Today, we learn from the island's weekly newspaper that the world's most exclusive floating care home, appropriately (if rather pretentiously) called FCH 'The World', will be visiting Cowes this week. And checking with the Southampton port authorities reveals that it will indeed be pulling into something called the Front Line (other ships pull into places like Esso Berth 6) at 0800 on Friday, from St.Malo. Presumably to do a bit of stocking up with proper English grub before moving across the water to Cowes.
The exclusivity arises from the fact that you buy apartments on this ship, rather than renting a cabin for the odd cruise, and that you are not allowed to buy unless you can both show a large amount of ready cash (to prove that you are very rich) and pass the scrutiny of the residents' committee.
We wondered about the sort of person who would want to buy a permanent slot on a ship of this sort. If you have that sort of money, you can afford to go wherever you want and stay in the best hotels, hotels from which you can reach out to do, see or otherwise experience whatever might take your fancy. Or you can just hole up in your own house. So what is the added attraction of being holed up on a ship with a whole lot of other rich old people for weeks on end? Perhaps if I was old enough to enjoy holidays with Shearings I would understand. For which see reference 3.
We thought that one reason might be privacy, which seemed a bit thin. Another might be avoiding the authorities, tax or otherwise, which also seemed a bit thin. Perhaps the real draw is the quality and quantity of the medical staff, with facilities to match. Maybe they can knock up new dentures for you on the spot, as it were, with no need to have to rely on what there might be in the way of dental technicians at your next exotic destination. Say Port Moresby for a spot of crocodile spotting or a spot of vicarious cannibalism.
Or, maybe, it is just statistical. There are so many rich people about these days, that there will always be enough to fill any box you might come up with, be it ever so oddly shaped. The law of large numbers strikes again - also known as the central limit theorem to those of us in the know.
And then there are the terms of your lease or your agreement or whatever else it is that the lawyers do. What happens if you are a rich DIY nut and you want to be able to paint your own walls, fit your own doors? Perhaps have a little workshop, along with a small forge, following the famous example of that other rich man, Louis XVI of France? But we were pleased to see that there was a cigar lounge, so there was at least some possibility of smoking, if not in the privacy of your own home.
We also wondered about security. There are, one might suppose, plenty of bad people out there who might think about hijacking such a ship for ransom money. Does the ship carry a commando of retired special forces types? When not fighting off pirates and so forth, they could always put on martial arts displays for the entertainment of the residents.
PS: it would be funny if one found that, on closer inspection, the cigar lounge turned out to involve an expensive version of vaping, not real cigars at all.
PPS: this morning, following some Windows action from Microsoft overnight, the CNN pictures mentioned below have mysteriously come back - and one of which has been used to replace the snap first shown.
Reference 1: https://aboardtheworld.com/.
Reference 2: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/the-world-luxury-ship-one-square-meter/index.html. A two year old story about the ship from CNN. A story which has words, but from which the pictures, at least on this laptop, have been grayed out.
Reference 3: https://www.shearings.com/.
Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/search?q=floating+care+homes. For some previous musings on the subject.
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