
You can charter Flavio Briatore’s Force Blue ‘yacht’ for $235,000 a week during the low season. For that, you get five decks, a gymnasium, Turkish steam bath, cinema and cabin space for 12 guests.
There’s also a mud bath and massage room.
Unfortunately it’s not available during Monaco Grand Prix week, but then life is full of disappointments.
Somehow I suspect that Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone and the team bosses, including Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, didn’t get the most out of the facilities during several hours on board on Friday talking about the future of the sport.
The irony of the fact that they were meeting on a boat that probably cost its owner a sizeable chunk of the 40 million pound budget cap that they were so opposed to was not lost on those waiting on the wrong end of the gangway.
I might as well come straight out and admit that I love the Monaco Grand Prix.
It’s my favourite race, not just because it never fails to make friends and family insanely jealous but because the atmosphere is unlike anywhere else. It may be the slowest race of the year, with precious little overtaking, but no other race comes close in my book.
With a permanent pass, you can walk around the circuit during practice and stand barely a metre away from the speeding cars with no wire mesh fence between you and them.
Standing in the tunnel as the drivers blast through during a practice session is an utterly unforgettable experience, even with ear plugs.
This is a spectator’s paradise and, with the track reverting back to regular traffic after the sessions, you can only sit and gawp.
After a while you start to wonder what it must be like to live in Monaco and not own a Ferrari, Maserati or some other piece of even more exotic machinery. The shame of it.
As I fanned myself outside Briatore’s boat with a glossy, and suitably stiff, flyer for the luxury opening of Billionaire nightclub, one had to wonder why the girls handing them out should consider a group of sweaty reporters and photographers as potential customers. Maybe they were just taking pity.
But that’s typical Monaco. Not exactly all show and no substance, since material wealth is very much in evidence even in these supposedly lean credit crunch times, but sometimes just plain crazy.
Sitting on the quayside, it all comes to you. There’s no need to buy a copy of Hello magazine.
Montezemolo arrived for the meeting looking every inch the Italian playboy — flicking his hair and reclining luxuriantly in the back of a motor launch ferrying him across the water as if in a Luchino Visconti movie.
Briatore’s wife, fashion model Elisabetta Gregoraci waved from an upper deck with her pet dog under her arm.
Italian television hostess Simona Ventura turned up in a sleek Maserati, manouevring carefully past a parked Rolls Royce convertible, and was welcomed aboard.
Some passing American tourists wondered what was going on. Someone filled them in — Formula One team bosses having a meeting. “Oh, they’re just having a party,” said one to another.
And then it was time to really rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Having a meeting on board a boat may ensure privacy but it does have a notable drawback — everyone has to walk the plank to get off again and that is not easy when one end is hemmed in by a phalanx of television crews, reporters and assorted hangers-on.
The prospect of someone ending up in the harbour grew by the minute and Montezemolo was overwhelmed by a barrage of microphones and cameras the moment he stepped off. He seemed to quite enjoy it.
And then it was off to another meeting and a couple more hours spent waiting outside the Automobile Club de Monaco on the main pit straight, watching the Ferraris and Harley Davidsons cruise past.
PHOTO: Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo speaks with reporters at the end of Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) meeting held onboard of Renault F1 principal Flavio Briatore’s boat in the Monte Carlo harbour before the Monaco F1 Grand Prix May 22, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Pratta