nick candy super yacht

Nick Candy is selling his £54m superyacht while he builds a better one

If you’re in the market for a new superyacht , Nick Candy’s whopping number might be just what you’re looking for.

The billionaire property tycoon has announced that his lavish superyacht, named 11.11, is now on the market for 59,500,000 Euros (£53,758,547.50) but you better be quick.

The 63-metre long vessel was built in 2015 by the prestigious Italian yacht builder Benetti and scooped a World Superyacht Award in 2016. Candy expects it to be snapped up quickly after demand for high-spec yachts surged during the pandemic, with the super-rich looking for ways to travel in the most Covid-safe way.

Candy said in a statement,'I've been approached over the last few years to sell it – often by charter guests who after spending one or two weeks on board want to buy it – but I've always said no.

'I'm currently nine months down the line with designs for a new and bigger yacht, so now feels like a good time to sell, especially as there is increasing demand for superyachts which are viewed as a safer alternative to shore-based travel due to their natural isolation and self-sufficiency.'

The new owner will find stunning Art Deco-style interiors inside, designed to be brief by Candy and his wife, former actress and singer, Holly Valance. There’s plenty of space for large groups of friends and family. The VIP suite has its own separate lounge and marble bathroom, while the master suite comes with its own private deck, 180-degree views and jet pool. There’s also a nursery and four further guest cabins.

Days can be spent soaking up the rays from the split-level sundeck, with its large Jacuzzi pool and bar. There’s also an on-board spa with a treatment room and steam room, helipad for ferrying guests, a trampoline and a climbing wall, plus heaps of water toys to keep you busy.

Candy said: 'We have made some amazing memories on board over the past five years. The service level on board 11.11 is like no five-star hotel on the planet.

'The crew have taken service, food, hospitality, and maintenance of a superyacht to a whole new level but it's time to move on and build something new that works for our family and lifestyle in the future.

'I have always had a passion for yachts and get huge enjoyment from the project side of building and designing a boat – it is not dissimilar to building a house or an apartment building.'

11.11 is available to buy through Y.CO

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This Real Estate Mogul Is Selling His 260-Foot Superyacht for $71 Million—Because It’s Not Big Enough

The art deco masterpiece is is jam-packed with one-of-a-kind art, five-star amenities and bars aplenty., rachel cormack.

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Nick Candy may have built his fortune peddling mansions to the well-heeled, but now he’s diving headfirst into the marine game. The British real estate mogul is selling his very own luxury superyacht for a cool $71 million.

The custom 260-footer, known as 11.11 , was designed and built by Benetti and first hit the seas in 2015. The entrepreneur poured millions of dollars into the vessel to ensure it was finished to his standards. The end result is a superyacht jam-packed with blue-chip artwork, five-star amenities and bars aplenty. Think of it as one of Candy’s mansions at sea.

The upscale interior, which was envisioned by Candy’s namesake firm , features bespoke chandeliers, flashes of silver leaf, the finest Italian marble and statement mirrors that give a decidedly Art Deco aesthetic. Of course, it’s also been styled to perfection, and the space is adorned with works by contemporary artists. There’s a bespoke neon piece that reads “Move Me” by Tracey Emin, a “Butterfly Wall” by Dominic Harris, a light box installation by Hans Kotter and various photographs by Helmut Newton.

The spacious vessel can accommodate up to 14 guests across six cabins and features an indoor and outdoor bar on every single level. The generous master suite is situated on the upper deck and affords incredible views, a walk-in wardrobe, and a private sundeck with a jet pool and sunbathing area. The guest accommodation, meanwhile, consists of a full-beam VIP suite located on the main deck, plus two double cabins and two convertible twins that are found on the lower deck. There is also space for up to 16 crew.

Elsewhere, seafarers can enjoy a sky lounge, which is positioned on the upper deck and features a custom cocktail bar, an elegant main saloon with a backlit onyx dining table, a 14-seat al fresco dining area, as well as several sundecks and terraces.

The bespoke neon piece by artist Tracey Emin.  Jeff Brown

When it comes time for a little R&R, guests can make use of the gym, steam room, massage room, spa and the inviting jacuzzi. On top of that, 11.11 has a full arsenal of water toys, a custom 26-foot Benetti Limo tender and a 20-foot Novurania RIB. There’s also a helipad located on the bow, for the weekend jaunt into the city.

As you might expect from a Benetti, the performance is no slouch either. The speedster is fitted with twin 3512-C Caterpillar engines, which give a top speed of 17 knots and a range of 5,000 nautical miles at cruising speed. That gives you the ability to travel just about anywhere you like and is arguably 11.11 ’s biggest drawcard.

“It’s a level of luxury that, until you’ve experienced it, is very difficult to comprehend,” Candy told Bloomberg . “You can have dinner in one place and wake up in another.”

So, why is Candy trying to flip the vessel? The 47-year-old told Bloomberg he’s ready for an upgrade. “I want to build a bigger yacht,” he told the publication. “It’s like anything in life. Sometimes you want to have a change. Later in life, people contract their lives; at this age, I’m still expanding.”

Furthermore, Candy is capitalizing on the proclivity for marine travel during the pandemic. Yachts have become increasingly popular of late as they allow travelers to get about in a socially distanced fashion. Indeed, this month alone, 16 superyachts spanning more than 100-feet each were sold, according to SuperYacht Times.

This is the first time 11.11 has hit the market since her launch and she’s expected to draw a lot of attention. The vessel is listed for sale with Y.CO for the sum of $71 Million (€59.5 million).

Check out more photos of the vessel below:

Rachel Cormack is a digital editor at Robb Report. She cut her teeth writing for HuffPost, Concrete Playground, and several other online publications in Australia, before moving to New York at the…

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Real-estate tycoon Nick Candy is selling his $71 million superyacht to upgrade to a bigger one — see inside

• Real-estate mogul Nick Candy's superyacht, 11.11, has hit the market for $71 million. 
• The 207-foot yacht sports room for 14 guests, several bars, multiple dining areas, a spa, and a pool.
• Candy is looking to upgrade to a larger boat, he told Bloomberg. 
• The selling dealer, Y.CO, also has the yacht listed for charter for roughly $770,000 per week. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories .

Nick Candy, a British real-estate mogul, is parting ways with his 207-foot superyacht, but it's not because he needs the money or because he's moved on to other hobbies. It's because the ship is simply too small. 

Candy, who's selling his yacht 11.11 for $71 million through yacht company Y.CO, is looking to upgrade to something a bit more spacious, he told Bloomberg recently.

"I want to build a bigger yacht," Candy said. "Later in life, people contract their lives; at this age, I'm still expanding."

Apparently, six bedrooms, multiple decks, pool areas, a nursery, a full-blown spa, and several bars isn't quite enough for the businessman. But Candy's extremely high standards aren't terribly surprising, given that he made his fortune selling some of the priciest and most extravagant real estate imaginable. 

Take a closer look at 11.11 and all of its amenities below.

Nick Candy — a British real-estate mogul who made a fortune on ultra-luxury homes — is selling his gargantuan superyacht for $71 million.

Although the 207-foot yacht is extravagant by most people's standards, Candy is looking to upgrade to something a bit larger, he told Bloomberg.

"I want to build a bigger yacht," Candy told the outlet. "It's like anything in life. Sometimes you want to have a change."

Source: Bloomberg

That may be true, but the superyacht still has plenty going for it. That is, if you're into this sort of thing.

For example, Candy made sure to outfit his yacht with both an indoor bar and an outdoor bar on every level, as well as room for 1,000 bottles of wine.

Its art-deco interior, which was designed by Candy's firm, features gobs of polished stainless steel, mirrors, and Italian marble.

Plus, 11.11 accommodates up to 14 guests in six cabins.

The master suite offers a walk-in dressing room, 180-degree views ...

... and a palatial bathroom.

It opens up onto a private deck with a lounge area ...

... and a jet pool.

The yacht also has numerous other decks ...

... and indoor lounge areas.

The sun deck sports a mosaic-decorated jacuzzi and an Italian-stone bar.

