Are you safe on your superyacht? Probably not
Tatler, 26 September 2017September 26th 2017
Tatler, 26 September 2017
You know when an issue has made it when it features in Tatler! This piece is an indepth exploration of piracy in all its guises and how your superyacht is vulnerable. You can read the article online here.
You have spent millions on your glorious, gargantuan superyacht. You have all the latest technology and high-spec toys, as well as a legion of staff. You are king of this shiny, floating island. But you are also more vulnerable than ever.
Imagine you're aboard a superyacht, cruising pristine tropical waters among islands of swaying palms and beaches of powdery white sand. An attentive steward stands by with exotic cocktails as you lounge on a sun-drenched deck, cooled by the ocean breeze. Suddenly, you notice a change in the crew’s behaviour. They start hurrying around, looking nervous. What’s happening? The yacht seems to be going very fast. That island it was heading for is now abeam. Word spreads swiftly through the ship – the computer systems have been hacked, someone is controlling the yacht remotely. It is being steered at full speed towards a deadly reef, on which it will be wrecked very soon if a ransom is not paid. Sounds like something far-fetched on a late-night movie channel, doesn’t it? It isn’t. It’s the waking nightmare of the world’s richest yacht owners. Cyber-hijacking is a very real threat that has sent a chill through the ultra-luxe superyacht world. As super- and megayacht ownership grows apace, niggling worries about security have suddenly become a full-blown fear with the realisation that technology has opened up a whole new opportunity for piracy. Think Captain Jack Sparrow with a laptop.
‘The very presence of a superyacht suggests enormous wealth,’ says Malcolm Taylor, a former spook at GCHQ. ‘They are a prime target for a new breed of sophisticated criminal.’ Taylor quit the world of secret intelligence to head the cyber-security division at G3, a global company with headquarters in Marylebone. Part of the division is dedicated to safeguarding superyachts and the people on them. Taylor says that while technology on today’s yachts has grown at a dizzying pace, security systems have failed to keep up. That makes those beautiful, shiny floating palaces vulnerable.
One yacht owner sensitive to the threat is Michael Evans, whose Evans Property Group, one of Britain’s major developers, is run by his son Roderick. Michael Evans loaned his 215ft, £60m superyacht, White Rose of Drachs, to graduate students from the University of Texas at Austin and their professor, Todd Humphreys, for an experiment that rocked the industry. Humphreys and his students, from the department of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics, used a device concealed in a briefcase to intercept the ship’s GPS signals while it was in the Mediterranean on passage from Monaco to Rhodes. They then fed in data that tricked the yacht’s navigation system and persuaded the crew to change course without realising what was happening. ‘I didn’t know, until we performed this experiment, just how possible it is to spoof a marine vessel and how difficult it is to detect this attack,’ Humphreys said.
It came as no surprise to Campbell Murray, cyber-crime expert at BlackBerry. He told a superyacht-investor conference in London earlier this year how he hacked into a yacht’s systems with a laptop: ‘We had control of the satellite communications, control of the telephone system, the wi-fi, the navigation – and we could wipe the data to erase any evidence of what we had done,’ he said.
Today’s superyachts are like floating realms, havens of hedonism and conspicuous wealth, carrying every conceivable plaything, fabulous art collections and crews trained to accommodate the merest whim. But what if all this is suddenly at risk, threatened by a few taps on a keypad? The implications may be frightening, but not without irony. Just as owners ramp up their demands for more sophisticated systems, more powerful wi-fi and computer facilities to rival those of dealing rooms, so they increase their exposure to attack. ‘The whole point of a superyacht is that it is your inviolable sanctuary,’ a leading broker said. ‘Owners pay very large amounts of money to have their own, exclusive domain, beyond the reach of the rest of the world.’ The sums involved in superyacht ownership are colossal indeed, but so are the bank balances of the owners. Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, David Geffen of Geffen Records, Sir Philip Green of BHS notoriety and car-park king Sir Donald Gosling are all superyacht owners, along with a growing number of Russian billionaires.
