floro yacht transport

This Wisconsin billionaire’s superyacht is so stunning that when docked in Italy’s Livorno port more people flocked to see the vessel than an otherwise breathtaking sunset.

American tycoon Craig Leipold owns Loon superyacht-

Born in Wisconsin in 1952, Craig Leipold has a net worth of $3.6 billion, with most of his wealth stemming from his ventures in the sports and healthcare industries. The owner of the NHL’s Minnesota Wild grew up in a business-oriented family. Before making a name for himself in professional ice hockey, he found success with his telemarketing firm, Ameritel Corporation, and Rainfair Corporation, a protective clothing manufacturer. A graduate of Hendrix College with a degree in Political Science, Leipold obtained his first NHL franchise in 1997. The father of five boys is married to heiress Helen Johnson, who hails from one of America’s wealthiest families. Together, Craig and Helen have generously donated to community development and numerous causes, actively supporting their local community in Minnesota.

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Minister of Transport announces appointments and reappointments in the transportation sector

From: Transport Canada

News release

Today, the Minister of Transport, Pablo Rodriguez, announced the following appointments and reappointments in the transportation sector.

August 28, 2024      Ottawa, Ontario                  Transport Canada

Atlantic Pilotage Authority

The Atlantic Pilotage Authority is a Crown corporation responsible for establishing, operating, maintaining and managing, in the interest of navigation safety, an effective marine pilotage service in and around the Atlantic provinces, including Chaleur Bay, Quebec.

• John Patrick McCann (Dartmouth, Nova Scotia) has been appointed as Chairperson for a term ending on May 2, 2029.

Belledune Port Authority

The Belledune Port Authority is a federally incorporated, autonomous, non-share corporation that operate at arm’s length from the federal government. It acts as a landlord by leasing port operations to private companies. The port aims to leverage commerce to drive prosperity in Northern New Brunswick.

• Lucien Sonier (Caraquet, New Brunswick) has been reappointed as board member for a term ending on June 14, 2026.
• Iris Auclair-Bernard (Heron Bay, New Brunswick) has been reappointed as a board member for a term ending on May 2, 2027.
• Joseph Lorio Roy (Moncton, New Brunswick) has been reappointed as board member for a term ending on June 4, 2027.

Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority

The Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority is a binational, shared governance organization that owns and operates the Peace Bridge, connecting Fort Erie, Ontario, and Buffalo, New York. The Bridge Authority’s mandate is to provide a safe, efficient, environmentally sensitive, and cost-effective conduit of trade and travellers between Canada and the United States.

• Llewellyn James Holloway (St. Catharines, Ontario) has been reappointed as a Canadian board member for a term ending on June 2, 2028.

Canadian Air Transport Security Authority

The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) is a Crown corporation mandated with protecting the public through effective and efficient screening of air travellers and their baggage.

• Sharon Ruth Duggan (Bay Bulls, Newfoundland and Labrador) has been reappointed as a board member for a term ending on June 4, 2028.

Laurentian Pilotage Authority

The Laurentian Pilotage Authority is a Crown corporation responsible for establishing, operating, maintaining and administering marine pilotage and related services in the waters of the Laurentian region, in particular the St. Lawrence River and the Saguenay River.

• Georges Farrah (Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec) has been appointed as a board member for a term ending on June 20, 2028.
• Jean Aubry-Morin (South Glengarry, Ontario) has been appointed as a board member for a term ending on June 20, 2028.

Montreal Port Authority

The Montreal Port Authority is a federally incorporated, autonomous, non-share corporation that operate at arm’s length from the federal government. It builds and maintains facilities that it leases to private stevedoring companies. It aims to make the port of Montreal as competitive as possible, and from this perspective provides first-rate facilities to sea and land carriers, to terminal operators and to shippers.

• Hélène Lauzon (Montréal, Quebec) has been reappointed as a board member for a term ending on May 8, 2025.
• Nathalie Pilon (Montréal, Quebec) has been reappointed as a board member for a term ending on May 8, 2026.
• Johanne M. Lépine (Montréal, Quebec) has been reappointed as a board member for a term ending on May 8, 2026.
• John Edward Parisella (Montréal, Quebec) has been reappointed as a board member for a term ending on May 8, 2026.

Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport Authority

The Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport Authority is a leader in providing safe, sustainable, and affordable air transport services to its customers and the communities served by the airport. It is also a driving force for economic growth in the national capital region.

• Bonnie Boretsky (Ottawa, Ontario) has been reappointed as a board member for a term ending at the 2027 Annual General Meeting of members.
• Sylvain Laporte (Chelsea, Quebec) has been appointed as a board member for a term ending at the 2026 Annual General Meeting of members.

Prince Rupert Port Authority

The Prince Rupert Port Authority oversees one of North America's fastest growing and most efficient trade gateways, strategically located on British Columbia's northern coast. It plays a pivotal role in connecting global markets through its state-of-the-art facilities and commitment to sustainable growth.

• Roderick Graham (Calgary, Alberta) has been appointed as a board member for a term ending on June 16, 2027.

The Federal Bridge Corporation Limited

The Federal Bridge Corporation Limited is a Crown corporation responsible for safely and efficiently managing and operating international bridges and associated structures in Sault Ste. Marie, Point Edward, Lansdowne (Thousand Islands) and Cornwall, Ontario.

• Marie-Jacqueline Saint-Fleur (Montréal, Quebec) has been reappointed as a board member for a term ending on June 4, 2028.
• Andrew Travis Seymour (Cornwall, Ontario) has been reappointed as a board member for a term ending on June 4, 2028.
• Rakesh Shreewastav (Toronto, Ontario) has been reappointed as a board member for a term ending on June 4, 2028.

Transportation Appeal Tribunal of Canada

The Transportation Appeal Tribunal of Canada conducts reviews and appeal hearings on administrative and enforcement decisions taken by the Minister of Transport and the Canadian Transportation Agency at the request of those affected by these decisions.

• K. M. Tracy Medve (Kelowna, British Columbia) has been appointed as a part-time member for a term ending on May 23, 2028.
•  Franco Pietracupa (Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Quebec) has been appointed as a part-time member for a term ending on May 23, 2028.
• Steven Donald Gerard Neatt (Québec, Quebec) has been appointed as a part-time member for a term ending on May 23, 2028.
• Martine Patricia Guay (Longueuil, Quebec) has been appointed as a part-time member for a term ending on May 23, 2029.

VIA Rail Canada Inc.

VIA Rail Canada Inc. operates the national passenger rail services on behalf of the Government of Canada. It offers a safe, efficient and environmentally friendly passenger rail service to regional and remote communities.

