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Superyacht sales soar thanks to pandemic and growing numbers of billionaires

Purchases of luxury vessels longer than 30m (98ft) increased by over 8% in the first nine months of 2021 compared with the same period in 2019, according to industry publication The Superyacht Group.

By Alexa Phillips, news reporter

Monday 8 November 2021 17:39, UK

Sales of superyachts are soaring amid growing numbers of billionaires and the appeal of escaping crowds during the COVID pandemic.

Purchases of luxury vessels longer than 30m (98ft) increased by over 8% in the first nine months of 2021 compared with the same period in 2019, according to industry publication The Superyacht Group.

Brokers Fraser Yachts said 2021 sales are "significantly outperforming" those of the last 12 years.

Superyacht prices start at $10m if bought secondhand and can be as high as $600m when new, industry figures show.

More than 200 new ones have set sail for the first time from January to September this year, an increase from 165 in the same period of 2019, The Superyacht Group said.

Another 330 orders have been placed.

"Some have seen that their ultra-rich friends who own yachts had a nice time during the pandemic, while they had to lock themselves at home," said Pepe Garcia, chairman of Spanish shipyards MB92, a superyacht refit firm.

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"I think this phenomenon is going to last for a few years."

Alberto Galassi, chief executive of Italian yacht builder Ferretti, said the pandemic "has taught us how fragile our life is".

"Postponing is no longer an option for those who can afford it," he said.

Azimut Benetti, another Italian yacht builder, said US clients have been driving the demand, with a "real boom" starting last spring.

The number of people who can afford to buy the boats has increased, with Forbes reporting there are now 2,755 billionaires - up by 660 on the previous year.

Tycoons who own superyachts include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Chinese billionaire Jack Ma and music producer David Geffen.

Last May Mr Geffen was ridiculed after posting about being "isolated" on his yacht in a tropical paradise and hoping everyone else was "staying safe" during the pandemic.

"Did David Geffen just give everyone the middle finger?" one Instagram user said.

Mr Bezos's superyacht is estimated to have cost about $500m (£350m).

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After Living Much of Life at Sea, Captain Sandy Finds Love on Land

Sandy Yawn of “Below Deck Mediterranean” married Leah Shafer on — what else? — a superyacht in Florida.

By Tammy LaGorce

Sandra Dolores Yawn has been locked up, left for dead on a Florida highway and chased through the Red Sea by pirates.

In the summer of 2018, Leah Rae Shafer reached out on Facebook to send Ms. Yawn her blessings. Not because she thought Ms. Yawn, who goes by Captain Sandy, needed her well wishes, but because she had started watching “Below Deck Mediterranean” on Bravo.

The show follows a crew tasked with catering to a revolving cadre of guests who have chartered a superyacht. Ms. Yawn, a star of the series, is at the helm. Ms. Shafer had written to congratulate her on the show’s success. There was another reason, too. “I thought she was hot,” she said.

Ms. Yawn, 59, has been a yacht captain for more than 30 years. Her foray into television, which started in 2017, was not exactly foreordained. Until her mid-20s, “I was a mess,” Ms. Yawn said. “I was always in trouble. I got kicked out of 11th grade. I didn’t go to college.” At 13, at the start of an adolescence spent between Dundee, Fla., where her father lived, and Bradenton, Fla., where her mother lived, she started drinking. By 17, “I was getting arrested so many times I couldn’t even count how many,” she said. Usually a parent bailed her out. Her father’s refusal to do so after one drunken incident landed her a night in jail.

In 1989, when she was 25, the revolving door of South Florida treatment centers she had been pushing through quit spinning when a counselor told her she couldn’t return. “She said, ‘Sandy, as soon as you get some money in your pocket you’re going to start drinking again,’” Ms. Yawn said.

Fearing real jail time, she joined Alcoholics Anonymous. To start paying off the thousands of dollars she owed in legal fees and addiction treatment center bills, she got a job washing boats in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. By 30, she had earned her captain’s license from Maritime Professional Training, a school in Fort Lauderdale for mariners and yachting professionals.

