Page 24 Daily Mail, Thursday, August 8, 2019electric curtains and an enormous
rainforest shower for two.
It is sleek and beautiful and
relatively low-key for a
superyacht. Pierre doesn’t even
have a gym — though the couple
did take a yoga instructor on board
their last boat.
If I had a superyacht, I think I’d
be tempted to follow suit, with a
few tweaks — perhaps a stylish
infinity pool. And maybe a discreet
gym and an open-air cinema and a
wine cellar and a meditation room
and, of course, a ‘snow room’ — the
new thing these days, where you
can chill down after a day in the
fierce Mediterranean sun.
I wouldn’t want to be showy. But
perhaps I’ve missed the point.
Because in the hierarchy of toys
for the uber-rich, the superyacht is
up there with private jets and pri-
vate islands. So maybe it is fun tohave the whole thing painted pink,
blue, silver, leopard skin (all of which
have been done) or even black.
More and more owners are opting
for the latter, despite being warned
that such a dark hull can absorb
so much heat from the sun, it can
become too hot to touch. And that
the warranty may not apply when
bits of it start to melt.
According to Oliver Sherriff, CEO
of Princess Yachts in Plymouth,
one customer became so bewil-
dered by the myriad paint colours
on offer for his two 30 and 40-metre
yachts that he bought his six-year-
old daughter to the factory and
handed the choice over to her.
‘She chose turquoise!’ says
Oliver. ‘For two boats worth
£25 million! And it looked abso-
lutely stunning.’
Not that he’d complain if itdidn’t. Princess Yacht sales have
been going bananas lately. Last
year, they sold 270 for a total of
£340 million. Over the three years
between 2015 and 2018, sales went
up a staggering 70 per cent.
Up the road in Poole, Dorset,
Sunseeker — a vast and incredibly
professional operation employing
more than 2,600 mostly local staff
— sold 147 boats last year for
£300 million, up about 19 per cent
on 2016, and figures for this year
look to be even more impressive.
The increased demand is driven
by two things. First, all the money
now sloshing about thanks to
there being more ‘high net worth
individuals’ than ever before.
Second, the quality of British
boat-building.
‘We are the best boat-builders in
the world,’ says Bryan Jones,marketing manager for Sunseeker.
‘We should be really proud and
fanfaring this, because we lead
the charge.’
So British-built yachts end up
around the world — roaring across
the Atlantic, bobbing in St Tropez,
moored up in Mallorca, pootling
about in the Caribbean.
Mega-yachts — also known as
‘Citadels’ and favoured by Abram-
ovich, fellow Russian oligarchs and
the troubled Arcadia tycoon Philip
Green — are another level up.
Most are festooned with security
systems, because with great
wealth comes great paranoia.
The Russians, particularly, have
embraced yachts that are fire-
proof, bullet-proof and communi-
cation-proof with a radio shield
around them, their own radio
frequency and panic rooms. Forthose from troubled regimes, a
boat is also a moveable asset.
Trouble at home? Simply power
over to the safety of Europe.O
F COURSE, different own-
ers want their yachts for
different purposes. Onassis
used the original supery-
acht to entertain celebrities from
actor Richard Burton to Winston
Churchill. The Chinese often turn
theirs into casinos and, never big
sunbathers, tend to demand that
the entire deck be enclosed.
(There’s a story doing the rounds
that one owner asked for a boat
with no windows because his wife
hated the water so much she
couldn’t bear to see it.)
Some double up as mobile artBLINGTANNIA RU
Pictures: MURRAY SANDERS/SUNSEEKERby Jane
Fr yer
T
HERE is something utterly
bewitching about padding bare-
foot across the hand-finished
teak deck of a brand-new, 131ft,
£20 million yacht.
Just brushing against all that soft white
leather and gleaming chrome, or sinking into
the deep cream carpets below deck as you
touch up your lipstick in the bespoke mirrors
above the marble washbasin, or seeing the
uniformed crew hovering, poised to please, is
enough to make you start acting differently.
To feel grander, special, chosen. And to
imagine you’re one of the world’s uber-rich
who, last year, snapped up a record number of
superyachts. And who then, on top of the
astronomical purchase prices, spend millions
more personalising their toys with infinity
pools, lifts, ice chambers, wine cellars and art
galleries. After all, why have any old bog-stand-
ard superyacht, when you can have one cus-
tomised to suit your own flamboyant taste?
Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich’s
£1.6 billion, 533ft yacht Eclipse has two
helipads, 24 guest suites, two pools, three
launch pads and a mini submarine.
The Aviva, a 323ft monster owned by British
businessman and major Spurs shareholder Joe
Lewis, has its own indoor tennis court. And the
Elandess, owned by Travelex founder Sir Lloyd
Dorfman and his wife Sarah — named after
their initials! — has a 26ft swimming pool.
The late shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis
went rather further with his boat Christina
(named after his daughter), a decommissioned
warship he bought in 1954 and spent £4 million
fitting out with an onyx and silver staircase
and a marble pool that, at the touch of a
button, became a dance floor.
He also had 12 guest suites, and ordered
footrests made from whale’s teeth and bar
stools upholstered with the foreskin of minke
whale. Yes, really.
‘Personalising your superyacht is the most
amazing thing you can imagine,’ says Pierre
Kruse, a self-made Danish fashion mogul who
bought his first yacht when he was 31 for
£29,000, and is kindly talking to me by phone
from the deck of his 116ft Sunseeker Fleur,
anchored outside a small cove in Mallorca.
‘I’ll be in Palma tomorrow. It is wonderful not
to be tied down.’P
IERRE, 59, and his wife did up his eighth
yacht with the help of the designer who
created the BA business-class interiors,
and included yards of American walnut,
a wine cellar, two Jacuzzis — one for them at
one end of the boat, one for their four kids at
the other — and his wife’s pride and joy, a vast
master bathroom with underfloor heating,ПОДГОТОВИЛА
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