Yachties Gone Wild

By The Hunger

Super Yacht Industry

Cue dramatic movie preview voice, “In a world where you get to live and work on multimillion dollar yachts, travel to the crème de la creamiest of world locations, cruising the Med in summer, the Caribbean in winter, and get paid well for it. Welcome to the Super Yacht Industry.”

Living in Palma de Mallorca, one of the world’s super yacht Mecca’s, has given me insight into how the world’s richest 0.00001 percent and their crews live. This could be the flagging utopia one imagines.

What draws people together from such diverse longitudes on land to pursue the same latitudes on water? Their love of adventure, their love of sailing and their love of the water – these people are called “Yachties.”

Super yachts voyage to all four corners of the globe; however, the majority of crews come from the same 5-10 nations. With such a highly concentrated anglophile population in the Super Yacht Industry, it’s the usual suspects of world nationalities that make up these mobile anglophile enclaves.

It’s part colonial history and part geographical positioning of these countries that primarily makes the super yacht industry to be made up of antipodeans, and it’s colonial mother. All countries share the same adventurous blood type. Nationalities most likely to bump into in a Yachtie port:

1. United Kingdom
2. Australia
3. South Africa
4. New Zealand
5. United States

Significant numbers and nationalities are harder to define for the second group. Also, second group numbers would rise and fall depending on which port you’re in. Honourable mentions include:

1. France
2. Spain
3. Canada
4. Netherlands
5. Philippines

It’s interesting to note that while most super yachts are registered in one of the many tax havens of the world (The Cayman Islands, Antigua, The Bahamas, Malta, Isle of Man, Jersey, Canary Isles, and the UAE to name a few), these exclusive areas of the world contribute a tiny percentage of crew members to the industry.

Yachties

Yachties are an interesting bunch. Most live by a “work hard, play hard” attitude that produces a sizeable amount of debauchery. And let’s face it:  when you’re seeing life through the eyes of a billionaire, wouldn’t you? The shagging potential in the yachting scene is high, and with so much time spent at sea, I’d be carpe-diem-ing the fuck out of it too when I got back on land.

Imagine living and working with the same people 24/7 – if you’re lucky you might get some hot crewmembers to help stave off boredom and seasickness. There are lots of hot stewardesses out there riding the high seas. If there weren’t any on my yacht, when I got back on land I’d want to compress my life by pressing the rewind button too.

Because of the disturbingly high number of antipodeans and ubiquitous Yachtie hangouts the world over, the flagging potential is lower than one would think, unless you employ one of two strategies. 1) Mostly hang out with other foreigners (i.e., non-natives of the country you’re in), or 2) Mostly hang out with the locals. Try a bit of both and see what happens.

But if meeting people from exotic countries doesn’t interest you, I’m sure you’d have an antipodean buffet of fun from port to port and more stories than Odysseus after living in this water world.

For some, seeing the world on turquoise waterways is a dream. For others, it might feel like a floating Alcatraz. Yachties will tell you “everything is better on water,” and from what I’ve seen, they have a pretty good time on land as well!

Flagging, Flags of the World