One of the most advanced vessels afloat is Eclipse, owned by Roman Abramovich. According to a recent rich list, Abramovich, 50, is worth more than £8bn. A large slice of his fortune, made in the Russian energy and metals sectors, went on buying Chelsea Football Club, but he really splashed out on the yacht. She was handed over in 2011 after a four-year development and building programme at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg. Eclipse is known as the ‘$1.5bn yacht’, although this is almost certainly an overestimate. The original contract was priced at around £400m, according to industry sources, with significant add-ons that are impossible to calculate accurately. At 162.5m (533ft), the yacht is 17.5m shorter than the length of two football pitches. She has nine decks, two swimming pools, two helipads and a collection of boats and watersport toys, plus, of course, the obligatory jet skis. Her complement, including chefs and domestic staff, numbers around 70; there are cabins for up to 36 guests. On a lower deck is a huge space that can be converted into an art gallery. Abramovich’s wife, Dasha Zhukova (they married in 2008, while Eclipse was being built, and recently announced their separation), is an enthusiastic patron of contemporary art, and the gallery may well have been her idea.
Dasha, 36, certainly enjoys the yacht – it’s her base during the Cannes Film Festival and the venue for some smart parties. Her friend and frequent guest Ivanka Trump was practically brought up on superyachts, but Eclipse, well, eclipses anything her father Donald has owned. Not least in the matter of self-defence. Abramovich was born in Russia and raised in near-poverty, but he acquired enormous wealth during the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was one of the last men standing after the murderous ‘aluminium wars’ in the Nineties, when more than 100 people were killed in the struggle to control plants producing the sought-after metal. Who could blame him if his experiences in Russia left him with a low tolerance of personal risk? Seeing people in the same business being blown up on a regular basis would leave anyone with a keen interest in self-defence. No one outside the ship’s inner circle knows precisely what Eclipse can deploy if she’s attacked or in danger, but informed sources in the yachting industry claim her systems are impressive. They are said to include a steel hull, aluminium superstructure and armour plating to protect sensitive areas such as the bridge and owner’s suite. And, according to several reports, she has an ‘anti-paparazzi laser shield’ that can automatically detect most cameras and target them with a beam that frazzles their light sensor.
It has also been claimed that Eclipse carries an ‘on-board missile defence system’. While this conjures images of the yacht firing Patriot-style rockets at an incoming Scud, a security expert told Tatler that it probably refers to something like the ballistic-missile protection system produced by British company Vector Developments – a deterrent rather than a lethal weapon, designed to persuade a would-be raider to abandon their attack by engulfing them in powerful light and noise. A superyacht package would typically comprise launchers loaded with an arsenal of light and acoustic missiles that have a range of more than one mile. A broadside of this stuff (the noise is said to be louder than standing next to a jet at take-off) is aimed at dissuading even the hardiest assailant. Eclipse is also equipped with what has become the superyacht must-have – a submarine. It is used for undersea-exploration trips, but if the yacht became a target, her owner could secretly slip away to safety. Underwater. Eclipse was among the first yachts to have its own sub, but they have become de rigueur. The U-boat currently topping the desirability list is the Aurora 6, a luxuriously appointed vessel that even has its own ‘restroom’. It can accommodate up to six people in a saloon fitted with leather upholstery and a cocktail cabinet, and is priced at around £4m.
Helicopters have been part of superyachting for years, but a new concept has captured the imagination of owners who like to be ahead of the game: the on-board executive plane. The Colorado-based aircraft company XTI has designed a plane that can take off and land vertically on an existing helipad, which all self-respecting superyachts have. The TriFan600 can fly at 390 miles an hour and has a maximum range of over 1,000 miles, vastly exceeding the capabilities of shipborne helicopters. It can carry six people and their luggage and is expected to cost from around £7m.
Russian Vasily Klyukin, a Moscow businessman now resident in Monaco, wants to go a step further. He has commissioned a design for a superyacht with its own jet, capable of taking off and landing vertically like the TriFan600, but with a much longer range and far superior speed. His Monaco 2050 project is yet to be built, but Klyukin says on-board jets are set to become standard accessories on superyachts.
