I never imagined that Jeff Bezos and I would have much to talk about over a beer, but when I learned that he was a bit dissatisfied with the size of his “super yacht,” I had to give it a second thought.
Because, like Jeff, I am also a boat owner. So I feel his pain.
My first boat is a hundred-year-old 17-foot wooden canoe I’ve owned since 1973, and although I honor its natural beauty, it clocks in at almost a hundred pounds.
When I was 25 years old, it was no trouble to hoist it up onto the luggage rack of my little Opel Kadett station wagon and head for the nearest creek or river—especially if my buddy Bill was in the mood to share a weekend paddle with me and help carry the burden of loading and unloading.
But sometimes Bill was busy when I wanted to dip a paddle, so I had to find a way to manage it all alone. Over time it seemed that a hundred-pound canoe might be just a bit too much for an ageing guy to handle on his own.
Because sometimes a boat is just a bit too big.
In the late 1980’s, as I entered my 40’s, it occurred to me that a one-man kayak might be a better way to go, at least on the days when Bill had better things to do.
And so I picked up a 10-foot PVC kayak that weighed less than half of my Lewis-and-Clark era canoe. I loved it, because I could easily load it and paddle it by myself.
But that was thirty years ago, and 50 pounds weighs more today than it did when I was 40. And the 2012 Subaru SUV I’m driving now is at least a foot taller than that 1968 Opel Kadett wagon was, so you might understand why my paddling sessions have fallen off a bit.
A couple years ago I met an old gaffer who struggled with the same conundrum, but he had come up with a system: It was two lengths of sturdy PVC tubing. When he attached one end of each of them to his luggage racks, it made a ramp, and he could slide the kayak up onto the car, eliminating most of the heavy lifting.
I adopted his system, and it worked great — for a while, until I calculated the effort it took to transport and attach, un-attach, and store, the 8-foot PVC tubing pipes along with the kayak.
And so now, what with all the hassle, I find myself kayaking less and less.
Because sometimes a boat is just a bit too big.
I had already given my antique wooden canoe to my son, and I was considering giving my kayak to him too. “It’s just too hard for me to hoist it up on top of the car,” I whined to him. It was a hard admission to make, because I think he was still clinging to the notion that his dad was really Superman underneath those out-of-date cargo pants.
“You know,” he said, “I’ll bet if you laid down the seats, it would fit inside your Subaru Outback.”
We gave it a try, and it worked—but just barely. If I lay down the back seats, slide the front passenger seat all the way forward, remove the head restraint and lay the seat all the way back, and then shove the kayak in over the dash board up tight against the windshield, I can wrestle the car’s tailgate shut with a bit of a push.
So yeah, it works. But it would be nice if my boat were just an inch or two smaller.
Because sometimes a boat is just a bit too big.
And that’s what I guess Jeff Bezos might have said to me if we had shared a beer over our boat problems, when Jeff recently decided to sell his $500 million superyacht, because it was just a bit too big.
At 417 feet long, it would cover the high school football field—and half of the parking lot.
It is longer than the Statue of Liberty is tall — including its base.
Its length is within a few feet of the Pyramid of Giza’s height.
If you parked it on a Chicago city block, its prow and aft would block off the intersections at each end.
I don’t think Jeff minds paying the $30 million it costs each year just to operate it, but last year his yacht was denied mooring in Monaco for the Grand Prix. A month later, he couldn’t dock anywhere near Venice’s lagoon for his own wedding.
Because sometimes a boat is just a bit too big.
So he’s selling it now. You can buy it for a cool $500 million.
But you have to wonder: Did Jeff ever enjoy the lapping waves on his 40-story floating skyscraper as much as I do on my 10-foot kayak?
TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com
