Off Newport Rhode Island on September 15, 1962, President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline watch the 18th America’s Cup yacht race. Jackie, in scarf, sunglasses, composed yet blissfully relaxed, and her husband – trousers riding high above sports socks – are so cool it’s amazing their drinks haven’t turned to ice.

But what makes the picture, what really takes you to an otherworldliness, a stratosphere of superstardom, is the fact that the world’s most iconic couple of the Fifties and Sixties – arguably of all time – are pictured on a yacht.

Half a century on, the superyacht is emerging again as the status symbol of our time. In an age when the private jet is becoming everyday and the limousine a glorified taxi, it is only when you own a yacht that you are unarguably one of the super-rich. You are Roman Abramovich or Larry Ellison (not only owning your own yacht, but pouring millions into an America’s Cup campaign that you know is almost impossible to win), you are Roberto Cavalli or Flavio Briatore, you are Philip Green or Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

A yacht – unlike the jet, the car, the mansion, which can be argued to have a function – is an utter indulgence. More than that, it imbues you with something that the private jet or the mansion can’t. It is saying you’re unfeasibly rich, obviously, but also that you have a link with the elements – there is a hint of adventure to even the most opulent of these multimillion pound aquatic juggernauts.

“All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears,” said JFK in a speech before going on to the yacht to watch that America’s Cup race. “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, we are going back from whence we came.”

No Chelsea mansion is going to do that for you.

Kennedy was actually at the start of the renaissance of yachting for the rich as we know it today. After the superyachts of the late-19th and early-20th centuries – the beautiful Endeavour and Shamrock V raced by royalty and the likes of tea baron Sir Thomas Lipton – the yacht as more than a functional craft for racing really re-emerged in 1954, when Aristotle Onassis bought an ex-Canadian frigate which he named the Christina for $34,000, a price dwarfed by the $4m he spent converting it. If at that time buying ex-naval ships was perhaps the easiest way of securing your mansion on water, then the industry changed in the Seventies, when designers such as Jon Bannenberg – who spent some time designing sets for the Old Vic – entered this rarefied world. Shown plans for a superyacht, Bannenberg pronounced that he could design one better, and he did. What followed were vessels such as the famous 233ft Carinthia VI, launched at Germany’s Lürssen Shipyard in 1972 for German retailing tycoon Helmut Horton – and a superyacht business that gave the world Khashoggi’s 282ft Nabila.

Now, though, those yachts seem almost modest. “Today’s craft are virtual floating cities, with secondary sewage treatment plants, massive power generators, advanced satellite communications systems, space-age construction and sophisticated propulsion, including fully-automated sail handling,” writes Jim Gilbert in Superyacht, a new super-expensive megabook, published by Gloria, which, costing £2,000 and in a limited silk-bound edition of 1,000, is never going to pitch up at the local WHSmith.

The wealth of these new craft shimmer from its pages. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s Rising Sun features a helicopter pad that doubles as a basketball court and has a cinema inside. Fellow computer magnate Paul Allen – co-founder of Microsoft – has a simply massive 417ft yacht, Octopus, that has an ice-class hull, meaning he can take himself off to the polar regions.

Tom Perkins, partner of the Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, wanted to create a sailing yacht with all the benefits of modern technology. Maltese Falcon has high-tech sails adjusted not by a team of matelots but the touch of a button from one crew member.

“For these people it’s a great way of showing a different side of yourself,” says Superyacht publisher Ovais Naqvi. “You can express your creativity. Although I think Tom Perkins would see it as part of the same creative process – people had never heard of concepts such as Amazon and AOL, but he was investing in them.”

Perkins’s Maltese Falcon is one of the competitors in the Superyacht Cup, where the sailing versions of these leviathans race in Palma, Majorca, in Antigua and across the Atlantic, adding a competitive dimension to yacht ownership. Yachts are becoming more outré than ever, particularly with designs from Monaco-based Wally boats that look as if they’ve been imported by Dr Who, while owners are now investing in the design talents of Sir Norman Foster and Philippe Starck to make their yachts true originals.

Technology too has revolutionised modern yachts. Satellite communications mean owners can work anywhere in the world, and many yachts now have ranges of 5,000 miles. “The owners are people for whom the boat is very much a way of escape, and a refuge where they can work,” says Naqvi.

But they have to hit port some time. Strangely, what takes you out of society also brings you to the heart of it. Monaco is at the centre of the yachting world, and from there spreads a global social scene with hubs in Antigua, Newport RI, Ibiza, Palma, Portofino and St Tropez. When it’s in port, the yacht is at the heart of a social whirl – the Monaco Grand Prix or the Antigua Week regatta are places to be seen, with supermodels and superstars trotting up and down your gangplank.

“The celebrity chartering scene is a very different sort of crowd,” says Naqvi. And indeed, we now see the Beckhams, Diddy, Bruce Willis, Bono, Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson and so on tripping across the decks of acres of fibreglass. As the old magnates of the past have been replaced by the computer-age billionaires like Ellison and Allen, the charterers are hedge-fund managers looking for a seamless and exclusive experience with celebrity cachet thrown in.

“Yachting is very much in vogue and growing at an extraordinary rate,” says Nicholas Baker, senior sales broker at Camper & Nicholsons International. “There are more being built now and more people wanting them. It’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.”

The cost of running these vessels is astronomical, though. Once you have paid your millions for a yacht, you then need crew, fuel and moorings. Baker estimates that keeping a yacht running costs the owner £2 million annually. With this kind of drain on your resources it’s no wonder that one owner said: “The two best days of owning a yacht are the day you buy it and the day you sell it.”

Superyacht costs £2,000 and can be ordered on 0870 2797353 or from
www.superyachtbook.com. It is also available at the Foyles in Selfridges,
London W1 (0800 123400)

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