Sailing Around Australia; How the Other Half Do It

23/7/2014 – How the other half do it

Leading up to and during our sailing around Australia adventures, we have met a wide range of other sailors. By a wide range I mean that the range in ages, interests, beliefs and is from one end of the spectrum to the other.

This also includes the type of vessels that we have seen people taking to destinations. From a 19foot wooden hulled yacht that sailed from California to Australia, to the $45million dollar, 50 metre super yacht that our son works on.

The folks that have left their homeport aboard small vessels with few of the comforts of home have my admiration. We know several people that are travelling north without a fridge, others that have very limited facilities and no running water.

On Easy Tiger, we have most of the common comforts of home. We have hot water, electric auto flush and macerating toilets, two fridges and a freezer. We even have the quintessential big screen TV. Probably the only thing that we now think we should have is a washing machine.

This morning we got to see how the one percenters’ sail around Australia aboard their yachts. I read somewhere that the top 1% wealthiest people in Australia individually own more than lower 20% of the population combined.

This doesn’t mean a lot until you board a boat that has an art collection, a library, a 12 person jacuzzi and the varnish on the chairs in the dining room costs $4,000 per chair!

It also has a full time crew of 12 people including a chef, a master scuba diving instructor and 3 stewardesses. How many guests does it take I hear you say? The answer is 1. That’s not a typo, all that to entertain 1 person. The owner of the boat comes on board at different times for different experiences.

Those experiences include using the jet skis to go up a river in the Kimberly’s, using the motorbikes kept on board to ride the great ocean road, or the 14 sets of scuba gear to dive on the barrier reef. When he’s done he takes his personal jet back to the office, while the crew get the boat to the next destination and ready for the next adventure.

Of course there is a down side to this “super yacht”. We are finding it hard to find pens or marina berths for our 12 metre by 7.5 metre catamaran. Imagine the costs and difficulties in berthing something 50 metres! Probably the reason that the owner doesn’t take other guests, is that the boat is so nice, the crew so friendly and the toys are such fun, that no-one would want to get off.

The other problem is the depreciation. Apparently it is not good business to keep a super yacht for any more than 4 or 5 years before you upgrade. That means of course that the next one has to be bigger! Oh and another problem is that they take 3 to five years to build! Hopefully you can get a buy one get one free offer?

I think we’ll stick with Easy Tiger for the time being. Of course if any of the mega rich would like to trade… well, we could tolerate it for a while.

We don’t have any staff, jet ski’s or fancy polish on our chairs. But we are out there on an adventure and living the dream.

It just really proves that it doesn’t matter what vehicle you use to take you to your dreams, as long as it gets you there.