A swift means of escape from a yacht under attack may be sensible, but security experts say it is very much a last resort. The first line of defence, should a yacht find itself under attack by actual (rather than virtual) pirates, is a well-trained and armed protection team. Ed Hill, a former Royal Marines commando, runs London-based Intrepid Risk Management, a security outfit that specialises in superyachts. ‘Our clients include A-list celebrities and businesspeople,’ he says. ‘Of the latter, most are Russian.’
Hill has a team of former special-forces personnel, commandos and police officers, whom he handpicks for superyacht work: ‘They have to have social skills,’ he says. ‘You get guys who are terrific soldiers, good with a firearm, but around people – especially the kind of people who tend to be aboard superyachts – they just don’t get it. Our guys know how to conduct themselves; visible when they need to be, or unobtrusive. They have to blend in. It’s a question of personality and temperament. Last year, we had a Russian client whose daughter wanted to spend a couple of weeks on the yacht in the Med with some friends. We were asked to provide protection not just on the vessel, but ashore too. St Trop, and so on. Our guys had to go shopping, clubbing – whatever. Part of the job was to make sure the girls didn’t get into any scrapes. You need the right people for that kind of work – effective operators who are intelligent and discreet.’
In international waters, a team – typically three or four to provide 24-hour cover – is equipped with guns, including assault rifles. ‘A pirate’s business model does not include risking his life. When they realise they have serious opposition, they go looking for easier prey,’ Hill says. He tells a story to illustrate the point: ‘A while back, in the Gulf of Aden, one of our teams, doing a round-the-clock guard on a superyacht, spotted four skiffs approaching at high speed. They saw boarding ladders and AK-47s on the boats and fired warning shots.’ Hill adds that two of the team were trained snipers, his own former speciality. ‘The rounds hit close enough to show we meant business. The boats did a U-turn and disappeared.’
Piracy in the Red Sea – an important shortcut to and from the Mediterranean – has claimed a number of victims. In 2008, the French superyacht Le Ponant was seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden and around 30 crew held hostage. They were eventually released after a ransom of $2.15m was paid. Hill says yacht owners’ prime concerns are for personal safety and he is a strong advocate of citadels, as panic rooms afloat are called. ‘If it’s not built-in, we find a place on board that can be secured and defended,’ he said. ‘It has to be impenetrable and a place where a number of people can remain in safety until the threat is dealt with.’
Modern superyachts have citadels equipped with their own ventilation systems, water and food supplies and communications. The cost of building a citadel into a yacht is low compared to the cost of luxury items; gold and gold-plated fittings abound on many super- and megayachts, and, according to Hill, security is not expensive compared to other outgoings. One of his four-man teams would cost around £1,000 per man, per day, he says. Insurance company Towergate calculates the annual cost of running a superyacht at around 10 per cent of its initial price. Fuel, for a not particularly large but typical 71m (230ft) yacht (Eclipse is more than twice this size) runs at around £300,000 a year. Crew salaries are about £1m. Add in depreciation, dock charges, repairs and maintenance, and the bill is considerable, even for a billionaire.
Malcolm Taylor, of G3 security, says the threat of cyber-hijacking has tended to divert attention from superyacht crime that is happening every day, but is rarely made public. ‘Yachts are targeted by criminals because they know they can provide rich pickings. Money is being stolen all the time. A popular scam is to spoof an email that looks as if it’s coming from a regular supplier with a routine bill. The bill is automatically paid, but the bank account is not the supplier’s, it’s the criminal’s.’ There have been cases of sensitive documents and photographs being stolen from hacked computer systems, he says, with the yacht owner offered their return for a ransom.
