Spielberg hits the high seas on $200-million mega-yacht
Epic voyage pays homage to author Jules Verne
Film director Steven Spielberg is to sail his $200-million yacht round the world on an epic voyage that will see him return to the locations of some of his most famous films.
Spielberg, 66, plans to take his wife, the actress Kate Capshaw, 59, and some of his seven children with him on the 30,000-mile adventure his staff are calling “Verneing” in homage to Jules Verne, author of Around the World in Eighty Days.
It is the fulfilment of a lifelong dream for the director, who was raised in the Arizona desert and confessed during the shooting of Jaws, his 1975 blockbuster, that he gets seasick. He is expected to depart in May from Cannes, where he will be heading the annual film festival’s competition jury, on his superyacht Seven Seas.
He will then head east at a stately 12 knots on a tour of what one associate has described as “Steven’s greatest locations.”
These include North Africa and Sri Lanka, where he shot his Indiana Jones movies; Shanghai, where he made Empire of the Sun; and Hawaii, where digital dinosaurs roamed Jurassic Park on Kauai, the archipelago’s fourth largest island.
Spielberg has cleared all filming commitments this summer so he can dawdle through the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. The director, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes magazine at $3 billion, collected his 282-foot yacht from a Dutch shipyard two years ago.
But apart from brief holidays, including one last Christmas in the French West Indies, he has not spent much time on it.
“We are not expecting to see him during the summer,” said an aide at his production company, Amblin Entertainment, in Universal City, Calif.
“Maybe just a note saying ‘gone fishing’ on the door of his bungalow on the Universal Pictures lot. It’s been years since he took a proper holiday, so we are going to enjoy it too.”
The director has previously put Seven Seas up for charter at $1.3 million a week, twice as much as yachts of a similar size lacking some of its “secret ingredients” such as a computer-controlled anti-seasickness stability system under the hull.
Currently moored beside the Pelican Landing cocktail bar in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., it is his first big boat and boasts not only the basic essentials such as a 3D cinema screen in the main salon, a spa, helipad and two “spare” motorboats, but also an infinity pool with a 15-foot glass wall that doubles as an outdoor cinema.
Mega-yachts measuring 80 feet or more capable of carrying enough fuel to cruise for 6,500 kilometres at a stretch became popular with the working rich about a decade ago. These luxurious vessels allowed their owners to escape to exotic locations while staying in close touch with their businesses.
“Compared to 20 years ago, despite the fact we are all working harder than ever, many more wealthy people are sailing thousands of miles because their yachts are now floating offices,” said Jonathan Beckett, president of Burgess, an American yacht broker. “So they are as accessible in the middle of the Pacific as they are in Manhattan.
“It’s a mixed blessing. Many have dreamed about this for years, but are now finally doing it — only to find the longer stretches such as Hawaii to Los Angeles extremely tedious. So many set out, but then lose patience and fly home, or catch up with their yachts a few thousand miles on.”
Long voyages can test relationships: Eric Shear, 67, who captained big yachts for two decades, organized a world cruise for a Seattle entrepreneur and his second wife in 1991, when even the most luxurious boats had fewer distractions than today.
“It ended a few weeks later in the Mediterranean when the husband threw his wife’s $10,000 exercise bike over the side,” he said. “His Verne-ing, or whatever Hollywood types call it, is not for the weak of heart or those who cannot turn off.
“I heard Paul Allen (the co-founder of Microsoft) tried it on his megayacht Octopus but gave up after a few days because he could not relax.”