Rehab — she still has an A.A. sponsor and attends meetings whenever possible — helped her pin down the roots of her teenage rebellion. “I think a big part of my drinking was that I couldn’t accept my sexuality,” she said. “When I got sober is when I accepted that, oh my gosh, I actually prefer women.”

For Ms. Shafer, that level of acceptance took much longer. It also cost her a career as a gospel singer.

Ms. Shafer, 50, is the entrepreneur behind a skin care line, Skin by Leah, and a jewelry business started with a friend, Cuff Me. When she messaged Ms. Yawn to congratulate her on the success of “Below Deck Mediterranean” in 2018, she and her husband of 20 years, then living with their teenage daughter in Denver, were going through a divorce. The relationship had gone stale years earlier, Ms. Shafer said, but fear and uncertainty prevented her from leaving.

“I had the security of not worrying financially, because he took care of everything,” she said. Her gospel career at a nondenominational church had taken off when she was still in high school in Hesperia, Calif. But that was mostly a labor of love.

“I toured and went to college at the same time,” said Ms. Shafer, who graduated from California State University, Northridge, with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts.

By her 30s, she was recording albums, touring megachurches and singing at major Christian conferences. A flirtation with secular performance in the 2000s landed her on the 2003-04 revival of “Star Search” and later a recurring role on NBC’s “The Singing Bee.”

But “I loved God and I loved inspiring people, and the platform I was given was on the stage of churches,” she said. The only problem: “There was really no money in that.”

Before their divorce was final in 2019, she and her husband tried therapy and prayed together. Finally, in 2018, “I just jumped,” she said. “I took a leap of faith. I wanted freedom.”

She found it financially first. Skin by Leah Studio, her Lone Tree, Colo. facial salon that she founded in 2017, was successful right away, she said. When she first saw Ms. Yawn on TV, she was settling into life as an entrepreneur. She didn’t expect to get a response to her Facebook message. But when she got one three months later, in October 2018, it came with an invitation.

In addition to her job as a TV star, Ms. Yawn had started touring with “I Believe,” a series of motivational talks she created to inspire women in leadership positions. When she finally read Ms. Shafer’s message — thousands had been piling up, she said, but something drew her to Ms. Shafer’s — she was in the market for an entertainer for the talks.

In her message, Ms. Shafer had included a video of herself singing the national anthem at a 2014 Denver Broncos game. Once Ms. Yawn clicked the link, she replied right away. “She gave me her phone number and said, ‘I heard you sing,’” Ms. Shafer said. “‘Let’s meet up and talk about how we can do something together.’”

The two continued to talk on the phone and over email. Ms. Yawn was then living in Los Angeles. Ms. Shafer had been planning a Disneyland vacation with her daughter, Lauren, in November, a trip that gave her an excuse to meet Ms. Yawn in person.

Both say they fell in love seconds after Ms. Shafer pulled into Ms. Yawn’s driveway in mid-November 2018. “I offered to park her car for her, and that’s when we hugged,” Ms. Yawn said. “I felt this energy I had never felt. I knew I had to pay attention to that.”

It was a life-changing hug for Ms. Shafer, too. “It was not a normal feeling when I met Sandy,” she said. “She wasn’t the stern captain you see on TV. She was just so fun and so beautiful. That hug melted me.”

Over dinner at Catch, a Los Angeles seafood restaurant, they acknowledged their attraction. “I was really honest with her,” Ms. Yawn said. But Ms. Shafer wasn’t ready to date a woman. “I knew I wanted to be with her,” she said. “I was just freaked out.”

By the end of the evening, Ms. Yawn told her she should take her time. It had been two years since Ms. Yawn’s last relationship. “So at that point I was like, ‘Why rush it?’” she said. “I was older and I’ve learned a lot of lessons. One was, let things happen naturally. Slow and steady wins the race.”