The paparazzi are also a constant worry for celebrities – Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio and Princess Caroline of Monaco are all keen superyachties – and the use of drones has heightened the sense of threat. It’s all very well to slip off that bikini top when you are anchored far from the beach, but not if there’s a camera in the sky. Help is at hand. A Northern Ireland-based company, Search Systems, has developed SparrowHawk, an anti-drone drone that, they claim, is perfect for protecting yachts from unwanted aerial visitors. The company’s video shows SparrowHawk intercepting an offending drone and firing a compressed-air cannon that shoots a net over the intruder, disabling it. A parachute then opens and the captured drone floats down unharmed.
Odds-on there will be one in Roman Abramovich’s Christmas stocking.
How to pirate-proof your superyacht
There’s nothing like having a team of ex-SAS men aboard, armed and mounting a 24-hour guard, when your superyacht is in dangerous waters. The Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are pirate hotspots; so too are the Strait of Malacca and parts of South-East Asia. But closer to home, where national laws rule out lethal force, the yacht captain turns to technology. Long-range light and acoustic deterrents that emit ear-splitting sound or blinding light are becoming an essential part of yacht defences. They can be delivered by missiles fired from the yacht with a range of over one mile. The key to safety, experts say, is not to be taken by surprise. So your yacht should have high-resolution CCTV not just on deck, but below the water. There should also be thermal imaging and infra-red cameras for use at night, with optional sonar sensors to spot unwanted visitors in scuba gear.
The yacht should also have a citadel (panic room). It should be blast-proof, bulletproof and capable of housing ‘key people’ (owners and their family fall into this category) until help arrives. The citadel must have independent satellite communications, air supply and plenty of food and water. A loo would be nice too.
To counter cyber-hijacking or, for example, intrusion into the yacht’s computers with ransomware, specialists should be hired to do a complete review of the vessel’s systems. Given the vast sums that are spent on superyachting, this is not especially expensive. G3 says around £20,000 would typically pay for a security sweep, plus a regular payment to keep it up to date.
If all this fails, a means of escape is useful. Submarines and helicopters are to be found on most superyachts nowadays, but the yachts of the future will have vertical- take-off executive jets on deck, ready to whisk away the owners and their nearest and dearest. Which poses a question: what about all those friends who were delighted to accept an invitation to go cruising in pampered mega-luxury, but now find themselves gazing at a disappearing vapour trail?
You have spent millions on your glorious, gargantuan superyacht. You have all the latest technology and high-spec toys, as well as a legion of staff. You are king of this shiny, floating island. But you are also more vulnerable than ever.
Imagine you're aboard a superyacht, cruising pristine tropical waters among islands of swaying palms and beaches of powdery white sand. An attentive steward stands by with exotic cocktails as you lounge on a sun-drenched deck, cooled by the ocean breeze. Suddenly, you notice a change in the crew’s behaviour. They start hurrying around, looking nervous. What’s happening? The yacht seems to be going very fast. That island it was heading for is now abeam. Word spreads swiftly through the ship – the computer systems have been hacked, someone is controlling the yacht remotely. It is being steered at full speed towards a deadly reef, on which it will be wrecked very soon if a ransom is not paid. Sounds like something far-fetched on a late-night movie channel, doesn’t it? It isn’t. It’s the waking nightmare of the world’s richest yacht owners. Cyber-hijacking is a very real threat that has sent a chill through the ultra-luxe superyacht world. As super- and megayacht ownership grows apace, niggling worries about security have suddenly become a full-blown fear with the realisation that technology has opened up a whole new opportunity for piracy. Think Captain Jack Sparrow with a laptop.
‘The very presence of a superyacht suggests enormous wealth,’ says Malcolm Taylor, a former spook at GCHQ. ‘They are a prime target for a new breed of sophisticated criminal.’ Taylor quit the world of secret intelligence to head the cyber-security division at G3, a global company with headquarters in Marylebone. Part of the division is dedicated to safeguarding superyachts and the people on them. Taylor says that while technology on today’s yachts has grown at a dizzying pace, security systems have failed to keep up. That makes those beautiful, shiny floating palaces vulnerable.
