I Can’t Wait to Show You My Pictures from Tonga

You probably saw recently where the yacht Amazon founder Jeff Bezos commissioned some 2 years ago still isn’t finished.

He should’ve bought it from Amazon. It would’ve been there in 2 days.

The only reason I’m writing this is because I wanted to tell that joke so badly.

When it’s finished, it will be the most expensive yacht on the planet.

It’s costing half a billion dollars.

That’s a bunch of boat.

It’s more than the gross national product of the south Pacific Kingdom of Tonga.

Yeah, I know that one is a reach. Nobody knows anything about Tonga, so it’s not even relevant.

I can’t speak for the other 197 million people across the globe who use Amazon each month, but I for one would be happy to pack a cooler and maybe even kick in some gas money one Saturday afternoon.

Jeff would probably appreciate that. I saw one estimate that said the fuel cost of a yacht cruising at 18 knots would be nearly $3,000 an hour.

Let’s see. Eighteen knots is nearly 21 mph. Considering that it’s 5,400 miles from California to Tonga, the trip would take almost 261 hours.

Multiply that by $3,000 an hour and you’ve got a gas bill of $783,000.

How many dishes would that get you from the Gulf station?

Unless you’re my age or older, that reference was even lamer than the one about Tonga.

Can you even imagine all the headaches that would come with a half a billion dollar boat?

An article I found on CNN Travel said a yacht owner can expect to pay 10 percent of the purchase price annually just for maintenance and operating expenses.

One of the people quoted was a yacht expert named Rupert Conner.

Unsurprisingly, he said, “99 percent of all problems on a yacht start with a crew member.”

I hear you, Rupert. I’ve supervised people. The biggest challenge is trying to keep them from killing each other. I imagine trying to keep salty sailors all getting along together out there in the middle of the ocean would be quite a feat.

The yacht business is booming right now since the richest people in the world got even richer during the pandemic and had nowhere to go to blow all that extra loot. And from what I understand, used yachts are very hard to come by.

Steven Spielberg reportedly is getting a new yacht as well. His current one is for sale for $158 million.

I don’t know about you, but my yacht will be fresh from the showroom floor. Who knows how Steven Spielberg treated his? I’m not willing to take that chance.

I’ll bet he doesn’t even know how to check the oil.

It’s probably got a pretty cool movie theatre though.

I wonder what’s special about Bezos’s yacht?

Maybe it’s a so-called explorer yacht. Those can supposedly travel 9,000 miles without refueling.

That’s got you leaving California for Tonga, shopping at the Talamahu Markets, visiting the Ene’io Botanical Garden, touring St. Joseph’s Cathedral and getting back all on one tank.

When you think of it that way, it doesn’t sound too off-the-wall.