Happy yacht salesmen. Photo: Ray Tang/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images The 2022 Palm Beach International Boat Show is getting under way this weekend in Florida with all the lavishness you’d expect: $1.2 billion worth of boats glistening along the inland waterway, a VIP pavilion with open bar, and an accompanying contemporary-art fair. What it won’t have is many customers from the country that until recently was the second-largest market in the world for high-end yachts.
If the sudden disappearance of Russian yacht buyers does ultimately have an effect, it may only be at the very highest end of the market. “Clients from Russia and the Middle East have a higher average length of yachts,” says Merijn de Waard, founder and director of SuperYacht Times. “They are more keen on the very big boats.” According to the publication’s statistics, the average Russian-owned superyacht is 200 feet long, compared to 177 feet for American-owned ones.
As you might expect, yacht-buyers from the land of the Fabergé egg would tend to fall at the ostentatious end of the spectrum. If the idea of a helicopter landing on your boat makes you think, But where will my other helicopters land?, then you’ll appreciate fore-and-aft twin helipads, like Russian state oil-company chairman Igor Sechin has on his 445-foot yacht Crescent.
Another reason the market is so hot is that it has been rebounding from a slowdown during the first year of the pandemic, when sales of superyachts dipped amid travel restrictions and general uncertainty. Sales then rebounded sharply, leaving fewer used yachts available for purchase and generating a backlog at major shipyards. If anything’s holding back the superyacht market, it’s not lack of customers but lack of supply, de Waard says.
The Scheherazade is particularly mysterious. It rarely leaves its berth in Marina di Carrara, Italy, where its crew have installed a cover to hide its nameplate and a metal barrier along the pier to shield it from the gaze of onlookers.
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