One yacht owner sensitive to the threat is Michael Evans, whose Evans Property Group, one of Britain’s major developers, is run by his son Roderick. Michael Evans loaned his 215ft, £60m superyacht, White Rose of Drachs, to graduate students from the University of Texas at Austin and their professor, Todd Humphreys, for an experiment that rocked the industry. Humphreys and his students, from the department of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics, used a device concealed in a briefcase to intercept the ship’s GPS signals while it was in the Mediterranean on passage from Monaco to Rhodes. They then fed in data that tricked the yacht’s navigation system and persuaded the crew to change course without realising what was happening. ‘I didn’t know, until we performed this experiment, just how possible it is to spoof a marine vessel and how difficult it is to detect this attack,’ Humphreys said.
It came as no surprise to Campbell Murray, cyber-crime expert at BlackBerry. He told a superyacht-investor conference in London earlier this year how he hacked into a yacht’s systems with a laptop: ‘We had control of the satellite communications, control of the telephone system, the wi-fi, the navigation – and we could wipe the data to erase any evidence of what we had done,’ he said.
Today’s superyachts are like floating realms, havens of hedonism and conspicuous wealth, carrying every conceivable plaything, fabulous art collections and crews trained to accommodate the merest whim. But what if all this is suddenly at risk, threatened by a few taps on a keypad? The implications may be frightening, but not without irony. Just as owners ramp up their demands for more sophisticated systems, more powerful wi-fi and computer facilities to rival those of dealing rooms, so they increase their exposure to attack. ‘The whole point of a superyacht is that it is your inviolable sanctuary,’ a leading broker said. ‘Owners pay very large amounts of money to have their own, exclusive domain, beyond the reach of the rest of the world.’ The sums involved in superyacht ownership are colossal indeed, but so are the bank balances of the owners. Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, David Geffen of Geffen Records, Sir Philip Green of BHS notoriety and car-park king Sir Donald Gosling are all superyacht owners, along with a growing number of Russian billionaires.
One of the most advanced vessels afloat is Eclipse, owned by Roman Abramovich. According to a recent rich list, Abramovich, 50, is worth more than £8bn. A large slice of his fortune, made in the Russian energy and metals sectors, went on buying Chelsea Football Club, but he really splashed out on the yacht. She was handed over in 2011 after a four-year development and building programme at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg. Eclipse is known as the ‘$1.5bn yacht’, although this is almost certainly an overestimate. The original contract was priced at around £400m, according to industry sources, with significant add-ons that are impossible to calculate accurately. At 162.5m (533ft), the yacht is 17.5m shorter than the length of two football pitches. She has nine decks, two swimming pools, two helipads and a collection of boats and watersport toys, plus, of course, the obligatory jet skis. Her complement, including chefs and domestic staff, numbers around 70; there are cabins for up to 36 guests. On a lower deck is a huge space that can be converted into an art gallery. Abramovich’s wife, Dasha Zhukova (they married in 2008, while Eclipse was being built, and recently announced their separation), is an enthusiastic patron of contemporary art, and the gallery may well have been her idea.
Dasha, 36, certainly enjoys the yacht – it’s her base during the Cannes Film Festival and the venue for some smart parties. Her friend and frequent guest Ivanka Trump was practically brought up on superyachts, but Eclipse, well, eclipses anything her father Donald has owned. Not least in the matter of self-defence. Abramovich was born in Russia and raised in near-poverty, but he acquired enormous wealth during the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was one of the last men standing after the murderous ‘aluminium wars’ in the Nineties, when more than 100 people were killed in the struggle to control plants producing the sought-after metal. Who could blame him if his experiences in Russia left him with a low tolerance of personal risk? Seeing people in the same business being blown up on a regular basis would leave anyone with a keen interest in self-defence. No one outside the ship’s inner circle knows precisely what Eclipse can deploy if she’s attacked or in danger, but informed sources in the yachting industry claim her systems are impressive. They are said to include a steel hull, aluminium superstructure and armour plating to protect sensitive areas such as the bridge and owner’s suite. And, according to several reports, she has an ‘anti-paparazzi laser shield’ that can automatically detect most cameras and target them with a beam that frazzles their light sensor.