Six months later, the race was over. The women were in a committed relationship, and Ms. Yawn had moved to a place near Ms. Shafer’s in Denver. It was smooth sailing until the end of 2019, when news of the couple’s relationship started circulating in entertainment media.

The public outing ended Ms. Shafer’s gospel career. “I knew the minute I came out as being in love with a woman it would be over, and it was,” she said. Her six CDs, sold in dozens of church bookstores, were pulled from shelves and shipped to her doorstep. Christian radio stations stopped playing her music.

“I had worked for 35 years,” she said. “And it was over.”

Most painful of all were comments after her father’s death from Covid in 2020. “People in the church told me he died because of my sins,” she said. “But he had met and come to accept Sandy before he passed, and I thank God that happened.” Now, “my family adores Sandy.”

Ms. Yawn lost both her parents to heart attacks before she became a TV star — her father in 2006, and her mother in 2009. In 2015, she was en route to the Miami Boat Show on her motorcycle when she was hit by a car. The driver left the scene. “I felt my mother’s presence while I was flipping through the air, and I felt peaceful,” she said.

When she hit the pavement, she had a fractured pelvis and her foot “was on sideways,” she said. By then, though, she was used to navigating life and death scenarios, including fires at sea and run-ins with pirates. She credits her fortitude and empathy, qualities highlighted on “Below Deck Mediterranean,” which she joined in 2017, to her sobriety. “I’ve got nothing to hide and everything to share,” she said.

In 2022, Ms. Yawn and Ms. Shafer bought a house together in Parker, Colo. In September 2023, while Ms. Yawn was filming in Greece, Ms. Shafer flew overseas to visit. Ms. Yawn proposed with a diamond engagement ring on the beach , with violin players in the background.

Binge more Vows columns here and read all our wedding, relationship and divorce coverage here .

On May 11, Ms. Shafer and Ms. Yawn were married in Fort Lauderdale aboard She’s a 10 Too, a superyacht lent to the couple by their friend Carolyn Aronson. Fifty-five guests, the maximum allowed aboard the vessel, were in attendance. Among them were “Below Deck Mediterranean” castmates Aesha Scott, Kate Chastain and Dave White, known to viewers as Chef Dave. (And yes, there were cameras filming.)

Ms. Shafer, in a long white wedding gown by Leah Da Gloria, walked down the aisle with her two brothers, Matthew Dale and Justin Dale, to an altar decorated with white roses and hydrangeas; her daughter, now 18, was her maid of honor.

Ms. Yawn, in a white Veronica Beard suit, was escorted down the aisle by Mark Dunham, her brother-in-law. Michelle Dunham, Ms. Yawn’s sister, was her maid of honor. Most guests were barefoot, as is common on yachts. The brides and their wedding party were granted an exception.

Nadine Rajabi, the showrunner of “Below Deck Mediterranean,” who is ordained by the Universal Life Church, married them on the yacht’s bridge aft deck, a job made more difficult by the weather: wind caused her microphone to cut out and blew the pages of her speech around. But nothing could disturb the focus of the brides as they read handwritten vows.

Ms. Shafer told Ms. Yawn that she had taught her to be more optimistic, more playful and “to jump.” Ms. Yawn told Ms. Shafer that she had given her patience and grace.

The captain had been hoping to make it through the ceremony free of tears. But that, she said shortly after they were pronounced married, was impossible. “The minute I looked at Leah and started reading her all the reasons I fell in love with her I started to cry,” she said. “It’s so amazing to find this kind of love in your lifetime.”

On This Day

When May 11, 2024

Where Aboard the superyacht She’s a 10 Too, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Rescue Mission The couple chose “She’s a Lady” for their first dance during an onboard reception. Chef Dave prepared short ribs and a three-tiered, gluten-free vanilla, chocolate and strawberry cake that threatened to topple in the wind and heat (temperatures were in the 90s).

Cruising After the wedding, the brides took off for a five-day honeymoon to Little Palm Island on a yacht lent by Mr. Flynn. Ms. Yawn was at the helm, of course.

