The mysterious appeal of the superyacht summer

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I wonder if the Beckhams suffer from the pruney, shrivelled fingers that come from bathing in briny waters? How Kevin Costner keeps his white shorts so sparkly. And whether Beyoncé experiences that unique discomfort that develops while sitting in one’s soggy bikini bottoms for too long? 

These are just some of the questions I ask while admiring the 0.1 per cent aboard their boats each summer. For many, the season is initiated by the lengthening of hours in a day, or the beginning of the school recess. For me, the start of summer is marked by the first paparazzi images to emerge of the actor and climate activist Leonardo DiCaprio cruising in the sun.

No one enjoys, nor lives the superyacht summer so completely as DiCaprio: the usually reclusive 49-year-old seems to come alive the moment he sets foot aboard the deck. At a time when the news cycle is ordinarily sluggish, I am endlessly entertained by DiCaprio’s life of leisure, whose chief entertainments include gambolling through the waves astride a jet ski (no carbon footprint there eh, Leo?) and keeping in proximity to whichever supermodel’s derrière he has deigned to squire this year. 

His current squeeze appears to be the brunette Italian model Vittoria Ceretti (keep up, guys) who, at 26 years old, is thought to be the first girlfriend he has engaged beyond the quarter-century mark. I don’t begrudge DiCaprio his instincts. He represents the person — like a young Jack Nicholson — we all aspire to be. He sates every tiny appetite. And embodies the essential creed of not seeming to have a single care. Not for him the petty vanities of six-packs or full body tanning: he just wants to let it all hang out, unleash his inner five-year-old, and plunge gleefully into the sea. 

This summer has found DiCaprio holidaying aboard the yacht Koru, with Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, to whom Bezos became engaged last year. The world’s second-richest man has afforded DiCaprio some downtime as one of the cluster of celebrities sucked into Bezos’s orbit. Singer Katy Perry and her little Legolas Orlando Bloom have made up the odd sextuplet seen bobbing about Sardinia this past week. 

The Koru took four years to build at the cost of an estimated $500mn. It’s just one of the post-divorce assets Bezos has acquired — along with celebrity acquaintances and ferocious biceps — following his split from MacKenzie Scott in 2019. The 417-foot schooner is said to be an homage to his new beloved, with a busty figurehead at its bow that bears an uncanny likeness to Sánchez. As with his US Vogue shoot, and his too-tight cream trousers, Bezos’ mid-life era acquires another cliché every month.

But whatever. Every billionaire should have a big boat: it’s what being a billionaire is all about. Bernard Arnault’s Symphony boasts interiors by Zuretti, a cinema and grand piano, while the Octopus, built for Microsoft’s Paul Allen, has a large pool, a hangar for two copters and two helipads. Big yachts are, as pointed out by the FT’s unofficial boat correspondent Brendan Greeley, “a terrible asset”. And yet, they remain an almost irresistible indulgence for the super-rich. After all, what better way to boast your superpower credentials than to round up flocks of famous people, get them to take their clothes off, and hold them captive for your sport?

Sadly, the charms of superyachts evade me: I see them only as prisons on the sea. The thought of being moored for days with only bare acquaintances — while wearing a bikini, for God’s sake — strikes me as one of the more appalling ways to spend one’s down time. And that’s before the nagging nausea of all that floating, the persistent threat of drowning or being whacked across the head. All those bloody ropes, all that tack and jibing. And while, yes, I know that superyachts aren’t really boats as I might recognise them, there’s still no escaping that fact that, you know, it’s all quite wet. 

Add to that the bougie cocktail parties, the endless peacocking, plus the dilemma of how to pull off a cocktail dress while having to pad around in deck shoes, or worse, bare feet. I hope Bezos retains a podiatrist aboard the Koru: DiCaprio may be unkempt but he is by no means gnarly, and I need to know someone is attending to his toes.

I envy not these people on their superyacht adventure: examining Bezos’s onshore excursions I feel not one jot of jealousy. I’m just thrilled he’s ponied up for more DiCaprio content. “The king of the world”, forever: our prince of the vacation seas. 

Email Jo at [email protected]

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