• Filipe Dinis (Ottawa, Ontario) has been appointed as a board member for a term ending on May 23, 2028.
• Catherine Kloepfer (Winnipeg, Manitoba) has been appointed as a board member for a term ending on May 23, 2028.
• H. Glenn Rainbird (Belleville, Ontario) has been reappointed as a board member for a term ending on June 16, 2027.
• Jonathan Scott (Bradford West Gwillimbury) has been appointed as a board member for a term ending on July 18, 2028

The appointees come from diverse backgrounds with experience in several fields. They are active members in their communities and bring a wide array of knowledge and expertise to their respective organizations.

“I wish these highly qualified Canadians every success in these roles. The transportation sector impacts businesses, passengers, and tourists, and these important appointments will ensure that these organizations continue to fulfill their mandate and serve Canadians across the country.” The Honourable Pablo Rodriguez Minister of Transport 

Quick facts

The Minister of Transport is responsible for one of the largest appointments portfolios in the Government of Canada with 56 portfolio organizations, which include: 

9 Crown corporations;  

4 administrative tribunal/agencies;  

21 Airport Authorities;  

17 Canada Port Authorities; and  

5 other shared governance organizations.  

Associated links

• Governor in Council appointments - Canada.ca
• Orders In Council - Jean Aubry-Morin
• Orders In Council - Filipe Dinis
• Orders In Council - Sharon Ruth Duggan
• Orders In Council - Georges Farrah
• Orders In Council - Roderick Graham
• Orders In Council - Martine Patricia Guay
• Orders In Council - Llewellyn James Holloway
• Orders In Council - Catherine Kloepfer
• Orders In Council - Hélène Lauzon
• Orders In Council - Johanne M. Lépine
• Orders In Council - John Patrick McCann
• Orders In Council - Steven Donald Gerard Neatt
• Orders In Council - John Edward Parisella
• Orders In Council - Franco Pietracupa
• Orders In Council - Nathalie Pilon
• Orders In Council - H. Glenn Rainbird
• Orders In Council - Joseph Lorio Roy
• Orders In Council - Marie-Jacqueline Saint-Fleur
• Orders In Council - Andrew Travis Seymour
• Orders In Council - Jonathan Scott
• Orders In Council - Rakesh Shreewastav
• Orders In Council - Lucien Sonier
• Orders In Council - K. M. Tracy Medve

Laurent de Casanove Press secretary Office of the Honourable Pablo Rodriguez Minister of Transport, Ottawa [email protected]

Media relations Transport Canada, Ottawa [email protected] 613-993-0055

Visit Transport Canada’s website .

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The For-Profit City That Might Come Crashing Down

The dream of Próspera, founded by a U.S. corporation off the coast of Honduras, was to escape government control. The Honduran government wants it gone.

Ricardo González, legal consultant for Honduras Próspera Inc., looking out on the Honduran island of Roatán. Credit... Brian Finke for The New York Times

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By Rachel Corbett

• Aug. 28, 2024

Jorge Colindres, a freshly cologned and shaven lawyer, handed me a hard hat to take the elevator to the 14th floor of what is now the tallest building on the Honduran island of Roatán — nearly twice what the local building code allows. When construction is complete, Duna Residences will house 82 units overlooking a jungle of palm trees, the Caribbean Sea and several other new buildings that the Honduran government considers illegal.

Listen to this article, read by Frankie Corzo

If Próspera were a normal town, Colindres would be considered its mayor; his title here is “technical secretary.” As we looked out over a clearing in the trees in February, he pointed to the small office complex where he works collecting taxes and managing public finances for the city’s 2,000 or so physical residents and e-residents, many of whom have paid a fee for the option of living in Próspera or remotely incorporating a business there. Nearby is a manufacturing plant that is slated to build modular houses along the coast designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. About a mile in the other direction are some of the city’s businesses: a Bitcoin cafe and education center, a genetics clinic, a scuba shop. A delivery service for food and medical supplies will deploy its drones from this rooftop.

There’s not much else to see yet. But the Delaware-based company that founded this experimental town in 2017 has raised $120 million in investments — including from venture-capital funds backed by the Silicon Valley billionaires Peter Thiel, Sam Altman and Marc Andreessen — to transform the territory, about twice the size of Monaco, into the most developed start-up city in the world. Built in a semiautonomous jurisdiction known as a ZEDE (a Spanish acronym for Zone for Employment and Economic Development), Próspera is a private, for-profit city, with its own government that courts foreign investors through low taxes and light regulation. Businesses can choose a regulatory framework from a menu of 36 countries or customize their own.

A California company offers a Montessori education for approximately 60 students. Security is provided by a private firm of armed guards. An arbitration center staffed by three retired Arizona judges handles dispute resolution. (In order to enter the jurisdiction, I was told I needed to sign an “agreement of coexistence” binding myself to 4,202 pages of rules, violations of which would be subject to the jurisdictional authority of the arbitration center.)

Próspera has become particularly well known for the zone’s experimental medical facilities, which run clinical trials unburdened by F.D.A. standards. The week of my visit, Patri Friedman, grandson of the economist Milton Friedman and the founder of a start-up-cities fund that invested in Próspera, had a chip with his Tesla key implanted into his hand. On a previous trip he brushed his teeth with genetically modified bacteria purported to prevent cavities. Another time he was injected with a protein booster intended to make him “stronger and faster,” as he put it at a conference in Roatán that weekend.

“I can tell you when Próspera became most real for me,” Friedman told the audience. “When I sat down to fill out my informed-consent forms that said, like, ‘This agreement is adjudicated under the laws of the Próspera ZEDE; any disputes are arbitrated by the Próspera Arbitration Center.’ Like, you are under a different set of laws.”

There are more than 5,400 of these special economic zones in the world, ranging on a spectrum from free ports for duty-free trading all the way to the special administrative region of Hong Kong. About 1,000 zones have cropped up in just the past decade, including dozens of start-up cities — sometimes called charter cities — most of them in developing nations like Zambia and the Philippines. Some have actually grown into major urban centers, like Shenzhen, which went from a fishing village to one of China’s largest cities, with a G.D.P. of $482 billion, after it was designated a special economic zone in 1980.

Each zone offers a degree of escape from government oversight and taxation, a prospect that has excited libertarian and anarcho-capitalist thinkers at least since Ayn Rand imagined a free-market utopia called Galt’s Gulch in “Atlas Shrugged.” Today, escalating clashes between the government and Big Tech — like the S.E.C.’s regulatory war on crypto, or the Federal Aviation Administration’s repeated investigations into SpaceX — have spurred some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to seek increasingly splintered-off hubs of sovereignty. And with government dysfunction preventing reforms even in wealthy cities like San Francisco, locked in a decades-long affordable-housing crisis, and New York City, which just lost out on as much as $1 billion when Albany scrapped a 17-years-in-the-making congestion pricing plan that would have funded public transit, it’s not hard to see the appeal of starting from scratch.

