Day 33 - Super Yacht Ulysses

Woke up this morning to find a massive super yacht moored up in our cove. It was side on, so we couldn’t read it’s name, but using my detective skills, I googled the identification number VP-CPB of it’s helicopter, which told me it was a ship now called Andromeda, owned by a Russian billionaire (which turned out to be wrong!)

Later on the super yacht drifted around & identified itself to us as Ulysses, a 116 metre vessel owned by New Zealand billionaire, Graeme Hart. Hart is the richest person in Australasia, with a net worth of $8.6 billion. More money than sense.

Hart bought 2 super yachts, which are actually expedition vessels from Norwegian company Kleven. Apparently Kleven told him that he had to buy 2 of the vessels if he wanted them to his exacting specifications. Why not, they only cost $275 million each.

Hart later sold the 1st one, now Andromeda to the Russian billionaire, Yuri Milner, who had early investment in tech companies, including 8% of Facebook & 5% of Twitter (I wasn’t so wrong after all).

We spent the morning with our binoculars watching the comings & goings on Ulysses. It has a crew of 48 persons & every single toy you could ever imagine. We counted that they had about 10 additional boats including one that was a triple decker. The guests numbered about 8 & half of them were young children.

It was weird to see that the entire crew wore masks for the entire time they were out on deck & they shadowed the guests everywhere as if they were blind or too fragile to fall over. If a guest got wet, they had two staff holding towels out for them. I don’t know why wouldn’t do!

After breakfast we moved our OP to the beach & acquired 2 free sun beds that we had negotiated with the owner the previous evening.

Around 11.00am, I went for a run to Blace Beach & to photo Ulysses from a different perspective. The driftwood sculpture I had accidentally demolished was still demolished. Returning to our beach, Jackie & I had a discussion that we probably wanted to stay in Saplunara a bit longer.

Over a beer & salami & cheese sandwich at lunch, we both agreed that we would definitely like to stay longer after weighing up the pros and cons. It was the view from our balcony that was the clincher. It was further cemented when we moved our sun beds to the concrete jetty & spent the afternoon watching the boat goings on in the cove. It wasn’t for the prudish though, because it seems that most ‘boaties’ like to have a swim then strip off above board in full view of everyone else.

At 6.00pm we retired to our balcony & I had the added bonus of discovering the England v Iceland football match had just kicked off. Much to Jackie’s delight! It turned out to be a good result, but a poor performance.

At the conclusion of the game, we went down to dinner & negotiated a cheaper deal than Booking.com to keep our apartment for another 3 nights. We then had a fantastic meal of chicken & pork skewers with Ajvar (a roasted red pepper sauce) chips & vegetables. The restaurant has redeemed itself. We were given a large bowl of complimentary sweet grapes to finish off.

During dinner, Ulysses silently departed.

Song of the Day : Ship of Fools by World partyRead more