yacht influencer is now a thing
February 14, 2019 6:51 AM   Subscribe

THE LONELY LIFE OF A YACHT INFLUENCER: Alex Jimenez (aka TheYachtGuy) might look like he’s comfortably residing in the lap of luxury on Instagram, but the truth is, he’s kinda lost at sea.
posted by gen (35 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
This was an excellent read. A very honest and insightful article about what it means to be an influencer, as well as an interesting reflection on work, wealth, and public presentation. Thanks for posting this; I'm glad I read it!
posted by hippybear at 7:18 AM on February 14, 2019 [11 favorites]


Agreed, this article was way better than I initially expected it to be.
posted by peacheater at 7:23 AM on February 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


Owning a yacht, really owning it in full and being able to pay for its upkeep, means that you’ve somehow freed yourself from work and want.

Yeah, in the same way that being Superman means you're stronger than the average guy. What is it about money and capitalism that makes folks unable to realize that a few million dollars means you're completely set for life?

You can have drug-fueled orgies in a custom built country cabin as well as you can on a yacht, and the bathrooms are probably nicer when you're not out at sea.
posted by explosion at 7:44 AM on February 14, 2019 [7 favorites]


Sounds like owning a yacht is an expensive way to get fame, “friends”, respect, and drugs. I’ll bet every one of these oligarchs would trade it all for a hug from their dad as a child and a game of catch.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:51 AM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


Owning a yacht, really owning it in full and being able to pay for its upkeep, means that you’ve somehow freed yourself from work and want.

I think this is a really interesting thought, and explains a lot of appeal of completely out-of-reach, never-in-a-million-years luxury items to normal people like me*. Having a yacht doesn't mean that you worked hard and saved up however-many millions of dollars to buy one. It means that you have so much money that you never have to think about "saving up" again.

(*Yachts leave me cold, my out-of-reach luxury items are 50,000-hectare wooded estates with castles on them.)
posted by lollymccatburglar at 8:30 AM on February 14, 2019 [12 favorites]


What is it about money and capitalism that makes folks unable to realize that a few million dollars means you're completely set for life?

What he's getting at is that you can't own a super- (say, 50-100 meters) or mega- (over 100 meters) yacht without also spending millions of dollars per year on crew and maintenance. You can't do that with just a few million dollars. If "fuck you money" is enough to retire and say no to anything you just don't want to do (and indeed, a few million dollars might be enough for that) then owning a yacht sort of implies "fuck all of you money" and a big enough yacht implies something equivalent to "fuck literally everybody money."

And yes, the clientele for the biggest, fanciest yachts does tend towards the ostentatious. But beyond a certain point a yacht can be impractically large (even in yachting terms). You can own it, but you can't take it anywhere, because there's nowhere you want to go with a harbor that can handle it. Ownership of such a thing is itself a status indicator that maybe seems better in the abstract than in practice, and if you want to be able to use your big boat, you might need it to be slightly less big, as Larry Ellison discovered.
posted by fedward at 8:33 AM on February 14, 2019 [14 favorites]


Literally not 50-100 meter yachts. They are measured in feet. (foots?)

Your yachts are over 3x as large as what he is talking about. They probably don't exist in the "yacht" class.
posted by hippybear at 8:40 AM on February 14, 2019


My god what I wouldn't give for a couple dozen Mk-48s and a halfway decent launch platform.
posted by aramaic at 8:46 AM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]


The largest boat I've (temporarily and under strict supervision) helmed was just over 100 feet. You can find boats in the 50 foot size on the Great Lakes. Boats in the 50 to 100 foot size, even though they can be called yachts, are nowhere near the mega and super yachts the yacht influencer dreams about. You need to scale up your size expectations hippybear.
posted by sardonyx at 8:47 AM on February 14, 2019


I'm just speaking from what I read in the article.
posted by hippybear at 8:48 AM on February 14, 2019


From the article:
“Yeah, that’s just how it goes,” he said. “It’s an endless party, especially on the yachts that are 200 feet and up, the so-called ‘superyachts.’ Conditions are cramped, everyone’s out of their mind on some substance, and the bathrooms are being used for who knows what. There’s a kitchen and a big dining area, but good luck getting food out of there when you really want it. You’re not on here to eat a sit-down meal, even though they usually have nice dining rooms. The bars on each level are the focal points of these things.”
posted by Cris E at 8:48 AM on February 14, 2019


Here's the first link Google delivered to me for yachts for sale. I think the biggest boats here are in the 80 to 90-metre range, and honestly, just taking a quick scan of the listings, these seem like pretty "average" expensive yachts. They're certainly not the type to occasionally make the rounds of "holy moly, you have to see this ridiculous, over-the-top example of mega-super-duper yacht this particularly well-know person just bought that was priced at the GDP of three small nations."
posted by sardonyx at 9:07 AM on February 14, 2019


For the record:
  • Paul Allen's (rip) yacht, Octopus is 414 feet (126 m)
  • Roman Abramovich's yacht, Eclipse is 533 ft (162 m)
  • Larry Ellison's former and David Geffen's current yacht, Rising Sun is 453 feet (138 m)
  • The Prime Minister of UAE's yacht, Dubai is 531 ft (162 m)
posted by mhum at 9:08 AM on February 14, 2019


None of those yachts are the sort the guy in this article is promoting.