Onward In June, Ms. Yawn and Ms. Shafer will move from Denver to Ponte Vedra, Fla., to be closer to Ms. Dunham, who runs a private school for children with autism, Jacksonville School for Autism, in Jacksonville. On June 3, season nine of “Below Deck Mediterranean” premieres on Bravo. And on July 1, Ms. Shafer will open a skin care studio in Ponte Vedra.

An earlier version of this article misidentified   the man who escorted Sandy Yawn down the aisle. It was Mark Dunham, her brother-in-law, not her friend John Flynn. An earlier version of a picture caption also misidentified Mr. Dunham as Mr. Flynn. Additionally, the article misstated   the shoe rule aboard   the superyacht on which the wedding was held. The brides and their wedding party were allowed to wear shoes; other guests were not.

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Killer Whales Sunk a 50-Foot Sailing Yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar

It's just the latest in a string of orca attacks on sailboats., tori latham, tori latham's most recent stories.

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Two sailors had a whale of a time over the weekend—but only in the technical sense.

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“This was a scary moment,” the skipper Jelmer van Beek said at the time. “Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders. Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team.”

While that attack didn’t result in the sinking of the ship, another sailing yacht sank near the Tanger Med port in November, The New York Times wrote. The crew of that ship had to abandon the boat after a group of orcas slammed into the rudder for a whole 45 minutes. (The whales have seemingly been targeting sailboats in particular.)

Researchers don’t know for sure why the whales have been attacking boats, but they think it may be one of the ways the orcas play, the Times said—a pretty dangerous form of amusement, albeit. Others have theorized that it’s a short-term fad among the animals, or that one orca experienced a traumatic event that made it aggressive and other whales began to mimic that behavior. The incidents have become so common in recent years that sailors trade advice online about how to maneuver in the Strait of Gibraltar area, and the Spanish government issued a release that included tips for sailors.

Tori Latham is a digital staff writer at Robb Report. She was previously a copy editor at The Atlantic, and has written for publications including The Cut and The Hollywood Reporter. When not…

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Orcas Sink 49-Foot Yacht in Mystifying Trend Around the Strait of Gibraltar

A n unknown number of orcas sunk a sailing yacht in Moroccan waters in the Strait of Gibraltar on Sunday, according to Spain’s maritime rescue service. While orcas are typically peaceful, this is the latest in a string of attacks that have hit the region in the past four years.

Reuters reports that a 49-foot-long vessel, named the Alboran Cognac, carried two people and encountered the high social apex predators at 9 am local time on Sunday. The passengers reported sudden blows to the hull and rudder before the water started seeping into the ship. A nearby oil tanker rescued the two onboard and transported them to Gibraltar. The yacht was left to sink into the ocean.

Experts believe the orcas involved to be a subpopulation of about 15 individuals given the name “Gladis.” This group of juvenile males has sunk several yachts in the Strait of Gibraltar over the last four years, but experts are somewhat baffled as to why. While typically peaceful animals, the Gladis pod has plagued the small strip of water separating Europe and Africa for years.

There have been nearly 700 interactions between orcas and ships in the Strait of Gibraltar region since May 2020, according to Reuters. At the time, it seemed like one of many dystopian things going on in the world during the global pandemic. But the trend continues today, and we still don’t have much more of an explanation as to why this happens.

In 2020, photos of the Gladis pod revealed several injuries on the orcas’ bodies, possibly indicating previous run-ins with fishing boats. In a 2023 interview with NPR, director of the Orca Behavior Institute Monika Wieland Shields said we don’t know the motivation, but this could be a defense behavior based on previous trauma. It’s possible the orcas had negative experiences with a fishing boat, so now they see all large boats as a threat.

“I definitely think orcas are capable of complex emotions like revenge,” she told NPR. “I don’t think we can completely rule it out.”

However, Shields doesn’t completely subscribe to the “revenge” hypothesis. There have been plenty of other times when orcas around the world were targeted by boats, and they’ve never responded in this way before. Further, it doesn’t seem that this behavior is spreading to other orca pods.