It has also been claimed that Eclipse carries an ‘on-board missile defence system’. While this conjures images of the yacht firing Patriot-style rockets at an incoming Scud, a security expert told Tatler that it probably refers to something like the ballistic-missile protection system produced by British company Vector Developments – a deterrent rather than a lethal weapon, designed to persuade a would-be raider to abandon their attack by engulfing them in powerful light and noise. A superyacht package would typically comprise launchers loaded with an arsenal of light and acoustic missiles that have a range of more than one mile. A broadside of this stuff (the noise is said to be louder than standing next to a jet at take-off) is aimed at dissuading even the hardiest assailant. Eclipse is also equipped with what has become the superyacht must-have – a submarine. It is used for undersea-exploration trips, but if the yacht became a target, her owner could secretly slip away to safety. Underwater. Eclipse was among the first yachts to have its own sub, but they have become de rigueur. The U-boat currently topping the desirability list is the Aurora 6, a luxuriously appointed vessel that even has its own ‘restroom’. It can accommodate up to six people in a saloon fitted with leather upholstery and a cocktail cabinet, and is priced at around £4m.
Helicopters have been part of superyachting for years, but a new concept has captured the imagination of owners who like to be ahead of the game: the on-board executive plane. The Colorado-based aircraft company XTI has designed a plane that can take off and land vertically on an existing helipad, which all self-respecting superyachts have. The TriFan600 can fly at 390 miles an hour and has a maximum range of over 1,000 miles, vastly exceeding the capabilities of shipborne helicopters. It can carry six people and their luggage and is expected to cost from around £7m.
Russian Vasily Klyukin, a Moscow businessman now resident in Monaco, wants to go a step further. He has commissioned a design for a superyacht with its own jet, capable of taking off and landing vertically like the TriFan600, but with a much longer range and far superior speed. His Monaco 2050 project is yet to be built, but Klyukin says on-board jets are set to become standard accessories on superyachts.
A swift means of escape from a yacht under attack may be sensible, but security experts say it is very much a last resort. The first line of defence, should a yacht find itself under attack by actual (rather than virtual) pirates, is a well-trained and armed protection team. Ed Hill, a former Royal Marines commando, runs London-based Intrepid Risk Management, a security outfit that specialises in superyachts. ‘Our clients include A-list celebrities and businesspeople,’ he says. ‘Of the latter, most are Russian.’
Hill has a team of former special-forces personnel, commandos and police officers, whom he handpicks for superyacht work: ‘They have to have social skills,’ he says. ‘You get guys who are terrific soldiers, good with a firearm, but around people – especially the kind of people who tend to be aboard superyachts – they just don’t get it. Our guys know how to conduct themselves; visible when they need to be, or unobtrusive. They have to blend in. It’s a question of personality and temperament. Last year, we had a Russian client whose daughter wanted to spend a couple of weeks on the yacht in the Med with some friends. We were asked to provide protection not just on the vessel, but ashore too. St Trop, and so on. Our guys had to go shopping, clubbing – whatever. Part of the job was to make sure the girls didn’t get into any scrapes. You need the right people for that kind of work – effective operators who are intelligent and discreet.’
In international waters, a team – typically three or four to provide 24-hour cover – is equipped with guns, including assault rifles. ‘A pirate’s business model does not include risking his life. When they realise they have serious opposition, they go looking for easier prey,’ Hill says. He tells a story to illustrate the point: ‘A while back, in the Gulf of Aden, one of our teams, doing a round-the-clock guard on a superyacht, spotted four skiffs approaching at high speed. They saw boarding ladders and AK-47s on the boats and fired warning shots.’ Hill adds that two of the team were trained snipers, his own former speciality. ‘The rounds hit close enough to show we meant business. The boats did a U-turn and disappeared.’
