Superyacht Attorney Michael Moore, Chairman Emeritus of International Seakeeper's Society

today i'll be having a conversation with one of the most interesting players in the super yacht industry his day job is as a super yacht lawyer however he has been the chairman and is now chairman emeritus of the international sea keepers society which supports marine science and conservation by utilizing privately owned yachts as platforms for oceanographic research and over the years what the sea keepers society has done is attracted the most interesting yacht owners on the planet and today in the course of 20 minutes somehow we are going to talk about uh paul allen and his yachts uh rich devos and his uh various fed ship yachts the former secretary of the treasury william simon and his amazing yacht itasca prince khalid bin sultan of saudi arabia and his fleet of vessels called the golden fleet dr james clark who has built the most interesting sailing vessels ever imaginable and a lot of them and we'll talk about those he'll also touch on the man that's building the largest expedition yacht in the world which is over 500 feet and then to top it off i'm posing him a couple of questions about liability issues in the age of covet when it comes to yacht charter and with that brief introduction i would like to welcome to the yacht channel michael moore who's in miami today and i admire your beard so it's fascinating i do look like a whaling captain which is kind of the look i've always been going for but you have been deeply involved with sea keepers and aside from running the sea keepers and being chairman you're now chairman emeritus and you have uh interacted with so many really interesting yacht owners over the years not only as their attorney but also shepherding them into the sea keepers fold which is a very worthwhile organization and i thought it'd be really fun today if we could talk about some of the very fascinating characters who have owned some of the most interesting yachts in the world and really done amazing things with them it's like it's like where to begin it's been the uh the most amazing group of people on earth who had everything that we could imagine having and then they cert they suddenly turned their attention to the environment and you see that today uh with people like uh shell inga rokay who's building the the large uh expedition yacht rev the research expedition vessel up in norway or ray dalio who's building a beautiful for ocean x project but they have everything on earth and they've accomplished so much and solved so many problems and now they're turning their attention to solving the biggest problem which is the climate the health of the world which is effectively the health of the oceans turn our attention to some of your sea keeper owners that were founders and patrons of sea keepers they're all good paul they all have their own stories some uh wealthier than the others and some uh more exciting in their vision but each and every one fascinating so this is the excellent excellence five which is now called chantal mavi but uh it is the same boat yeah excellence uh this is the boss line of yachts when i think of uh rich devos and the devos family their vision for pleasure when they got away was yachting they loved yachtings and they had a series of yachts that were uh in my view kind of the vision that he created i think all of his yachts were fed ships as i recall i i hope i haven't completely missed the photo that you recall i think i think they were all fed ships but in doing the research for today i read about his first boating experience with his brother they bought a 38-foot sailboat and they had never sailed before and they took off uh on this on the south coast of florida the boat was leaking but they but they sojourned on and on their adventure and they made it to the north coast of cuba where the boats where the boat sank that was his first uh outing according to what i read and probably had more fun and at that point their their bit but his last boat this enterprise five um now chantal mavi uh is certainly in fantastic condition and uh is cruising all over the place and it's obviously beautiful i can see the uh that's at the profile that is just about as classic a profile as you can create in the audi world yeah well there she is in in newport in those pictures right there so another boat that um spent time in newport because it was managed by nigel henderson and his little company here in newport and that was itasca one of the visionaries of the uh the yacht world you know truly a visionary a man who had built up his had built his own vision the for absolutely in my view the scene right behind you there is the northwest passage when people thought this man's insane you can't take a yacht to there but itasca did that but bill simon was another one of these persons a great man who opened up uh the world in certain ways to yachting i don't know that anyone there was any example of anything like that in the day when this yacht was outfitted for you know rough weather and ice flows and all the above and he's but he was an amazing guy this this was really unique because this was a uh offshore tug built in germany by smith and had a range of 13 000 miles it was ice class and it was 1994 when he did the northwest passage and it was the first yacht to have done the northwest passage from i think it was from west to east and then they proceeded down on that they did their worldwide voyage they did the uh they hit the ice in the arctic well they didn't hit it but they cruised it then they went to antarctica and passed uh cape horn three different times in that world cruise this man could own any yacht in the world um but yet he decided that he wanted to convert an existing vessel that he could spend his time his energy and of course his money to convert to what it became which we now have the code the polar glass code and all these things that have come around to his vision so here's the 414 foot vessel of one of your clients former clients built in germany was built as a larsen but it uh came out of one of the bloemann vos one of the tisson crop shipyards it is the uh i guess this is the daddy of all exploration yachts that looks like paul allen's yacht yes it is what an