Lorenzo Fertitta came cruising up the Inside Passage this week aboard his $125 million yacht “Lonian.” Because it’s only 285 feet long, the Lonian was accompanied by a support yacht carrying Lorenzo’s toys, including a helicopter, a submarine, skiffs and jet skis.
Lorenzo, who raked in $2 billion on a bit of televised savagery called Ultimate Fighting Championship, didn’t spend much time viewing the brown bears on Admiralty Island. Who could blame him? After 20 years of promoting gladiatorial violence, what is a bear catching a salmon?
A few days earlier and about 10 miles away, in what sounded and looked like an invasion, a half-dozen jet skiers roared up Stephens Passage in a lateral formation. Had they brandished machine guns, they could have been the bad guys chasing 007 in the next Bond flick.
Jet-skiing tours of the Inside Passage stand as proof that in Donald Trump’s America, no recreation is too garish.
The town of Haines this week is celebrating Lucy Harrell, the most philanthropic of its millionaires. Lucy gave away a pile of dough to local charities, once confiding to me that she was hoping to inspire John Schnabel to match her generosity.
Harrell, who was born into money, didn’t understand that people like Schnabel who grow up poor can never be rich enough. Cash is the salve they apply again and again to the indelible scar of childhood poverty.
Part of Harrell’s legacy is the new boat harbor in Haines. Lucy was pushing harbor expansion 30 years ago, saying that luxury yachts would tie up to our docks and those on board would drop bank on groceries, souvenirs and whatnot.
I don’t imagine she was thinking of Lorenzo Fertitta, or even the guys on jet skis. Lucy was thinking of discrete folks who would enjoy a stroll down our Main Street, stopping for a cup of tea, then spending a workingman’s weekly pay on a piece of art.
Harrell was kindly and old-fashioned enough to believe that other yacht owners were just like her. Many were, back in Lucy’s day, when cruise ships were small and cruises were exclusively expensive. Passengers on those boats would stop by Alaska Indian Arts to order up a totem pole or duck in the Hotel Halsingland to uncork a bottle of champagne.
Then they scurried back to the opulence on board.
In recent years, the ultra-rich graduated from taking cruises to building or buying their own mega-yachts. One was a Russian oligarch who made a visit to Haines. Accompanied by a beefy bodyguard who stayed in his shadow, the oligarch and his family hired a local guide for a private tour of the valley.
The oligarch then wanted to lunch at the Fireweed Café, but was wary of crowds. He asked his guide if he couldn’t pay to close the restaurant to others so he and his family and henchman could enjoy a private meal.
The guide inquired, but the Fireweed wasn’t biting. “I’m sorry,” the guide told the oligarch. “That’s not possible.”
“Oh, I have learned that many things are possible,” the oligarch replied.
It’s not only oligarchs who do the impossible here each summer. In Hoonah, middle-class cruise passengers step off their ships and into helicopters that lift them to a mountaintop where bicycles await them. They coast downhill to a picnic spot for a salmon dinner before helicopters whisk them back to their ship.
Tourism looked much different 35 years ago, when Lucy Harrell arrived here. Our most common visitor was a retiree driving a motorhome from the Lower 48. The town had four RV parks and lobbied the state each year to smooth the washboards on the road to Chilkat State Park.
Some of the old guys behind the wheels of those rigs were World War II vets just happy to still be alive and to dip a fishing line into an Alaskan river.
Today’s visitors, even the much-vaunted “independents,” are a more invasive species.