The World Residences At Sea
The final hours of morning near as you finish up your espresso and take the last puffs of a Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure No. 2. Comfortably seated in a brown leather chair, you look out the panoramic cigar lounge window, taking in the view. Before you, framed by a layer of beautiful, teal-colored water sloshing against the hull of the ship below, sits the breathtaking port city of Cape Town, South Africa. You have just a few days to immerse yourself in the town’s culture before you begin to sail further up the coast of Africa and onwards to southeast Asia, so best to get a move on. You lay your Hoyo down to its final resting place, stroll out of the cigar lounge and head to the ship’s exit to begin your day’s adventure. This could be just another morning in your life aboard The World, an ultra-luxurious, residential yacht that travels the globe quite unlike any vessel traversing the seas.
The World is not a cruise ship, at least in concept. Technically speaking, it’s a “residential yacht,” owned by the people who travel on it. Still, in terms of size and build, the vessel looks like a small cruise ship, at about 644 feet long, 12 decks high and fully equipped for any body of water. The World quite literally travels the globe year-round, visiting roughly 100 ports a year, including anywhere from Dubai to Hawaii, or just about anywhere else on a coastline that your mind can imagine. In 2024, before the ship’s transoceanic crossing to Cape Town, it will start the year exploring the rugged beauty of Antarctica before hugging the eastern coast of South America, including a stop in Brazil during its famed Carnival celebration.
While the ship travels to larger ports that typically house cruise ships, staying for about four to five days on each visit, she’ll also go to more remote locations without traditional ports. For those ventures, the ship drops anchor and employs dinghies to bring its passengers ashore, staying for a day or three. Residents also have opportunities to take part in a handful of annual “expeditions,” usually guided by a team of experts, who facilitate the experience while also addressing their professional interests. The upcoming visit to Antarctica is one example.
The World started in 2002. So far she has visited over 1,000 ports of call in more than 120 countries, circumnavigating the entire globe every two to three years. The initial concept centered around an ultra-luxurious, seamless way to travel the world, featuring a hybrid model between permanent, onboard residents and rotating travelers. After about a year of growing increasingly irritated by the constant influx of people cycling on and off the ship, the group of well-to-do onboard residents got together and decided ‘why not buy the whole damn thing?’ Thus, ushering in the one-of-kind format The World boasts today as an entirely resident-owned ship.
To become a part of The World, individuals must purchase an onboard residence, which ranges in price from about $2 million to $15 million. Before getting to the point of purchase, potential buyers go through a vetting process. Perhaps the most critical qualifier in this process is the net worth minimum, which is a cool $10 million. The vetting procedures are handled by a management team based in Florida that takes care of all the sales, marketing and general operations for The World.
The price points of the residences correspond to the various housing options on board. Condos range from studio layouts (290 to 846 square feet) to one-bedroom, two-bedroom or three-bedroom residences (1,666 to 3,242 square feet). The ship has a total of 165 residences onboard, of which a few are usually for sale. Features of the different residence options of course vary, although every place has a private veranda, a fully equipped bathroom and owners are free to furnish and lay out their condos however they wish. The more expensive options come with additional space and amenities that include sizable, fully equipped kitchens, additional verandas, multiple bathrooms, large living and dining areas and so on. But the larger price tag doesn’t just buy you more luxury, it gives you more voting power.
When you buy a residence on The World, you’re also buying a stake in the ship. The residents themselves are shareholders: the more you pay for your place, the more shares, and therefore, the more voting power you have. The ship essentially operates just like a homeowners’ association or a major corporation. There’s an elected board of directors, major decisions are voted on by the ship’s residents and virtually everything is run by resident-controlled committees. This includes yearly itinerary planning, which is done three years in advance with the help of the captain and crew, as well as areas such as health and wellness and even a fine art committee, which essentially decides how to decorate the ship (an original Andy Warhol neon sign was on display during a recent stop in New York City). The ship’s continued operations are paid for via the daily lives of the residents, their significant home investments and annual ownership costs based on square footage of the condos. Everything onboard, from dining at restaurants to cigars, is for sale. Profits are reinvested back into the ship.
There are ten dining options onboard, six on the casual side and four fine dining spots, plus several cocktail lounges and bars. An executive chef runs the full dining experience, often de-boarding at each port to shop in local markets and curate food selections based on their port of call. The ship also carries a wine inventory that reaches up to 15,000 bottles, a number of which are signed by some of the most prestigious winemakers in the world.
The ship houses indoor and outdoor pools, a yoga studio, full-sized tennis court, fitness center, jogging track and a stern that can transition into a launch deck for watersports. And if you need some time to relax, consider the full-service spa, a hair salon and barber shop, a poker room and a theater where residents can enjoy film screenings or the ship’s Nobel Laureate Lecture Series. You can even get some work done at a library and two conference rooms aboard. And should you need to see a specialist of any kind, you’re likely covered with a physical therapist, doctor, nurse, trainer and even a PGA Tour pro all onboard.
