CHARLOTTE AMALIE — Billionaires over the world have descended upon the Caribbean ready for Christmas and New Year parties, as the yacht count in the region has more than doubled from the previous month.
The yacht season in the Caribbean nations is in full bloom, as more than 200 luxury vessels have clustered among the islands, compared with 81 in late November, according to shipping data compiled by Bloomberg.
David Geffen’s 454-foot Rising Sun superyacht is the largest in the region, currently anchored off St. Barts, followed by the 384-foot Infinity in the British Virgin Islands, and Canadian-Jamaican billionaire Michael Lee-Chin’s 378-foot Ahpo which recently arrived in St. Kitts.
In a normal year, former Chelsea F.C. owner Roman Abramovich might be throwing a New Year’s Eve bash alongside Geffen’s boat in St. Barts, but four mega yachts linked or owned by him have remained in Turkey as oligarchs’ yachts were seized across the globe following President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
Despite a tumultuous 2022, Boat International reported earlier this month that 600 superyachts were sold this year for a total of 3.6 billion euros ($3.8 billion).
On the other side of the world, the number of yachts in the Maldives has also spiked for the holidays, with the 290-foot Lauren L being the largest of the 17 luxury vessels dropping anchor there. Russian property owner Alexander Svetakov’s 237-foot Cloudbreak leads the fun in Phuket, after spending two months off a remote part of Indonesia and stopping over in Singapore for a few days
