffy about giant private boats but when I first spy Carinthia VII in Simpson Bay, as the last of the Caribbean morning rain clouds burn to blue, it’s impossible not to admire it. The deep navy bow rakes back gently into the waves. The hull and the three storeys above the main deck fall away elegantly towards the stern, making it look smaller than it really is — it’s 97m long and rises 23m above the waterline. This is no crystal-encrusted chunk of Dubai that somehow floated off the desert shore for sanctioned Russian oligarchs to party on. Think a mini QE2.
It was styled by the British yacht designer Tim Heywood and built by the German yard Lürssen under the name “Project Fabergé”. “Every detail is bespoke,” says Ralph de Joode, director of the Monaco-based Yacht Management, which oversees Carinthia VII, who shows me around. This includes the floor our bare feet are pacing over — it’s restored Chantilly parquet reclaimed from a derelict 17th-century Austrian abbey. As we head down the master stairs, he points out how the blue colour of the laser-cut leather tiles on the walls darkens as we descend. Everywhere we go the walls are decorated with modern art. “The new owner is a keen art collector, as was Mrs Horten,” de Joode says.
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In the master suite at the front of the owner’s deck — which has a bedroom, bathroom, dressing room, make-up room, study and dining room — I find Una Bringmane, from Latvia. She is making sure the “H” logo on the Hermès cashmere throws that cover the beds and the odd chair is discreetly covered up with a fold. This boat is grander than any French fashion maison (but you can always undo the fold if you are suffering from a bout of status anxiety).
I don’t expect the next crew member I meet to be a former Metropolitan Police constable from Bromley. Olivia Law (yes, really) “loved policing” but “met someone who was in yachting and travelled all over the world and I thought, ‘That sounds amazing’ ”. So she signed up to work shifts as a crew day worker in the south of France last year and is now a housekeeping stewardess. What does a housekeeping stewardess do? “Cleaning, mainly,” she says, laughing. “The guests want no fingerprints on anything!” What happens if someone who has made money by criminal means manages to find a way on board? “I don’t want to know. Don’t want to see. Don’t want to hear. I’m just cleaning!”
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A superyacht is about the most unequal place you can imagine. A deckhand on Carinthia VII earns about £2,500 a month. While I’m on board, a three-week booking for the Med comes in. That’s a £6 million summer holiday. Law, 24, admits she struggles comparing “real-world problems and ‘people with money problems’”. She has gone from dealing with stabbings in south London to trying to satisfy two members of the same family who ask her to set the air conditioning to different temperatures in the club room. How does she decide who gets their way? She gives me a look that says: “I go with whomever I like best.”
Superyachts are the ultimate extravagance because they are much bigger and thirstier than any other earthbound “toy” — guzzling 8,000 litres of fuel an hour at full speed — and have to be much stronger. “Everything has to be able to survive the roughest storm,” de Joode says. I notice that the panes of glass in the dozen windows and the doors of the Technogym (which fold away to create an outdoor workout area) are more than an inch thick. Each pane costs about £85,000.
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Most of the money is spent in the engine room, thanks to the four military-grade V20 engines that boast 40,000 horsepower and can propel Carinthia VII to 26 knots (about 30mph). That’s fast enough to get from the Caribbean to Monaco for the Grand Prix in one week, if the owner fancies it. It’s pricey, though. The fuel tanks need to be full for a transatlantic crossing. That’s 450,000 litres of diesel at a cost of about £385,000.
How much of the fuel is from sustainable sources? Only a tiny fraction is biodiesel, admits Stuart Irving, the 49-year-old from Greenock who first went to sea as a Royal Navy engineer on HMS Illustrious and is now Carinthia VII’s chief engineer. “But it will increase. We’ve reduced exhaust emissions and are looking into replacement engines and replacement diesels.” It feels as though the industry should do more if it is to have a future.