In promotional materials, Próspera markets itself to “21st-century pioneers” craving not just laissez-faire policies but also “good times and Caribbean vibes.” Direct flights from Miami and Houston can transport these digital nomads to Roatán in less than three hours. Then, from a chaise longue on the beach, they can register a business with the tap of a button. Although only one residential building has been built so far, a forthcoming eco-condo was during my visit courting buyers seeking “more personal freedom” and less “political drama.” Próspera’s original investment plan projected that by 2030 the city would be home to 38,000 residents, and that foreign direct investment in the country would top $500 million by next year.

But plenty of other people find Próspera’s goal — “building the future of human governance: privately run and for-profit” — unsettling. Critics have described it as a neocolonial state within a state, or an example of corporate monarchy, where yacht-owning C.E.O.s exploit land and labor in a poor country. Keller Easterling, the urbanist and architectural theorist, considers Próspera a city in name only, akin to “say, Mattress City.” Really, she says, the zones are low-tax, deregulated marketplaces.

As we peered over the edge of the tower’s rooftop, I considered the story of a subcontractor who was working at the apartment tower at night two months earlier. The power had gone out, and he walked to the edge of the floor to yell down to his crew to turn on a generator, but took a step too far and fell to his death. If companies choose their own regulatory frameworks, as they do in Próspera, who holds them accountable if they endanger or harm one of their employees?

“Próspera ZEDE has its own set of labor systems,” Colindres said when I asked him about it later. He told me the worker’s family was compensated appropriately — receiving at least as much as was required under Honduran law — but he declined to disclose details. If an independent investigation took place, its findings have not been released to the public. After all, the point of a place like Próspera is that there isn’t really a “public” to speak of.

This lack of transparency is one common criticism of Próspera, and today, it’s unclear whether this experiment can continue. In recent years, vehement opposition from the Honduran government and neighboring communities has imperiled Próspera’s future. Now its fate — and that of the private-cities movement writ large — hangs in the balance of a high-stakes case before an international tribunal.

There are about three dozen charter cities currently operating in the world, according to an estimate from the Adrianople Group, an advisory firm that concentrates on special economic zones. Several others are under development, including the East Solano Plan, run by a real estate corporation that has spent the last seven years buying up $900 million of ranch land in the Bay Area to build a privatized alternative to San Francisco; Praxis, a forthcoming “cryptostate” on the Mediterranean; and the Free Republic of Liberland , a three-square-mile stretch of unclaimed floodplain between Serbia and Croatia. Many of the same ideologically aligned names — Balaji Srinivasan, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Friedman — recur as financial backers; Patrik Schumacher, principal of Zaha Hadid Architects and a critic of public housing, is behind several of their urban (or metaversal) designs.

Srinivasan, the former Coinbase chief technology officer and now an adviser to Pronomos Capital, Friedman’s fund to build start-up cities, argued in his 2022 book “The Network State” that these new business-friendly hubs would soon compete with nation-states and, one day, replace them. “The Network State” was inspired, he said, by the state of Israel. “That country was started by a book,” he tweeted in 2022, referring to Theodor Herzl’s 1896 manifesto, “The Jewish State.” “You can found a tribe,” Srinivasan said on a podcast. “What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism — when a community forms online and then gathers in physical space to form a ‘reverse diaspora.’”

The concept might have stayed on the fringes of libertarian and neoreactionary forums had Paul Romer, who would go on to be the chief economist of the World Bank and win the Nobel Prize, not made charter cities the subject of an influential 2009 TED Talk. He projected a photo of students in an African country doing their homework under streetlights, explaining that their government required the electric company to provide power at such low prices that the company decided not to service the homes in their area at all. When the president tried to reform the system, he went on, consumers and business leaders pushed back, and ultimately, nothing changed. Romer argued that charter cities would give developing countries a chance to prosper by ceding uninhabited territory to wealthier nations to develop.

This ruling country would act as a “guarantor” to the host country and write its own laws and regulations, which would attract private companies to invest and build the cities. In turn, jobs, technology and educational opportunities would pour into the host country, which would share in the revenue, too. Locals would stop leaving for richer countries, migrants would come to the zone, a virtuous cycle would take hold and students wouldn’t need to do their homework in the streets. “The city can be built,” Romer said in his talk. “And we can scale this model. We can go do it over and over again.”

Around the same time that Romer was delivering his TED Talk, Honduran soldiers stormed the home of the country’s left-wing president, Manuel Zelaya. They led him outside at gunpoint, still in his pajamas, and put him on a plane to Costa Rica. Zelaya had been planning to hold a public referendum on reforming the Constitution, which his critics saw as an attempt to illegally extend term limits. Shortly after the coup, the military held another election; it put into office the conservative candidate Porfirio Lobo, who lost the previous contest to Zelaya. Several nations, including the United States, questioned the legitimacy of an election staged by leaders of the coup.

President Lobo’s chief of staff, the Harvard-educated lawyer Octavio Sánchez, saw Romer’s TED Talk and thought it was just what Honduras needed to achieve economic prosperity. Sánchez arranged a meeting in Miami among Romer, Lobo and the president of Congress, Juan Orlando Hernández. Lobo told Romer that to do something as significant as he proposed — to create a zone that would replace Honduran laws with those of a wealthier nation — they’d need to amend the Constitution.

Romer visited Tegucigalpa soon after. Honduras, a country where over half the population lived in poverty and 75,000 people left each year for better opportunities in the United States, was an ideal testing ground for his vision. When Romer returned home, he recorded a follow-up TED Talk titled “The World’s First Charter City?”

A tumultuous three years followed: Romer and the oversight board he helped set up were sidelined, and the Honduran Supreme Court initially rejected the constitutional amendment. But Congress, led by Hernández, dismissed the four opposing judges in what some critics called a “technical coup.” (Hernández, who succeeded Lobo as president of Honduras, continued to have a career marred by corruption and was recently sentenced to 45 years in a United States federal prison for drug trafficking.) In 2013, Honduras amended its constitution to allow for the creation of autonomous zones, following China and the United Arab Emirates.

I met Colindres outside his office on a “Wellness Wednesday.” Catering staff had set out fruit and granola bars on the counter of an open-air cafeteria at the city’s headquarters, a small complex of three interconnected buildings on a manicured tropical lawn. A guard in black combat fatigues with a double-barreled rifle paced near a porch swing. Colindres, who is 31, peeled an orange as he began to tell me about his family’s history in Honduras. One of his grandfathers fought in the Honduran armed forces against communism during the Cold War. Later, his uncle, the president of the chamber of commerce, was taken hostage by Communist guerrillas. Colindres’s hero is the family’s capitalist success story: his great-grandfather Constantino Marinakys, who immigrated from Greece after World War I and built a fortune, in part by opening grocery stores during the country’s banana boom in the early 20th century.

