{"id":808890,"date":"2026-10-20T19:10:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T19:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/808890\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T19:10:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T19:10:14","slug":"excessive-wealth-extreme-emissions-and-ecocide-what-i-learned-at-europes-big-superyacht-show-the-super-rich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/808890\/","title":{"rendered":"Excessive wealth, extreme emissions \u2013 and ecocide: what I learned at Europe\u2019s big superyacht show | The super-rich"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who knew? Apparently everyone did, apart from me: you don\u2019t wear shoes on a superyacht. Now, about to step on to my first teak deck at the Monaco<\/a> Yacht Show, I\u2019ve got to take my trainers off, and I\u2019m having a sock panic. Have they got holes? Do they even match? Do they smell?<\/p>\n

To be honest, I\u2019ve come dressed all wrong for Europe\u2019s big annual superyacht trade exhibition. The code for men seems to be crisp and tucked in, blazers and chinos, navy and white, sculpted hair and designer sunnies. (I went colourful, loose, casual). For women, it\u2019s something like Riviera elegance. Everyone \u2013 whether they\u2019re Italian, French, English, German, American, exhibitors, buyers, brokers, charterers \u2013 seems to know each other. The international superyacht community seems to be a close-knit one, and I\u2019m not part of it. Yet.<\/p>\n

For now, though, I\u2019m boarding my first vessel: a relatively modest Zeelander 8 \u2013 23.9 metres (79ft) long, built in the Netherlands. It has a rather retro look about it, with pleasing curves and a rear end not unlike a Porsche\u2019s. I could imagine James Bond at the wheel. It\u2019s fast too, reaching 40 knots (46mph); I could be in Saint-Tropez in a little over an hour.<\/p>\n

How much? \u2026 the Monaco Yacht Show 2026. Photograph: Syspeo\/SIPA\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Downstairs there\u2019s a huge owner\u2019s cabin, plus a couple of double guest cabins, all en suite, with lots of nice details, such as a cream-coloured leather floor. In the less opulent crew quarters, there\u2019s room for two or three. How much does it cost? This one is not actually for sale \u2013 some of the boats here are, others are for charter, some just for show. But I could order one just like it, it would take a year and a half to build and cost me about \u20ac9.5m (\u00a38m).<\/p>\n

Tempting, certainly, but I need to see a few more before rushing into anything. I can\u2019t help noticing that, compared with some of the others packed into Port Hercules, the Zeelander 8 is a bit \u2026 well, small. Is it even a superyacht? There seems to be some debate about how long a yacht has to be to be super \u2013 some say 24 metres, others 30.<\/p>\n

No question about this one \u2013 a Fast50, made by Italian builders Baglietto, with room for 12 guests and a crew of nine. It\u2019s not as fast as the Dutch one, despite the name. Its four engines take it to 30 knots, but that\u2019s actually very quick for a 50 metre boat. Perhaps more importantly, its gross tonnage, referring to internal volume, is 499; a sub-500GT yacht isn\u2019t subject to the more stringent safety and environmental rules under the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) that yachts over 500GT are, so they require less frequent surveys and have fewer restrictions on crew size and certification. My favourite features are the large \u201cbeach club\u201d (the open deck at the back) and the Jacuzzi right up at the pointy end. Imagine it: sitting with a glass of fizz, in the bubbles, at 30 knots, C\u00e9line Dion blasting out \u2026 where do I sign?<\/p>\n

Oh, again. Not for sale. The first Fast50, fresh from the shipyard, is already sold, but they won\u2019t tell me how much for or who to (superyacht owners can be quite shy). The search continues.<\/p>\n

Sam at \u2018the pointy end\u2019. Photograph: Sam Wollaston\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