Despite the many alluring amenities, most owners split time on the ship. They’re free to leave from any port and rejoin wherever and whenever they please. Some may be onboard eight months of the year, others for just a few months or even year-round.
The World is an English-speaking ship with about 50 percent of the residents hailing from North America, although numerous countries are represented in the resident body. The average age among residents is around 60 years old, and this group is a highly active bunch, reflected in many of the ship's amenities. At any given time, there’s typically 150 residents onboard and up to 300 crew members from 42 countries, creating a rare 2:1 ratio between crew and passengers.
Guests are welcome, and for longer term visits, there are places onboard available for rent, though access is limited and is invitation-only. Despite the occasional visitors, The World is mostly condensed to a tight-knit, niche community of crew and passengers that’s periodically cut off from greater society. This luxuriously curated bubble has led to extremely close bonds between crew and passengers, some of which have been together over a decade on this floating city.
And what better way to develop a friendship than over cigars? The Cigar Club, a smoking lounge onboard, offers a simple, yet elegant set-up to enjoy a cigar. It’s a two-room space with an open layout and small partitions that jut out from each side. Wood floors are joined by subtle beige rugs and several studded, brown leather chairs along with a few two-seaters. Side and coffee tables with ashtrays stand at the ready nearby most seating options. Large windows on either side of the room, when the curtains are drawn back, offer exceptional views of the surrounding environment, which quite literally could be anywhere in the world.
The star of the room is the display, cabinet humidor on your right side as you enter. Nearly a dozen open boxes line the shelves, mostly fine Cubans such as Partagas Serie D No. 4s, Montecristo No. 4s, Cohiba Lanceros, Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure No. 2s and multiple Cuban H. Upmann lines. A singular non-Cuban box valiantly remained, a box of Arturo Fuentes. The selection wasn’t due to lack of interest in non-Cubans, but rather it was reflective of their more recent ports of call, which happened to have more favorable Cuban selections (a crew member had been sent out to buy more non-Cuban boxes during Cigar Aficionado’s visit in New York City). The ship also holds additional cigars comfortably tucked away in storage, estimated to include about 1,000 to 1,500 smokes. If a resident requests any box of cigars, the crew will make sure it finds its way onboard.
The other gem of the room lies adjacent to the display humidor, just on the other side of the small partition: a well-stocked bar. While beverage service is available at any time in the room, there’s plenty at the bar ready for pairings. Some of the highlights include Camus Borderies XO, Gordon & MacPhail Scotch, Havana Club Union Rum and Louis XXIII Magnum Cognac, which goes for about $10,000 a bottle and is purportedly a favorite among cigar smokers onboard.
The Cigar Club is open 24/7 to residents, who often host small parties and events inside. There’s only a few handful of smokers onboard who frequent the lounge, stopping by roughly every other day. It’s also the only area on The World where smoking is permitted.
The entire experience onboard is completely curated and seamless, and that extends to cigars. No box of smokes finds its way onboard by happenstance, the crew knows the taste preferences of the cigar smokers and specifically buys boxes based on this information. They’ll even stock the humidors in resident’s rooms, just as they’ll also stock their fridge and cabinets with groceries should they want to cook. And if they don’t want to cook or eat out, the ship has a Call-a-Chef program where one of the ship’s chefs will come up to their residence and cook for the owners.
The crew has a binder on each resident which includes notes on their preferences and tastes, allowing them to provide anticipatory, customized service. Even the small market onboard isn’t what it seems, products are specifically placed based upon what residents like. The flavors of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in the freezer, the brands of beer in the fridge, all of it is there for a reason. As stated on The World’s website, “you’ll be pampered from sun up to sun down.”
Even off the ship, residents experience world travel like no one else. At every port of call, planned programming is set up for residents if they wish to partake, from rare tours to exclusive visits to wineries not open to the public. The World’s esteemed concierge team removes all the hassle and logistics that comes with travel. You want a rental car? Just walk off the ship and it’s waiting for you. And the PGA Tour pro onboard? He doesn’t just help you with your golf swing, he books tee times and handles all arrangements at prestigious golf courses around the world. Would-be golfers simply have to get off the boat and get on the shuttle waiting for them, their bags, the scheduling, everything, is all handled for them.
It’s hard to imagine a more luxurious, tailored environment to travel the world—or enjoy cigars. Just about every day offers a new horizon. With each cigar you smoke comes a different view of the world. That’s hard to beat.
Website: https://aboardtheworld.com