Another theory is that ramming boats is just the latest orca fad, according to Renaud de Stephanis, president and coordinator at CIRCE Conservación Information and Research, a cetacean research group based in Spain. He told NPR in 2022 that “this is a game” for the orcas, and when they “ have their own adult life, it will probably stop. ” As orcas grow older, they have to help the pod hunt for food and have less time to play with sailboats.

Director of Bay Cetology, Jared Towers, told NPR that fads like this come and go in the orca society. Towers said some orcas in the Pacific in the 1990s would kill fish and swim around with it on their head. Now we don’t see that anymore. Hopefully, the boat ramming phenomenon will come and go like any other trend.

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‘The Shameless’ Review: A Remarkable Lead Performance Illuminates Radical Visions of Indian Womanhood

Filled with religious and personal turmoil, Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov's Un Certain Regard selection arrives as a tactile but malformed queer Indian drama.

By Siddhant Adlakha

Siddhant Adlakha

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A radical vision of Indian womanhood collides with scattered storytelling in director Konstantin Bojanov ‘s “ The Shameless ,” a provocative queer drama laid low by its oblique narrative. Following two women destined for a life of sex work, the drama is lucid in its politics, but often opaque in its drama — a dynamic embodied by two wildly different lead performances.

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Shetty, meanwhile, plays Devika with a more theatrical approach, despite her being a much quieter counterpart to Renuka. While she embodies some of the most volatile symptoms of repression (including a particularly incendiary depiction of self-harm), her style of acting results in a strange aesthetic bifurcation, as cinematic naturalism clashes with the filmic equivalent of classical Indian dance, in all its operatic glory. Whenever Renuka is on screen, the camera tracks each moment closely and intimately, as Sengupta lures the camera closer into her orbit with harsh, raspy, romantic whispers that cut the acidic sting of her words. However, in order to fully account for Shetty’s more showy performance, the frame doesn’t just grow wider, but becomes more distant. It can’t help but feel disconnected, even when the younger actress imbues Devika with a vivid sense of anguish through brazen physicality.

Bojanov often takes moments of physical and emotional self-discovery for granted, focusing instead on how these women deal not with exploration, but of having explored. The frame never shies away from physical intimacy, but its most emotionally intimate moments seem to occur between cuts, and between scenes, as the movie skips forward to dilemmas dictated by the plot — Can the two women escape together? Where will they go next?  — rather than by key moments of pathos. Bojanov’s approach stabs, but seldom twists.

“The Shameless” does occasionally try to supplement its flimsy character moments with superimposed, dreamlike premonitions, but these are more fleeting flourishes rather than a consistent visual language to get any coherent point across. However, despite its lacking emotional throughlines, the film’s frankness with regards to femininity and women’s bodies, and its vicious depictions of the violent forms of control enacted by men — ideas mapped out on Sengupta’s painful expressions in every scene — create a vivid texture, and a tactile sense of reality. “The Shameless” is mostly worthwhile, if also limited to being a realistic portrait of bleak circumstances punctuated by occasional spiritual resilience.

Reviewed online, May 14, 2024. In Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard). Running Time: 115 MIN.

• Production: (Switzerland-Bulgaria-France-Taiwan-India) An Akka Films, Urban Factory, Klass Film, House on Fire presentation. Produced by: Nicolas Wadimoff, Philippe Coeytaux, Séverine Pisani, Palmyre Badinier, Frédéric Corvez, Maéva Savinien, Rossitsa Valkanova, Vincent Wang, Mohaan Nadaar, Deepti Chawla. (World sales: Urban Sales, Paris.)
• Crew: Director: Konstantin Bojanov. Writer: Konstantin Bojanov. Camera: Gabriel Lobos. Editor: Tom Hsin Ming Lin. Music: Petar Dundakov, featuring Dmriti.
• With: Anasuya Sengupta, Omara Shetty, Auroshikha Dey, Rohit Kokate, Koran Bhivagade, Tanmay Dhanania, Mita Vasisht. (Hindi dialogue)

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