The trouble with superyachting, I\u2019m finding here in Monaco, is that you think you\u2019ve found the perfect vessel, and then you look over there and there\u2019s a bigger, better one. It\u2019s not just me \u2013 this is reflected in the Global Order Book, published by Boat International, which tracks construction projects. The 2026 GOB<\/a> counts the number of yachts over 24 metres under construction globally at 1,093. In 2016, it counted 755 vessels under construction. This year\u2019s figure is actually down 3.95% from last year, but that\u2019s balanced by an increase in average length and gross tonnage. In other words, a few fewer, but they\u2019re getting bigger. New prefixes are required, \u201cmega\u201d and \u201cgiga\u201d, but for simplicity\u2019s sake we\u2019ll stick with superyacht. Here at MYS 2026 there are 118 superyachts, with a combined length of 5,508 metres, and a value of \u20ac4.5bn.<\/p>\n

Despite the sock shame, I\u2019m beginning to feel more comfortable. Most people are friendly. It\u2019s a lovely day on the C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur \u2013 I\u2019m offered ice-cream, branded fans and straw hats. It\u2019s not just the yachts, there are stands for everything connected. Would I like to come to a wine tasting later \u201cexploring superyacht wine trends\u201d? Of course I would. Am I interested in yachting in Saudi Arabia? Hmmm, maybe next year. There are loads of toys on show \u2013 jetskis, eFoils, even submersibles. And if you\u2019re still finding life at sea boring, there\u2019s a portable golf simulator, with cameras and sensors, plus a screen, with hundreds of real courses programmed into it. So after dropping anchor off St Barts you can play a round at St Andrews. It costs \u20ac170,000 (\u00a3143,000).<\/p>\n

\u2018I could get used to this.\u2019 Photograph: Sam Wollaston\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

And so on to Nixie, built by L\u00fcrssen in Germany, owned by co-founder and CEO of Revolut, Nik Storonsky: 102 metres long, with a helipad, glass-bottomed infinity pool, dedicated spa and wellness zone, and a crew of 34, one of whom is busy polishing a stainless steel cleat on the lowest of its decks. Access, though, is \u201creserved exclusively for direct, potential clients,\u201d says the L\u00fcrssen PR. Perhaps they think the average Guardian reader is not in the market to rent a boat the length of a football pitch. Nixie costs \u20ac2.4m a week to hire. A lot, I know, but if you split it between the 12 of you \u2026<\/p>\n

Anyway, it\u2019s not even the biggest here, which I will be allowed on. First though I pass another \u2013 Boardwalk V, only 76.5 metres long and five years old, but this one is for sale, at a discount price! Down \u20ac14m, to just \u20ac135m. Not including the helicopter. Boardwalk V \u2026 it\u2019s ringing a bell. Got it! And now the twin flags on the helicopter\u2019s tail \u2013 the American stars and stripes and the tricolore of Italy \u2013 make sense. This boat belongs to Tilman Fertitta, billionaire owner of restaurants, hotels, casinos, and the Houston Rockets basketball team, and now Donald Trump\u2019s ambassador to Italy. He made the news in June<\/a> when hundreds came out to protest after he parked his brand new 117-metre yacht (also named Boardwalk, but without the V) in Venice. He\u2019s got an upgrade \u2013 that\u2019s why he\u2019s selling this one.<\/p>\n

To be honest there are some proper horrors on show. This one looks like a supersized 80s caravan, that one more like a bridge than a boat, another is bright red \u2013 like some kind of firefighting ship. \u201cI don\u2019t understand the clients,\u201d says Rick. \u201cThey just want something that\u2019s big and flashy and comfortable, they don\u2019t care about anything else.\u201d Rick is also pretty disparaging about the people who sell these boats, the brokers. \u201cThey\u2019re like real estate agents, they say: \u2018Look at the master cabin, look at all the light, the big windows,\u2019 it\u2019s all about the interior space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guess what Rick does? Yup, yacht broker. It\u2019s why we\u2019ve changed his name. He also points out something about the way they look. \u201cI don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve heard the analogy, but they look like irons.\u201d As in electric irons, to do the ironing with, and oh my God, he\u2019s so right \u2013 that shape, pointy at the bow, then rising and widening as you go aft, with a squared off swim platform \u2026 As Rick says, \u201conce you see it, you can\u2019t unsee it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a 2024 study<\/a>, Oxfam identified 23 superyachts owned by 18 billionaires and estimated the average annual carbon footprint of each of these yachts to be 5,672 tonnes. For an average citizen of the world it would take 860 years to produce the same amount.<\/p>\n