Plus, there's an outdoor dining space for 14 ...

... and an indoor one.

The superyacht also offers up a steam room, massage room, gym, and a helipad for good measure.

It also comes with its own matching tender built by Benetti, the company behind 11.11.

Those who can't quite swing the $71 million asking price may still have a shot at taking 11.11 out for a spin.

The selling dealer, Y.CO, is also renting out the yacht for $770,000 per week.

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Holly Valance’s billionaire husband buys her $53m yacht despite her getting seasick

BILLIONAIRE Nick Candy spoiled his Aussie wife, Holly Valance, with an extravagant gift. But she needed the help of a TV hypnotist to use it.

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THE billionaire husband of actress Holly Valance bought her a £26 million ($53 million) yacht — even though she got seasick.

The Sun reports tycoon Nick Candy had to call on TV hypnotist Paul McKenna, 52, to stop her throwing up on the Benetti vessel. And it has now emerged that she “hasn’t had a dose since”.

Aussie Holly, 32 — mum of two-year-old Luka — was “heavily involved” in redesigning “11.11” to make it childproof, 43-year-old Nick told Boat International magazine .

The ex- Neighbours and Strictly star also helped choose the decor including expensive artwork by Tracey Emin, 52.

“There were no bars and the sundeck was all wrong — everything was too small, the jacuzzi, the seating. Inside it was like a Russian tsar’s palace,” British property mogul Nick said of the yacht’s revamp.

“It’s not my family’s style. Functionality and comfort are the most important things. My wife told me, ‘I’m not sitting on another sofa that’s uncomfortable’.”

Nick and Holly have sailed to Monaco and St Tropez in France on the Benetti and to Capri in Italy where Simon Cowell — a pal of McKenna — was a guest on board.

This story originally appeared in The Sun .

The Aussie TV host has shared a hospital bed selfie to social media, revealing her “pretty big” health news as she urged people to take care.

The US pop star has been spotted undergoing an elaborate rehearsal at the MCG ahead of her blockbuster show at the AFL grand final.

Costco has sensationally waded in after Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ lawyer claimed the rapper bulk bought 1000 bottles of lube from the retailer.

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Motor Yacht

Luxury motor yacht Candyscape, built in 1994 by Italian shipyard Benetti, is a timeless superyacht with a unique and well-dressed interior to match. With a steel hull and aluminium superstructure, she features exterior design by Stefano Natucci while her interior is the work of Candy and Candy. This fine entertaining vessel measures 44.76 metres and can accommodate up to 12 guests.

The motor yacht has experienced several name changes as well as an extensive 2005/2006 refit in her 15 year existence. Previously known as Ambrosia, Ambrosiana, Lady Lola and Lady Christina of Merseyside, Candyscape was originally constructed for the private use of one of Benetti’s owners. It is now in the hands of Candy and Candy owners Nick and Christian Candy.

Candyscape is the first yacht to feature design by luxury lifestyle consulting firm Candy and Candy, usually known for their high-end residential designs. With such a different design team behind its interior overhaul, the design of the yacht resembles a luxury on-land residence in the guise of a traditional superyacht.

Rare fabrics appear as standard, with hand-painted silk curtains in the salon and vintage materials and patterns used throughout including 1930s dress patterns and classics from designer Ozzie Clark. Particular features of the luxury vessel include crew uniforms especially designed with the help of Alasdhair Willis, husband of fashion designer Stella McCartney, and guest accommodations fully stocked with Jo Malone products.

The media room carries a collection of books that are predominantly a mixture of modern art, fashion and interior design. Here can also be found a range of entertainment options including a projection screen, plasma TV, and Kaleidescape DVD video system. Adjacent to the media room is the powder room featuring unique Louis Vuitton upholstery made up of several disassembled monogrammed suitcases from the high-end designer complete with handles and buckles. The main deck also houses a formal dining area for up to 12 guests with a large table easily convertible into a roulette table. Al-fresco dining options are offered on the aft deck.

Luxury motor yacht Candyscape’s upper deck combines a Jacuzzi with extensive space for sunbathing. Also on the top deck is a barbeque, round table, bar and dumb waiter that provides easy access to the galley.

Amongst her six cabins are an indulgent master suite; two double staterooms; and two twin staterooms. Located on the main deck, the master suite features a private office and generous marble en suite complete with Jacuzzi. The guest rooms can all be found on the lower deck and also feature en suite facilities.

Featuring a dedicated crew, Candyscape is an excellent charter yacht for luxury vacations. The yacht cruises comfortably at 15 knots while her crew of 10 ensure the needs of every guest are met.

The luxury motor yacht is equipped with an armada of water toys to provide endless entertainment during any yacht charter. Onboard water toys include a Nautica tender, Jet Skis, kayak, water skis, ski boards, donuts and a banana stored aft of the bridge deck.

Candyscape’s home port is Monaco and she cruises the West Mediterranean during the summer and winter charter seasons. Particular sailing areas include the French and Italian Rivieras, Corsica and Sardinia.

• Yacht Builder Benetti View profile
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EXCLUSIVE: Yours for a cool £54m! Tycoon Nick Candy is selling his 63-metre superyacht complete with Jacuzzi, art-deco style interior and helipad - as billionaire and wife Holly build an even bigger one

• British billionaire businessman Candy, 47, put his stunning vessel on the market having owned it for five years
• He bought '11.11' named after his daughter's birthday in 2015 and promptly gave it an art-deco style makeover  
• Ship includes master bedroom with 180 degree sea views, Italian marble interiors and bespoke chandeliers 
• Candy said he had many happy family memories on board, but that he now feels like 'the time is right to sell' 
• He expects it to be snapped up quickly due to demand surge from mega-rich buyers during coronavirus crisis
• Candy said he and his ex-soap actress wife Holly are nine months in to a four-year project to build a new boat

By Paul Thompson for MailOnline

Published: 11:15 EDT, 19 August 2020 | Updated: 11:22 EDT, 19 August 2020

View comments

Billionaire property tycoon Nick Candy is selling his magnificent superyacht - because he is getting an even bigger one. 

Prospective buyers of the sleek 63metre-long vessel called 11.11 will need deep pockets as she is on the market for an eye-watering 59,500,000 Euros (£53,758,547.50). 

But Candy expects the yacht to be snapped up quickly thanks to a surge in demand from mega-rich buyers wanting to ride out the coronavirus pandemic on the ocean waves. 

The 47-year-old businessman who has two daughters aged six and two with wife Holly, said he had turned down previous offers for the yacht, but was now selling up as he was having a 'new and bigger' one built for his family. 

Billionaire property tycoon Nick Candy is selling his magnificent superyacht - because he is getting an even bigger one

Prospective buyers of the sleek 63metre-long vessel called 11.11 will need deep pockets as she is on the market for an eye-watering 59,500,000 Euros (£53,758,547.50)

The 47-year-old businessman said he had turned down previous offers for the yacht, but was now selling up as he was having a 'new and bigger' one built for his family

The businessman told MailOnline the ship holds many happy memories for him and his family, but now is a good time to sell 

Candy completely refurbished the boat after buying in 2015 to remove some of the wood interior and make it more to his taste

Candy and his former pop star wife Holly (above) are nine months in to a four-year project of working on a new boat together. The couple who married in 2012 after meeting in 2009 enjoyed regular holidays on the yacht

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He said: 'I've been approached over the last few years to sell it – often by charter guests who after spending one or two weeks on board want to buy it – but I've always said no. 

'I'm currently nine months down the line with designs for a new and bigger yacht, so now feels like a good time to sell, especially as there is increasing demand for superyachts which are viewed as a safer alternative to shore-based travel due to their natural isolation and self-sufficiency.'

The award-winning yacht offers the last word in nautical luxury with an art-deco style interior, featuring fittings of Italian marble, bespoke chandeliers and polished stainless steel. 

She can accommodate 12 guests in six sumptuous state cabin rooms while powering them through the waves at a top speed of 16.5 knots (19mph).

The master suite enjoys 180-degree views from six huge portrait windows flooding it with natural light, and has its own private sunbathing area and jet pool, as well as a walk-in dressing and powder room, and nursery. 