In the late 1800s, Honduras owed immense debt to Britain, and began offering land and financial incentives to attract foreign investment. Eventually, U.S. banana companies, like Cuyamel and United Fruit (now Chiquita), built railroads, port infrastructure and other projects in exchange for land. By the beginning of World War I, O. Henry had named the country the original “banana republic.” The six largest banana companies owned more than a million acres of fertile land on Honduras’s northern coast, and in 1911, one orchestrated a coup to install a puppet government.

Where many see a story about exploitation, Colindres describes one of private-sector productivity. As workers migrated to the coasts to work, the plantations grew into small cities with their own housing, schools, hospitals and stores. “Back then there was very poor infrastructure, and so when the banana companies came everything had to be done,” Colindres said. “No roads, no electricity — all of what we consider public infrastructure in Honduras, it was put in by the private sector.”

Colindres’s political views started hardening as a teenager living through the coup of 2009. He went to law school and came to the conclusion that he’d have to leave Honduras for the United States if he wanted to have a fulfilling career. But then came news that the ZEDE constitutional amendment had passed. Honduran law preserved national authority over a few fields, like criminal law, but granted the zones broad freedom to establish their own courts, fiscal policies and labor and environmental protections.

In 2014, as required by the amendment, Juan Orlando Hernández appointed a group to oversee the ZEDEs. Early members included a granddaughter of the final Austrian emperor and a band of Republicans from the U.S. that included the former Reagan speechwriter Mark Klugmann, the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, the former Reagan aide Faith Whittlesey, the libertarian economist Mark Skousen and Ronald Reagan’s son Michael Reagan. A couple of years later, Honduran lawmakers heard about an Arizona entrepreneur named Erick Brimen who was lobbying Washington to make creative use of the U.S. Constitution’s Compact Clause to pass a bill establishing low-regulation “prosperity zones.” Brimen was having a hard time implementing his vision in the States, so took the Hondurans up on their offer to develop a zone like the one Romer imagined, but run by a private company rather than by another nation.

Brimen, who grew up in a wealthy family in Venezuela until he moved to the United States at 12, met Gabriel Delgado, a Guatemalan entrepreneur who had already identified a couple of plots of land in Roatán as potential sites. In 2017, they decided to work together, with Brimen acting as chief executive and Delgado heading up fund-raising and real estate development. They secured early investments from Friedman’s Pronomos Capital and an unnamed investor “behind” SpaceX. But their success in establishing the first ZEDE, they said, is due in part to keeping their ideological beliefs quiet. “Instead of saying we are trying to create a libertopia,” Brimen told the libertarian magazine Reason in 2021, “we shifted the conversation away from advancing a political ideology toward, yes, liberty, but as a tool to development.” After a brainstorming session, Brimen came up with a name that might accomplish that: Honduras Próspera, Inc.

When Colindres heard the news that the project had broken ground, he reached out to Brimen, who expressed interest in his 2019 paper “Make Honduras Great: Charter Cities as a Development Program.”

“He said, ‘I also want to make Honduras great,’” Colindres recalled. He promised Brimen his support. “Let me bring all my contacts and all my clients and everybody to join,” he told him. “And then that’s what I did.”

Próspera has now incorporated 222 businesses into the ZEDE, including an outsource staffing agency and scores of experimental medical centers. Minicircle, founded by two young biohackers, offers a product that they say might cure Alzheimer’s and suppress all tumors; Symbiont Labs manufactures implants that turn people into “self-sovereign cyborgs”; the Bay Islands Fitness and Transformation Center offers affordable semaglutide injections; and the Global Alliance for Regenerative Medicine provides stem-cell treatments. (A man sitting next to me on my flight from Roatán showed me severe burns on his arms that he’d come to treat at the clinic.) While I was visiting, a “pop-up city” called Vitalia used a dome it had erected on Próspera’s grounds to host events for biotech innovators who want to “make death optional.”

Much of the activity at Próspera takes place not in the area where the Duna tower stands and Colindres works but a 15-minute drive away at Pristine Bay, a green, gated golf community and beach club. Starting in 2021, Próspera began incorporating parts of the resort into the zone. Down by the tennis courts, I saw Vitalia’s white-tented dome, though organizers did not allow me to attend any of its events. Reason wouldn’t grant me access to a conference it was hosting at the hotel either. So I hung out by the pool, and down the street at AmityAge Academy, an old restaurant that a Slovakian math tutor had turned into a Bitcoin education center and cafe.

That’s where I met Zussel Ramos, at the time AmityAge’s 25-year-old lead educator, next to a bookshelf stocked with Ludwig von Mises’s “Bureaucracy,” Ayn Rand’s “Capitalism” and Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life .” I bought a coffee — the barista let me pay with “fiat” paper money on a one-time basis — and then Ramos took me on a tour. On the walls downstairs hung a Bitcoin mining machine, a portrait of Guy Fawkes astride a bucking green stallion and a map of Roatán with colored squares of paper marking the dozens of businesses that now accept Bitcoin, largely thanks to Ramos’s door-to-door persistence.

Ramos told me she couldn’t wait to move to Próspera — probably to the Duna tower. Then she’d apply for physical residency, giving her the right to vote for ZEDE leadership — one vote for every square meter of land she owned, under the current rules. For now, very few people actually live full time in the ZEDE, which is a checkerboard of territory across both the island and the mainland. It started out with 58 acres in Roatán, but since a ZEDE’s territory doesn’t need to be contiguous, it has added 385 acres in La Ceiba on the mainland, followed by another 239 acres of Roatán’s Port Royal and then 322 acres of Pristine Bay.

Just how much land the Próspera ZEDE plans to absorb is the source of much of the conflict that now vexes the project. Early promotional images sparked outrage for depicting the north coast of the island dotted with skyscrapers, futuristic houses and yacht-filled ports, rather than the wooden shacks and jungle that exist there now. One image that forecast the growth of Próspera from a village to a town to a city made it look as if the project had “started engulfing the areas around it,” says Ricardo González, a legal consultant for Honduras Próspera Inc. “It was taken literally” by the people who lived in those areas, he says, but it shouldn’t have been. “Everything is voluntary, we cannot just pick up your land and say now it’s part of us.”

But it is also true that the ZEDE law allows the Honduran government to compel landowners to sell to a zone, so long as they are paid fair market value for the property. Brimen insists that Próspera would never take advantage of that provision, because it violates the sanctity of private-property rights, and that the company has self-imposed “the highest possible limitations on this in its charter.” Nevertheless, the provision’s existence set in motion a spectacular series of events as Próspera began incorporating land.

The Duna tower stands next to a fork in the road, with one path leading to the Próspera gate, manned by guards carrying guns and contracts, and the other winding down a dirt path to a small fishing village called Crawfish Rock. Roatán, thanks to its thriving tourism industry, generates more money than many parts of Honduras, but Crawfish Rock — home to a Black, English-speaking community (Roatán is a former British colony) — is an exception. Turquoise and peach houses sag and lean on stilts, their roofs patchworks of corrugated-metal scraps.

