The billionaire yacht lifestyle, for less: a glamorous trip aboard Le Ponant
Make new friends on a yacht so handsome you imagine she’ll sail up into the air: Adam Bloodworth goes aboard Le Ponant for CityAM – The Magazine
A kilometre off the coast of Cassis, and I’m doing backstroke. In my peripheral vision I catch a black speed boat reverse each time I move my arms. In a crisply ironed shirt, the crew member adapts the vessel’s position to match my strokes. I test the formula: I swim forwards a bit, and the speed boat lines up with me again, always remaining exactly 20 metres away. Framing the French Riviera on the skyline is Le Ponant, the boat I’m staying on, where men (more ironed shirts) stand waiting for me with towels rolled into neat logs.
But I’m not getting out yet. I’m swimming in a busy water passage so the speedboat is to protect me. Having your own water security team feels very Tom Cruise but this is life on a private yacht. Only Le Ponant isn’t a private yacht, it’s a public ship masquerading as a billionaire’s plaything. With 16 bookable rooms hosting 32 guests, and an almost even guest-to-staff ratio, it’s unique. It feels like a yacht even if boat nerds insist it’s too big to qualify (there’s actually no standard definition, so I’m right and they’re wrong).
Onboard, I’m handed a sparkling French apple cider in a champagne flute to take the edge off when I finally get out of the freezing cold water. (Okay, maybe freezing is dramatic, but the Med in spring still makes your heart race.) I’m not the only pleb who wants a slice of the billionaire lifestyle: within the luxury sphere, tenders have been shrinking the number of cabins on small and midsize ships. The relaunch of Crystal Serenity under Abercrombie & Kent saw the vessel go from 1,200 to 700 passengers as demand grows for more personalised cruises. At the business end of that trend is the yacht industry, which was worth $8.91bn in 2022 and is forecast to keep growing until at least 2030.
It’s understandable: they shaped our modern idea of glamour. Yachtbound photos of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the 1950s established a new era of paparazzi photography, and David Beckham, Kylie Jenner and Leonardo DiCaprio still use them today. In an age where it’s hard for the rich and famous to visit restaurants on dry land without getting papped, the yacht is a haven of discretion. Even Jeremy Clarkson is prone to baring all at sea when he’s done playing farmer in the Cotswolds. Short of having Clarkson’s cash, private yachts of this quality are prohibitively pricey. Charting one in the Mediterranean will cost £30,000 for entry level boats in low season, and that wouldn’t include docking or taxes, and sometimes not food. Double that and you’d still end up with something far less romantic to look at than Le Ponant. Plus, even if you have the cash, you don’t necessarily want the faff of amassing fourteen friends and guaranteeing they each have the hedge fund-level wealth to cough up for their share of the private charter.
Le Ponant is the image of a sailboat you had in your mind as a child, the sort of impossibly beautiful ship that would have tickled JM Barrie’s imagination; you imagine she could take off into the skies at any moment
Le Ponant is the image of a sailboat you had in your mind as a child, the sort of impossibly beautiful ship that would have tickled JM Barrie’s imagination; you imagine she could take off into the skies at any moment. She retains her original teak decking from the build in 1989, vanishingly rare on public boats, with three soul-stirring sails on the top deck, best for doing your Liz Taylor impression from while spread eagle on a sunbed.
Later it’s pre-dinner drinks accompanied by funky jazz bands (singers blasting sentimental ballads are old hat, one Ponant staffer tells me). Cocktails taste great on top of Le Ponant. One shameful morning I saw the bartender carting a new crate of Campari up the stairs after I’d gone gung-ho on the spritzes the evening before.
But there’s another allure to spending a week at sea with 31 randos: the opportunity to make new friends. Cruises can be chaotic but 32 guests might be the perfect number: any less would be rather intense, like a dinner party you can’t escape from, and any more you’d forget who they all were, awkwardly staring at the floor instead of saying hello, endlessly meaning to make new connections but failing because social boundaries hemmed you in. There was the Australian who emigrated to southern France and is living out her mother’s dream Mediterranean lifestyle, the lady who writes for Tatler (darling!) and the Belgian man who came alone and took a shine to a single, rather fabulous London-based mother who’d come with her daughter. What fun!
Day trips – a chance to take the speedboat to shore – took us to Saint- Tropez (again, darling!), Cassis and Nice. In Saint-Tropez, LVMH is ruining things by buying all the shops and killing the bohemian spirit, but it’s such a small place that normal-folk and yacht owners mingle on the same promenade. It feels weirdly democratic; there aren’t enough restaurants for there to be ‘cool’ ones and touristy ones, just the handful on the waterfront where everyone goes. Have an eight euro croque monsieur at Le Gorille; opened in 1952, it is the final place on the waterfront that retains the zephyr of Saint-Tropez in its artistic, alternative heyday. (Even iconic Tropezienne Bridgitte Bardot has condemned the town that made her, saying she would never venture there anymore because it’s become too commercial.)
Trips offer opportunities to escape the on-board company if you needed to, but I was keen to get back, if only to pretend it was my regular daily commune to be whisked away on a speed boat from land to my bed. On the last night we were dancing to Daft Punk in the lounge (this is where the bigger boat helps: decent indoor communal areas, more like a typical cruise ship).
After hoovering up as many cocktails as there were guests, I sat cross-legged with my shoes off, getting the goss on why the Belgian man hadn’t made his move. It was that type of ‘new friend’ conversation where there is always more to say.
Le Ponant sails from Dubrovnik to Dubrovnik from August to October 2024, and from Athens to Athens from June to July. Seven night sailings cost £8,280 per person based on double occupancy. To book go to uk.ponant.com/le-ponant. For airport chauffeur services from Blacklane go to blacklane.com