The sophisticated Benetti yacht is named 11.11 after the date of birth of Candy's elder daughter Luka who was born on November 11, 2013. 

She has 16 crew who provide guests with a level of service described by Candy as being 'like no five-star hotel on the planet'. 

The 1,181 tonne vessel is fully equipped for entertaining with an informal sky lounge featuring a custom cocktail bar. 

The lounge opens up to a deck space with a backlit dining table for up to 14 guests and an outdoor bar crafted from natural Italian fluted stone. 

The yacht's lavish sun deck features a spacious Jacuzzi and giant cushions to relax on while there is also a spa with its own massage area and mosaic-tiled steam room. 

The award-winning yacht offers the last word in nautical luxury with an art-deco style interior, featuring fittings of Italian marble, bespoke chandeliers and polished stainless steel

The 1,181 tonne vessel is fully equipped for entertaining with an informal sky lounge featuring a custom cocktail bar (above)

The sophisticated Benetti yacht is named 11.11 after the date of birth of Candy's eldest daughter Luka who was born on November 11, 2013

Guests can be ferried to and from the yacht by helicopter as it has a touch-and-go helipad on its bow as well as its own tenders and jet skis for fun on the water. 

More active guests can work up an appetite on a trampoline, a climbing wall and in a jungle gym. 

Candy, who is married to singer Holly Valance and has made billions with his brother Christian by selling homes to the super-rich has owned the yacht since it was built in 2015. 

He revealed that he had stripped out much of the interior and brought in Candy & Candy inspired fixtures and fittings to match his tastes. 

In an interview with Boat International, he said: 'There were no bars and it was designed for a Rolls-Royce Phantom to be kept in the tender garage! I didn't need any of that. 

'The sundeck was all wrong – everything was too small, the Jacuzzi, the seating. Inside it was like a Russian tsar's palace. 

'I'm not saying that's bad but it's not my family's style. It was too heavy, too classical and it was quite dark. We needed to de-wood it, basically.' 

His wife Holly played a major part in the redevelopment which made the interior almost unrecognisable with its monochrome decor complementing wall-panelling and dark surfaces. 

Artwork from revered names such as Tracy Emin and Dominic Harris added a colourful and quirky element to the vessel

The master suite enjoys 180-degree views from six huge portrait windows flooding it with natural light, and has its own private sunbathing area and jet pool, as well as a walk-in dressing and powder room, and nursery

Artwork from revered names such as Tracy Emin and Dominic Harris added a colourful and quirky element to the vessel. 

Candy even had to bring in stage hypnotist Paul McKenna to cure his wife's seasickness so she could enjoy life on the boat to the full. 

The couple who married in 2012 after meeting in 2009 enjoyed regular holidays on the yacht – but also chartered it out for 650,000 Euros a week. 

Candy added: 'We have made some amazing memories on board over the past five years. The service level on board 11.11 is like no five-star hotel on the planet. 

'The crew have taken service, food, hospitality, and maintenance of a superyacht to a whole new level. 

'But it's time to move on and build something new that works for our family and lifestyle in the future. 

'I have always had a passion for yachts and get huge enjoyment from the project side of building and designing a boat – it is not dissimilar to building a house or an apartment building.'

A spokesperson for Candy added: 'The new yacht is being built from scratch and will take around four years to complete. Nick and Holly have currently done nine months' worth of design on the new yacht with their technical and naval architects and design team.' 

11.11 which is being listed for sale by leading international yacht brokers Y.CO won awards at the World Superyacht Awards 2016 and Asia Boating Awards 2016.

Candy says he has had interest from guests who have chartered the boat for 650,000 Euros a week who have wanted to buy it

Will Christie, the Y.CO Head of Sales said: 'Demand among buyers is on the rise. In fact, in terms of sales we are busier than ever. 'We've seen a 75 per cent increase in web traffic since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak, and this has translated into a high number of enquiries, with web enquiries alone rising by 50 per cent last month and the successful sales of five pedigree yachts over 45 metres in length in the last two weeks alone. 

'The fact that yachts offer freedom away from changing travel restrictions is one factor behind this demand, but more and more we are speaking to clients who are totally changing the way they work and live, realizing that they can run their businesses remotely and therefore spend more time at sea than they had imagined before. 

'With clients who previously could not have justified yacht purchase moving into the market for the first time, we are also seeing sellers who are taking this opportunity to sell to upgrade to larger yachts. 

'11.11 is one of the most exciting yachts to come onto the market in recent years with her striking exterior and interior design. 

'She offers a huge amount of comfort in her layout - particularly in the Owners' quarters - and would make a great family yacht for any owner, no matter how long they want to spend on board. She has also built an enviable charter reputation, which adds to her appeal.'

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Countdown to Palm Beach Boat Show: 63m Benetti 11.11

• Palm Beach Boat Show 2023: Everything you need to know
• Superyachts
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Palm Beach is big on superyachts. Its town marina is fresh out of a $40 million revamp aimed at wooing gin palaces up to 260 feet. The world-famous Rybovich Superyacht Marina and re-fit yard is a golf cart ride away.

So the Palm Beach Boat Show makes a natural stop-off for pricey superyachts looking for a new owner. Which is why the stunning 206-foot Benetti 11.11 has a slip booked and brokers Y.CO at the ready to hand out glossy brochures showing the $71 million asking price.

Owned by British real estate mogul Nick Candy, 11.11 will be the biggest and most-expensive boat at the 2022 Palm Beach boat show. By far.

It seems the high-profile developer (who reportedly is one of the potential buyers of Chelsea FC) acquired the superyacht back in 2014 after the original owner walked away just 10 months before completion.

He jumped into a very last-minute redesign that reconfigured the sundeck, redesigned the tender garage (which had been set-up to accommodate a Rolls-Royce Phantom), and using his Candy&Candy design team, redecorated pretty much the entire interior.

The yacht was finally launched in 2015, just weeks before its coming out party at that year’s Monaco Yacht Show . Since then it has cruised extensively and been a popular charter yacht available for rent at a non-trivial $718,000 a week.

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With its vertical plumb bow and sleek Benetti lines, the superyacht has been spinning heads from St. Barths to St-Tropez. Flat out she can run at 16.5 knots with a range of 5,000 nautical miles.

Inside, the Art Deco-inspired interior is filled with art from Nick Candy’s burgeoning collection. They includes pieces from Tracy Emin, Hans Kotter, Helmut Newton and David Yarrow.

No word as to whether all that art comes included.

Benetti 11.11 specification

LOA: 206ft (63m) Beam: 35ft (10.8m) Engines: 2 x 3512-C Caterpillars Top speed: 16.5 knots Asking price: $71 million Charter rate: $718,000 per week

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On board Candyscape II, the Candy Brothers' £39 million yacht

Nick and Christian Candy's £60million superyacht has gone on sale only two years after it was unveiled.

The ultimate floating party pad for the rich and famous, boasts a large rotating sunbed, leather floors and a piano that plays itself.

Candyscape II has spent much of its short life hosting Hollywood celebrities, including Gwyneth Paltrow and US Idol presenter Ryan Seacrest, oligarchs and leading sportsmen, and could be yours for £39 million.

But its sale should not be taken as a sign the brothers’ empire is heading for the rocks — they have commissioned a replacement. A source said: “The reason they’re selling it is because they’ve got another yacht on order. It’s currently being made.”

The 208ft Candyscape II was built in Italy and was itself a replacement for their first yacht, Candyscape, which they sold for about £11 million. Their current yacht has a crew of 16 and can accommodate a dozen guests.

The marketing particulars boast of “contemporary classic styling”, with crystal chandeliers, a glass lift and “a collection of different woods and textures, all seamlessly arranged to combine 21st-century chic with Thirties glamour”.

Super-yacht agents Edmiston said: “A wave and weather artwork adorns the dining saloon and a sun orrery charts the position of the planets. By any standards, the sun deck is an incredible space with a large dining area, elegant bar and a rotating sunbed.

