by Captain Lee
About $4,000.
And we did it. We got exactly what he wanted, we got it delivered on time, and it was delicious, or so I was told. It basically cost the amount of booking a couple of seats on a commercial airliner, but for a guy with millions or even billions to spend, four grand to him is what I spend on bubblegum, and I don’t torture myself over how much money I’m going to spend on a pack of gum.
Another owner had a special project that would have made a normal guy flinch but didn’t make him bat an eyelash, nor should it have. He wanted to get a new dining room table, and for the material on top, he wanted a single, solid slab of onyx.
I didn’t even know you could buy an onyx slab for a dining table. I knew you could buy wood, or glass, or steel, and if you wanted to do stone, maybe someone could do marble or granite or soapstone. But onyx? I’d only heard that as a material people used in jewelry, not furniture. If I wanted to buy some onyx earrings, I could probably find some at Macy’s between $100 and $1,000, depending on how flashy I was feeling. But an entire table? A table that was supposed to seat twelve people? That was a lot of onyx. And it wasn’t just the raw weight—this guy wanted it to be in a single slab. So even though it might have been easier or cheaper to find two or more pieces and then just glue them together, the owner didn’t want any seams to mar the table’s surface.
So, I made a few calls. Eventually, I found a stone purveyor who was able to find the slab I was looking for, but it wasn’t cheap. The slab alone cost $25,000. If we were going to install the slab into a house with a wide-open front door, then maybe the costs would have ended there. But on a yacht, everything is more complicated. Unlike a mansion, the roads for a yacht go to the marina, not to the numbers on a mailbox. In order to get that slab in the boat and set it down nice and gentle, we needed to commission a crane and the personnel capable of using it. We needed to hire craftsmen who could install it properly. At the end of the day, that tabletop ended up costing the owner $50,000.
And hell, it looked gorgeous.
Though one of the big questions was always, How long is that going to last? Even though a lot of owners visit their yachts only a few times a year, they’re remarkably susceptible to environmental fatigue. One time, an owner came on board, looked around for a bit, gestured at the dining room chairs, and said, “I’m sick of looking at these—let’s change it.” And it wasn’t like the guy was pointing to chairs with warped wood or couches in the salon with red wine stains on the upholstery. He just got bored with seeing the same thing. And this boredom could set in quickly—often in under two years.
So, these gorgeous dining room chairs had to go. “I hate them—go buy new ones,” he said. And that was that. No discussion, no auction, just make them go away. But the chairs were new. No one had ever sat in them before. “Just get rid of them,” the owner said. Those chairs cost about $1,000 each, and we ended up just asking the crew if they wanted to take them home. It was that or give them to the Salvation Army. Here’s a pro tip if you want to become a professional furniture flipper: follow the stuff that comes flying off a yacht. It’s a good way to buy a thousand-dollar chair for $50.
One of the biggest drivers of change on a boat would be a change in the owner’s personal life. If the guy got a new wife or a new girlfriend, it was time for a makeover. The new girlfriend didn’t want to sleep on the same linens as the old girlfriend. Or she didn’t want to use the same towels. Or she didn’t want to sleep in the same bed. Or eat off the same table. Or be cooled by the same generators. Whatever might cause her emotional distress or mental anguish, that would just have to go, even if that change meant replacing all the carpets or the upholstery or the navigation system (not typical, that last one).
It wasn’t always big-ticket items like 50K tabletops. Sometimes it was something as simple as linens. But even then, simple doesn’t mean cheap. Sometimes, we’ll be told to get bedding for all the cabins. But they don’t just want sheets from JC Penney. They want 1,200-thread-count sheets, and those sheets need to be Egyptian cotton. Because, they say, it’s the best. And that’s an easy get.
They’re not always so easy.
Just about everyone has sheets, but not everyone has rare art.