amazing human being he was uh you mentioned sea keepers uh if there if if there was no uh paul allen there would be no sea keepers i mean uh back in the day the first sea keeper was a man named alex dreyfus and uh the second seat keeper was paul allen he said here's a check for 250 000 and um which to me was kind of shocking that a person of only 45 years of age would cut a check like that you know immediately and say um i only have one requirement and that is whatever you do that you share it with the world you know his parents were librarians so anyone could go into the library there in seattle where he and his childhood friend bill gates would go and do their thing and of course they branched out as they got out grew the local library but it was a safe place for them but everyone could share in the knowledge that was inside those four walls and of course as they grew together paul allen always had that kind of vision of open architecture and with seakeepers that was his one requirement we've never charged a dollar uh for our uh the work we do and the information we have and this and the service we provide the paul allen vision extended to so many things i mean i could go on forever paul allen had you know three wonderful yachts he was a wonderful yacht owner to the day he died and they were unusual you you kind of gave the lineage of of uh one but uh none of them were in pattern it wasn't like he just went into a shipyard and said oh here's my check you know he really acquired very unusual yachts octopus was at such a scale or it had it has eight decks the two giant helipads that can take twin turbines um you know a lot of people have these little submersibles but he had a 10-man submarine that he could launch i guess basically through a moon pool or from within the hull so under any sort of weather conditions yeah there are a lot of boats parading as expedition yachts now um and they're built on existing hulls and they they really don't fill the build the way this one i it's going to be a long time before anybody matches this boat the yacht petrol yeah i mean this is the yacht where not once but twice paul allen went after the remains of the 1400 people that died when the when the hood was sunk by the body by the nazis um and he was successful in the second go-around but those kind of things to honor uh those fallen uh warriors uh very few people on this earth would have the resources to do that paul allen had the resources and he put it to put it to good use you know he he's just a remarkable man he is absolutely the best of the best of the best and he also proves another adage that while people are out there getting envious is that he's no longer with us and at age 65 uh it's a tragedy but it's you know it is what it is it's what life is all about yeah what a what a good man i mean what an amazing individual they should do a biopic it'll maybe four movies about the you know the four worlds of paul allen i'd like to turn to another uh very interesting owner um in terms of what he put together and his vision on yachting he um i mean suddenly appeared the golden fleet and to first have a very good sized and very capable bloomin voss yacht was is is impressive always but then he sent his captain who was uh peter peter jago i don't know if you remember peter was a uh a jet pilot he was uh british but he taught at the u.s top gun school he uh went to san diego on behalf of the prince the owner and he commissioned uh the first shadow boat the shadow boat was such an interesting component because everybody was trying to fit things onto their boats and the other boats out the boats he had in the golden fleet were classic he had the golden eye which was the airplane the amphibious airplane and the golden osprey which was his fishing bug so you have this very rugged world capable exploration fleet and they're all parked in monaco which is not exactly the expedition capital of the world um brief aside i chartered uh the golden fleet for the formula one races one year to a 20-something german who now goes by the name of kim.com and uh this was between this was between his various uh criminal exploits and he had some cash on hand and he rented the golden fleet for a million dollars for the event which i thought was quite wonderful but then he got out on the race course and because he had the prince's yacht he got very good access with peter jago they got right next to uh one of the most important turns on the race and uh in the middle of all this kim rolls out a 60-foot banner and hangs it off the side of the golden odyssey announcing one of his.com sites that he was raising money for and apparently that exposure on the race course he raised more than enough money to pay for his charter very enterprising guy and caused a lot of trouble for all of us i'm sure all the odd brokers would hang their banners off the buildings that they rented around the course yes there's a lot of blow back from the principality on monetizing this advertising that they knew was now unbelievably important he could be one of the first environmental figures uh coming out of the middle east he was just a dedicated environmentalist he still is to this day let's talk about uh maybe the most renowned sailboat owner you know certainly in our generation and probably any generation i mean it's just staggering the boats that uh dr clark has uh built and and sailed himself he's not he's not a uh he's not a passive owner he's amazing i think that he brought technology um into the into the yacht world his brilliance is probably a genius uh in both both athena and hyperion you know just renowned for their amazing qualities balance the classic yachting particularly with his j-boat there and then the ultimate go fast flat bottom maxis the maxi racers comanche well again when i was uh doing a little searching around a little bit today to get these pictures um i was disappointed to see that he has all his vessels are for sale right now and there was a quote but basically he said you know been there done that he's done with sailing i don't i don't know if that's true but that's uh showed up in my uh brief research this morning and i'm god bless him i think there's a time the man amen for all seasons you know there's a time for this and there's