French cruise ship, Le Ponant, was seized by pirates and its thirty person crew taken hostage this Friday in the Gulf of Aden off the Somali Coast. Read Full Article »

Delta AirElite Business Jets and Cavendish White have jumped on the luxury synergy bandwagon by bringing together two privileged forms of transportation: private jets and yachts. Read Full Article »

Mega-yacht crews are well versed in the fine art of shiatsu massage, preparing the perfect langoustine salad and popping jeroboams of Cristal. It’s the little things, like saving the boat and its passengers in case of emergency, where they may ... Read Full Article »

Concierge service? Check. Spacious home? Check. Place to dock the boat? Not so fast. In the past, sailors seeking refuge at a private residence club were challenged to find a welcoming home for both their families and their favorite toy. ... Read Full Article »

Quintess, LRW is taking to the high seas with its latest acquisition, a 70-foot luxury yacht dubbed Lady Quintess. The Viking Sport Cruiser is capable of doing upwards of 30 knots on the open sea. Quintess joins fellow destination clubs ... Read Full Article »

A Carribean New Year might have to wait If toasting the New Year on a chartered yacht sounds dreamy, you’ll have wait for the eve of 2009. This year, the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is the most popular ... Read Full Article »

A daunting 112 million blogs are on the web today, and people are writing about everything from Apple products to Zodiac signs. Luckily for luxury yacht fans, Helium Report has come across some top-notch blogs that enthusiastically cover megayachts to ... Read Full Article »

A megayacht owner already has the biggest and baddest boat around. What else could he or she want after buying the fastest and most technologically advanced vessel? A submarine? Like any other fine piece of machinery, the numerous pictures end up ... Read Full Article »

As fractional luxury yacht ownership continues to grow in popularity, so do the options for consumers. Last week yacht management company SharedYachts announced a three year partnership with Black Pearl Yacht Sales to extend their fractional ownership yacht inventory. SharedYachts currently ... Read Full Article »

The world’s largest privately owned sailing yacht, Maltese Falcon, is definitely in a class of its own. Completed in 2006, the 88-meter yacht features three free-standing carbon-fiber masts that rotate to fill 15 sails. In a recent interview with 60 ... Read Full Article »

It’s well known that the number of megayachts on the seas is growing at a rate faster than new docking spaces created. The result is an aquatic parking problem akin to the streets of San Francisco. Luckily for megayacht owners, ... Read Full Article »

Hot tubs and grand pianos have become almost passé in the world of megayacht builders and their billionaire clients. Onboard the latest and most extravagant yachts, these luxury amenities are standard, right alongside medical suites, basketball courts and helipads. ... Read Full Article »

These days, destination clubs offer more than just luxury homes in beach, mountain and other resort locations. Many clubs have beefed up their portfolios with luxury yachts, providing members the same destination club experience and service, but with the ... Read Full Article »

A new 2,500-acre resort development featuring a marina that can accommodate luxury yachts of up to 300 feet in length will transform the island of St. Kitts into a mega-yacht destination by 2010. The new marina follows other Caribbean developments ... Read Full Article »

Some of the biggest names in the luxury yacht industry showed their wares as perfect weather fell on perfect tans in Newport Beach for the 2007 Lido Yacht Expo earlier this month. Helium Report was there to get the latest ... Read Full Article »

A three-year wait is not what most consumers bargain for when they plan to spend $30 million for a megayacht. Moreover, the megayachts that do get built are sometimes marked up with yacht flipping premiums, described last week in ... Read Full Article »

Joining the PrivatSea Club could land you at the 32nd America’s Cup in Valencia. In an email statement, PrivatSea announced the incentive for members who join by June 1st. The package includes a three-night stay from June 24th to 27th ... Read Full Article »

Just days after we updated our luxury guide to Cabo San Lucas, private residence club Capella Pedregal added another yacht to its fleet for club members. In a press release, they confirmed their newest yacht to be a 57-foot Viking ... Read Full Article »

Yacht Share, a fractional and yacht share membership club, recently announced its merger with Voyage Charters. The merged company – called Voyage Yacht Share – has exclusive rights with Stealth Yachts and Voyage Yachts. Yacht Share founder, Bob Kyle, told ... Read Full Article »

If you are researching fractional yacht ownership in California or Florida, you may want to look into what Miracle Yachts has to offer. Currently, they have a limited amount of shares available for two yachts, a 2004 72’ Cheoy Lee ... Read Full Article »

