Nothing says so much about a superyacht or its owner, writes Evan Osnos, as its LOA. The initials stand for “length over all” – or what one aficionado he interviewed calls “phallic sizing”. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, before he got the idea of sending celebrities like Katy Perry into space, commissioned a $485m yacht called Koru. With its towering masts, the 127 metre-long boat proved too tall to pass beneath Rotterdam’s famous Koningshaven Bridge, and while its manufacturers suggested dismantling the bridge, rather than the yacht, the heroes of that particular story – the Dutch – refused.
I had a similar problem recently. Delivery people couldn’t remove our old fridge because we had, in the interim, narrowed the hall with an understairs cupboard. In that moment, I identified with Bezos. True, as Osnos reports, one well-stocked diesel yacht can produce as much greenhouse gas as 1,500 passenger cars, while my broken fridge produces none, but the parallel remains.