A yacht sails on its stomach and the man who keeps the crew and guests fed is Gino Razzano. The 55-year-old from Naples has to be on his A game every day. Some guests request tuna that has been caught in north Atlantic waters in winter, not summer — the fish is oilier in summer and, yes, guests can tell the difference. Others want a favourite bottle of wine flown by private jet from Bordeaux to Polynesia. Razzano also has to set aside his Italian pride. “One client asked me to make a gorgonzola and banana pizza,” he sighs. What did he do after making it? “I go to my cabin and I cry. I cry.”
Razzano has it tough but the man with the hardest job on board, after Captain Mosca, is Marius Pienaar, 41, the boat’s electro-technical officer. He has to make sure that guests can pick up their phone at any time, anywhere, to make a call, check messages or stream any entertainment they want. The super-rich don’t do waiting. On the upper deck he shows me the tangle of 8,000 cables, dishes and antennae that constantly chirp away at low and high-orbit satellites to make sure Carinthia VII is “always on — and all communications are safely encrypted”. The bill can run into thousands of pounds an hour if every guest is streaming a film or sports game at once.
The rich and often famous attract unwelcome attention. Simon Rowland is a former Royal Marine whose London-based company, Veritas, provides security for superyachts such as Carinthia VII. His biggest challenge is not pirates but paparazzi, who use drones to photograph boats and their passengers. Some vessels can scramble the navigation systems of drones and even try to force them down. Others have alarms to alert passengers if one is approaching. Rowland also sweeps boats for surveillance devices before a charter begins and after it ends.
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Sinking the national debt of a small country into something sinkable — whether you are an owner or merely renting — may seem absurd, but de Joode says superyachts offer value for money. “This is your own private, fully staffed dream home, which you can take pretty much anywhere in the world and invite anyone you want. You can have dinner here tonight with friends and wake up tomorrow off the coast of Cuba and go scuba diving before breakfast. Short of going to the moon, there is no rarer experience.”
Some owners say it is easier to do business deals on superyachts. As one puts it: “The person you’re negotiating with cannot easily get off, and is being so well taken care of it’s hard to say no to anything you suggest. The deals I do on board can pay for maintenance for a year.” Small wonder Jeff Bezos, Russian oligarchs and Middle Eastern rulers are engaged in a never-ending game of grow-grow-grow your boat.
Becoming a superyacht owner, though, is not plain sailing these days. Superyachts seized from Russian oligarchs with links to President Putin are stranded in ports around the world, each costing local authorities up to £700,000 a month in upkeep. Governments are looking to sell them but are tangled in legal disputes over who really owns them. Buyers are reluctant to make an offer for fear they might fall not-so-mysteriously overboard shortly after taking ownership.
One hundred miles away from St Martin, the £65 million Alfa Nero, an 82m superyacht, has been abandoned in port in Antigua. Lawyers for its rumoured owner, the Russian billionaire Andrey Guryev, deny he owns the vessel — but it’s not clear who does. Further west in San Diego, the £240 million, 106m-long Amadea, which boasts a live lobster tank and a hand-painted piano, was seized in May 2022. It is thought to belong to the Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov. There are at least three other sanctioned assets in Dubai.
Chartering Carinthia VII is not for the financially — nor morally — faint-hearted. It’s all down to those Hortens, whose name endures on board thanks to a poster advertising a Vienna exhibition of the family art collection. The patriarch, Helmut, founded the family’s business empire by taking over companies from Jews who were forced to sell by the Nazis. After buying the Alsberg department store in Duisburg, Germany, in 1936 Helmut said it had “passed into Aryan ownership” in an advertisement he placed in a Nazi party newspaper.
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You’d think anyone considering chartering the vessel might be told about this past. But all Bond offers when I bring it up is: “She [the yacht] was owned by the lady who owned some big supermarkets in Germany.” When I press him further and mention the Nazi history, he says: “I think we sort of stay out of that side of things.”
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