The Residential Cruise Line Ltd. announced an agreement (called a Memorandum of Understanding) with Aker Yards to start building the Magellan. This is the first step in building their residential cruise ship, and an important one since Acker Yards is ... Read Full Article »

Barton & Gray Mariners Club is a fractional boat ownership and marine services provider with 30 to 60 foot luxury yachts suited for cruising, run abouts, and sportfishing. The yachts spend the summers in the Northeast and the winter months ... Read Full Article »

With the announcement of the Residential Cruise Line’s Magellan Vacation Club, the interest in residential cruise ships continues to grow. (See our Quick Guide to Residential Cruise Ships for an overview.) However, since only The World of Residensea is sailing, Helium ... Read Full Article »

The Magellan Residential Cruise Line is now offering a new vacation club program, the Magellan Club. For 20 years, club owners get a personalized two-week vacation to any of the ship’s destinations – 300 ports-of-call in 150 countries. Magellan Club membership ... Read Full Article »

What do Magellan’s Residential Cruise Line and the landlocked Phoenician Resort have in common? Besides being two luxurious places to beat the winter-time blues, they’re joining forces to bring you a Celebrity Event – a celebrity golf tournament, a gala ... Read Full Article »

A reader recently wrote a review for Voyage Partners, a new company based in the San Francisco Bay Area that is trying to sell fractions of a residential cruise ship – in advance. If they get enough buyers, they intend ... Read Full Article »

Shared Yachts, recently announced new locations in Naples and St. Petersburg, Florida. The Naples location features a 2000 Carver 396 Motor Yacht and St. Petersburg a 2006 Meridian 341 Sedan. According to Shared Yachts CEO, Mark Casburn, the company plans to ... Read Full Article »

Until recently, the ‘Residential Cruise Ship’ concept was represented by one ship, the five-year old The World. Now there are at least four additional ships that are in various stages of development. Here’s a quick rundown to get you started. ... Read Full Article »

We recently interviewed Robert Pevenstein, an avid sailor as well as President and co-founder of a new fractional yacht company, Phoenix Yacht Management. Pevenstein and his business partner, CEO Tom Patterson, crafted Phoenix Yacht Management out of their combined years ... Read Full Article »

Helium Report recently discovered a yacht company, Skylla Club, which offers a unique brand of round-the-world, expedition yachting. Skylla is a yacht share club aimed at the passionate traveler who enjoys diving, hiking and exploring remote locations. Club Membership Skylla Club has ... Read Full Article »

Our investigation of the small, but growing fractional yacht business led us to Dr. Loren Simkowitz, the founder and CEO of Monocle Yachts. His company currently has about 40 yachts under fractional ownership and management and expects that to grow ... Read Full Article »

Doug Dunbar, a self-employed consultant and former sales and marketing executive, sent Helium Report a review of his experience with Yacht Share, along with some photos. We first wrote about Bob Kyle’s Yacht Share program in August. For $1,200 a month, ... Read Full Article »

We interviewed Gary Feracota, who with his wife, Patricia, founded Pinnacle Yachts about eight years ago, and has grown the business to be one of the leaders in the fractional yacht category. Pinnacle offers a “lease share” program, that provides ... Read Full Article »

We have already noted that some in the yacht business think that owning any part of a yacht is a bad idea, since asset depreciation seems to happen so quickly. But a group of experienced entrepreneurs and bankers, including Rob ... Read Full Article »

Fractional yacht programs are reporting strong sales this year, and so are the charter firms. Why? Our sense is that affluent travellers around the world are looking for new vacation experiences, having stayed in plenty of 5 star + resorts ... Read Full Article »

A year ago when we looked, the concept of fractional yachts or sailboats seemed to be growing, but slowly. However in the past 12 months, there seems to have been a burst of activity, with new firms and programs coming ... Read Full Article »

Lots of $50M+ yachts to ogle at from the reporters at BW Online, who are obviously getting tired of writing about stock option backdating. And if you wanna burn a few more minutes, take the poll over at dealbreaker.com to ... Read Full Article »

We spent some more time with Bob Kyle, founder of Yacht Share to learn about his new fractional ownership venture. Here are ten question and answers from interviews Helium Report conducted via phone and email: 1. What is the profile of ... Read Full Article »

If a luxury home can be shared via a destination club, why not divide a yacht? Bob Kyle, the founder of Yacht Share, is betting consumers will find the appeal of his new fractional program a better alternative to the ... Read Full Article »