Piracy in the Red Sea – an important shortcut to and from the Mediterranean – has claimed a number of victims. In 2008, the French superyacht Le Ponant was seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden and around 30 crew held hostage. They were eventually released after a ransom of $2.15m was paid. Hill says yacht owners’ prime concerns are for personal safety and he is a strong advocate of citadels, as panic rooms afloat are called. ‘If it’s not built-in, we find a place on board that can be secured and defended,’ he said. ‘It has to be impenetrable and a place where a number of people can remain in safety until the threat is dealt with.’
Modern superyachts have citadels equipped with their own ventilation systems, water and food supplies and communications. The cost of building a citadel into a yacht is low compared to the cost of luxury items; gold and gold-plated fittings abound on many super- and megayachts, and, according to Hill, security is not expensive compared to other outgoings. One of his four-man teams would cost around £1,000 per man, per day, he says. Insurance company Towergate calculates the annual cost of running a superyacht at around 10 per cent of its initial price. Fuel, for a not particularly large but typical 71m (230ft) yacht (Eclipse is more than twice this size) runs at around £300,000 a year. Crew salaries are about £1m. Add in depreciation, dock charges, repairs and maintenance, and the bill is considerable, even for a billionaire.
Malcolm Taylor, of G3 security, says the threat of cyber-hijacking has tended to divert attention from superyacht crime that is happening every day, but is rarely made public. ‘Yachts are targeted by criminals because they know they can provide rich pickings. Money is being stolen all the time. A popular scam is to spoof an email that looks as if it’s coming from a regular supplier with a routine bill. The bill is automatically paid, but the bank account is not the supplier’s, it’s the criminal’s.’ There have been cases of sensitive documents and photographs being stolen from hacked computer systems, he says, with the yacht owner offered their return for a ransom.
The paparazzi are also a constant worry for celebrities – Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio and Princess Caroline of Monaco are all keen superyachties – and the use of drones has heightened the sense of threat. It’s all very well to slip off that bikini top when you are anchored far from the beach, but not if there’s a camera in the sky. Help is at hand. A Northern Ireland-based company, Search Systems, has developed SparrowHawk, an anti-drone drone that, they claim, is perfect for protecting yachts from unwanted aerial visitors. The company’s video shows SparrowHawk intercepting an offending drone and firing a compressed-air cannon that shoots a net over the intruder, disabling it. A parachute then opens and the captured drone floats down unharmed.
Odds-on there will be one in Roman Abramovich’s Christmas stocking.
How to pirate-proof your superyacht
There’s nothing like having a team of ex-SAS men aboard, armed and mounting a 24-hour guard, when your superyacht is in dangerous waters. The Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are pirate hotspots; so too are the Strait of Malacca and parts of South-East Asia. But closer to home, where national laws rule out lethal force, the yacht captain turns to technology. Long-range light and acoustic deterrents that emit ear-splitting sound or blinding light are becoming an essential part of yacht defences. They can be delivered by missiles fired from the yacht with a range of over one mile. The key to safety, experts say, is not to be taken by surprise. So your yacht should have high-resolution CCTV not just on deck, but below the water. There should also be thermal imaging and infra-red cameras for use at night, with optional sonar sensors to spot unwanted visitors in scuba gear.
The yacht should also have a citadel (panic room). It should be blast-proof, bulletproof and capable of housing ‘key people’ (owners and their family fall into this category) until help arrives. The citadel must have independent satellite communications, air supply and plenty of food and water. A loo would be nice too.
To counter cyber-hijacking or, for example, intrusion into the yacht’s computers with ransomware, specialists should be hired to do a complete review of the vessel’s systems. Given the vast sums that are spent on superyachting, this is not especially expensive. G3 says around £20,000 would typically pay for a security sweep, plus a regular payment to keep it up to date.
If all this fails, a means of escape is useful. Submarines and helicopters are to be found on most superyachts nowadays, but the yachts of the future will have vertical- take-off executive jets on deck, ready to whisk away the owners and their nearest and dearest. Which poses a question: what about all those friends who were delighted to accept an invitation to go cruising in pampered mega-luxury, but now find themselves gazing at a disappearing vapour trail?