Sink clearly \u2026 a bathroom on one of the superyachts. Photograph: Sam Wollaston\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Oxfam zoomed in further to one family, the Waltons, heirs of the Walmart chain and owners of three superyachts (at this level you\u2019re not talking about the haves and the have-yachts, you\u2019re talking about the have-yachts and the have-lots-of-yachts). They travelled 56,000 nautical miles in a year with a combined carbon footprint of 18,000 tonnes. That\u2019s equivalent to the carbon emissions of about 1,700 Walmart employees.<\/p>\n

Superyachts use an awful lot of fuel \u2013 some of the bigger ones use more than 500 litres of diesel per hour<\/a>, releasing CO2 as well as nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere. The recreational boating sector as a whole \u2013 including yachts \u2013 produces about 16m tonnes of CO2 annually<\/a>. It\u2019s not just when they\u2019re going along; at anchor they operate onboard generators to run their \u201chotel loads\u201d (for air conditioning, stabilisation systems, lighting, galleys, hot tubs, etc) which emit further CO2. In addition, the vessels\u2019 big anchors and chains act like the grim reaper\u2019s scythe on the Posidonia seagrass which grows on the Mediterranean seabed and is a vital habitat for sea life as well as a source of oxygen.<\/p>\n

And there are more and more of them. The big increases came in 2022 and 2023 when, as Boat International puts it, \u201corders soared as UHNWIs sought private holiday cocoons.\u201d UHNWIs, you\u2019ll know, are ultra-high net worth individuals, but why the big boom? Because a superyacht is \u201cthe best way to practise social distancing in a very safe and very comfortable way,\u201d says Gr\u00e9gory Salle. Covid was brilliant for the superyacht sector, in other words. Salle is talking to me by video from Lille where he works at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. He\u2019s also author of the thoroughly researched and surprisingly entertaining book Superyachts: Luxury, Tranquility and Ecocide, which has a whole chapter devoted to Posidonia seagrass.<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos\u2019s 127-metre Koru. Photograph: Giuseppe Catuogno\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Ecocide is not the superyacht\u2019s only crime. \u201cIt has really become the symbol of excessive, unjustifiable wealth,\u201d Salle says. Even though the gap between most of us and the people who have them is virtually unfathomable, \u201cit looks like provocation, especially when all you\u2019re hearing and reading about is crisis, austerity, poverty \u2013 including child poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Superyachts are also a kind of floating paradox that Salle calls \u201cconspicuous seclusion. On the one hand they\u2019re meant to be noticed, they\u2019re massive, you can\u2019t miss them. But at the same time the interior is hidden and of course it can sail away and escape ordinary people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salle uses words and phrases such as \u201cplutocracy\u201d, \u201coligarchy\u201d and the new \u201cglobal super-bourgeoisie\u201d about the people who own them, a \u201ctransnational capitalist class\u201d who operate outside and above borders and rules. Look at the stern of the superyachts, under the name, and they\u2019re almost all registered in places such as the Cayman Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Isle of Man and Malta \u2013 flag states offering, among other benefits, tax neutrality.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to hide a superyacht, or ownership of one. We know about Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s 118-metre Launchpad, and Jeff Bezos\u2019s 127-metre Koru, estimated to have cost \u20ac444m. Koru caused a stir in 2022, when a historic bridge in Rotterdam, a Dutch national monument, was going to be dismantled in order to let it through. After the uproar its masts were stepped downstream in the end. Koru is actually a sailing yacht, which might sound like a greener way of doing it, but then Bezos also has a 75-metre support vessel, with additional crew accommodation, helipad, submarine, speedboats and cars, that follows Koru around like a loyal dog. Zuckerberg\u2019s got a couple of support vessels too.<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s longest superyacht \u2026 Azzam. Photograph: David Jalda\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Roman Abramovich is another big fan of a yacht. Using leaked documents, Forbes counted 16<\/a> belonging to the Russian oligarch. My ship location app tells me that the superest of his fleet \u2013 Solaris (140-metres) and Eclipse (162-metres), both registered in the Cook Islands \u2013 are now parked in the Sea of Marmara, near Istanbul. When western governments seized Russian oligarchs\u2019 assets after the invasion of Ukraine, Turkey refused to join the sanctions<\/a> and became a bolt-hole.<\/p>\n

