Everest

Available for charter for only €200,000 per week

Cocktails on the foredeck?

In 1992, when I was just starting to put VNI together, one of my first investors was Alan Sidnam.

Alan was then Vice Chairman of the ad agency Ogilvy Mather, and he wrote me a check for $1.2 million, based simply on an idea. What a guy!

I had just moved from my walk-up in Brooklyn into my first one-bedroom rental apartment in Manhattan, but boy was I proud of it. Alan said he would come by to have me sign some documents. Great! When he walked into my new place I could see a look of horror in his eyes, even though he tried to conceal it.

“You live….here?” he asked.

I did.

Later I would go to visit Alan at his apartment. He lived in the Museum Tower, on top of the Museum of Modern Art. Floor to ceiling windows. Unbelievable views. I swore then that one day I would live in the Museum Tower also.

Despite many setbacks, (including my ex-wife and former best friend stealing my business and leaving me to die – but more on that another day); I worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to make a success of myself. Then, last year, Lisa and I bought a fairly large apartment… in the Museum Tower. Finally.

One of our friends in the Tower heard we were going to be in Europe for August and invited us on his boat. It would be in the South of France, he said. Come on by.

So yesterday we did.

We called them up and they sent the tender to come and pick us up on the dock.

The tender was a 26 footer.

It took us out to his ‘boat’. 165 feet of white fibreglass, chrome and teak.

Now, I have been around boats all my life, and I had seen things like this from a distance, but I had never spent any time aboard one. Until now. My own boat, (which I was pretty proud of), you could have easily put on the deck of this one, and sail away.

There was a full-time crew of 11. In white uniforms with the name of the boat tastefully stitched onto their shirts. Everyone was extremely accomodating.

Many years ago, I went trekking in the Himalayas.

You start off full of vigor and energy, but the air starts to get might thin, and pretty soon you’re handing the sherpas your backpack…. your jacket…. your watch…. anything that you can get rid of. It’s just up and up and up and up. Like being on a stairmaster for 8 hours non stop. At the end of the first leg, I barely… barely managed to crawl (quite literally) into a village at 11,000 feet called Namche Bazaar. I was on my knees when we reached the lodge house. “Thank God” I said, from the ground. “Thank God”….barely breathing.

Then the sherpa pointed up….. up….. way up. The Khumba Ice falls. “Next” he said. Another stop on the way to Everest Base Camp.

I threw up on the spot.

Yesterday, I saw Everest…. floating nicely off Cannes.