Mark Megahan
Owning a motor yacht is nothing but a way of screaming to the world you make too damn much money. At least, that’s what my chief accountant keeps telling me. He’s been pestering me for a week about the nine million I have just sitting idle in my checking account. Greedy dastard wants to use it for arbitrage. I have other plans that he doesn’t know about. When he finds out he’s going to start yelling again. The phone on my desk started beeping. Probably him. Now’s as good a time as any to break the news.
A new yacht
The extra liquidity my bean counter was trying to get his paws on came from the insurance settlement on my last yacht. I made the mistake of following his financial advice and leased the boat out for charters when it wasn’t in use.
Thankfully, nobody was killed when careless barbarians set fire to it off the coast of Italy. Oh well, that’s what insurance is for. The part that hurt was losing a really great crew.
I was glancing through the Superyacht Times the other day and noticed that the Percal was on the market. I’d glimpsed the 32 meter motor yacht in the Bahamas a few seasons ago and spotted it here and there a few times since. It had a great captain. There’s a good chance he might be up for sale along with the boat.
Any crew would have been snapped up by other boats long ago but the captain can afford a little time off between owners.
It was listed at $6.5 mil but I could probably haggle them down to 5.7 or so. Especially after I offer to pay the agent separately to have the boat delivered to Fort Lauderdale.
That’s where young and eager crew hopefuls line up to join the jet set every spring. I can pay anyone to do that but this way the agent gets a cut directly. Only if the yacht deal goes through.
A good crew
One of the things I learned from the experience of my first yacht was that the boat itself is practically nothing compared to what’s involved with maintenance. That’s where the crew comes in. Contrary to popular belief, they aren’t hired as sexual playthings. Those are rented by the boatload from services in port.
Instead, they’re hired as slaves. Salt water does really nasty things to everything aboard a boat. That means it needs to be meticulously scrubbed away around the clock.
The Percal would need a crew of about eight to tweeze fried chicken crumbs off the teak flooring. They have to do that after any greasy food is served. A stem-to-stern cleaning takes around 10 days.
To clean each yacht stateroom requires vacuuming walls and air vents and microcleaning grout with toothpicks. If they even see a bottle of spray-on sunscreen they throw tantrums. Cream only on a ship.
When it comes to hiring luxury yacht crew, you get what you pay for and they know it. That’s why they’re often more spoiled than my guests. I pass out around three grand a month to each one over the howls of my accountant. If the Percal’s former captain isn’t still in the bridge and looking for a new contract, finding one will be tough. They need to be international business men as well as boat drivers.
They know full well the owner wants it operated in a super-secretive way so they can use them and deflect attention from the ownership. That’s what non-disclosure agreements and shell companies are for. If all goes well, I can be aboard my new yacht and ready to sail by June, just in time to head for the Mediterranean. Damn the accountants and full speed ahead.