a time for that i think that's biblical so now i want to switch gears because uh we are living in a strange time we already talked a little bit about cuba which i did want to touch on with you but um yachting in the age of kovid 19 is is really uh perplexing to say the least um and i don't know why i perseverate on liability i'll tell you why because i have friends that are well i have clients that are chartering their boats out and trying to charter their boats out now and i have friends that are captains on shorter boats and so what i propose to them is okay let's see i've i'm i'm going to rent my house out here airbnb and uh i got somebody coming in and they are uh you know they don't have kovite and they're coming to stay in the house and i'm about to give them the keys and i said oh by the way i got i've got six uh teenage and 20-something kids that are going to be living here with you you don't mind do you have a have a nice vacation so it's it's the idea that uh you charter a boat and you're not uh living with the crew is really naive and if if you are able to embrace the concept that you are living in the same house in the same hull with them um is that comfortable and safe or can it be i think it's uh i think it's going to be as the industry is evolving yachting will be the safest place to be on planet earth asterisk corporation says they can sterilize a vessel where it will be you know 99.9 percent bacteria free there will be no cova 19 issue um we all know now that the crew if quarantined for 14 days either they're going to have it or they're not going to have it i think you're going to see protocols developed that are going to be ensure the safety not only of the crew but uh but of the guests uh where there will be one person designated to go ashore uh with masks and gloves and you know man and uh the whole all of that good stuff and you gotta live a life you got to and if you're going to live it i can assure you there's very few places better than a yacht yachts can be upgraded to have uh ultraviolet light in the in the air system and and you can have the ionizer um so so every cabin every day can be completely sanitized you can also run incoming provisions and luggage and people through a missed gate of sanitizer that'll do the 99.9 percent so as long as as long as you get into your biodome you turn your yacht into a biodome that's sanitary and and then you don't you know pull into a port and everybody goes out and parties because if that happens uh your your you know game over it's a crap shoot after that if you talk to the yacht brokerage community uh they'll all tell you they're booming well that brings up another point so so let's say somebody is on a charter and something goes wrong and you know there's the saying we have that the charterer stands in the owner's shoes let's say there's some liability issues with crew or whoever else is the charterer who's going to end up on the hook for that well what the trouble with lawyers is you know we we're hired by people to take their to take effectively the best position we can take on their part but i think that sometimes the position is weak and sometimes the position is strong but i think that it's going to be hard for people to use uh the kobit 19 defense position as a way of recovering of damages money damages in a civil lawsuit i think it's gonna be difficult because i think everyone goes in everyone in the world knows there's the kobe 19 thing and there's really no way that you can totally ensure that someone how they got it where they got it and so forth it's the invisible enemy i just don't think a lot of these cobit 19 ideas are you know they're suing insurance companies now for fair to pay their business interruption insurance some of those may succeed people getting infected i don't i just don't know i'm not so sure i think a lot of those uh lawsuits are gonna be a lot of lawyers are gonna make a lot of money but i don't think there'll be many winners at the end of the day except the lawyers really that's the way i see it first of course major it is a classic force major an unseen event that was not predictable that's at the front end now it's totally predictable it's completely everywhere so either way you're not you don't have a great lawsuit you you've gotta but i think yeah you could stay home and get it so yeah that's right exactly that's the argument um you know you get a bad pizza delivery yeah exactly i don't see it i just don't see it happening but i haven't really i've had a few phone calls that were pretty readily answered you know people the crew came down three members of the crew house over 19 they were sent home the rest of the crews being in quarantine now i haven't had any negative consequences i mean we you know negative consequences in the sense of cancelled charters all right well it's been a pleasure chatting with you and uh seeing you since i haven't been in miami for a while so it's uh this is a good way to catch up paul thanks for thanks for uh inviting me it's always a good time to chat i mean i just feel like it's you and me having a little chat here so and it's great all right well thank you we'll get back in touch with you uh over time and catch up again i hope absolutely thank you for inviting me so that concludes today's conversation uh they're going to be a lot of links attached to this podcast we'll have links to all the vessels we talked about uh plus links to the sea keepers society and michael moore's office if you need a good super yacht attorney a great super yacht attorney next up we're having a conversation with an amazing uh yacht broker who's highly successful as a super yacht broke his name is mark elliott he's also been captain on some very noteworthy yachts and one that was made famous by hollywood because it was called nadine and it got caught in a freak storm and went down in the mediterranean as depicted in the wolf of wall street so i'm looking forward to reviewing that hollywood's uh footage of that incident and see what he has to say about what really happened and that'll be in next week's podcast see you then

Channel: Xplorer Yachts

Views: 2,807

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Id: njIGBUiix0k

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020