BROADCASTS.com

Mel Magazine
While chasing a 2017 story about medical tourism and Slovakian stem cells that had already taken me to hospital facilities in Bratislava and Vienna, I wound up partying on a 283-foot yacht floating in the French Riviera. As I watched intoxicated rich people having expensive fun in their cheap white shower slippers \u2014 first rule of yacht club is there are no shoes on the yacht, which are instead piled in a big heap at the yacht\u2019s entrance \u2014 I began to wonder, \u201cHow could anyone spend their whole life doing this?\u201d
Then, almost on cue, seated at a table on the rear deck with Lindsay Lohan and her entourage, I spotted a dude who had, in fact, spent his entire life doing this. Alex Jimenez was a professional yacht influencer, and he was hard at work.
I didn\u2019t know that at the time, of course. I just saw an open chair next to a lanky guy wearing a loose polo shirt and a flat-brimmed Yankees hat, and sat down in it. As everyone else gradually made their way toward the raucous festivities taking place on the foredeck, Jimenez struck up a conversation with me. He remarked that I seemed both thoughtful and decidedly out of place.
\u201cI\u2019m working,\u201d I said. \u201cI never stop working. All I can think about is work.\u201d
\u201cHey, me too,\u201d he replied. \u201cI\u2019m working right now.\u201d
\u201cI used to feel all messed up about my career,\u201d he continued. \u201cI was a short-haul truck driver in the Bronx, and I guess I caught the yacht bug. I\u2019d go to a bookstore, grab a table and read everything I could about yachts. Then, on the very first weekend after I downloaded the Instagram app, right after Instagram became a thing you could download, I went to a luxury boat show and took some of pictures of the yachts. I added some hashtags, and pretty soon I had 800,000 followers. But the quantity doesn\u2019t really matter to the folks who pay me, it\u2019s the quality. Influential people follow me, Gulf state princes and Russian moguls who might actually be able to buy these yachts.\u201d
Wait, what?
When Jimenez said that he was working, I assumed he was \u201cworking\u201d the same way Lindsay Lohan was \u2014 that is, \u201cworking the crowd.\u201d He looked important enough, wearing an expensive, custom-made watch with all of the wheels, ratchets and levers exposed.
\u201cNah, I\u2019m nobody you\u2019d know,\u201d he assured me. \u201cI\u2019m here to take some pictures and post some video stories of the yacht, which a brokerage group is trying to sell. The watch is a loaner from a friend. I wear it, take a picture of my wrist and tag his company on my Instagram account. It\u2019s just a small part of the hustle.\u201d
The yacht hustle, I soon learned, was the all-consuming passion of Jimenez\u2019s life. He went from a guy who took Instagram pictures, always head-on yacht shots run through one of the generic filters, to a guy that yacht brokers paid to stay on their yachts in order to mention that said yachts were docked in a port and available for sale or charter. He was helicoptered from yacht to yacht, and slept in the smallest guest cabins.
\u201cThe yacht we\u2019re on right now used to be a cruise ship that they retrofitted,\u201d he told me. \u201cYou can sleep a dozen or more people on here, and the decks can fit a bunch more, but it\u2019s all kind of crowded.\u201d
I mentioned that the bathrooms were both tiny, and with a hundred or so people aboard the yacht, already rather foul.
\u201cYeah, that\u2019s just how it goes,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s an endless party, especially on the yachts that are 200 feet and up, the so-called \u2018superyachts.\u2019 Conditions are cramped, everyone\u2019s out of their mind on some substance, and the bathrooms are being used for who knows what. There\u2019s a kitchen and a big dining area, but good luck getting food out of there when you really want it. You\u2019re not on here to eat a sit-down meal, even though they usually have nice dining rooms. The bars on each level are the focal points of these things.\u201d
We took a walk around the yacht while people boozed and bumped into each other, their words slurring together and distorted further by the deep bass thump of the music playing from the upper and lower decks. Jimenez\u2019s own cabin was indeed tiny, very nearly a capsule hotel. He showed me the heavy-duty metal suitcase where he secured his borrowed valuables, a collection of watches on loan from various business acquaintances.
\u201cThe watches are heavy on the wrist,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re great to look at, but their bands often cut into the wrist. And yeah, the room is small, but with my nocturnal schedule, it\u2019s not like I sleep very much. I take maybe one picture a day and post a few Instagram stories, but I\u2019m expected to be up on the deck, mingling with partygoers and selling the mystique of the yacht.\u201d
Jimenez leveled with me \u2014 once upon a time, he had been excited by the idea of partying on a yacht. After all, who wouldn\u2019t be? But now he was basically just a working stiff. He too had a home and a family, with kids he didn\u2019t see as much as he could because his \u201cfeet were never on dry land.\u201d
He had considerable yacht expertise and knew all the major players in the yacht world, buyers and sellers and their glorious boats. He had been on the 100-foot yachts and the 500-foot yachts, and seen yacht-related activities he assured me exceeded any fantasies, dark or light, that I could ever imagine. Yet all that meant he was now just another yacht worker, someone who punched the clock \u2014 or the pearl-faced wristwatch, in his case \u2014 the same as the kitchen staff, the bartenders and the yacht\u2019s crew.
