IF I had the money, would I buy a big fancy boat? It is a question I’ve found myself ruminating on in recent days while perusing a clutch of articles about the so-called billion-pound boom in sales of superyachts.
Or, as one story in Tatler puts it, “a wave of affluent buyers looking to escape lockdown misery snap up their own floating palaces”. How the other half live, eh?
My fascination with motor yachts, though, is largely stoked by the fact I have been binge-watching a reality TV series called Below Deck. The show follows a motley yacht crew as they toil at the beck-and-call of uber-rich clients with eye-watering demands.
It is not for the faint-hearted, with the premise best described as Downton Abbey meets Keeping Up With The Kardashians with a dash of Game of Thrones.
After each charter, if all goes well, the staff below stairs get a huge tip from the guests – then swiftly splash this hard-earned cash by getting legless at swanky beach and island resorts dotted across the Caribbean and Mediterranean.
There are drunken spats and messy dramas and simmering feuds and dastardly power plays that will make you gasp at their audacity. It is terribly gauche yet gloriously compelling viewing.
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I say this because I have devoured 85 episodes of Below Deck Mediterranean. I am now three series into Below Deck (that’s the main series; the Med one is a spin-off).
Mastermind, here I come. My specialist subject: the trials and tribulations of chief stewardesses Kate Chastain and Hannah Ferrier on Below Deck. These women embody ingenuity and tenacity. They are nails.
To be honest, I’ve always envied those with the robust constitution that makes a good sailor. Over the years, I have been seasick on the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, as well as the Adriatic, Coral, South China, Red, North, Mediterranean and Tasman seas. It is hard to choose my most embarrassing debacle in this vein.
Arguably, it is a toss-up between when I became queasy on a pedalo on Loch Lomond and had to be towed to shore as small children pointed in horrified amusement as my pallor veered between ghostly grey and pistachio green.
Or perhaps the shark-diving excursion in South Africa where I misjudged the direction of the wind and inadvertently acquainted a poor German chap dozing on the deck with the remnants of my breakfast.
To this day, I still marvel at how calm and polite he was – even when the smell from his soggy fleece pervaded the minibus all the way back to Cape Town.
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I have crossed the North Atlantic on QE2 during a force 10 storm, a torrid experience that saw me spend the best part of two days hugging the toilet in my cabin like I was Kate Winslet clinging to that floating shard of wood in the film Titanic.
So, the question remains: would I buy a big fancy boat. Probably not. But you don’t need sea legs to dream on the sofa.
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