With all of these wonderful articles about fascinating subjects or about writing, a savvy reader would not think I'd take on yacht building, but I have.
A Hole in the Water You Fill With Money by Patrick Cooke is really quite interesting. The article itself is intriguing and depressing all at the same time and makes the book that it is written about, Grand Ambition by G. Bruce Knect, seem like it would be more of that. Is it off-kilter that I genuinely want to read this when Mr. Cooke writes:
From the living room of his $18.5 million duplex in New York's Time Warner Center, Mr. Von Allmen and his wife alternately cajole and torment Lady Linda's patient yacht designer, Evan Marshall, with questions that may strike the reader as strictly the problems of the idle rich. Should the yacht have built into it one garage or two for storing smaller craft? (Securing speedboats and wave runners on deck is viewed by the yachting community as déclassé and a sign that the owner can't afford a garage.) How will guests in the sky lounge be able to view underwater scenes sent from video cameras mounted beneath the yacht's hull? And what is the best way to air-condition the outdoor decks during those sweltering Mediterranean cruises?
or
Mr. Knecht, without being in any way judgmental, catalogs the jaw-dropping excesses. One owner has a room onboard that makes snow. Another built a concert hall large enough to fit a 50-member orchestra. Yet another has an onboard runway where models show off the newest fashions in a room with only two seats. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's 414-foot Octopus boasts a basketball court and a commercial-quality recording studio. No one, however, goes over the top like the Russians, the "oligarch-yachtsmen," as the author calls them. Roman Abramovich, the owner of Britain's Chelsea football club, also owns the Eclipse. At 533 feet, she is nearly as long as two football fields. Stored below decks is a submarine protected by a missile-defense system.
It was the last passage that really grabbed me, when the new yacht owner tours his purchase. This just smacks of being a character in a novel.
There is a scene toward the end of "Grand Ambition" where the author accompanies Mr. Von Allmen on a tour of Lady Linda. The owner is in a rotten mood. As he glumly surveys each luxurious deck, "there was not a flicker of excitement." He looks instead like a man staring down into a hole in the water that just swallowed a fortune.
As I'm all thriller this year, I'm guessing that this will be my next Audible.com book, but I bet I will find it fun and entertaining anyway.
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