Last month, I attended a birthday party for a yacht broker. His co-workers said that business was booming for all sizes of boats (though maybe they don’t deal with anything smaller than 35′? 70-125′ seems to be their bread and butter). “In the old days we could have just closed the office in August, but the phone never stops ringing.” What’s changed? “Boat buyers are richer and younger,” was the answer. “They’re taking much longer trips and want bigger more capable boats for those trips. Starlink has been the catalyst. It makes a tremendous difference, especially, for the crew, and has made people more willing to work the longer voyages. The owners can still work, no matter how long the trip.” How does Starlink compare to the previous generation of satellite-based Internet for yachts? “It’s 100 times faster,” a broker said, “a total game-changer for both speed and reliability.”
Speaking of reliability, it seems that the mid-priced yachts ($10-25 million) either have two independent Starlink subscriptions and receivers or, in some cases, two antennae and a single receiver that is smart about which one to use (“diversity is our strength” in the RF world). “You need the second antenna,” the brokers explained, “because sometimes the line of sight to the satellite is block by a mast.”
What I can’t figure out is where these additional/bigger yachts are parking. The world was already short of slips before the cash showers of government coronapanic programs and, more recently, AI. “They keep building marinas here in South Florida,” said a broker.
Its infrastructure fund went from owning zero marinas in 2024 to roughly 200 marinas today — more than anyone in the world.
The company paid $5.6 billion in early 2025 for Safe Harbor, which at the time owned and operated 138 marinas in the United States and Puerto Rico, including dozens of marinas from Maryland to Maine as well as the Caribbean’s largest in Fajardo, P.R. It also runs nine marinas on the Mediterranean, catering to large yachts in places like St. Tropez, Antibes and Monaco.
What’s going on locally? An $80 million revamp of a marina just south of Abacoa:
The facility will feature two five-story indoor storage buildings with 427 enclosed dry storage slips and 20 wet slips.
Someone with $80 million to invest didn’t get the climate change memo? The buildings are designed to handle 180 mph hurricane winds (the last hurricane to make landfall in Palm Beach County in a “major” category (>= 3) was in 1949). But they’ll be worthless if sea level rise happens as promised by the Climate Doomers.
How much does a true “yacht” cost an Nvidia receptionist? A Turkish-built 125′ Hargrave, which ChatGPT says is mid-market at this size, is advertised at $24.5 million. Westport is a “step up”. For the programmer who has been at Nvidia 10 years, “Feadship / Lürssen / Oceanco / Royal Huisman: an entirely different stratum—bespoke, extremely expensive, and usually much larger, though some of these yards historically built yachts around this size.”
Related:
Your financial analysis assumes that Nvidia employees were stupid and didn’t sell their RSUs on vest immediately to diversify!
Phil, your posts on SpaceX keep driving the stock higher! $176 this morning! Can you start giving us all a heads up on the “news” ahead of time so we can get our orders in? Also, have you had a recent chat with your analyst at Morningstar to see what he is saying?