“The split-level master suite shares a private gymnasium with the VIP cabin — entertainment, exercise and sleep — Candy & Candy style,” adds the online brochure. With an interior designed by the brothers, it was fitted with a �100,000 Perspex Schimmel piano that plays itself.

The dining table can seat up to 20, with service from two chefs and five stewardesses. Unveiling the yacht, Nick Candy, who is engaged to actress and singer Holly Valance, said: “We wanted to be able to host parties and events.”

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• What Is Cinema?

Too Big to Sail?

Espen Oeino, the Norwegian designer of such iconic yachts as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s $200 million Octopus, was on a sleek 240-foot craft he had also designed, sailing from St. Tropez to Nice, in the fall of 2008. With him were three European billionaires and their wives, relaxed and happy at the end of yet another summer in a world that seemingly had no limits on luxury or cost. Suddenly the television was blaring with the news that the U.S. credit crisis had put the global economy at serious risk. “Soon they were all stuck to the TV, watching news unfold about how bad things were,” says Oeino, adding, “There were some very nervous people on board.” When they reached Nice, the billionaires rushed off the boat and onto their jets in order to fly home and tend to their businesses. “That is when I realized, Hey, something is really ugly here,” says Oeino.

[#image: /photos/54cbf5782cba652122d8a54e]|||Slide Show: Mark Seal and Todd Eberle delve into the lifestyles and personalities aboard the ocean’s most enviable vessels. |||

He shows me renderings in his Monte Carlo office of one of “the victims,” as he calls the super-yachts that were commissioned but never got built. He knew what had happened to the yachting world the last time the economy tanked, in 1929: the boats got small. “It took 50 years for yachts to return to comparable sizes,” he says, noting that the stalemate didn’t break until 1980, when the international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi launched the 282-foot, silver-hulled Nabila, named for his daughter. “It took a long time to come back to what it was pre-Depression. I was worried it was going to happen again.”

Equally alarmed was veteran yacht broker Nicholas Edmiston, whose clientele includes a number of American, European, and Russian billionaires. When I met Edmiston, in the summer of 2004, while I was writing another yacht article for this magazine, he regaled me with stories of wild extravagance and got me on several of the biggest, most sumptuous boats sailing the Mediterranean. “That was the height of the boom,” he tells me now in his red-leather office in Monte Carlo. Back then, yachts were routinely selling for premium prices, frequently double the asking price. “The yacht business more or less hit reinforced concrete in late fall of 2008,” says Edmiston. Gone were the days when a super-yacht that had cost the owner $35 million was sold “to somebody from a former Soviet Union country” for $75 million.

“Then what happened?,” I ask.

“Nothing. That was the trouble. Things got bad, really bad. People did not want to sell boats at deep discounts; people did not want to buy boats.” He had little choice but to wait for the storm to pass. “People were saying, ‘What are we going to do?’ ” he recalls. There was only one answer for brokers: reduce prices. “They would say, ‘I just want to get it sold.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to be realistic. We can sell it, but we can only sell it for what it’s worth. Don’t say to me you want 20, when I’ve just told you it’s worth 12.’ ” Edmiston says he recently sold a yacht for $65 million, $39 million less than the owner had turned down in the summer of 2008.

As the economic world crumbled around them, many yacht owners retreated, quietly mooring their boats in places where they wouldn’t be seen. “They were parking in Greece, Croatia, and La Ciotat [the shipyard town in Provence], and not taking them to St. Barth’s for Christmas,” says Oeino. Edmiston adds, “There was an attitude against people being extravagant and spending money!”

Many new launches were said to be the result of owners who had commissioned yachts before the crisis and were in too deep to stop. A number of innovative concepts were put on hold, however, most notably a collaboration between Wally, the state-of-the-art designer of powerboats and sailboats, and Pierre-Alexis Dumas, of the French luxury brand Hermès, for a vast, triangular, ecologically sustainable, $130 million “floating island” called WHY (Wally-Hermès Yachts). Before the crisis, Hermès had planned to finance the project on spec. “Now we have to wait for a client before proceeding,” says Wally owner Luca Bassani Antivari as we speed away from the Monaco coastline on his newest powerboat, the 73 Wallypower.

Fractional-ownership pitchmen promptly entered the arena of super-yachting. I met one of them in Cannes, on a boat designed by the British architect Lord Norman Foster. For $2.3 million, not including running costs, he told me, I could become a one-eighth owner of a futuristic craft called Ocean Emerald and sail on it for 30 days a year. “Yachting is a wonderful pastime, but it’s financial suicide,” says John Hare, chairman of YachtPlus. I boarded another “affordable” alternative in Cannes: the Aquariva, one of a limited edition of 22 speedboats created by the designer Marc Newson as an homage to the great Riva brand and available this fall through the international art dealer Larry Gagosian for a mere $1.5 million each.

I had become curious about the current market for big boats after spending an afternoon on one called Predator this past summer. At 238 feet, Predator is a marvel of engineering and naval architecture that seems to fly in the face of the recession. To underscore its name, it is decorated with sculptures and depictions of sharks and other predatory creatures. The owner had ripped out most of the standard staterooms to enlarge the master suite, which is now one of the largest in the world. The boat features a massive dive room, equipped with the latest scuba gear, so the owner and his guests can literally swim with the sharks.

The aggressive look is equally prevalent on the most audacious yacht afloat: the 390-foot A, created by the French architect and designer Philippe Starck for a Russian client he calls “a genius of mathematics.” Starck tells me A is a monolith, an artifact from the future, a line in the sand that makes every boat that came before it obsolete. His intention was to design a yacht that was “organic, in harmony with the sea,” as opposed to most super-yachts, which he feels treat the ocean with arrogance. “The fabulous gold shit,” he calls them. “Just showing the money, the power of the money, the vulgarity of the money.”

He was in bed, he says, where he gets most of his inspirations, when the vision for A came to him whole. He had the boat down on paper in an hour and a half, and A was launched in the summer of 2008. Is it a futuristic battleship? An ultra-modern submarine? It looks like an enormous white stiletto with what The Times of London called “a razor-sharp bow [that] will cut through Arctic ice.” Its white, porthole-dotted hull rises up sleek and shiny, its sharp angles impervious to piracy and price (it cost more than $300 million to build and requires $20 million a year to maintain). According to The Wall Street Journal, there are 23,600 square feet of living space, encased in bombproof glass, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and hidden doors that lead to sanctums such as the one referred to as “the Nookie Room.” The 2,583-square-foot master suite, with its rotating bed, is accessible to a select few via a fingerprint security system. There are three pools (one whose glass bottom is visible from the disco below it), 44 security cameras, and a 35-member crew in custom-designed harem-style uniforms. With its high-speed twin 24,000-horsepower diesel engines, A is able to out-run almost anything on the high seas.

The Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, the undisputed king of the super-yacht set, has four enormous boats. His newest, launched last summer, is Eclipse, the biggest yacht in the world. Though Abramovich’s representatives will not reveal details, Eclipse is believed to be between 533 and 600 feet, making it at least 18 inches longer than the previous recordholder, Dubai, owned by the Sheikh of Dubai. While Abramovich reportedly lost half of his estimated $23.5 billion fortune in the 2009 collapse of the Russian steel industry, Eclipse is a stunning statement of power. Built at a cost of somewhere between $400 and $800 million, it has eight decks (two for helicopters), a 70-member crew, 11 guest cabins, a disco, a mini-submarine, and reportedly special shields that emit flashes that prevent paparazzi from getting pictures. The boat is so overwhelming that even other oligarchs marvel. “A million euros [$1.3 million] a month in maintenance,” one says in praise of it.

“If you come with your own little palace, you are more welcome,” explains German industrialist and shipyard owner Guido Krass, who hosts royalty and heads of state aboard his 240-foot floating mansion, Silver Zwei (he sold the first Silver to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi), on which he has traveled this year to Kuwait, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Oman, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Maldives.