One time, an owner looked at a space on the wall and said, “I’ve got to fill that with something.” But he didn’t plan on just slapping up a poster from the movie Donnie Darko or Einstein sticking his tongue out. This wasn’t a college dorm room. He wanted Art with a capital A. He wanted a Pollock or a Warhol or a Kandinsky. For his boat.
It should be noted that one doesn’t just purchase an original Jackson Pollock and that’s the end of it. A Pollock can cost up to $200 million, and that’s without the frame. Even a lesser Pollock, at $50 million, is both a lot of money to spend and just the first stage in an elite art purchase. After all, news of an art sale of that magnitude will be reported. That’s, to a large degree, one of the key factors motivating the purchase in the first place. People will know. People will be impressed. So, in addition to the art itself, the owner also had to purchase security.
In order to protect the owner’s purchases, we installed a top-flight security system. It had pressure-sensitive pads on the deck to alert us if anything larger than a hedgehog tried to get on board. To monitor all the public spaces in the boat, we also had closed-circuit TVs equipped with night-vision lenses, and these were complemented by heat sensors in the gangways. Nobody was getting on the boat without the security detail being aware of it.
But that wasn’t all.
After buying the painting, after installing the $100,000 security system, after all of that, the owner still had one more purchase to make.
He had to buy a duplicate of the painting.
The duplicate itself wasn’t cheap. This had to be convincing. It couldn’t just be some print he bought at the Museum of Modern Art’s gift shop, mass produced and printed by some high-end laser printer. This had to really look like the original, it had to be oil on canvas, it had to have three-dimensional layering of paint, and be produced by an actual painter intimately familiar with the original artist’s work and techniques. That alone cost a pretty penny. And it was well spent.
After all, he was spending $50 million on a work of art—who’s going to hang that on a wall? Things happen to walls. But for an investment like that, he put the painting in a vault.
But if the painting was in a vault in some bank, then why the need for all the security?
Because the painting was purchased as a way to impress. It’s part of how the owner tells a story. The story is “I’m important, I have great taste, and I have quite a bit of money.” That story isn’t going to be convincingly told without a few props. One doesn’t just put an original Pollock up on a bulkhead and call it a day. To really sell that story, you need the additional security, all the technical tools, and staff. If you’re going to spend $50 million to tell a story, you can spend a million more to sell it.
This is all to say that where there’s a lot of money, there’s a lot of money to spend. And where money can flow, corruption has a way of working its way into the picture.
Refits are expensive. This provides opportunities both legitimate and illegitimate.
When a boat gets a refit, it means getting a tune-up to the hundredth degree. It means fixing, restoring, cleaning, modifying, customizing, or otherwise improving a boat, exterior and/or interior. For big boats, this can require a lot of work.
And a lot of dollars.
There are lots of people who can do the work. There are different contractors who would love to resurface the decks or paint the superstructure. There are plenty of interior decorators who would love to throw out hundreds of thousands of dollars in furniture and replace it with brand-new cabinets, tables, and art. The captain holds a great deal of power in making these decisions. He’s the one who solicits bids and talks to the specialists who could do the work.
There’s a lot of money riding on those kinds of decisions. Enough money, in
fact, that a few thousand directed to the right person might not be seen as an expense, but as insurance to guarantee a high-paying job. Some people call it “perks,” but I call it what it is: a kickback. Sometimes, an owner will take the boat into the yard for a refit, and before the work even starts, the crew might notice that the captain is now driving around in a brand-new pickup truck. These jobs could cost millions of dollars, so someone giving the captain a bag with $20,000 in cash might seem like a real bargain.
Not to me.
I’ve always felt that a captain should make decisions like that based on who can do the best job, not who can be the quickest to fill a gym bag with twenties. I’ve been in those situations. On more than one occasion, I’ve been handed an envelope with a bid in it only to find out there’s more in that envelope.
“There’s a twenty-thousand-dollar check in there for you, too, Cap,” the bidder said.
“Why don’t you just take the 20K out of the bottom line for the boss,” I replied.
