So, I left my one bedroom flat in East London (Zone 2) early on a ho-hum Tuesday morning to hop the bus en route to the exclusive five star May Fair Hotel just off the Piccadilly to attend Superyachts.com‘s Top 100, an event for mega yacht execs and brand reps to rub elbows and gab about the future of their industry. Featuring a full day of press workshops with “the visionary builders and designers behind the largest super yachts in the world”, Top 100 had been set up for journos to crash “intimate sessions with the heads of the super yacht industry, gain an in-depth insight into the largest luxury yachts set to launch in 2014 and discuss the most vital topics surrounding the world’s most incredible yachts”.
The workshops – each set in a suite as big or bigger than my humble Hackney home – proved a chance for me to delve into ambivalence with nuanced discussions about boats that in some cases would almost eclipse the very neighbourhood where my Victorian loft conversion was situated. Interviews with CEOs, marketeers and leading edge designers served as an introduction to observe an alien world. It was an exquisite world to be sure, where standards were set high and expectations even higher, but one which left me thinking about which line I should toe – aspiring and audacious or proudly practical and overtly down to earth.
Ever since I had wangled my way onto a press trip to a mega yacht shipyard on Italy’s Adriatic coast last spring (not to mention a regatta in French Polynesia a couple of months after that), I’ve been getting invites to all sorts of yachty stuff. When I can go, I do. I’m as much a wannabe gawker as the next guy, and big toys for big boys have a way of capturing my imagination like little else … as well as filling my thoughts with a beguiling mix of consternation and wonder. To pit my general disdain for elitism against a genuine admiration of a resilient industry weathering years of global financial crises while creating and providing highly skilled jobs and the chance for designers and craftspeople to do amazing work can provoke a heaping dose of internal conflict. I can’t help but see almost every facet of the industry as contributing to what amounts to a pissing content – but one worth billions of pounds and resulting in the livelihoods of plenty of hardworking people.
With respect to the 2014 forecast, it was full speed ahead. Broad consensus seemed to suggest that rich folks will keep getting richer and that their yachts will continue to grow evermore mega. Indeed, whereas a couple of decades ago the typical luxury yacht needed to be at least 40 metres long to qualify for the Top 100, the minimum length today is 75 metres.
The same morning I publicly transporting my way to the Top 100, custom yacht builder CRN signed a letter with a Chinese client for a 68 metres super yacht, the brand’s biggest vessel ever sold in China. Coincidentally, my first workshop of the day was with CRN. China came up during my meeting with CEO Lamberto Tacoli and Brand Manager Luca Boldrini but just general comments about expanding markets – and certainly nothing about any specific plans. Still I suspect the LOI business was going down at about the same time that I was with Tacoli and Boldrini. Their Blackberries started buzzing like crazy at one point during our session. Both played it cool, but afterward when I would see them in passing they seemed to have their phones glued to their faces (as well as intriguingly gleeful yet calculating grins).
With increasing interest and demand from China will come the development of marinas and related infrastructure across East Asia, an area with little currently to accommodate luxury yacht lifestyle. Along with that will be the prospect of more jobs and the hope of at least a bit more spreading around of exceptionally concentrated wealth. I suppose this is something the mega yacht industry sees as the upshot of their work. As Tacoli put it during the interview in an off-the-cuff statement about innovation during my morning chat with him, “an emperor can’t be a pessimist”.
At the very least, the new super yacht bound for China should give me and maybe even some writerly types on the other side of the planet something to ponder on while sitting on the bus.
