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The news that Jeff Bezos has purchased a “superyacht” has rekindled interest in the Hermetic world of wealthy globetrotters who appreciate this ultimate status symbol.
According to experts, the superyacht industry has been booming for years, even during the global economic downturn caused by the pandemic.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and richest man in the world, saw his personal wealth practically doubled since 2017, thanks to the huge volume of revenue it achieved in 2020, when more people than ever turned to online shopping.
But Bezos isn’t the only one to get even richer. Many of the richest people in the world have seen their fortunes grow in recent years.
And shipyards continued to build mega-yachts – bigger and bigger as they grew in popularity.
According to experts and brkers, in 2020 more yachts have been sold than ever before and in 2021 sales will again break records.
What do we know about Bezos’ yacht?
The 127-meter vessel is made in the Netherlands by Oceanco, according to Bezos’ biography published by specialist media Bloomberg in early May.
Estimated at around $ 500 million, a drop in the ocean for the richest man in the world, whose wealth at one point increased by $ 13 billion in a single day in 2020.
His estimated net worth is now close to $ 200 billion.
This price does not include the smallest motorized “support yacht” that Bezos is also considering purchasing.
This ship includes a helipad. Bezos’ girlfriend, TV host Lauren Sanchez, is trained as a helicopter pilot.
The main yacht cannot include its own helipad due to the three navigation masts on its deck.
The smaller yacht should also be able to carry other things, such as cars, luxury speedboats and possibly even a submarine, according to an article by Forbes published this week.
The superyacht project, shrouded in secrecy and known as the Y721, will be completed in June, according to Bloomberg.
Bezos probably placed the order several years ago, as bespoke boats like this can take around 5 years to build.
Oceanco, the Dutch yacht maker, has not commented on the project.
They have already built the 106.7 meter Black Pearl, the second tallest sailboat in the world.
What is a superyate?
There is no official definition of a superyacht (compared to a normal yacht), but in the industry the term generally refers to a yacht over 22 meters in length.
Some question this definition, saying that the term “superyacht” applies to boats over 60 meters in length.
Other brkers have even adopted the term “gigayate” to refer to boats over 300 feet.
“It’s a bit of marketing,” says Bill Springer, who writes about the yachting industry for the magazine. Forbes.
Bezos’ yacht, which measures more than 121 meters, is almost as large as the Great Pyramid of Giza (if the boat has been placed vertically). It’s a little less than half the length of the Eiffel Tower.
Only a few giant superyachts like Bezos’ ship are built each year, but large-scale projects are often carried out with such secrecy that builders have to sign confidentiality agreements.
Therefore, it is unlikely that we will ever know whether Bezos copied the decorative styles of the Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko, who decided to cover the wall of a hut with shagreen skins.
A booming industry
The industry has grown rapidly over the past 20 years.
According to the National Marine Manufacturers Association of the United States, in 2020 boat sales peaked in 13 years, reflecting how people have turned to the water for help. perform safe activities and with social distancing during childbirth due to the pandemic.
“The market is in turmoil,” says Sam Tucker, head of superyacht research at business intelligence company VesselsValue. “There has been a record number of transactions completed and this trend continues even to this day.”
The used yacht market has also “been crazy,” says Tucker. “It’s hot red.”
According to Tucker, there are 9,357 yachts over 19 meters long found currently at sea, that is to say that they did not sink or that they are not kept on the ground either.
About 85% of them are motorized and 15% are sailboats like the one Bezos ordered.
Fewer yachts were chartered in 2020, says Tucker, who attributes this to travel restrictions during the pandemic.
Sales fell for a few weeks when the United States was hit with lockdowns in 2020, but then fell they shot immediately.
In June, “it was like someone flipped a switch.” Orders started pouring in quickly, says Bob Denison, who has been a yacht broker in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Since 2001.
“There was nothing like it before,” he says. “The demand is two or three times greater than what I have seen.”
Denison’s company sold 1,008 boats in 2020, a 35% increase from the previous year.
It is currently on track to post another 30% increase in 2021.
About 65 of the boats I sold in 2020 were superyachts. So far this year around 40 superyachts have been sold, which means your company has sold around 2.2 superyachts per week from January.
Demand has totally exceeded supply, says colleague Ben Farnborough, adding that it is now much more difficult to find used boats for sale.
Farnborough is hoping that easing travel restrictions due to the coronavirus will soon allow travel to Europe for more used yachts for sale in the United States.
What superyachts do you buy?
Boats often are bought by companies and are then chartered by the owner of the company, making it difficult to establish with certainty which yachts belong to which.
In famous shipbuilding ports, like the one in the Netherlands where Oceanco is located, hobbyists try to detect the registration of private jets in order to determine which billionaires have come to visit their future yacht.
Privacy is the goal of owning a yacht, says Tucker, who views the industry as a “opaque industry“.
Tech industry billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are rumored to own yachts.
“These are top secret assets and one of the reasons they are purchased is for privacy,” Tucker says.
Privacy also offers security, a not-so-trivial consideration for the world’s richest people.
And the ultra-rich may want to keep their new toys ultra-private today.
When Hollywood billionaire David Geffen posted on Instagram a photo of your yacht To say he was “isolated” in a tropical paradise and expected everyone to be “safe” during the pandemic, the rest of the mortals were quick to criticize him.
“Did David Geffen just insult everyone?” One user commented in reaction to Geffen’s not-so-humble boast.
why are they so expensive?
Yachts offer “true exclusivity,” says Springer, who likens owning one to owning a private island or build a custom city from zero.
“In the Renaissance, wealthy patrons paid the equivalent of millions of dollars to build cathedrals,” he says.
“And they were the most beautiful and they had the best craftsmen, and these were the most spectacular projects of their time. And there was a lot of ‘hey, I’m very rich and I’m going to do these things. really increbles with my money “.
“Superyachts are therefore very similar in this regard,” he adds.
They’re also getting more comfortable, reaching places beyond “classic ports of glamor” like Monaco, Springer says.
People are now taking them to more exotic and remote places like Antarctica and Papa New Guinea.because owners are discovering that they are more than just status symbols.
The best superyachts are custom made, with artisans who design every detail to the tastes of the richest and most elite in the world.
Their construction can take years. A yacht as large as Bezos’ probably involved around 400 workers and designers, Farnborough estimates. When done, you’ll probably need around 60 people to handle it.
Annual operating costs are around 10% of the purchase price, says Tucker of VesselsValue.
High oil prices and the possibility of more lockdowns could lead to more second-hand yachts entering the market in 2022, he believes.
What other things cost as much as a superyacht?
Bezos bought the newspaper The Washington Post in 2013 for just $ 250 million, about half the cost of his new superyacht.
A painting by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was sold at auction in New York for $ 93 million. There is also a painting by Claude Monet at around $ 350 million.
Virgin Galactic has sold tickets to the space between $ 200,000 and $ 250,000 in recent years as it prepares for your first commercial launch.
But if you’re Jeff Bezos, you don’t need to book a ticket: he, behind space company Blue Origin, could fly in his own spaceship.
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