There are now 6,000 yachts of 80ft or more on the high seas – double the number of a decade ago. And last year a total of 777 builds of 75ft-plus – an increase of 15 percent on the 2005 figure – were listed by ShowBoats International magazine. The sales rush has been fuelled by the increasing number of wealthy oligarchs emerging from the former Soviet Union and an expanding Far Eastern market.
“Yachting is very much in vogue and growing at an extraordinary rate,” says Nicholas Baker, senior sales broker at Camper & Nicholsons International. “It’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.”
A super yacht takes about 400,000 man-hours to build, more than a jumbo jet, which is why waiting lists vary between two and five years. The size of vessels is also growing. In 2002, the average luxury yacht was about 165ft in length, but this has increased to 230ft and there is even a growing trend for boats exceeding 450ft.
Ironically, in some major yachting areas, success has brought its own problems. In Western Australia, for instance, sales of luxury boats climbed by 80 percent in a year, but yacht clubs have been forced to close their waiting lists because of delays of up to ten years in securing a mooring pen.
Closer to home, the world’s top sailing showpiece, the Monaco Yacht Show, at Port Hercules from September 19-22, is poised to attract a huge amount of global interest. Official prediction from The Yacht Report is that “the superheated market undoubtedly means there will be a feeding frenzy of buyers.”
The superyacht has become today’s status symbol – and these gleaming multi-million pound floating palaces boast every home comfort. Items such as home theatres, retractable plasma televisions, wine fridges, built-in cappuccino machines, icemakers, submersible boarding platforms, underwater lights, pressure washers and Italian-designer interiors are regarded as standard.
The bigger, fabulously expensive, craft, are virtual floating villages, complete with advanced satellite communications systems and fully automated sail-handling with push-button winches, in-boom furling and self-tacking sails.
Some boast helipads, submarines and even missile-detection systems. All this shimmering style and hi-tech gear does not, of course, come cheap. Allow about £1m per metre for a new build, even more once you exceed the 70-metre mark. Then there are running costs – reckoned to be about £2m a year.
Offsetting this major investment, chartering can generate anything from £30,000 a week for a modest vessel to £500,000 a week for a 60-metre yacht hired out for a corporate function.
Modern technology has revolutionised yachts, with satellite communications allowing owners to work anywhere in the world from luxury vessels with a range of 5,000 miles.
When owners do eventually dock they can take their pick from some of the most desirable places on the planet. Monaco is at the heart of the sailing world, with a glittering global social scene stretching all the way from St Tropez, Portofino and Palma, to Antigua and Newport, Rhode Island.
The western Mediterranean hosts half of the world’s yacht fleet every year, so ports there are under growing pressure to provide more facilities.
Valencia, home to the America’s Cup this year, is offering a total of 176 new berths for yachts between 25 and 120 metres in what the operators claim is the Med’s only port catering exclusively for yachts longer than 24 metres.
Yacht berths are seen by some as an investment opportunity. Last year in Antibes, the 15-year lease on a berth for a 70-metre yacht sold for £4.4m, and Barcelona’s Port Forum, which opened in 2005, reports that berth prices have rocketed in value by 20 percent in a year.
In the Caribbean, Yacht Haven Grande, the new $200m marina on St Thomas, United States Virgin Islands, officially opened late last year, with high-speed in-slip fuelling, wi-fi, 24-hour security and alongside berthing for yachts up to 200metres. A new yacht marina is also being built near St Lucia’s Rodney Bay and aims to be open in time for the next Caribbean season.
Africa, with its northern coastline in the Med, is becoming increasingly important. In north Morocco, just 50 miles from the coast of Spain, Port Marina Smir has 450 permanent berths and can accommodate vessels up to 60 metres long.
Further afield, yachting sees enormous potential in the emerging market of China, reports Boat International magazine. Starbay Yacht Club opened a new marina in Dalian, in the north east, last year. Owned by the Chinese government, it offers 80 slips and plans a capacity of 270.
The whole world, it seems, is waking up the many attractions and advantages of sailing. From the Royal Papua YC, in Papua New Guinea, to Kiriazi Marina, on Egypt’s Red Sea coast; from Port Adriano, on Mallorca, to the Montreal Yacht Club…exciting developments are taking place. And the global sailing boom looks destined to get even bigger.
LUXURY boat building companies are predominantly based in Western Europe and America, with the top end of the market dominated by a very select number of European manufacturers led by Feadship, which is Dutch, Azimut-Benetti (Italian) and Lurssen (German).
Feadship is a joint venture between the three top names in Dutch shipbuilding – De Vries, Van Lent and De Voogt. – and is recognised as the world leader in the field of custom built motoryachts.
Azimut-Benetti has been voted the world’s No 1 producer of 80ft-plus yachts and Lurssen, based in Bremen-Vegesack, is right at the forefront of custom superyachts.
In Britain, the biggest vessel at this year’s Collins Stewart Boat Show, at ExCel in east London, was the Sunseeker 37, a new 37metre, 200tonnes superyacht built at Poole, Dorset. It costs £8.75m and Sunseeker have orders for five but are aiming to build 30. At the Southampton Boat Show last September, another British company, Fairline, which makes boats costing up to £2m, sold a vessel every 28 minutes.
THE world’s biggest superyacht belongs to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Called Dubai, it is 525ft long and was originally commissioned by the Prince of Brunei. When his funds ran out and construction stopped, Sheikh Mohammed took over and created the largest existing yacht on the planet.
Chelsea F.C.‘s Russian owner Roman Abramovich has three superyachts – Pylorus (377ft), Le Grand Bleu (370ft) and Ecstasea (282ft) – and is having the 550ft Eclipse built. When it is completed it will become the world’s largest.
Meantime, the No 2 slot in the superyacht league is held by U.S. Oracle software billionaire Larry Ellison, owner of the 453ft Rising Sun. In third place is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, with Octopus at 417ft and Tatoosh at 302ft. When completed, the Octopus had no berth, so Allen bought another yacht, the 162ft Hanse, simply to acquire its bay at the Yacht Club marina in Antibes.
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“All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, we are going back from whence we came.” – U.S. President John F. Kennedy in a speech before watching the America’s Cup off Newport, Rhode Island, on September 15, 1962.
