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In reply to the discussion: It will be more fun when we find out who really bought those cards [View all]Kid Berwyn
(14,795 posts)11. The New Yorker had a nice story about yachting you may enjoy.
The Haves and the Have-Yachts
Luxury ships attract outrage and political scrutiny. The ultra-rich are buying them in record numbers.
By Evan Osnos
The New Yorker, July 18, 2022
In the Victorian era, it was said that the length of a mans boat, in feet, should match his age, in years. The Victorians would have had some questions at the fortieth annual Palm Beach International Boat Show, which convened this March on Floridas Gold Coast. A typical offering: a two-hundred-and-three-foot superyacht named Sea Owl, selling secondhand for ninety million dollars. The owner, Robert Mercer, the hedge-fund tycoon and Republican donor, was throwing in furniture and accessories, including several auxiliary boats, a Steinway piano, a variety of frescoes, and a security system that requires fingerprint recognition. Nevertheless, Mercers package was a modest one; the largest superyachts are more than five hundred feet, on a scale with naval destroyers, and cost six or seven times what he was asking.
Excerpt
For the uninitiated, a pleasure boat the length of a football field can be bewildering. Andy Cohen, the talk-show host, recalled his first visit to a superyacht owned by the media mogul Barry Diller: I was like the Beverly Hillbillies. The boats have grown so vast that some owners place unique works of art outside the elevator on each deck, so that lost guests dont barge into the wrong stateroom.
Excerpt
Nobody can say precisely how many of Putins associates own superyachtsknown to professionals as white boatsbecause the white-boat world is notoriously opaque. Owners tend to hide behind shell companies, registered in obscure tax havens, attended by private bankers and lawyers. But, with unusual alacrity, authorities have used subpoenas and police powers to freeze boats suspected of having links to the Russian élite. In Spain, the government detained a hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar yacht associated with Sergei Chemezov, the head of the conglomerate Rostec, whose bond with Putin reaches back to their time as K.G.B. officers in East Germany. (As in many cases, the boat is not registered to Chemezov; the official owner is a shell company connected to his stepdaughter, a teacher whose salary is likely about twenty-two hundred dollars a month.) In Germany, authorities impounded the worlds most voluminous yacht, Dilbar, for its ties to the mining-and-telecom tycoon Alisher Usmanov. And in Italy police have grabbed a veritable armada, including a boat owned by one of Russias richest men, Alexei Mordashov, and a colossus suspected of belonging to Putin himself, the four-hundred-and-fifty-nine-foot Scheherazade.
Excerpt
OShannassy has come to see big boats as a space where powerful solar systems converge and combine. It is implicit in every interaction that their sharing of information will benefit both parties; it is an obsession with billionaires to do favours for each other. A referral, an introduction, an insightit all matters, he wrote in Superyacht Captain, a new memoir. A guest told OShannassy that, after a lavish display of hospitality, he finally understood the business case for buying a boat. One deal secured on board will pay it all back many times over, the guest said, and it is pretty hard to say no after your kids have been hosted so well for a week.
Continues
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/25/the-haves-and-the-have-yachts
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Limit 100 per person...9900. Under the 10,000 threshold that initiates questions about the money.
SunSeeker
Dec 2022
#3
Didn't the RNC buy all of Don Jr.'s books, so it would get on a bestsellers list?
70sEraVet
Dec 2022
#23