In 2019, the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan created Comic, a collection of three equivalent items, every consisting of a contemporary banana diagonally duct-taped to a wall. One is on the Guggenheim. One other was devoured by cryptocurrency platform founder Justin Solar, who paid $6.2 million for the fruit-based paintings at a Sotheby’s public sale final November.
And the third was on show at Fredy’s Deli, the café aboard The World, in January after I visited the super-luxe residential megayacht. The C-suiters, surgeons, actual property tycoons, and tech innovators who reside—no less than for some months of the yr—on the 644-footlong ship can gaze on the controversial conceptual paintings on their option to seize one in every of Fredy’s glorious smashburgers.
I prodded for the identification of Comic’s proprietor, however Robin Edwards, a retired company legal professional and chairwoman of The World’s gross sales and advertising and marketing committee, wasn’t biting. Privateness is paramount for the house owners of the ship’s 165 residences, which vary from 300-square-foot studios to a spacious three bed room house presently listed at $12.5 million.
I had joined Robin and her husband, Wealthy, a Navy veteran and retired funding banker, on the ship’s Asian restaurant, East, throughout a three-night journey from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas. Wealthy wore grey on grey (Venetian shirt, Marseilles blazer) and a mustache to match. Robin was in a lotus-print shirt from Hawaii and had simply had the sleeves taken in by the onboard tailor. They each turned 77 final yr, and had been sitting so shut collectively it regarded like they had been holding palms below the desk.
I’d like them to be my grandparents, and never simply because they’ve a spare bed room within the two-bed, two-bath they purchased in 2015. Whereas they’ve a house within the Bay Space (a residency on land is required for tax functions) and go to their youngsters and grandkids in Virginia and Connecticut, they spend most of their time on The World.
“It’s the easiest way ever to travel,” Robin defined over king salmon sashimi and Alsatian Riesling at East. “You don’t have to pack and unpack. You can come and go as you please.” The ship, which launched in 2002, units its route yearly, roaming from normal cruise stops comparable to Alaska and the Bahamas to far-flung ports in Namibia, Vanuatu, and Antarctica. Wealthy, an newbie photographer, chronicles the couple’s journeys on a pleasant dad weblog, The place within the World Is Riccardo?
However life on The World is about way more than the ship’s glamorous locations. Residents get
to know their “neighbors” at wine tastings, poker tournaments, and lectures on filmmaking, archaeology, and geopolitics. Some 25% have had a house on board for a decade or extra. “You come for the itinerary and stay for the community,” Robin mentioned. “In terms of aging and longevity, one of the most important things is having a social life.”
“And getting physical activity,” Wealthy added. The one regulation-size tennis courtroom at sea unfurls in Pacific blue resin on the highest deck, ringed with a strolling monitor. The ship’s workers consists of Pilates instructors, private trainers, and (ought to a again be thrown out whereas kayaking in French Polynesia) a bodily therapist. On the spa and salon, residents can have their pores and skin resurfaced, knots kneaded out, beards groomed, and love handles laser-sculpted away.
The ship attracts well-heeled retirees, with the typical age within the sixties, owing to costs that monitor excessive finish residences in New York and London (plus a upkeep price based mostly on residence sq. footage). However house owners vary in age from 22 to 95 and are getting youthful on common because of the Starlink satellite tv for pc Wi-Fi and the ascendance of digital nomads and distant work.
Potential house owners sometimes come to The World via private referrals or through the high-end villa specialist Unique Resorts, whose members spend greater than 1,200 nights a yr aboard its 4 residences. The Edwardses did six exploratory sailings, then took the plunge and purchased their very own house on board.
In its greater than 20 years at sea, no actual competitor has risen to problem The World’s dominance in its area of interest. That’s not for any lack of startups making an attempt to get afloat. As COO of The World for six years, Alain Gruber watched many would-be rivals’ bold proposals for residential megayachts flame out. “They have either been too large or too small, or the timing to market or funding was off,” he mentioned. “In most of the cases, it was a combination of those things.”
