Factors That Spur Superyacht Sales

A surprising statistic, when we compiled this year’s annual Top 100 Superyachts of Asia-Pacific, is that 20 vessels are built by Amels or its parent Damen.

- Bruce Maxwell

Bearing in mind that every superyacht had to be 48m (157ft) LOA or above to make the 2020 list, this is a phenomenal result, and it begs the question as to whether today’s owners are looking for something different in these luxury steeds.

A superyacht per se offers privacy, relaxation, status, world-class cruising and cuisine options, social and business interludes, entertainment, sea sports such as fishing, snorkeling and scuba diving, and the ability to explore our superb oceans at leisure.

On another level, superyachts are self-contained islands able to operate for increasingly longer periods without the need for shore supplies, and they can reach remote, completely isolated locations beyond the ken of even the most adventurous cruise ships.

This suggests other attributes. I spent a week once fishing with David Lieu at Scarborough Reef in the South China Sea. He was in his “little” Van Triumph, the 33m or 110 footer, before building the better-known 65m or 212ft vessel of the same name.

He owned the Van Shipping Line, and his Vanguard racing yachts designed by a young Ed Dubois twice saw Hong Kong leading the premier Admiral’s Cup in the English Channel at the halfway stage, only to slip to a still-exceptional third overall after testing series-ending Fastnet Races.

Perusing brochures, books and videos during evening drinks in his lounge – we were tied alongside in the schooner Mandalay – I suddenly realized he was very concerned about the Cold War becoming a global nuclear war. If that happened, he said, he planned voyaging to the South Pacific.

Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika movement ended the Cold War in 1989, but the same strategy could be applied to any calamity, such as SARS two decades ago, or to the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus now.