There is a rule in serious wealth management.
It has existed in various forms across various family offices for decades. It is never written down. It is passed, quietly, from advisor to principal at the moment the principal becomes wealthy enough to need to hear it.
The rule is this: never own anything that floats, flies, or fornicates.
The yacht is the most egregious offender of the three.
The Numbers Are Brutal
A superyacht does not depreciate like a car. It depreciates like a rumour — fast, relentless, and impossible to stop once it starts.
A 50-metre vessel purchased at €20 million loses between 5–10% of its value annually before a single wave hits the hull. Maintenance runs at 10% of the purchase price per year — minimum. Crew, insurance, port fees, fuel, refits, and the quiet but persistent cost of a vessel that exists to be used but spends most of its life waiting.
The average superyacht is used 30 days a year.
The other 335 days, it is a balance sheet liability wearing the disguise of a status symbol.
Charter the same vessel for those 30 days and the cost is a fraction of the annual carry. No depreciation. No crew contracts. No emergency refit in Palma because something failed during the winter lay-up. No asset that requires its own asset manager.
The arithmetic is not complicated. It is simply inconvenient.
So Why Do They Still Buy?
Because the ultra-wealthy are not making a financial decision.
They are making a sovereignty decision.
A yacht you own is available at 11pm on a Tuesday when the decision to leave is made at 10:45. It is configured to your specifications — the artwork, the menu, the tender, the guest cabins arranged exactly as they should be. It carries no history of previous passengers. It answers to no availability calendar. It does not require a conversation with a broker.
It is, in the most literal sense available to a human being outside of sovereign territory, yours.
For a certain category of principal — the ones who have structured their lives around the elimination of friction, the compression of time, and the absolute preservation of privacy — that is not a luxury.
It is an operating requirement.
The Intelligent Middle
The families who do this well have stopped treating it as a binary.
They do not own a yacht because the numbers work. They own a yacht because the numbers are not the point — and they have structured everything else in their financial life well enough that the numbers do not need to be.
Meanwhile, for the tier of ultra-wealthy for whom the ownership carry is a genuine constraint, the charter market has evolved to meet them.
Vessels available with 24-hour notice. Full crew. Personalised provisioning. Departure from the port of choice, on the date of choice, without a mooring contract in sight.
The experience without the exposure.
What the Rule Misses
The old advisor’s rule was sound for its time.
But it was written before the access economy reached this altitude. Before platforms existed that could put a 60-metre superyacht in the Adriatic within 48 hours of a phone call.
The question is no longer own or don’t own.
It is what does ownership actually buy you — and is that specific thing available another way?
For most, the honest answer changes everything.
The sea does not care what your name is on the hull. Only you do.
