As I bobbed lazily off the coast of Nerano last week, a boat sped past me spilling over with lobstered fratboys in backwards golf caps. I caught sight of the name on its hull just before being submerged in its wake — ‘Thanks Dad!’, it read — and chuckled between lungfuls of seawater as my obituary flashed before my eyes: “unknown writer drowns at hands of amusingly named party boat, despite evident natural buoyancy.” (Then another thought: ‘Thanks Daddy!’ would have been a different type of craft entirely.) And so, just as young Giacomo hooked me from the water at the vital moment, I began thinking about the other equally colourful yacht names out there — and what they might say about their owners.
Straight in with the big guns. So to speak. ‘Tits’ is the infamous name of the yacht once owned by Prince Jefri Bolkiah of the Bruneian royal family — a playboy, hotel magnate, mansion hoarder, and sometime polo opponent of King Charles. Prince Jefri was a controversial figure who, it’s alleged, would invite Miss USA candidates around for “tea”, according to Vanity Fair: “A code for sex.” He was also known (allegedly) to pay for the cosmetic enhancements of the women he dated around the world, which likely explains his choice of yacht name. Its twin tenders, by the way, were known as “Nipple 1” and “Nipple 2.”
‘A’ is either a minimalist name for a minimalist yacht (its exterior was designed, in sleek white lines, by Philippe Starck) or a flex by owner Andrey Melnichenko against his fellow seamen: Most marina reports and yacht registers are filed alphabetically, meaning Melnichenko’s is always listed at the very top.
On one hand, the name makes sense for the offshore haven of the famously publicity-shy golfer, whose other boat was christened ‘Solitude’. On the other, slapping the word ‘PRIVACY’ in vast letters on a 47-metre, world-famous superyacht is a bit like having the license plate ‘HUMBLE’ on your golden Lamborghini. Either way, there’s some irony in the fact that the boat became the subject of a lawsuit shortly after it was finished: Woods reportedly sued its builders over accusations that they had used it in promotional materials in breach of his, well, privacy.
Ectasea can be speedy. Noted for its combination of size and power (most superyachts of its 86m length travel at around 15 knots — this one can go at over 30), the craft was commissioned by an ascendant Roman Abramovich in 2001. Its name is uncharacteristically punny for the usually demure industrialist — joining the canon of dad-joke marina stalwarts like ‘Tax Seavasion’, ‘Nauti Boy’, ‘Seas the Day’, and ‘Anchor Management’.
The name of the 295-foot long Lionheart is an apparent reference to courage. And to be fair to Sir Philip, it must have taken quite a lot of that to sell BHS for £1.
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Issue 18
Setting up a Ponzi scheme is easy. You promise handsome returns and foolhardy investors give you their money accordingly — and then you pay these investors out based on the deposits of further foolhardy investors, and the wheel turns. The problem, of course, is getting out. In this week's edition of the Friday Five, we meet the most notable fraudsters who didn’t.
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