“The epic design isn’t able to accommodate a helicopter, however, as the soaring masts make it too unsafe to land. As a result, Bezos commissioned a second yacht to hold his toys and tenders. Christened Wingman, the custom 246-footer is Damen’s largest support vessel to date.”
I would guess that Bezos will employ a crew of over 70+ to run both of these vessels. Plus a helicopter pilot among many others. He probably employs dozens of security people too. I would suspect Bezos employs hundreds of people that have nothing to do with running Amazon.
Billionaires have to constantly worry about kidnapping plots. When he and his family travel they don’t stay at five star hotels like pukes that fly first class. This is a
floating five star hotel.
My father in law had a Freedom 32 for twenty plus years that I sailed on extensively. At one point in time his best friend had a Tiana 55 sloop. It took several people just to maintain this vessel. It took a couple just to maintain the 32’.
When I went on my honeymoon 26 years ago we were on the SV Flying Cloud owned by Windjammer Barefoot cruises. It was 230 feet in length and had a crew of 25. This vessel is almost twice that size. Of course, nothing was computerized on the Flying Cloud.
I would guess there were thousands of people employed directly and indirectly by the construction of a vessel like this in the Netherlands and other countries.
Most of the crew duties on my father's boat were by him and my brother and I. He had it docked in central Florida. Our annual vacations were a month sailing the Caribbean.
And I HATED it...
We were doing this at a time before video games and internet. There's only so many times you can play checkers with your brother before you're beating him on the head with the board. Add to that my father's trend of having either an annual girlfriend or wife (most of them very young), and they spending their time messing around below decks, it added up to a very un-fun time on the water.
Ironically, though, I look back on this and wished I would have appreciated it more. It was a beautiful boat and we visited nearly every island in the Caribbean. It was an experience that changed in my mind over the years to something I now fondly remember.
Sadly, when we moved to Michigan, my father looked into the cost of hiring a crew to sail that boat up the east coast and down the St. Lawrence up to northern Michigan and figured it was too costly to do, so he sold the boat. We had another on the Great Lakes, but it wasn't the same.
Sailing is a wonderful activity. What Bezos is doing ain't that...
Your focus on his security was my first thought as well, as it wouldn’t be safe to be on the open sea for even a full day due to hijacking or mother nature. I tend to think a second yacht is unnecessary unless it had a landing pad, but I’m not a seagoing expert.
I’m only speculating, but my guess is one of the yachts is for security, and the other is for non-security personnel. Perhaps part of his SHTF plan.