“We really want to win this bid,” he said.
“You have a better chance of winning the bid by thinking about the owner’s financial situation, and not mine,” I said.
Not everyone agrees. One owner I knew just felt that this sort of thing was a kind of bonus for the captain. He thought that there were lots of good companies out there, and if soliciting a bribe got his captain a new truck or a down payment on a summer house, then what was wrong with that? But that’s just never the way that I’ve seen things. I’m paid to do my job by the owner—I’m not paid by a contractor with his own agenda. If you keep the conflicts of interest to a minimum, your life gets simpler and easier.
Captains aren’t the only ones targeted for this kind of scam. Chefs wield remarkable power on ship as well. If an owner decides that he wants to modernize or upgrade the galley, he’ll seek input from the captain, but he’ll lean heavily on the expertise of the chef to make many of those decisions. And those kinds of decisions can prove incredibly lucrative to a company selling ovens, walk-in freezers, grills, cooktops, and any other appliances that could be on the acquisition to-do list. As a result, a kitchen supply company might offer a chef a few thousand dollars to steer business its way. A good chef should simply make the decision based on what’s best for the boat, but some put their own pocketbooks first. If a chef switches all his knives from Crate & Barrel to Wüsthof right after a big upgrade, it might be a sign he took a kickback.
Big-ticket items like pricy name-brand appliances aren’t the only way that a chef could wield the power of the owner’s black card. Stocking up on booze for the season can be an incredibly hefty bar tab. We never want to run on empty at the bar, and so we’ll often buy up to $100,000 worth of alcohol to top off before the season starts. With those kinds of numbers, a less ethical chef might ask around for $5,000 in “consultation fees” before deciding on which distributor will satisfy his needs. From my perspective, you just never want to be in the position where you’re stocking cheapie Popov vodka instead of Grey Goose or Hamm’s beer instead of Guinness because that’s how the distributor was able to fill the order while still affording their payoff.
Some people think they’re entitled to dip in. After all, the owner isn’t the one who has to pay for it, right? But the thing is, any time you’re making decisions based on something other than “What’s the best way to do your job,” things can get missed.
And that’s where you can run into big trouble.
I was working this one boat when things didn’t go the right way. I’m not saying that this was necessarily because of bribes or kickbacks (though I’m not saying that wasn’t a factor). I’m just saying what can happen if people don’t keep their eyes on the ball at all times.
I was going to be taking charge of the boat, a 165-footer, once it finished its refit in Europe. The refit was pretty pricy—about 4.5 million euros ($5.5 million). We could probably have done it in the US for maybe $2 million, but the owner wanted it done in Europe, and the owner gets what he wants. Part of the refit was that we were going to get the boat painted, which ended up costing the owner 1.7 million euros.
It certainly seemed like a high price tag, but keep in mind that painting a boat of that size isn’t a simple job. You don’t just call your friends over to the marina, get a few rollers, and spread a coat or two of True Value Navajo White all over the hull. Painting is a very technical, precise job. Before you even get to the painting, a painter has to do a ton of prep. They erect massive scaffolding around the boat, then construct a tent over the scaffolding. Either that, or they dock the boat inside a big shed. Not only does that protect the boat from rain and wind, but it also protects people from the boat. Often, there’s a lot of scraping and sanding when a boat is prepped for paint, and that residue can be inhaled, so the tent or shed keeps all that in, and the air is filtered before it can be released outside of the tarp.
The prep team goes over the hull, and if they want a new coat of paint, they sand off the old one. Then they search the hull for any dings, dents, or abrasions before sanding or pounding or polishing them off. This all takes thousands of hours, and the paint hasn’t even been applied yet!