This new, flamboyant level of oceangoing opulence is not restricted to a couple of billionaires, I am told by a bon vivant in one of the world’s most expensive luxury-goods emporiums. A banty rooster of Eastern European descent, he is wearing a blue linen suit from which protrudes a little potbelly, which he blames on weeks of lavish living at sea. He shows me on the screen of his iPhone pictures of the colossal Alfa Nero, which a multi-billionaire buddy of his had chartered at the standard rate of $1.1 million per week, not counting such running costs as the $650,000 it takes to fill up the gas tank. “I gained so much weight,” he says. “It was sick! ” He keeps his iPhone in my face to display scenes of life on Alfa Nero —the elegant staterooms, the large crew, the extravagant wine and food available at any time. “It was sick! ” he repeats. He points out the swimming pool on the boat’s stern, which can be transformed into a helicopter landing pad with the flip of a switch. Then he shows the lavish French villa his host had acquired at an astronomical price just so that he could entertain his guests between cruises.

Clearly, one league of super-yacht owners were gone. But another had swiftly taken their place, snapping up their boats (and their lifestyles) at deep discounts. The economic crisis had hit the big-boat world extremely hard, but from the tumult there had emerged a fresh species of vessel: bigger, more cutting-edge—the new new. For the new owners, it seemed that the recession had never happened. Hoping to meet a few of the proud possessors of the most expensive toys on earth, I went to Monaco and managed to go on board eight boats in eight days.

On the Good Ship Lollipop

I start in Monte Carlo, at La Belle Epoque, the 17,500-square-foot, 30-room, two-level phantasmagoria that was formerly the home of the late international banker Edmond Safra. On the morning of December 3, 1999, this extraordinary penthouse was destroyed by a fire started by his male nurse. Safra died of asphyxiation in a locked bathroom.

The Candy brothers, Nick, 37, and Christian, 36, the swinging, London-based developers and interior designers, snapped up the expansive residence and transformed it into a fancy showplace for their Candy & Candy company designs. (Two months after my visit, they would sell the penthouse to an unnamed Middle Eastern investor for $304 million.)

I find Nick Candy and his gorgeous Australian girlfriend, Holly, in the office in the penthouse, where—as in all of the Candys’ residences and their London headquarters—the brothers work side by side at matching desks.

“So you were impressed by the apartment?” asks Nick, the more outspoken brother, who has wavy reddish hair and is clad in cargo shorts and a pink linen shirt.

“I am frankly speechless,” I reply. “Did you get a good deal?”

“An amazing deal,” he says. “I think most people were scared to touch this.”

Were he and his brother spooked by the deadly fire that had raged through the place?

“No,” says Nick. “We had it blessed by every religion you can have it blessed by: Roman Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, rabbi—the whole lot.”

He leads me outside to the port, where in one prime slip Candyscape II, the brothers’ 203-foot extravaganza in white, stands waiting with its 14-member crew and every conceivable amenity.

In the main saloon, beneath a metal installation of the planets, Nick Candy attempts to describe the whale of a boat, employing a phrase that comes up frequently in conversations with the brothers: “not only.” According to a writer in Candy, the brothers’ magazine, the boat is “not only a home, but a floating showcase.” There’s not only an elevator but a circular shaft designed to take guests on a “Jules Verne—ish thrill ride” through the ship’s four levels. Not only is there a 12-person Jacuzzi, but it turns into a circular bed that rotates with the sun. Should the sun’s rays become too intense, the bed automatically sprays guests with a fine mist. In the guest cabins, not only are there full-length mirrors to satisfy the greatest narcissist, but the mirrors are equipped with invisible, computerized cameras that guests can program to see what they wore the night before—and the night before that—in order to avoid embarrassing wardrobe repeats. On the sundeck, according to Candy magazine, not only is there a massive alfresco dining table that can become a daybed, “but if, say, Lily Allen or Lady Gaga suddenly feels like performing … the table can also rise up to provide a small stage, complete with the necessary sound system.”

Most of all, Candyscape II is not only a yacht but a marketing tool, a model, like the Monte Carlo residence, to show off the Candy brothers’ expertise in designing homes, apartments, yachts, jets, helicopters, and cars. “We are in 30 countries today, designing for clients,” says Nick. “So whether it be a Kylie Minogue or Gwyneth Paltrow or any one of our billionaire clients, we are designing for their specific tastes.” To show potential new clients the unlimited scope of their designs, the Candys have to create their own domains. They have to live as well as, or better than, their clients. Hence, the multiple residences, the yacht, the private jet, the soon-to-be-completed helicopter, and the fleet of Rolls-Royces and Range Rovers. The brothers have an estimated worth of $1.5 billion.

Nick pauses, as if by telepathy. “Christian’s arrived,” he says, and his brother, tall, thin, angular, and intense, strides into the saloon, dressed exactly like Nick. The brothers are so close they complete each other’s sentences. Sons of Tony Candy, a small-ad-agency executive from Surrey, they began with a $9,000 loan from their grandmother to ride the London housing boom, developing and designing homes for the Über -rich. Then came the crash, seemingly shaking Candyland to its core. Banks went bust. Projects imploded. Their expansion into America—an eight-acre project in Beverly Hills—was imperiled when their partner, an Icelandic-owned bank, couldn’t pay its share of a loan and the venture went into default. However, they cannot afford to show weakness or retreat. In the Candy universe, to retreat is to die. Candyscape II is a strong signal that they not only have survived the economic crisis but are going full steam ahead.

“We weren’t really planning to buy a boat,” says Christian of their first yacht, the original Candyscape, which they acquired for their company in September 2003. “We came to a yacht show together and fell in love with it.” It was a 150-foot Benetti, on which they did a massive refit, including adding a mini-casino and a bathroom lined with antique Louis Vuitton suitcase leather. They felt they had to come up with the perfect name, and Nick rattles off a few they rejected: “ Candy & Candy, Eye Candy, Nose Candy, Yes We Candy .… Then Alasdhair Willis, who is Stella McCartney’s husband and one of our consultants, along with some of our marketing team, came up with Candyscape .”

The boat was a blast, the brothers say, recalling the parties they threw on it—with performances by Bon Jovi during the Cannes Film Festival and the Monaco Grand Prix, and guests that included Prince Albert, Uma Thurman, and Ryan Seacrest. It proved to be a magnet for business. “Big deals were signed on board,” says Nick. “We bought NoHo Square [their multi-billion-dollar London apartment and commercial complex] on the back of that boat during the Monaco Grand Prix. We did that with Kaupthing Bank, which, you know, is now in administration [has been taken over by the government].” In short, the yacht worked its magic. But one yacht is never enough. “We wanted bigger and better,” says Nick.

They were in the middle of construction of their new boat, a collaboration between Espen Oeino and the Candy & Candy design team, when the crisis hit. Candyscape II stood half built in an Italian shipyard. “In the construction industry, if you have something half built, it is worth nothing,” says Nick. They decided to forge ahead.

Christian picks up the thread. “Every six weeks I was heading down there to keep an eye on it, to look at the detail. With a project of this size, you have to be on top of it.”

Once the boat was launched, the economic crisis took an even more painful turn. “Everybody thought you could put a deposit on a boat and flip it and six weeks later make money,” says Nick. “But the value of yachts has fallen off a cliff.”

He looks around, taking in Candyscape II. “In the boom, you would probably get 80-million-plus euros [$104 million] for this,” says Nick. “Today, you would probably get—”

“—sixty,” says Christian.

Their latest deal could easily make up the shortfall. One Hyde Park, 86 luxury apartments adjacent to Harrods in London’s Knightsbridge, which the Candys opened this fall in partnership with the prime minister of Qatar, is said to be the most expensive real-estate development in the history of Great Britain. The brothers told Bloomberg News that they expect to earn £550 million [$860 million] if the remaining apartments at One Hyde Park sell for their asking price. They charter Candyscape II throughout the year, for $585,000 a week. Still, Nick says, “you don’t break even or make money on boats.” The boat sucks up cash insatiably. “To operate a yacht like this is 2.5 million euros [$3.2 million] a year,” Nick continues. “That is just straight operating costs for the crew and maintaining it, and we are not even in the super-league of the 90-to-100-meter [295-to-330-foot] yachts.”

