There's always a bigger yacht.
The year was 2024 and the brand-new 400-foot Lurssen "Kismet" was set to be the shining star of the Monaco Yacht Show, the largest yacht by length ever displayed. (Just down the quai, the 367-foot Freire "Renaissance," which has a gross tonnage of 7,200, was set to become the largest yacht by volume ever displayed at the show, but thanks to her Lurssen/ Nuvolari-Lenard pedigree, "Kismet" was the belle of the ball.) This had to be a moment of great pride for "Kismet's" Shahid Khan, the Pakistani-American truck-bumper god, and "Renaissance's" owner the Anglo-American industrialist A.
Gary Klesch.
Then "Golden Odyssey" happened. Something like 48 hours before the show began, the Oceanco "H3" dropped out, and her slip, right next to "Kismet" became available. And then out of nowhere the 404-foot, 7,690GT Lurssen "Golden Odyssey" pictured in this video barged in and took her place. She set records for both length and gross tonnage, and was a humorous reminder that sometimes even billionaires get humbled.
As for the owner of "Golden Odyssey" it has long been rumored that it was the Chinese online shopping baron Richard Liu, who used her as an intermediate boat while his new yacht, the Lurssen "Deep Blue" was under construction.