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, vice president of Crawfish Rock’s patronato , or community board, it was 2019 when the first Próspera representatives came to the community, informing them of plans to develop a nearby resort. “It’s quite normal for us to have this kind of restricted, gated community popping up,” Cárdenas said. The island is full of them. They also wanted to do community development, they told her, and offered small-business loans to Crawfish Rock residents. But then odd things started to happen, Cárdenas said.

Próspera stationed armed guards on the road. Then Brimen tried to form a new patronato that Cárdenas said was stacked with Próspera employees. (A Próspera representative disputed this.) In 2020, Cárdenas received a voice message from someone in the community that said, “This project is not a normal project.” So she and Luisa Connor, the president of the patronato, began to research Próspera. They learned about the ZEDE law and about the involuntary sale of land. “By no means did they explain to us” what a ZEDE was, Connor says. “They came as a normal resort they were going to build next to the community.” (A Próspera representative disputed this, saying the company held multiple town halls describing the project to residents.)

Distrust spread among members of the community, who felt they had been lied to about Próspera’s intentions. In September 2020, Brimen tried to address the conflict by organizing a meeting in Crawfish Rock. Connor wrote a letter asking him to postpone it, because Covid was spreading rapidly on the island and the hospitals there were full. Brimen, who says he was invited by village elders, held the meeting that evening anyway, accompanied by guards. He stood on a second-story porch reading into a microphone the parts of the ZEDE law pertaining to land expropriation. “That’s when all hell broke loose,” Cárdenas said. People rushed up the steps, some shouting that he should leave, others to let him speak; shoves were exchanged, and Brimen’s MacBook tumbled off the railing. He yelled at people to back up and stop violating his right to social distance. Trucks of police officers arrived.

Brimen later said that, before he was interrupted, he was trying to point out the ways the law restricts, rather than promotes, the forced sale of land. But a video of the encounter circulated throughout Honduran media, and the fear of expropriation became a galvanizing message used by anti-ZEDE groups on the mainland and the other Bay Islands. From that point on, the narrative changed from “ZEDEs are bad because they are violating constitutional rights,” González says, to the more forceful “ZEDEs are bad because they’re going to take your land.”

A national protest movement was born, and prominent politicians turned against the project. In 2021, Xiomara Castro, the wife of the ousted President Zelaya, made repealing the ZEDEs a central promise of her election campaign. The zones became associated with the corruption of Juan Orlando Hernández, the president at the time, whom many Hondurans now revile. Castro won with a clear majority. In 2022, Honduras’s Congress unanimously repealed the law and passed a constitutional reform that would abolish the three existing ZEDEs. “Never again will we carry the stereotype of the banana republic,” Castro declared to the U.N. General Assembly a few months later.

There was one problem, however: Congress, mired in competing legislative priorities, failed to ratify the reform. Furthermore, the original ZEDE law guaranteed the companies 50 years of legal stability — no matter what changes were made after a zone was founded. The net result is that Próspera is in a state of legal limbo.

Delgado seemed bewildered by the staunch opposition to Próspera. How had his dream to enrich Central America become a political piñata? “We’re not crooks,” he told me. “We’re just guys trying to get something good done.” He said he was inspired to help found Próspera after reading Machiavelli’s writings on the impossibility of reforming a system from within. “The idea is that if you go to a place where nothing, nobody has a stake, there’s no entrenched interests, you can make really deep reforms that won’t affect any of the players,” he said. Years of dysfunction and corruption would be replaced by radically simple governance. A free market and political stability would attract top innovators and investors from the West while empowering Latin America’s legions of microentrepreneurs — the guys on the side of the road selling oranges or “a chicken leg in a bag,” Delgado said — to grow real businesses.

Crawfish Rock, home to a Black, English-speaking community. Conflict with Próspera over the ZEDE law sparked a nationwide protest movement.

But in seeking to sidestep politics, Próspera instead ran straight into them. The endemic corruption in Honduras, the sort of thing Próspera was supposed to combat, was also what enabled its creation and has plagued its pursuit of legitimacy. For Hondurans, the prospect of American capitalists promising prosperity may instead resurrect fears of exploitation and dispossession. Despite Próspera’s fantasy of exit, it uses roads, hospitals and ports built by the municipal government, and it shares an economy and ecosystem with its neighbors in Crawfish Rock. The national government that granted its right to exist, meanwhile, may still take it away.

In 2022, the government began stripping Próspera of some of the special privileges it was granted under its predecessors. It halted the company’s tax-exempt customs service, allowing the zone to continue to import goods only if it paid the same duties as the rest of Honduras. Colindres said that the National Banking and Insurance Commission also pressured Honduran banks to shut down accounts of Próspera businesses and bar lenders from financing its projects. Duna Residences, for example, “was going to be financed by one of the biggest banks of Honduras,” Colindres said. But once President Castro came to power, the financing evaporated and the building was delayed. “The third tower would already be under construction if they hadn’t done that.”

At the end of 2022, Honduras Próspera Inc. and its affiliates filed an astronomical $10.775 billion lawsuit against the state in a World Bank tribunal called the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Próspera is thought to have a good chance of prevailing in part, critics say, because the court is biased toward corporations, which can bring suit against nation-states but cannot be sued by them.

A win for Próspera could demonstrate sufficient legal stability to attract investors and set the precedent for new cities around the world. If it loses, start-up city founders will need to look for new legal strategies. Colindres said that his mission now is to try to persuade the government, “whether this government or the next government,” to stop “harassing” the banks and let them finance Próspera projects. That could be the government of Juan Orlando Hernández’s wife, Ana García de Hernández, who would soon announce her candidacy for the 2025 presidential election.

With building delayed, the view from the Duna tower’s rooftop looked like little more than a construction zone — a patch of dirt littered with piles of two-by-fours and wooden pallets. There were as many sheds as finished buildings. Still, some think Próspera may already be too far along to fail: There is simply too much capital already invested, too many commitments made, to have them torn apart in Tegucigalpa. The government is making “emotional arguments more than anything else,” González told me. “If they had the legal right to do what they’re trying to accomplish, they’d have already done it.”

Read by Frankie Corzo

Narration produced by Tanya Pérez and Krish Seenivasan

Engineered by Anj Vancura

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The 10 Most Reputable Boat Transport Companies (With Costs)

Distinguished boat transport companies are those with a proven track record of success in terms of boat transport. They are licensed, insured, and have a team of experienced professionals who know how to handle boats of all sizes. Let's see which companies make the list of most reputable boat transport companies and how much they charge for different kinds and sizes of boats.

1. Flagship Boat Transport 2. Sevenstar Yacht Transport 3. Nationwide United Auto Transport 4. Mercury Auto Transport 5. Intercoastal Logistics 6. A1 Boat Transport 7. We Will Transport It 8. Intercoastal Shipment 9. Executive Auto Shippers 10. All-Day Auto Transport

Some of these companies offer boat shipping services for domestic and international shipping. Let's find out what specific boat transport services each company offers.