Now Gruber is taking his personal shot as CEO of Ulyssia, a deliberate residential superyacht whose 133 properties (common value: $18 million) are practically half reserved forward of its 2029 scheduled launch. Gruber sees a possible clientele amongst regretful former yacht house owners who “don’t want to leave the lifestyle but don’t want the headache of having to control logistics and crewing and staffing.” With a glossy silhouette designed by famend nautical structure agency Espen Øino Worldwide, medical services rivaling these of a navy hospital vessel, and a prohibition on fractional possession (The World permits 50% purchases), Ulyssia is positioning itself as a formidable competitor for moneyed seafarers.
“It’s the easiest way ever to travel. You don’t have to pack and unpack.”
Robin Edwards, Chairwoman of The World’s Gross sales and Advertising and marketing Committee
In the meantime, plans for a brand new vessel from Storylines, a Miami-based startup, for the 530-condo MV Narrative are millennial catnip: a solar-powered hydroponics farm, a microbrewery, and a Ok–12 non-public faculty. In addition to 50% possession fashions, there’s a timeshare-ish 25% buy possibility beginning within the low $600,000s. “Empty nesters are typically the demographic,” cofounder and CEO Alister Punton mentioned, “but once we released the education programs, more families started to gravitate toward us, and we saw our average age trending down.”
The renderings of the furnishings aboard Ulyssia and MV Narrative—sinuous outside sofas, mid-century-style eating chairs, built-in bookcases, and wide-plank wood flooring—look lifted from a five-star Miami lodge, and certainly Gruber is assured that lodge chains will quickly desire a piece of the motion. “You see companies like Ritz, Four Seasons, and Aman entering the cruise space,” he mentioned. “What all of those hotel companies have in common is substantial residential portfolios—branded living. It’s not a question of if there will be several companies in the future entering the residential space at sea. It’s just a question of when.”
However that “when” is a vexing query—one to which not one of the upstarts within the area, a lot of them years not on time already, have but delivered their remaining solutions. Storylines’ launch date is presently 2027. The Instagram bio for one more residential superyacht, Somnio, says it launched in 2024. (It didn’t; a consultant for the corporate now says the date is 2027.) And the carbon-neutral M/Y Njord appears to be in precise impartial, although its CEO says a significant announcement is coming later this yr.
Even with some unit consumers dedicated, launching a ship of this scale is a dangerous and massively costly proposition—costing a whole lot of thousands and thousands, or into the billions. “It takes time to build an unparalleled ship,” Punton mentioned. “For projects of this size, it’s natural that there will be movement in dates.”
And for potential consumers, a rental at sea isn’t fairly like every other actual property. “It’s a lifestyle investment,” Wealthy mentioned, “not a financial decision.”
On The World, the multimillionaire and billionaire house owners are individuals who could make huge issues occur, whether or not that’s snagging an internationally notorious paintings or procuring early-release COVID vaccines for the crew in 2021—which, coupled with a quarantine interval in Dubai, obtained the ship again out to sea whereas the pandemic nonetheless snarled life on land.
Not that The World is inhabited by a bunch of snobs. The house owners I met on board had been down-to-earth subscribers to the quiet-luxury philosophy. The residence I stayed in (a complimentary sublet offered as an unusual concession, give that the media not often sail on board) had paint-by-numbers artwork on the partitions, geodes on the dresser, and a straggly basil plant alongside a bunch of peonies from the onboard florist. The market subsequent door to Fredy’s Deli shares truffled Fauchon Paris foie gras and house owners’ favourite flavors of Ben & Jerry’s.
Comic is displayed proper outdoors, inside straightforward attain of alternative bananas.
This text seems within the April/Could 2025 problem of Fortune with the headline “A pied-á-mer for lifelong travelers.”
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
