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Mind you, every boat needs a Tim on board because sitting on one can get rather boring. Tim and Nick Scott, probably Britain’s greatest raconteur and mimic, are a one–two punch I defy any yacht owner to equal. Also on board were the ecdemomanic Bismarcks, and in order to save you a trip to the dictionary, ecdemomania is an abnormal compulsion to travel. Chantal Hanover and the mother of my children completed the group. Well, all I can say is that it’s going to be a long time before another trip like this one comes along, except, that is, if Tim and Nick decide that it’s time for premature evacuation from London and get back on board.
And speaking of premature evacuation, I wish Rising Sun, Octopus and Tatoosh would evacuate the Med and go back where I can’t see them, somewhere far away like between New Zealand and South America. Rising Sun belongs to that Oracle fellow Larry Ellison, who obviously needs a very big boat to make up for his inferiority complex. Or perhaps he built such an ugly yacht for the same reason that ladies of the 18th century used to have monkeys draped around their shoulders — to make them look less ugly by comparison. Four hundred and fifty-two feet long, with a large glass-enclosed superstructure, it is powered by — get this — 48,000 horsepower. By comparison, my 125-footer is powered by the wind, and a tiny 350 horsepower diesel. I cannot be bothered to calculate it, but I assume that 48,000 horses pollute more in one day’s travel than 350 will in a lifetime.
I was brought up to believe that the first function of a boat was to be beautiful. These monsters are not only environmentally incorrect, they are also hideous to look at and are not in harmony with the sea. They are gold-plated toys that look like office buildings, with interiors inspired by nightclubs. Their only purpose is to show off the money of their owner. Paul Allen, the Microsoft creep, owns Octopus and Tatoosh, and matches them in looks. He, too, is a Riviera regular and polluter, and the reason Ellison built Rising Sun the size he did was in order to ensure that his yacht would be larger than Allen’s. So far so bad. I won’t even go near where Abramovich is concerned. His taste is on a par with Ellison’s and Allen’s, and the way things are going, more and more horrors are being built by nouveaux billionaires anxious to impress the rest of us.
The last thing I believe in is government legislation, but if things keep going the way they are, we will soon have no more fish or plankton left in the Mediterranean. Is it fair that one man can pollute more than, say, thousands of others, simply because of his ego. Back in the Land of the Depraved, General Motors is bribing people to buy the Hummer, as obscene a car as anything ever made, which does nine miles per gallon. Hummers should be outlawed because they serve absolutely no purpose outside the military. Yet America is full of them.
What responsible people should do is not service mega-yachts which damage the environment. Then what would people like Allen, Ellison and Abramovich do? These green types who go around threatening scientists with violence should go after Larry, Roman and Paul, but cowards that they are, they will not. A poor scientist working on finding ways to combat disease is an easy target. Those rich slobs are not.
The only other way I can think of to make mega-yachts redundant is a Lysistrata-type of boycott by hookers. Only those with sailing boats will be serviced, but I will not hold my breath till that happens. Hookers have always been drawn to stink pots. Sweet young things to sails. Happy sailing.
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