Moscow's Wealthy Push the Boat Out

The scenery is gray, the sun pokes through the clouds for a few weeks a year and the rivers freeze over in the winter, but Moscow is emerging as one of the world's most unlikely yachting capitals.

For the city's wealthy elite, a Bentley, a top-of-the-range BMW or a Hummer is yesterday's fashion toy, and a boat is now the latest must-have accessory.

Guillaume Vorstelman, who runs Timmerman, a company selling luxury American yachts, said the Russian market was growing so fast, he had sold five times as many boats this year as last.

"Boats at the moment are in fashion," he said. "A lot of the people buying a boat never use it, but they can say 'I have a boat.'"

At the Crocus Yacht Club, on the Moscow River, behind a row of tower blocks on the outskirts of the city, Misha, 62, a businessman in a pale-blue golfing jumper was eyeing a pricey vessel. "I actually have a yacht already but I want a bigger, more modern one," he said.

As Vorstelman chatted, a man wearing wraparound sunglasses helped three women in high heels and clutching designer bags step into a speedboat. The women made themselves comfortable in the easy chairs at the front of the boat; the man stood behind the wheel and fiddled with the controls.

"They want to have the best and the fastest boats you can imagine. Boats we have not sold anywhere else are selling here in Moscow," Vorstelman said. And customers are impulse buyers, he said. "When you talk about a powerboat, let's say for half a million dollars, you can sell it in a split second," he added.

Other retailers have similar stories.

Andrei Boyko has been selling yachts for five years and he said sales had doubled each year. In the past 12 months he has sold 178 vessels. "That is a lot, even by European standards," Boyko said.

Behind him a towering launch cruised past, its wake rocking a man fishing nearby in a rubber dinghy.

Boyko also owns an exclusive yacht club an hour's drive outside the city. He says club members use their yachts to cruise to a riverside restaurant or club on the weekend. They want to arrive in the latest Western model, although Russian brands have started to emerge.

A group of Russian businessmen decided that bigger was better for the country's rich, and set up a company in 2003 to build large motorboats. Using the name of the Dutchman who taught Peter the Great about shipbuilding 300 years ago, Timmerman is the first Russian company to build luxury yachts.

"We understood that we can make very good and exclusive super yachts of the highest quality for a price that is 20 to 30 percent lower than in the West," said Vladimir Shchelin, sales director of Timmerman Yachts. "We want to attract all the clients that are currently buying from Western companies."

Timmerman has so far completed five yachts and has eight more under construction -- the biggest measures 45 meters, is opulently outfitted and costs $19 million.

For his first yacht, Sergei Komarov, 29, has set his hopes on a smaller model costing about $100,000. "We don't have good weather all year round, we only have two or three months when we can use it," he said. "It's a toy of course, but I like it," he said, gesturing at the yacht.