“It is very different to go on a yacht and then go back to hotel life,” says Christian. “The service standards, the space for freedom, waking up on different mornings with different backdrops—you just cannot get that in a hotel.”

Plus, Candyscape II is a showcase not only for the Candy & Candy brand but also for the Candy brothers themselves, offering instant access to fellow super-yacht owners, who tend to stick to their own kind. “Like-minded people go in for boats,” explains Nick. “We’ll be in St. Tropez, and we will go on [billionaire British retailer] Philip Green’s boat, [British Thoroughbred-racing king] Michael Tabor’s boat. Most of our friends have boats, so you just go from boat to boat. Obviously business comes up.

“This time of year, everybody is coming here,” he continues when we are on the stern of Candyscape II, surveying the giant boats crowding Monte Carlo’s harbor. “From Middle Eastern royal families to Russian oligarchs, entrepreneurs from all around the world.” They are here because the South of France is a jumping-off point to the sun spots of the world. “We’re one and a half hours from London, and you have Ibiza, Capri, Sardinia, Corsica, Monaco, Cannes, St. Tropez. All my friends from L.A. are here now. Sam Nazarian is on a boat. He owns all the top restaurants, bars, and clubs in Los Angeles. It is his 35th birthday on Friday night. Harvey Weinstein is here. The prime minister and the Emir of Qatar are both here. All the royal families of the Middle East are here. For these two months, this has become the center of the world, where the super-rich want to play.”

Nick races off the yacht, and he and his girlfriend climb into Catch Me if You Candy, the brothers’ speedboat. The next night they’re going to a party at the home of David and Simon Reuben, the Bombay-born, London-based brothers who made their billions in aluminum mining in Russia. “They own a number of boats, including Siren, a very nice boat that I think my friend Simon Cowell’s going to be chartering in the next couple of weeks,” says Nick. “They’re having a big party. I’ll see whether I can get you an invite.”

He does. That night, in the Reuben villa, high on a hill above St. Tropez, yacht owners (including Denise Rich, the former wife of the American tax exile Marc Rich, who is staying on her boat, Lady Joy ) mix with British man-about-town Nicky Haslam, actors George Hamilton and Joan Collins, and more than 100 others. No one seems to be dwelling on the recession.

On the Bounding Main

I’m at the port of La Spezia, Italy, where a caravan of vehicles, led by a silver Maybach, speeds onto the dock. Behind the Maybach is a black Mercedes cargo truck, out of which four men in matching navy-blue Armani shirts and slacks rush and begin unloading luggage: black Armani suitcases, silver Armani shopping bags, white Armani duffel bags.

From the Maybach steps Giorgio Armani himself, having been driven two hours straight from his July ready-to-wear show in Milan. Dressed also in navy, he hurries onto the gangplank of his new, 213-foot yacht, Main, with an exterior as deep green as the sea. He greets his crew, 14 young men in white Armani shirts and shorts, then disappears into his bedroom, emerging moments later in identical white shorts and shirt.

“ Andiamo, andiamo! ” he says to hurry an assistant and associates waiting for him with a few last bits of business to attend to before he can sail away, with a group of longtime friends, on a two-month vacation. He signs papers and poses for a photograph. Then he strips to his waist and walks around the boat, through its stunning split-level, colorful main saloon (a departure from the regulation Armani Casa hues of black and mauve) and its sleek areas with wraparound louvered windows. Armani quickly settles into a world that moves on his whim. Up on the bridge deck, his captain awaits his orders. “Maybe Mr. Armani changes the plan,” he says. They might sail for Naples, Monaco, Cannes, St. Tropez, Ibiza, or the Aeolian Islands of Sicily. It’s all up to Armani.

Then the engines roar and the air fills with smoke. The crew members have changed into their sailing uniforms: shirts and shorts the color of the boat. One of them shouts out something in Italian, the dock lines are thrown off, and the big boat backs away from the dock. “ Bella, bella!, ” Armani exclaims, sitting at a teak table on the fourth and topmost deck with his friends, laughing, dipping cookies into cappuccino, the stress falling rapidly away as Main sets sail.

Meanwhile, I am about to go super-yachting in Greece, whose colossal financial crisis could bring down the whole of Europe if it defaults on its $400 billion in loans. After a night in Athens, I fly to Corfu, which some German lawmakers have suggested be sold to help satisfy the national debt. Here, in the blue Ionian Sea, lies the ideal vessel for escaping any economic crisis, a yacht whose exterior is painted in a camouflage pattern, like the World War I battleships designed to confuse and elude enemy gunships. A 115-foot riot of design in blinding Popsicle colors, the yacht is called Guilty.

“YOU HAVE PEOPLE FROM INDIA AND CHINA NOW TALKING ABOUT YACHTS. RUSSIA IS COMING BACK, AND THE MIDDLE EAST IS BOOMING.”

Guilty as Charged

Dakis Joannou, the Cyprus-born construction magnate who is among the world’s leading collectors of contemporary art, takes me on a tour of his estate. Then we sit outside at a table in the garden, looking out at Guilty, which blazes with almost neon intensity in the morning sun. Soon the Milan-based designer Ivana Porfiri is at the table with her iPad, helping Joannou tell how they created what he has called “a totally magical object.”

Once again, Guilty is the last in a yacht-lover’s progression to ever bigger and better boats. “The first was a very fast 55-miles-per-hour Italian boat called Mickey Mouse, ” says Joannou. “The next one was called Donald Duck. We had a family conference for the name of the new boat. Everybody wanted to call it Goofy .” Instead, he took the name of a work by the artist Jenny Holzer: Protect Me from What I Want. His fourth boat, a 90-footer, served Joannou’s purposes: sailing around Greece’s archipelago islands every weekend from March until October. But then Joannou needed “an upgrade,” and he enlisted Porfiri to help him create a new boat.

What Porfiri conjured up—a swirling Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole whose interiors explode with infinity mirrors, ultra-modern furniture, and windows that change shade as the sun moves—would surely have been inventive enough. In the summer of 2007, however, the Michelangelo in Joannou’s collection of contemporary artists arrived on Corfu for a visit.

“Jeff,” he says, meaning Jeff Koons.

A balding, 70-year-old grandfather, Joannou is subdued to the point of being shy. He might have remained simply the rich chairman of a group of privately held building and civil-engineering companies, but in 1985 his life took an unexpected turn: he met Jeff Koons at an exhibition of his “Equilibrium” series and fell so deeply in love with the artist’s work that he became a serious collector and a major patron of Koons, who is now the top-selling living artist at auction.

“He was sitting on this actual table, and I told him the plans for the boat,” says Joannou. “I said, ‘Do you have any ideas about the outside? Because we don’t know about the color.’ ”

“Razzle-dazzle,” Koons said almost immediately.

“What?” asked Joannou. “Razzle-dazzle” was the term used for camouflaging World War I battleships. Once Koons showed Joannou photographs of those battleships with geometrically patterned exteriors, Porfiri opened her notebook to show that she had had the identical idea, causing Joannou to exclaim, “It has to be done.”

Koons went to work, applying the design and adding an image of music star Iggy Pop on the top deck. Koons suggested calling the boat Iggy, but after Joannou saw and later acquired a Sarah Morris painting that featured one word in red on a white field—GUILTY—he knew he had found the perfect name.

What emerged was a boat so extreme that it had to be wrapped in paper to guard against paparazzi as it was trucked from the Cantieri Navali Rizzardi shipyard in Sabaudia, Italy. All along the way, trees and power lines had to be cut, and bridges strengthened, to accommodate the load. Joannou and his wife, Lietta, and Porfiri took the boat on its maiden voyage, and it caused a dizzy stir in the little port of Hydra.

“Wow! What is that?,” Joannou recalls people asking. “Is it a disco boat?”

In June 2008, Guilty was officially launched in Athens to the acclaim of a hundred art aficionados, including Larry Gagosian and the Italian photographer Jean Pigozzi, whose own Ettore Sottsass—designed trawler had pushed previous design limits. “And I thought my boat was crazy,” Pigozzi told Joannou.

