I went to Barcelona for a few days early in the new year. It was nice – chilly, but with a suggestion of warmth in the sun. And there were colours to be seen that weren’t any shade of grey. I felt blessed, but a little guilty not to be back in the monochrome winter of my northern European homeland, sloping miserably back to work like everyone else. My privilege was weighing heavy. But then I saw the superyachts.
The first one I noticed was the 105-metre Lady Moura, which, according to its Wikipedia page, was the ninth-largest private yacht in the world when it was launched in 1990. A Saudi billionaire, Nasser al-Rashid, apparently paid $200m for it.
For some reason – late-onset sea sickness? Tricky year at work? Wanted a bigger one? – he got shot of it a couple of years ago. It was bought by the chairman and founder of a Mexican conglomerate called Grupo Salinas. If I had several billion to my name, I would probably be daft enough to demand a new boat, so fair play to thrifty Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who wasn’t too proud to pick up Lady Moura secondhand for a reported $125m. I’m not sure, but I believe its onboard helicopter, a Sikorsky S-76, was thrown in. Bargain.
These monstrosities throw up more questions than answers. How anyone accumulates that kind of wealth is the obvious puzzler. Even the most red-blooded capitalist must surely wonder if, somewhere down the line, the profit margins on something or other must have been unpardonably – dare I say it, indecently – high. Someone somewhere, in other words, must have been paying over the odds for something. This reading may well betray my limited understanding of economics – I accept that. I should make my way to Davos to be properly educated in the benefits to us all of this kind of megawealth.
There is a contradiction inherent in the whole business of owning a superyacht. One of the biggest attractions, we are led to believe, is the privacy it affords you. Far out to sea, you can more or less please yourself what you get up to. Yet there could hardly be a more ostentatious bauble to dangle in front of everyone, inevitably attracting attention and scrutiny. Details of who owns what and how much they paid for it are widely available on the web. You can’t have it both ways.
And it’s not just businessmen – and they do all seem to be men – whom we have never heard of running companies in faraway places doing who knows what. Just along from Lady Moura was moored Grace, a bit of a tiddler at just 81 metres. This one is owned by a Sunderland-educated accountant called John Reece. Once of PricewaterhouseCoopers, he has long been the chief financial officer of Ineos, Jim Ratcliffe’s conglomerate. Fair play to the lad.
But here is the bit I don’t get: as an accountant, he presumably has a head for numbers. In which case, how can the costs associated with running these things ever make sense?
If I had the money for a superyacht, I like to think I would do something for the common good, rather than buy a boat. But even if I were unhinged enough to do so, I can’t imagine sailing anywhere on it. It makes me jumpy enough looking at that little disc whirring around on my electricity meter. How do these people manage to relax out there on the ocean waves, knowing that the fuel alone is costing them upwards of £1,000 an hour? Trying to doze on my lounger, I would picture streams of £50 notes shooting out the back of my boat every time I closed my eyes.
How do they manage to enjoy themselves? They must be really special people.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
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