• Transporting a 50-foot yacht via All Day Auto Transport can cost around $10,000 to $12,000.
• Transporting a 40-50 ft yacht via A1 Boat Transport will only cost you around $2,500 to $3,000.
• Sevenstar has a good reputation when it comes to yacht transport, and their transport costs range from $20,000 to $120,000.
• Open and closed trailer, Lift-On/Lift-Off (Lo-Lo), Float-On/Float-Off (Fo-Fo), Roll-On/Roll-Off (Ro-Ro), flat rack, and container are some of the shipping services each company has in common.
• Some company also offers oversized boat transport, international and domestic shipping, and expedited shipping.

Top 10 Reputable Boat Transport Companies

Here are the top 10 reputable boat transport companies that you can trust:

1. Flagship boat transport is a reputable boat transport company

Flagship Boat Transport is a boat transport company that offers a range of services, including boat hauling, yacht transport, and boat storage. They have a fleet of specialized trucks and trailers that can accommodate boats of all sizes, and they offer both open and enclosed transport options. They are known for their attention to detail and commitment to customer satisfaction.

Estimated costs for transporting different boat types via Flagship

2. Sevenstar yacht transport is a leading company for yacht transportation

Sevenstar Yacht Transport specializes in the transportation of yachts, sailboats, and other watercraft via ocean and land transport. They offer a variety of services, including lift-on/lift-off (LOLO), float-on/float-off (FO/FO), and roll-on/roll-off (RORO) methods of transport. They also offer customized solutions to fit the specific needs of their clients.

Estimated costs for transporting different yachts via Sevenstar

Because yachts are typically larger and more luxurious than other boat types, their transport costs are typically higher.

3. Nationwide United Auto Transport is another excellent boat transport company

Nationwide United Auto Transport is a boat transport company that offers a range of services, including boat hauling, boat storage, and boat shipping. They have a large network of carriers and can transport boats of all sizes, from small pleasure boats to large yachts. They are also known for competitive pricing and excellent customer service.

Estimated costs for transporting different boat types via Nationwide Boat Transport

4. Mercury Auto Transport can handle boat shipping professionally

Mercury Auto Transport is a company that ships sedans, SUVs, classic cars, and pickup trucks nationwide, including in Hawaii and Alaska. It also ships boats and recreational vehicles (RVs) within the continental United States. You can choose between open or enclosed vehicle shipping.

For boat transport, they specialize in the transportation of boats and yachts. They offer both open and enclosed transport options, and they have a team of experienced drivers who can handle all types of boats, from small fishing boats to large luxury yachts.

Estimated costs for transporting different boat types via Mercury transport

5. Intercoastal Logistics offers excellent boat shipping services

Intercoastal Logistics is a highly reputable and reliable company that specializes in providing top-notch boat shipping services to clients across the globe. One of the key features that make Intercoastal Logistics stand out is its commitment to providing personalized services that are tailored to the unique needs of each client.

The company understands that every boat is different, and as such, they take the time to assess each boat and develop a customized shipping plan that ensures safe and secure transportation.

Estimated costs for transporting different boat types via Intercoastal Logistics

Want to know more about the cost of transporting a 40-foot sailboat via road or by crewing? Here's an article for you.

6. A1 Boat Transport is a reliable boat transport company

A1 Boat Transport is a company that specializes in the transportation of boats and other watercraft throughout the United States and overseas. They can even transport boats up to Australia. The company also offers a variety of services, including boat hauling, boat shipping, and boat transportation.

They use specialized equipment and trailers to ensure that each boat is transported safely and securely. They also offer door-to-door transport services, which means that the boat is picked up from its current location and delivered directly to its destination.

Estimated costs for transporting different boat types via A1 Boat Transport

7. We Will Transport It is a trusted boat transport company

This company is a transportation and logistics company based in the United States. They specialize in providing vehicle shipping, heavy equipment transport, and freight shipping services to customers across the country.

They work with a network of carriers and logistics professionals to ensure that every shipment is handled with care and delivered on time. Whether you need to transport a car, truck, boat, RV, or heavy equipment, We Will Transport It can help you get it where it needs to go.

Estimated costs for transporting different boat types via We Will Transport It

8. Intercoastal Shipment specializes in freight shipping services

Although based in London, this company provides freight shipping services to businesses and individuals across the United States. The company provides a wide range of shipping options, including full truckload, less-than-truckload, and intermodal transportation services.

They offer both open and enclosed transport options for vehicles, as well as flatbed, step-deck, and RGN trailers for heavy equipment. They also offer insurance coverage for all shipments, so customers can have peace of mind knowing that their valuable assets are protected during transport.

Estimated costs for transporting different boat types via Intercoastal Shipment

9. Executive Auto Shippers offer one of the best boat shipping services

Executive Auto Shippers is a vehicle transport company that specializes in the transportation of cars, trucks, and motorcycles. They also offer boat transport services for small boats and personal watercraft. They have a large network of carriers and can transport vehicles and boats of all sizes, from small cars to large yachts. Executive Auto Shippers is known for their professionalism and reliability.

Estimated costs for transporting different boat types via Executive Auto Shippers

If you're transporting a 40-foot powerboat, here's how much you can expect to pay for the overall transport costs.

10. All Day Auto Transport is a professional boat shipping company

All Day Auto Transport is a boat transport company that specializes in transporting boats and other watercraft across the United States. They offer both open and enclosed transport options, as well as expedited shipping for customers who need their boats transported quickly.

The company has a team of experienced drivers who are trained to handle boats of all sizes and types, and they use specialized equipment to ensure that each boat is transported safely and securely. They also offer insurance coverage for all boats during transport.

Estimated costs for transporting different boat types via All Day Auto Transport

Thank you for the list of shippers! It would be a good idea to remove or update pricing information in the article. I was so disappointed to find the prices are 2x-3x the amounts shown in the article for each of the six companies I called from this list (April 20240. Might be better to have no pricing information than to set expectations unrealistically low. Again, I appreciate having a list of shippers to work from.

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The Dockwalk Guide to Yacht Transport

Louisa Beckett is the former editor of Motor Boating, ShowBoats International, and Southern Boating magazines, and a longtime contributor to Dockwalk. Over her career, she has written about a wide variety of vessels ranging from Sea-Doos to superyachts, and has had many adventures on the water, including riding in a U.S. Coast Guard “rollover” boat in heavy surf off Cape Disappointment, Washington.

Even now, in the third year of the pandemic, we’re seeing headlines about global supply chain disruptions caused by worker shortages and other factors related to COVID-19. In particular, the maritime shipping industry has been affected, with long lines of cargo ships frequently sitting idle as they wait to be unloaded in port.