\u201cYou\u2019ve seen the crew,\u201d he told me. \u201cIt\u2019s about 30 people on this yacht, and they\u2019re Greek and serious as a heart attack. Nine times out of ten, the crews on these yachts are either Greek or Russian. The rich people that staff these yachts talk at length about whether it\u2019s better to go with one or the other. They can make pretty decent money, and on a 500-footer with a 60 or 70 person crew, you\u2019re probably talking $5,000 or $6,000 a month plus room and board.\u201d
After years of yacht influence, the true appeal of high-class maritime life had become clear to Jimenez. \u201cYou have to be really rich to own one of these,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, you have to be so rich to own a yacht that\u2019s 300 feet or more. You can\u2019t be rich like LeBron James, because that\u2019s nothing. You can\u2019t be rich like Tiger Woods or Johnny Depp. They\u2019re not rich in super-yacht terms. We\u2019re talking 10 percent or more of the purchase cost of the yacht paid out in upkeep every month. The brokerages and buying groups can swing it because there\u2019s a bunch of investors, and because they charter the yachts to offset costs.
\u201cBut for the guy who owns the Eclipse [Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch], that\u2019s not the point. He\u2019s not chartering that thing out. It has a submarine and a missile detection system. See, the power of owning a magnificent yacht like that is in how you\u2019re telling the world that you\u2019re beyond buying and selling. You have more money than there is money to have. You\u2019ve transcended. There are no frontiers left for you on dry land. I mean, true peace is only at sea.\u201d
Jimenez, a poor Puerto Rican kid, grew up hustling. He worked 50- and 60-hour shifts at whatever job he had; he considered overtime to be a necessary part of his base pay and counts himself among those annoying grinders who dismiss 40 hours of work per week as a \u201cpart-time job.\u201d He now made a \u201ccomfortable middle-class living,\u201d but sitting there with me in the cabin, fretted that it could go away at any time. \u201cThis is me working a little network I\u2019ve built using someone else\u2019s social media platform,\u201d he said. \u201cIf Instagram changes its algorithm slightly, there goes a bit of my business. If Instagram disconnects some of the tools I use to build and monitor my account, there goes a bit of my business. And if Instagram goes away and is replaced by something newer and better, I need to get there first, just like I did with this account. If I don\u2019t, I\u2019m done. I\u2019m totally dependent on a platform that\u2019s completely out-of-control.\u201d
For Jimenez, Instagram is essentially a money tree that must be fertilized and harvested as much as possible before its popularity wanes. As another side hustle, he \u201cplants\u201d subsidiary yacht accounts, accounts with soundalike names and images, and uses cross-promotion from his primary account to grow them until they\u2019re large enough to sell to yacht brokers or manufacturers. \u201cI build them up and then sell them off, and my client gets a ready-made account that has real followers and legitimate engagement,\u201d he told me. \u201cI started focusing on that when I realized that this wasn\u2019t just a \u2018life of the party\u2019 job, that pushing social media is something you do all day and all night long.
\u201cI fire off these posts while I\u2019m sitting around on the yacht, when things are very slow. I\u2019m not in this for the fun of it, I\u2019m not posting silly stuff. I basically do sponsored advertisements that follow a set format. I watch Instagram like a hawk to see if anything is hampering the growth of these other accounts, and to see if I\u2019m continuing to get the activity I need on my primary posts.\u201d
After surveying his cabin, Jimenez and I walked to the side deck and slouched over the railing. The sun had set, and we studied the well-lit coastline of Cannes. \u201cIf you could have anything at all, anything in the world, what would you want?\u201d he asked me.
\u201cI guess I\u2019d want to keep writing and keep getting paid for it,\u201d I responded.
\u201cWell, I want to own a yacht,\u201d Jimenez said. \u201cI used to just want to be on yachts, because I thought the parties were cool and the technology was awesome, but now that I\u2019ve spent a good portion of my life partying on them, I actually want to own a yacht. Owning a yacht, really owning it in full and being able to pay for its upkeep, means that you\u2019ve somehow freed yourself from work and want. If you own the yacht that way, you\u2019re a free man. The hustle and grind are things of the past.\u201d
I asked him if he had plans to leave the yacht while we were in the French Riviera.
\u201cNo, I\u2019m going to hang back here, because I\u2019m scheduled to be on another o