As part of the prep, the painter needs to remove every bolt and screw that covers the deck plating. Every screw, every doorknob, every cleat, everything that isn’t the superstructure needs to be removed, marked, and catalogued. For that boat, it was about 100,000 screws. And before the screws could go back in, they all had to be coated, individually, in Tef-Gel. This gel allows someone to insert and remove screws from a hull. Often, different things on a ship are made from different materials. So, the hull might be steel, the screws might be stainless steel, and the superstructure might be aluminum. When you have two different materials interacting with each other, it can cause electrolysis, which can create bubbles in the metal. Not a desirable outcome. All 100,000 screws had to have Tef-Gel applied with a toothbrush. If each application of Tef-Gel just took a single second, and the guy coating it never took a break or slowed down, it would take about twenty-eight man-hours just to coat every screw on the boat.
Then, finally, came the paint. But . . . not quite. First, the workspace needed to be adjusted to the right conditions. The temperature had to be kept constant, at about 65 degrees, so there wasn’t any expansion or contraction of the materials. The interior walls were washed with cascading water so that even minuscule contaminants were kept away. Even the air was accounted for—inside that tarp, the air pressure was kept higher than the outside air pressure. That meant, even with people coming in and going out, the air on the inside pushed out that contaminated outside air. Just walking in to work on the job, people felt a slight punch of air against them.
At that point, the painter could apply a show coat. This was not “show” in the sense of a show pony, but in a “show me what’s wrong with this picture.” The show coat, usually blue or green, helps reveal any flaw or irregularity on the hull. Those were fixed by using a fairing compound, then re-sanded and primed, and finally the finish coat was applied. Another inspection would take place, maybe it passed, maybe it didn’t. If it didn’t, then they would re-sand and reshoot the boat again until it was right. Then all the screws were reinserted and the doorknobs replaced. If everything was done right, the exterior paint would be so brilliant, it would literally reflect the water.
Problem was, for me, that this particular boat had orange peels in a lot of places. Orange peels happen because the paint was applied improperly so that the exterior wasn’t smooth and uniform. As a result, you get the subtle dimpling of an orange peel.
I didn’t oversee the refit and painting of the boat. It was just a delivery job for me, bringing the boat to the owner. That said, even if you’re just the messenger, you do not want to be the guy handing over a boat covered with orange peel that just got a 1.7-million-euro paint job. Especially when it should have cost only about a million euros at most. You shouldn’t do a crap job, and you shouldn’t overcharge, but you sure as
hell shouldn’t do both and not expect someone to notice.
You get that orange peel by someone screwing up, usually when a painter uses incorrect technique on the job. For instance, he might use too much paint in a single coat, or he might spray at an angle rather than perpendicular to the surface, or he might not have enough pressure in the spray gun, etc. I saw it and thought, No way. You pay a lot of money for a job, you want to see perfection. Someone put on that orange peel finish, and that was a mistake. Not smoothing it with some fairing compound was a second mistake. Someone else checked it, saw that it wasn’t perfect, and said, “Eh—good enough,” and that was a third mistake. I said they should sand it down and try it again. And there were a few other things, problems with the boat that I pointed out to the owner, signs that someone either let something slip or was trying to pull one over on him. I thought they should try again. The owner, on the other hand, disagreed.
See, the owner had been without his boat for a year while it was getting the refit. And after a year, he didn’t want to hear that the boat was going to need to go back to the yard, get sanded down, get looked over, have all the screws removed, get repainted, have all those screws covered in Tef-Gel again, and everything put into working order. That’s another three months to a year of work. Who had the patience for that? Instead, he said, “Let me just take it, and we’ll have them redo it the next time we’re in the yard.”
Suuuurrrre. Of course, they’ll hop to when we come strolling in, in another year or two. They were happy enough to agree to such a proposal, because they knew they’d never have to follow through with it. And sure enough, when he did bring it back, they told him it had been out of the yard too long and that they couldn’t really guarantee the work at that point. And why would they? If you buy a car and see a scratch, that’s on the dealership. You buy a car, see a scratch, then drive it around town for a year, and then bring it back? Good luck getting the dealer to pay for it.