Superyachts
The length that lies
Two boats of fifty metres can differ by half in the only measurement that decides how the week feels. It is not on the first page of the brochure.
Motor yachts over 24 metres
Superyachts
A superyacht is a household that floats. Superyachts takes the finest of them apart: why gross tonnage matters more than length, what a general arrangement plan hides, where the money goes once the boat is paid for.
Superyachts
Superyachts
What a superyacht costs in a year nobody talks about
The purchase price is the part the buyer researches. The annual bill is the part that decides how long the boat stays in the family.
Superyachts
The boat in October
A superyacht spends most of her life tied up, empty and being worked on. What happens in those months decides what the summer feels like.
The short version
What separates a serious yacht from a long one
Length is what the brochure sells and volume is what you live in. Two boats of fifty metres can differ by half in gross tonnage, and the larger one has the beach club, the full-beam owner's suite, the tender garage and the crew mess that keeps a crew of twelve civil in August. Ask for the GT before you ask for the LOA.
The second number is the one nobody prints: the running cost. A conservatively run motor yacht costs about ten per cent of its new-build value every year, more in its first year and in any year with a yard period. Crew is the largest line, then maintenance, then fuel, then the berth. None of it is optional and all of it is due whether the boat moves or not.
What fails is rarely the boat. It is the plan around it: a home berth chosen for the town rather than the shelter, a crew hired for the season and lost by the second one, a charter programme bolted on to pay for the boat and quietly changing what the boat is.
Worth knowing
Where the 24 metre line comes from
The Large Yacht Code applies above 24 m load line length; below it a boat is a big yacht, above it a small ship
Crew a 50 m motor yacht carries
10 to 13 in cabins for 12 guests, and every one of them sleeps below the waterline
Annual running cost, conservative rule
about 10 per cent of the new-build price, before financing and before depreciation
Time a superyacht actually spends under way
typically 10 to 15 per cent of the year; the rest is at anchor, alongside or in a yard
The deck vote
One of these, not all four. Which decides it?
Use it now
Running Cost Model
What a yacht of a given length actually costs in a year, line by line.
Questions people ask
About 45 to 50 metres and 450 to 500 GT if everybody is to have a cabin with a window, the crew a mess of their own and the guests a deck where nobody works. Twelve guests on a 35 metre boat is a party, not a cruise, and by day four the difference shows.
The five-year-old boat, almost every time, if the survey is clean. The first owner took the depreciation, the warranty snags are fixed, the crew know her and the systems have been run in. A new build is for owners who want a specific layout, and who can wait three years for it.
Because it measures enclosed volume, and volume is where the cabins, the crew, the machinery and the storage go. Regulations, port dues, crew requirements and often insurance are set by GT, and two boats of equal length can sit in different rule books because of it.
Teak decks, tender davits, stabiliser seals and anything with a touchscreen. Then paint, which on a dark hull in the Med has a life of about seven years before the yard invoice reaches seven figures.
The Log
One entry a week, on a Saturday.
One entry a week: the new long read, one boat worth studying, one number worth knowing. No advertising, no tracking, one click to leave.