Today's Alliteration: Billionaire Boats of Barcelona

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Today’s plan, after finding an ATM that didn’t expect a 5€ tip for giving me my money, was to take a long walk up to the Eixample district to see some commercial buildings done by Antonio Gaudi. We did that, and had a nice time of it. But before you hear about that adventure, and the subsequent walk down to the Mediterranean, you will be treated to a special blog about the Billionaire Boats of Barcelona.
We decided to ramble back down La Rambla, having nothing better to do on this particular morning. It wasn’t our first time down to the sea – we’d been there in in 2009 during our “meet here from opposite sides of the world” trip. That time though, we had not made it all the way to Barcelona’s touristy beachside district of Barceloneta, instead turning back into town at the yacht basin. Today we thought it was a nice opportunity, with slowing improving weather, and so off we went.
A nice little boat basin fronts the city right by the statue dedicated to Christopher Columbus. Strolling along, we started to get the sense that this was no average boat parking lot, rather that there were some enormous boats, like miniature cruise ships. “Charters they must be” we thought. Well, we took a lot of pictures and I decided to do some research once we got back to the apartment. Let’s just say I had no idea that there was an entire internet world dedicated to yacht gossip.
Taking them from modest to absurd, here’s a small summary.

Ace
Ace belongs to Russian Samvel Karapetyen (net worth $4.7B.) She is 87 meters long and is valued at $120M.



Mayan Queen
Coming in at 93 meters, this boat belongs to the 3rd richest man in Mexico, Alberto Bailleres ($6.9B.)





Ulysses
New Zealand’s richest man, Graeme Hart ($5.3B) is the proud owner of this beauty. Rolling along at 107 meters and valued at $180M, this boat isn’t quite large enough. Not even with its helicopter garage or 22-meter tender. He has another on order that will add an additional 30 feet to the front end.





(Just about now, you should be noticing a strong mathematical correlation between net worth and boat length.)

Parked over on the side were a handful of more modest boats in the 60-70 meter range (typically less than $100M to get on the water.) The most amusing was the Paraffin, an odd name we thought. Turns out it was the boat of the fellow who founded The Yankee Candle Company, everyone’s favorite stop in the mall.


The cutest super yacht of the bunch was the Garcon (shown here on the right,) a 67-meter beauty that was actually built to be the tender  the Ace above("garçon" of course being the pejorative French word for "waiter.") One yacht apparently not being quite enough.



There was one shy boat, not parked with these beasts, but modestly tucked away across the harbor with only its nose sticking out from behind a big building. This one is the Katara - riding the seas at 124 meters, it belongs to the Emir of Qatar ($10B) and is valued at a few bucks over $300M.



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