Would the same boat be built today? Guilty was a product of the height of the boom, and even Porfiri admits things are different now. “Everything was climbing up and up and—” She slams her hand on the table. “Then everything came crashing down. Today, you don’t want to show anything.”

“A, people don’t have it,” says Joannou, meaning money. “People just stopped buying yachts. And, B, even people who go on yachts don’t really use them anymore, because of the cost of fuel.”

The owner of arguably the most ostentatious vessel on the sea, however, has no intention of giving it up. “I am what I am,” he says. “You can’t really change your life completely, and I don’t think people should.” He pauses, then adds, “Let’s stick to pleasant things.”

As we sail around Corfu, it occurs to me that Guilty might be an ingenious hedge against the recession, as a piece of contemporary art whose skin—the biggest and most expensive Jeff Koons work in existence—might be worth more in the art market than in today’s beleaguered yacht market. A Koons Balloon Flower sculpture sold in 2008 for $25.8 million at auction. Ivana Porfiri insists it’s a boat, not a floating piece of art. But when I bring the subject up with Joannou, the magnate emerges. “Hmm, maybe yes,” he admits.

Terific, with One R

The next day, a Eurocopter EC120 is sent to fly me to the tiny island of Patmos, where a beautiful shipping heiress is waiting on a boat that was inspired by Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d

Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten

Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

The winds were love-sick with them.

The sails of Angela Ismailos’s stunning 164-foot Perini Navi sailing yacht, Baracuda, are indeed purple. Ismailos is waiting seductively on the stern, barefoot, in a flowing sundress and a gold necklace, as members of her crew of eight deliver me in her dinghy.

By noon, we are sipping champagne in her handsomely furnished saloon. My hostess lights a big cigar, turns up the volume of her favorite opera, Tosca, and, as Maria Callas’s voice fills the air, tells me about her boat. The daughter of a Greek shipping executive and the wife of shipping magnate George Economou (No. 707 on the 2008 Forbes list of international billionaires), Ismailos is a fireball. She has degrees in law and political science from Athens University, and she has studied at New York University, the New York Film Academy, the Juilliard School, the Lee Strasberg Studio, and Columbia University, in New York, where she lives part-time in a Park Avenue apartment surrounded by the works of her friends Julian Schnabel, John Currin, and Francesco Clemente. Her first film, Great Directors —in which she interviews 10 filmmakers, from Bernardo Bertolucci to John Sayles—was shown last year at the Venice Film Festival. When it opened in Cannes, she had a party for 150 friends on her boat.

Angela says that when she was young she would sit in her father’s office and look out at the port of Piraeus. “I used to sit there and look at all the fishing boats, cruise boats, sailing boats, and I always imagined torture, battles, and the Persians coming to attack the Parthenon and take over Athens,” she says. She also had a recurring dream: “A huge sailing boat with purple sails coming to save me and my family.”

When she began conceptualizing her dream boat, she and her husband came across Rupert Murdoch’s 184-foot sailboat, Rosehearty, with its Christian Liaigre interiors. While they admired it, Ismailos had something quite different in mind: “a continuity of the floors and ceiling,” she says, referring to the bleached teak that you see throughout the boat. She envisioned a minimalist, contemporary vessel, its walls of white parchment and lacquer, its hull covered with reflective silver. It would be one of the world’s most technically superior and aesthetically stylish sailboats, as smooth as the predator whose name she would give it: Baracuda , with one r, “because I don’t like two *r’*s,” she says. One night in New York, at a party hosted by Calvin Klein, she met the man who would help her achieve her vision, the master of minimalism who had designed Klein’s Madison Avenue flagship, the London-based architect John Pawson. She gets Pawson on the phone during my visit to extol the virtues of the boat, which, she says, definitely wasn’t built with the meager proceeds from her films. “It would take James Cameron or a Jurassic Park blockbuster returns to afford to buy a sailboat like this,” she says.

“When I met my husband, I told him, ‘I love art, I love opera,’ and he told me, ‘I love shipping,’ ” she says. “I told him, ‘I hope we don’t end up like Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis.’ His ambition and her talent killed their lives. But since then everything has been good. He gives me a lot of freedom.”

A late lunch is served on the expansive sundeck, with its Hermès deck chairs, where Ismailos talks about her next film, a feature entitled The City of a Dead Woman, the story of a woman who re-discovers her desire to live through a complex relationship with a priest on a remote Greek island; about the time she visited the tortured Christina Onassis on Skorpios; about a party she is giving the following night on Baracuda, with guests including Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s chairman of worldwide contemporary art, VANITY FAIR contributing editor Reinaldo Herrera and his wife, the designer Carolina Herrera, and several Greek royals. She asks me to stay.

She and her boat have a hypnotic hold on me, but I have to excuse myself and fly to the South of France, where an unlikely sailor is expecting me on a dock in St. Tropez.

The Aristocraft

Tara Gabriel Galaxy Gramophone Getty is the name his parents gave him, but everyone now knows him simply as Tara Getty. We are on a 1971 Riva Aquarama, and he is taking me to his boat, a storied vessel launched in 1938. The last private yacht of Sir Malcolm Campbell, the British racing hero known as “the fastest man on earth” for breaking speed records in cars and boats he named Blue Bird, it has been immaculately restored with its original fittings as well as the newest technology. “I like classic boats personally,” Getty says when we are in *Blue Bird’*s main saloon, which is as elegant as a suite at Claridge’s. “I always liked older things. I quite like restoring things versus building from scratch.”

His circuitous route to Blue Bird is indicated by a photograph placed prominently on a table in the saloon: a 1969 Patrick Lichfield portrait of Getty’s parents on the roof of the 19th-century palazzo they purchased during their honeymoon in Marrakech. The picture shows John Paul Getty II, son of the American oil baron who was once the world’s richest man, in a djellaba, and Talitha Pol, the Javanese beauty who became a 1960s fashion icon, kneeling in harem pants and a flowing robe. They were introduced by Getty Sr.’s onetime assistant Claus von Bülow, who seated them next to each other at a dinner party he was hosting in London after Rudolf Nureyev, who was said to be entranced by Talitha, had canceled. Married a year later in Rome, the couple blazed a trail of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll to become emblems of the 1960s along with their friends Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. “It’s a beautiful picture, and it sort of represents the wild 60s,” says Getty. Yves Saint Laurent, who paid homage to Talitha in some of his designs, once described the couple as “beautiful and damned.”

ONCE JEFF KOONS SHOWED HIM PHOTOS OF THOSE WORLD WAR I BATTLESHIPS, JOANNOU SAID, “IT HAS TO BE DONE.”

Tara, their only child, was born in Rome in May of 1968. When he was three, his mother died of a heroin overdose. Tara was sent to live with his father’s first wife and four half-siblings in Rome. When he was five, his half-brother John Paul Getty III was kidnapped by the Mafia, and his right ear was delivered to an Italian newspaper with a ransom note. “Everyone left Italy, and the rest of my family went to America,” Tara tells me. “I went to live with my maternal grandparents, who were living down here.

“I consider myself very lucky that I came here,” he says of St. Tropez, where he and his family still live part of the year, in the house of his late maternal grandparents, the artists Willem and Poppet Pol. “They were great. They became my parents, really. I went to school for four years in Ramatuelle [a village in the hills above St. Tropez]. It’s an amazing place to be brought up.”

In St. Tropez, the world of boats opened up to him. His father had been born at sea, “off the coast of Italy on a cruise ship,” he says. In 1988, John Paul Getty II bought film producer Robert Stigwood’s antique yacht, Jezebel, and after a restoration re-christened her Talitha G, for his late wife. He and Tara had discussed crossing the Atlantic together in Talitha G, but he died in 2003.

The son John Paul and Talitha Getty left behind is an unpretentious, gentle man, tanned and bearded. He spends half his time in South Africa, where he and his wife, Jessica, run a game reserve in Zululand. But it is here, on the sea, that he feels most alive. His résumé is rife with private schools in England and time spent in the family businesses, but through it all runs a series of boats, gradually growing in size and range, that led him to Blue Bird. “He’s a serial boat buyer,” says his broker, Nick Edmiston, who helped Tara locate Blue Bird, which was in a sorry state in a Rotterdam shipyard.