Yes, there are Very Large Yachts. That isn't what this article is about. It's about middle middle-range yachts owned by brokerage firms looking to turn a buck.
posted by hippybear at 9:10 AM on February 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


None of those yachts are the sort the guy in this article is promoting.

Ah, yes. That is correct. The four I listed are (more or less) four of the largest/most famous superyachts out there. They probably should belong to their own class to distinguish them from mere superyachts, maybe "megayacht"? The guy makes mention of Abramovich's yacht as specifically an example of the kind of yacht that's in a different realm than the ones he's promoting because, at that size, you're not renting it out for mere millionaires to party on. It's essentially an independent duchy floating out beyond the laws of man.
posted by mhum at 9:19 AM on February 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


They probably don't exist in the "yacht" class.

Imperial barge?

Maybe "imperial sex barge".
posted by ryanshepard at 9:20 AM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


The same broker also has yachts for charter. Even though these all have guest limits (12 up seems typical) I'm sure a lot of these are rented as party boats (exactly the type of use mentioned in the article). You can pack in a lot more day partiers than you can as long-term sleepover guests.

Even if you're looking to do something corporate, these are the types of boats that you'd rent. I read about one company (I think it was Mercedes, but I could be wrong about that) offering Mercedes owners the opportunity to attend the Monaco Grand Prix as a "guest" of the company--the type of guest who pays their own way. The package involved staying at a fancy hotel, and then watching the Monaco Grand Prix from the deck of a yacht anchored in the harbour. (If you've seen footage of the race, you'll know that the cars zoom right along the water's edge. The race is worth watching for the scenery alone.)
posted by sardonyx at 9:21 AM on February 14, 2019


Your yachts are over 3x as large as what he is talking about. They probably don't exist in the "yacht" class.

No, he's definitely talking about some pretty big yachts. He calls 200 feet cramped. Chakra (86 meters) is mentioned a couple times; Savannah (83.5 meters) is in an embedded Instagram post. The yacht Larry Ellison sold to David Geffen (the one I linked as impractically large) was 138 meters. At the turn of the century there was a whole thing in the yachting world about how Feadship (builders of Ellison's new yacht) didn't have the capacity to build yachts over 100 meters and other companies were taking business from them because of that limit. 50 meters is big enough to be called a superyacht but also, in that crazy market, small enough not to have any sort of prestige attached to it.

Disclosure: I know someone who worked for Feadship when that 100 meter limit was becoming a problem. I got to tour a 50 meter one. It was lovely, but it only has capacity for 12 guests.
posted by fedward at 9:32 AM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]


I read once the book Mine's Bigger about Tom Perkins and his yacht Maltese Falcon, a "mere" 88m long.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:51 AM on February 14, 2019



My god what I wouldn't give for a couple dozen Mk-48s and a halfway decent launch platform.

A scuba rig and a pneumatic drill with a 1" spade bit would work too.
posted by boilermonster at 9:57 AM on February 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


Approximately what percentage of these do we think are purchased by men who aren't sure that New Zealand will be safe enough when the revolution/zombie hordes come?
posted by jacquilynne at 10:00 AM on February 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


Yacht for survivalism seems kind of silly, considering how much maintenance a yacht needs. I'll grant that there are silly people with that kind of money, but I bet most survivalists have their strongholds on land.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:14 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


The construction of big stupid boats for big stupid parties is ancient, if one considers Caligula’s Nemi Ships. Mussolini had them raised from the lake bed where they had sunk from 1929 to 1932. Sadly, the museum he placed them in burned to the ground in 1944. Divers are now looking for signs of a supposed, even bigger and stupider ship still in the lake.

Everything old is new again.
posted by faineg at 10:30 AM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


My father was never terribly wealthy, but at the time of his peak income, during my teen years before he started paying for my college, he acquired his proudest possession: a 27-foot sailboat with an auxiliary motor which he kept in a rented slip in Marina Del Rey and took out for rides with my mother (and sometimes me) up and down the California coast. Never got farther north than Ventura or farther south than Palos Verdes, but that was plenty for him. Don't know where the yearning to sail came from - he spent WWII as a tailgunner on a Marine Air Corps bomber and his only contact with the Pacific Ocean was getting shot down once and floating in a life raft for 12-18 hours before being picked up by one of our PT boats. But when he had to sell the boat, he acquired a couple sailing-themed art prints, including the much-too-ironic-iconic "I Told You So". It is, sadly, the last of his possessions I still own.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:40 AM on February 14, 2019 [6 favorites]


I mentioned that the bathrooms were both tiny, and with a hundred or so people aboard the yacht, already rather foul.

