We are sailing

THE age of austerity seems a long time ago in the shipyards of Sunseeker, Britain’s biggest manufacturer of superyachts, based in the south-western coastal town of Poole. The company is operating at full capacity, with most of the boats under construction very much in the gin-palace category. A customer won’t get much change out of £5m ($8m) for a yacht over 28 metres long; a 40-metre boat can cost £11m. Protruding from the front of one cavernous workshed is the bow of a half-finished, triple-deck, 48-metre behemoth, costing £20m. The last such monster was sold to Eddie Jordan, a motorsports entrepreneur. Mr Jordan seems to like Sunseekers. He has bought ten of them over the years.

Although much of Britain’s shipbuilding industry has sunk without a trace since the second world war, the country’s niche superyacht business is buoyant. Superyacht UK, an industry association, recently estimated that the total revenue from British superyacht businesses was £492m in 2013/14, up by 7% on the previous year. This reflects a long-term upward trend, although at a slower rate of increase since the financial crisis in 2008 (see chart).