As Getty proudly gives me a tour of the boat, he talks about its restoration and both the freedom of being on the sea and the danger. Once, when he was sailing with a friend in the Gulf Stream off the Florida coast, the waters were so rough that the ship actually broke up around them, and the Coast Guard had to rescue them. No chance of that happening on Blue Bird, which was stripped down to its studs and rebuilt piece by piece by G. L. Watson, of Liverpool. The interiors were done by the pre-eminent firm of Bannenberg and Rowell Design, run by Dickie Bannenberg and Simon Rowell, in London.

It is tempting to view Getty and Blue Bird as part of the new strain of super-yachts, beyond the reach of the global recession. But, for him, a yacht is not something to show; it’s a way of life, stretching back to the glory days of his parents. “So many come into yachting because they made a fortune; Tara came into it because he was a kid who grew up on the beach,” says Edmiston.

The other end of the spectrum plays out on the dock in Monte Carlo. I’m standing with my luggage in front of the Port Palace hotel, which overlooks the marina, at the end of my eight-day adventure. On the decks of a moored yacht there is a commotion, made by white-clad crew members as they line up in formation to bid a charter guest farewell. A short Eastern European, trailed by his family, emerges to the cooing of the crew. The scene attracts a gaggle of onlookers, who quickly approach the boat with their cameras. The man ambles down the gangplank in blue velvet house slippers and heads for a white Rolls-Royce Phantom standing nearby. He and his family climb inside, but the rowdy horde of young men and women surround the sedan, and one girl places her grimy hands on the hood and leans against the car to pose for a picture. “How rude!” screams a crew member as the Rolls speeds away. Then the crew scurries back to the boat to get it ready for the next guests, due to arrive within hours—the number of yacht charters rose sharply last summer, after recovering from a drop the year before.

Speaking of the future of yachts, Guido Krass, the German industrialist, tells me, “The Americans have been quiet, but the Asians are going for these 100-meter [328-foot] monsters. You have people from India and mainland China now talking about yachts. Russia is coming back, and the Middle East is booming. Despite the economic crisis, the average size of big boats has outgrown all expectations.” This fall’s new arrivals include Orca, New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov’s futuristic 315-foot vision; Serene, a 439-foot Espen Oeino marvel, complete with a Snow Room (where guests can cool off in a simulated blizzard) and an outdoor cinema (two drive-in-style screens rise up from the deck); and Pacific, a 278-foot giant with, according to the designer Dickie Bannenberg, “elements of Nepal, Japan, Polynesia, South America, and the movie Minority Report thrown in.”

In spite of the global economic meltdown, the world of the super-yachts sails on.

Special Correspondent

Cocktail hour.

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Nike Entwisle

Nick Entwisle

As retirement loomed, the superyacht industry veteran channelled his passions into establishing a yachting charity in his adopted home of Mallorca.

When an 11-year-old Nick Entwisle tried his hand at dinghy sailing for the first time on a family holiday in North Wales, he could have had no idea that he was laying the groundwork for what would become a life and career immersed in the boating world. 

Despite embarking on a banking career in London, he was soon lulled into a totally different lifestyle, far removed from The City and indeed from Yorkshire, where he was born and raised. “Somebody at work chartered a boat and invited me on a weekend away,” says Nick. “We did a trip across the Channel to Cherbourg and I really enjoyed it. So much so that I then started organising weekends away myself,” More sailing followed without any formal tuition – and then “there came a point where I was single with no commitments and I decided I wanted to sail full-time,” he recalls. He qualified at Britannia Sailing School on the South Coast, then stayed on to teach beginners and qualify as a Yachtmaster Instructor. He got his first superyacht job in his mid-thirties as a mate on a 100-foot ketch in Mallorca, the island which also became his home. 

During his time at Pinmar, he had been heavily involved in the company’s annual golf tournament, helping to raise money from the industry for over 30 years, so he was no stranger to the charity world. “When it came to retirement, I knew I had to do something useful with my time – after all, I never did learn to play golf!”  jokes Nick. “I had all of these contacts from my years at Pinmar and there was this idea in the back of my mind about collecting donations from superyachts that had food going spare,” he recalls. The seeds of Yachting Gives Back were being sown. 

The idea quickly gathered steam, largely thanks to Nick’s superyachting contacts. Pinmar donated warehouse space along with flat pack boxes for donations – and with help from old industry friends a name and a logo were created. “The next thing I had to think about was – if I succeeded and got lots of donations – what exactly was I going to do with them?” Nick reached out to an old contact, Suzie Black, founder of local children’s education foundation Shambhala and together, they made a list of charities that were in need of support. 

“The top two charities that we chose to help at the start were the food bank Mallorca Sense Fam and Tardor, a social dining room feeding 100 people a day. We still work with both of them today,” says Nick. Many more beneficiaries have been added to that list since those early days – including Es Refugi, Can Gaza, and SOS Mamas, helping mothers and children in need. 

The charity, even in its early days, quickly received an enthusiastic response from the industry. “A memorable moment early on was when an old friend who was a captain of a 96m yacht called Palladium sent me a message saying he’d got some bits and pieces for me,” says Nick. Those ‘bits and pieces’ turned out to be more than he could have hoped for. “It was a bit of British understatement!,” says Nick. “His crew formed a human chain down the passerelle which disappeared up into the sky. We got 26 great big bags full of food and other things.” The resulting post went viral on social media, further cementing the charity’s name in the minds of the superyachting community. 

Physical donations come to a shipping container donated by the STP shipyard in Palma, which is manned three days a week by volunteers from all walks of yachting life. “The generous physical donations mean that – in addition to foodstuffs – we have people in shelters sleeping on superyacht quality bedding, or using nice fluffy towels.” says Nick. “We waste very little – even down to bedding that is too stained to be salvageable – some of that can go to the animal charities for example.”

That was 2019 – and nobody could have guessed what was around the corner. “I have such memories from Covid,” says Nick. “MSOS (Medical Support Off Shore) sold thousands of PCR kits during the pandemic. They treated it as a windfall and gave us huge donations.” Today, Yachting Gives Back benefits from financial donations from far and wide. “Several industry companies now have fundraising events for us. We’ve also had great support from the Superyacht Charities Foundation,” says Nick. “Those financial donations have been essential because the money enables us to fill the gaps in the other things that we get.”

Beyond donating food and materials, the charity found opportunities to contribute to improving the lives of people in need in various ways. The donations have even enabled Yachting Gives Back to fund a part-time psychologist at Es Refugi, a charity working with the people with addiction problems or the long-term unemployed. “We found out that almost all of the 30 residents there had got back into the workplace after a year,” says Nick. “We were very proud to have contributed to that.” 

The need for Yachting Gives Back is as pressing as ever – with Poverty Watch España sharing in their latest report that nearly a quarter of the population in the Balearic Islands were at risk of poverty and exclusion in 2022.

The good news is that the charity’s future looks bright, with increased financial support enabling Yachting Gives Back to further respond to specific requests for things like washing machines, fridges and other equipment at shelters and food banks. “We are fortunate to make or have made our living from some of the wealthiest people on the planet,” says Nick. “Many of us are therefore in a position where we can easily give something back to this beautiful island community we call home,”

“I’ve always thought that a superyacht is the most effective way for a billionaire to redistribute their wealth,” Nick continues. “The shipyards, their staff, their contractors, their suppliers and so on. With Yachting Gives Back, we’ve added a little extra at the bottom of that pyramid that trickles down into local economies. I like to think that thanks to the amazing support we’ve had, we’ve been able to build a bridge between two communities.”

Nick Entwisle was one of three recipients of a Bowsprit award at the 2024 edition of The Honours , organised by The Superyacht Life Foundation and the Monaco Yacht Show, which seeks to recognise the exceptional and inspiring people of the superyacht industry who are inspiring change in the industry and beyond.

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