“Yeah, that’s just how it goes,” he said. “It’s an endless party, especially on the yachts that are 200 feet and up, the so-called ‘superyachts.’ Conditions are cramped, everyone’s out of their mind on some substance, and the bathrooms are being used for who knows what. There’s a kitchen and a big dining area, but good luck getting food out of there when you really want it. You’re not on here to eat a sit-down meal, even though they usually have nice dining rooms. The bars on each level are the focal points of these things.”
brb editing lottery wish list
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:51 AM on February 14, 2019


Well I guess the Green New Deal will be a job killer in some respects
posted by cricketcello at 10:55 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


Some superyacht owners use them as pricey art warehouses. This is just begging for a heist movie. A literal Ocean's 11.
posted by SPrintF at 10:56 AM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


TheYachtGuy realizes that getting paid to attend parties on yachts isn't fun anymore, but he thinks that paying for the yacht and the party would be somehow more satisfying. Dude, think it through; you don't make your feelings of inadequacy go away by trading up for a larger and more expensive set of inadequacies.
posted by peeedro at 1:08 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


TheYachtGuy realizes that getting paid to attend parties on yachts isn't fun anymore, bt he thinks that paying for the yacht and the party would be somehow more satisfying.

Oh? I didn't read it that way. He says that his dream was to "own a yacht [...] really owning it in full and being able to pay for its upkeep" which I took to mean that he wouldn't have to rent it out to trust-fund millionaires and B-list celebrities for parties in order to afford it. I interpreted that part as just him wanting the complete and total financial independence that would be necessary in order to buy a yacht outright (as opposed to buying it as an investment in a revenue stream).
posted by mhum at 1:45 PM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


I see no proof that this guy has influenced *any* yachts. Yachts have no time for your nonsense, man.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:57 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


A previous employer had a 40 ft boat that we would party on after work in the summer - docked at Georgetown in DC. Often parked directly behind us was one of Michael Saylor's yachts.

Honestly, I always thought the 12 or 15 of us piled into my bosses leaky wood hull boat were having more fun that the folks in sport coats and dresses standing around trying to impress everybody else on the yacht. But they looked to have better food.
posted by COD at 5:05 AM on February 15, 2019


I first went to sea on a 40m M/Y in 1973 and I have been in the industry ever since, working on board large yachts for 15 years and then ashore where now aged 68 I am still highly involved in this growing niche industry.
The part of the market this "Yacht Influencer" is involved in is a niche of a niche market.
An old friend in the city of London once explained the top end of the yacht market as follows:
Imagine the merchant princess of your who moved between their various castles and now move them into todays era and they would be Yacht owners.
Sure there is the party crowd, very obvious on the docks of Monaco and Cannes and St Tropez and St Barths who tend to rent rather than own. But this highly visible sector is in fact the lesser part of the industry.
Here are the top 200 yachts at the moment as generally known.
Most owners are igcognito though Superyacht fan likes to publish about those it can.
The profile of very high end owners is of course Royalty or Oligarchy where money as we mere mortals know it is just for us little people.
This segment of society is beyond the level of living off the income of their income, the once accepted entry level bar to being a "gentleman".
Level of service is amongst the best in the world as private chefs and top interior staff are flown around as needed.
I once captained for an Arab family, not royal, on one of their three yachts who used to arrive on the Cote d'Azur in their 747 with an entourage of 20 gofers, hairdressers, maids, butlers, tutors, bagmen, masseurs etc for his family and then there was the further shore crew of security, drivers and general hangers on.
Nobody lived on board, there were floors of hotels booked up and down the coast and it was all a veritable circus up to and including old family retainers bought on holiday.
The global superyacht industry has an annual turnover of €24 billion, from yacht-build to repair, services, berths, crewing etc, with 54 per cent of the annual turnover created in Europe. The superyacht fleet has more than doubled in the last ten years, with nearly 5,000 yachts over 24 metres in length currently in service, and the industry directly employs 148,000 to 163,000 personnel worldwide.
Support vessels are the new in thing to carry the toys, submarines, helicopters, and all terrain vehicles. They are considered essential if you want a holiday in Antarctica or to go diving in the Solomons.
Scientific expedition and research yachts are growing in popularity reflecting that some at least have an iota of consciousness for the planet.
Notable among these and pushing the envelope is the new vessel for Kjell Inge Røkke and his family.
I don´t think you will find YachtInfluencer guy on any of these but it it is quite probably where he wants to be.
posted by adamvasco at 5:29 AM on February 15, 2019 [6 favorites]


People buy big boats to carry the little boats that accompany their biggest boats?

How do they get the little boats off the big boats so the people on the biggest boats can use them?
posted by jacquilynne at 6:47 AM on February 15, 2019


They have little docks with lifts for personal watercraft (lower the lift into the water, pull the craft up, raise the lift) and cranes for long term stowage in secure positions.
posted by fedward at 11:43 AM on February 15, 2019


Every time I go back to this thread I get I’m On A Boat stuck in my head. (NSFW: language)
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:17 PM on February 15, 2019


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