“It’s a very difficult marketplace at the moment. The freight rates are higher than they’ve been in decades. Congestion in ports is at an all-time high, all these things are affecting our ability to get ships where they need to be on time, and space on ships is at a massive premium,” says Simon Judson, CEO of global logistics firm Peters & May , which organizes passage for yachts on board a wide variety of commercial cargo ships.

• How COVID Has Affected Crew Hiring

Right from the start, the pandemic dramatically transformed the yacht transportation industry. In early 2020, the number of bookings by the usual clients, including owners and captains wanting to move their yachts to seasonal cruising grounds and sailing yacht owners and captains following the regatta circuit, fell off dramatically. At the same time, bookings increased from yacht owners who were unable to travel to their vessels and wanted to have them shipped home instead. Then, as COVID-related lockdowns and sheltering began to fuel the demand for new and brokerage boats, yacht manufacturers, dealers, and brokers around the world began to use yacht transport companies to ship boats to clients who couldn’t get to the vessels or send crew to pick them up. “I think COVID has changed everybody’s way of doing business,” says General Manager Laura Tempest of DYT , which owns and operates semi-submersible yacht-transport ships.

Port closures and travel restrictions also made it difficult for yacht transport companies to move their loadmasters into position around the world in order to supervise loading and unloading. In addition, “We have had a shortage of loadmasters at times when they came down with COVID,” said Uta Scarlata, who handles transatlantic and Caribbean sales for Sevenstar Yacht Transport , which operates its own fleet of 120 cargo vessels.

“Everything about the logistics of shipping a yacht from A to B is ten times harder,” Judson says, but he adds, “As we moved through the pandemic, we learned a little bit about how to adapt. Today we are using what we’ve learned to be better placed. That means making sure we’ve got the right people in the right places a lot further in advance [and] thinking about relocating our cradling and lifting equipment and everything we need to load the boats a lot further in advance.”

While internal logistics such as these typically are handled by a yacht transportation company behind the scenes without affecting its clients, industry experts agree that this year, yacht captains are going to have to act earlier than usual in order to secure transportation for their yachts.

If you do need to ship a yacht overseas, there are two basic means of transport: on the deck of a commercial ship or inside a semi-submersible vessel.

“It’s kind of going back to old days when if you didn’t book well in advance, you are not going to have a space…. People are done [with sheltering]. They are going to start using their yachts whether it be in the Med or in the Caribbean,” says Tempest. “We are seeing all of our repeat customers coming back, and the ones we met in the last year and a half that we didn’t know before are coming back.”

“Every ship that we’ve put on from the middle of last year has been fully booked probably a month before it comes to port. That was never the case before. We would always have some space a week before,” says Judson, who also predicts that demand for yacht transportation will increase in 2022 as owners return to pre-pandemic levels of cruising and racing. “If there’s a reason to book early, it would be to avoid disappointment in the fact that there may not be space,” he says. “To be safe, you should be thinking at least two months out.”

Cargo Ship vs. Semi-Submersible

There are a variety of reasons why an owner or captain would want to arrange to have a yacht transported from one location to another. It might be to change cruising grounds with the seasons, or to take the yacht to an event. Some yachts are able to make the voyage on their own bottom, but others must be shipped because they may be too small or have an insufficient fuel capacity to make the trip, their owner wants to avoid wear and tear on the vessel, or the yacht is booked for a charter in the new destination and the timing is just too tight.

Booking space on a cargo ship gives you the advantage of being able to transport a yacht pretty much anywhere around the globe where that vessel is scheduled to deliver freight.

If you do need to ship a yacht overseas, there are two basic means of transport: on the deck of a commercial ship or inside a semi-submersible vessel. Which method to pick depends on a variety of considerations, including the location where you want to ship the yacht, the flexibility of your schedule, whether or not you want to use the transit time to get work done on board, and the price.

In the most common scenario, the yacht is lifted by crane onto a commercial ship and secured in a custom-built cradle on its deck, where it shares space with other cargo for the duration of the passage. Since cargo ships typically make multiple stops and can experience delays in loading and unloading cargo, it’s important to have a flexible schedule. “Shipping is not an exact science. You can’t expect to ship on a certain day and unload on a certain day. You have to give yourself flexibility,” Judson says.

On the other hand, booking space on a cargo ship gives you the advantage of being able to transport a yacht pretty much anywhere around the globe where that vessel is scheduled to deliver freight.

The other yacht-transport method, pioneered by Dockwise Yacht Transport (now DYT) in the 1980s, is “float on/float off.” DYT’s semi-submersible ships are partially submerged in the water; the yacht floats into it and is secured in a cradle on the deck by divers. Then, the water is drained from the hold. At the end of the voyage, the process is reversed and the yacht floats out.

“When the world woke up with a bang, the amount of consumer goods to be shipped outweighed the space available to ship them. That will take some time to stabilize,” he says.

DYT offers a limited number of routes designed to match typical yacht-shipping patterns, such as from the Mediterranean to Fort Lauderdale and the Caribbean and back. “What I think sets us apart from anyone else is that we have a set schedule — there is no deviation; there is no change. That is why charter yachts depend on us,” Tempest says.

When clients want to ship their yachts off the beaten path, DYT will refer them to its sister company, Sevenstar Yacht Transport, for bookings on board its cargo ships.

DYT recently launched a third ship, Yacht Servant , which was built in China and is scheduled to start transporting yachts in May. For a short window in 2022, DYT will have three semi-submersible vessels in operation, which should help to meet the rising demand for yacht transportation.

Riding Along

Before the pandemic, captains typically could send one or two crewmembers along with the yacht during either type of transportation, enabling them to use the passage as a mini yard period to get a variety of jobs done on board.

While most cargo ships do not permit riders to sleep in their yachts while in transit, before the pandemic, they often would assign them cabins in the ship and let them eat in the mess hall and recreate with the ship’s crew. However, when COVID-19 hit, most ship operators suspended this courtesy in order to reduce the risk of the disease spreading on board, which could lead to serious delays if the ship was forced to quarantine before unloading in a port.

“When things calm down, we will accept riders again,” Scarlata says. On DYT, “We still allow riders as it’s such a crucial part of the service that we offer,” Tempest says. In fact, the semi-submersible ships provide power to the yachts so that riders can sleep and work on board. At the height of the pandemic, however, the company limited the riders’ interaction with the ship’s crew. “They needed to provision their yacht for the duration of the voyage. They had to stay in the yacht and on the deck of the ship; they could not go into the ship’s superstructure.”

• 5 Things You Need to Know About Health Insurance During the Pandemic

One thing that has not changed in the yacht transportation industry is the need for owners and captains to ensure their vessel is properly insured for the passage. “Some people get caught out on this. They think their hull and machinery insurance will automatically cover them. They need to take out a separate marine cargo insurance policy,” Judson says.