Eclipse doesn\u2019t even eclipse everything. The world\u2019s longest superyacht, at 180-metres, is Azzam, launched in 2013 for Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, who died in 2022, but according to Boat International<\/a> and the Superyacht Fan website<\/a>, Azzam is still in the family. When you get to this level it\u2019s not always clear who owns a yacht, as they can be held in trusts or shell companies, sometimes across several jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

Take Dilbar for example \u2013 a little shorter than Azzam but the world\u2019s largest by volume. In June Bloomberg reported<\/a> that a court in Germany had ruled that sanctions no longer applied to the yacht after finding insufficient evidence that the Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov controls The Sister Trust, which formally owns the vessel.<\/p>\n

Or Kosatka, formerly Graceful, the 82-metre yacht seen being escorted<\/a> through Danish waters by Russian naval vessels in the summer and widely reported to be linked to Vladimir Putin. A bigger, 140-metre yacht, the \u20ac620m Scheherazade, which boasts two helipads, anti-drone technology and a cryotherapy room, remains impounded in Italy. Activists working for poisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny believe<\/a> that one is also owned by Putin.<\/p>\n

There is no secret about who owns the aptly named Leviathan, the biggest boat at the Monaco Yacht Show. Co-founder and president of the video game company Valve, Gabe Newell doesn\u2019t just own the 111-metre Leviathan, he also owns the 93-metre support vessel Draak, parked up next door.<\/p>\n

I am allowed on to Leviathan and get a brief look around. I\u2019m shown the huge mess area, which Newell and his guests share with the 42 crew. As well as the pool, there\u2019s an outdoor cinema, basketball court, and a huge gaming lounge with consoles and race simulators, open to everyone. The crew are also keen to point out Leviathan\u2019s diesel-electric hybrid propulsion and battery energy storage system. But it still has a 494,000-litre fuel tank. Fill \u2019er up? Certainly sir, that\u2019ll be roughly a million euros.<\/p>\n

Leviathan, the biggest boat at the Monaco Yacht Show. Photograph: Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not total eco denial at the Monaco Yacht Show however, there\u2019s at least some acknowledgment of environmental impact. I drop in on the Blue Wake awards, \u201cfor solutions delivering measurable impact on yachting sustainability\u201d. So there\u2019s a prize for a company using more sustainable materials for yacht interiors. A yacht wins a Blue Wake for having sails, and a marina gets one for planting Posidonia plants.<\/p>\n

This is all good news \u2026 but actually, when you look at it, it\u2019s not that good. In five years 3,000 sq metres of Posidonia have been restored \u2013 sounds impressive, but then by my calculations that\u2019s an area of about 55 metres by 55 metres. The boat with sails? Great, but actually there are fewer sailing boats here than in previous years, the trend is towards power, more and more of it.<\/p>\n

It looks like greenwashing, token gestures. I have an Italian friend who calls these superyachts stronzi di mare \u2013 turds of the sea. And you know what you can\u2019t do to a turd. There\u2019s no escaping the truth: that they drink fossil fuels like there\u2019s no tomorrow, which there won\u2019t be if they\u2019re allowed to carry on; that there\u2019s no more monstrous symbol of inequality; and that they look like irons.<\/p>\n

But before storming off in disgust, maybe I\u2019ll just pop into that wine tasting. In my socks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who knew? Apparently everyone did, apart from me: you don\u2019t wear shoes on a superyacht. Now, about to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-808890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}