Both Sevenstar and DYT include an all-risk insurance policy in the rate they quote for yacht transport. “Usually, one of the questions we get is, ‘Can we leave it out?’ It’s not optional,” Tempest says. “It covers everyone on board and eliminates the need for multiple underwriters.”

Price Increases

Captains booking transport for their yachts today are finding that insurance rates have gone up. “The whole insurance market has hardened over the last couple of years,” Judson says.

As for shipping, no matter what method you choose, you are bound to see a COVID-related price increase. “DYT rates have increased over the past six months. Many factors have attributed to this but certainly a large portion is a consequence of the global pandemic,” Tempest says.

“In the last ten years, freight rates have been very low…. Now the market has flipped a little bit,” Judson says. While there are a number of reasons behind this, the main one is the reduced amount of cargo space currently available.

As for shipping, no matter what method you choose, you are bound to see a COVID-related price increase. 

In early 2022, Judson reported that his company had seen rates for shipping yachts between the U.S. and the Caribbean go up 15 to 20 percent; transatlantic shipping rates had increased a 60 to 80 percent, and rates to and from the Far East had gone up 200 to as high as 300 percent. “Coming out of Asia, every ship is full to the gunwales and if you want some space, you have to pay through the nose for it,” he says.

“There are not as many people who are prepared to pay the increased freight rates we are seeing at the moment. There are a lot of people who are holding back…,” Judson continues. “Not everyone who ships a yacht is a multi-millionaire. We’ve got lots of clients who are dealers, brokers, and manufacturers who are moving their boats where they need to be to be sold as new boats…. I think the people and companies who are shipping their boats now are the ones who have more of a commercial need.”

This feature originally ran in the April 2022 issue of Dockwalk.

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Float-on, Float-off, how does it work? - DYT Yacht Transport

Float-on, Float-off, how does it work?

Our semi-submersibles are exciting vessels. With a unique float-on/float-off loading method, they have an average transatlantic delivery time of 15 days while carrying yachts up to 165m (541ft), loaded in impressive numbers on the carrier’s dock. The vessel is submerged in a floating marina that allows for easy loading. The yacht carrier starts her dock operation when all yachts are moored in position.

The yachts are secured once the deck is dry and ready for a safe crossing. During yacht transportation, the yachts are safely stowed between the yacht carriers’ spray covers, protecting them from the elements.

When you contact DYT to book your yacht transport, our DYT team works together to provide a service that suits your needs. When the planned transport date arrives, you will have received comprehensive details about what you can expect from us and what we require from you.

Stow plans showing the on-deck position of each yacht are arranged well in advance. This allows the deck of our ship to be prepared with the required cradles, fixtures, and fittings before arrival at the designated harbor.

Upon arrival, the vessel is prepared for semi-submersion. Ballast tanks are flooded, so we are submerging the ship to the required depth in preparation for your yacht’s FLO/FLO loading. The specific amount of necessary ballast is carefully calculated based on the maximum yacht draft and cradle height, ensuring safe FLO/FLO loading of all yachts.

Once loading is complete, yachts will be instructed to switch off all engines and generators. The vessel’s stern door is closed before our DYT divers can safely enter the water and begin their checks. Divers check all cradles are ready to receive their respective yachts. Divers remain in the water as de-ballasting begins, ensuring cradles stay positioned as each yacht descends and is secured. Once the vessel deck is dry, our divers and loadmaster will check all cradles and dockings alongside crew and shore teams. These final safety checks are an essential part of the loading process and teamwork at DYT.

Upon arrival at the next destination, the ship is again submerged to allow our DYT loadmaster to oversee and direct the unloading of all yachts using the FLO/FLO system.

And off you go, broadening your horizons.

DYT Yacht Transport Semi-Submersible

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From moving a power boat across the state to hauling a fleet of yachts to a boat show across country, Joule Yacht Transport has the equipment, skill and experience to get the job done efficiently and dependably.

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Joule Yacht Transport has been moving power boats and sailboats of all sizes coast to coast for over 70 years. We serve the 48 contiguous United States and Canada with a privately owned fleet of trucks and trailers and a network of Owner Operators that are the experts in overland boat hauling.

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Whether you’re a Boat Owner, Dealer, Manufacturer or Boat Show Promoter, Joule Yacht Transport can move, haul, transport or truck your boat overland anywhere in the continental United States and Canada. 

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There is no substitute for experience when hauling an oversize load like a yacht. Some of our drivers have over 35 years of experience. We understand your boat or yacht is more than an investment to you. Our drivers are boat lovers, too, so they take the same care and caution when transporting your boat as you would.

Joule Yacht Transport is a preferred carrier by many boat manufacturers and the dedicated carrier for Brunswick Boats, maker of Boston Whaler, Sea Ray Boats and Cabo Yachts to name a few. The confidence of these manufacturers is earned over many years of boat hauling and through hundreds of successful marine vessel moves.

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All Joule Yacht Transport boat hauling jobs are completely insured for $2,000,000. This coverage assures that the overland shipping of your boat or yacht will be protected. Our safety record and long list of satisfied boat transport clients speaks volumes about the care we take in moving your investment. Contact Joule Yacht Transport to get our insurance carrier information.

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We can transport any year, make, model, shape or size boat.

At FMT, our highly-trained team is adept at using various yacht transport shipping methods. 

Our team of experienced marine industry professionals is dedicated to providing the best service at the best price.

We offer competitive boat transport costs by using our extensive contacts within the yacht shipping industry.

We work hand-in-hand with boat/yacht manufacturers, brokers, captains and private yacht owners to provide best custom designed yacht transport plan to fit any scenario or requirements.

Freight Calculator

FREIGHT CALCULATOR is only a quick price reference tool – click on the GET A QUOTE form at top of the page to get an official quote

In order to transport your boat safely, you have to measure Heigh, Beam (Width), Length, bow pulpits, swim platforms, outboard motor brackets, outboard motors.

Any loose items down below may damage your boat or be damaged, Remove any loose items on deck. Stow and secure all loose gear.  Remove anchors from the deck. Tape your hatches closed for transit.

Transport prices are generally based on the miles from origin to destination and the size and weight of the boat being transported. 

We are located in the US but we provide different routes and locations to the Caribbean, and routes to various locations in the Mediterranean.

TESTIMONIALS

Satisfied customer; miami, fl, customer since 2015, customer since 2016, as seen on....

Discover why our yacht transport services have garnered attention from leading publications and industry experts. We take pride in being recognized for our commitment to excellence, reliability, and unparalleled service. Explore the articles below to learn more about how FMT Yacht Transport is making waves in the yacht transport industry.

Registered Members of

At FMT Yacht Transport, we take great pride in being a trusted and reliable yacht transport company, dedicated to serving our valued clients with utmost professionalism and care. We are delighted Members of the most important yacht Brokers Associations in the industry.

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305-304-6148 20533 Biscayne Blvd Suite 400 MIAMI, FL 33180 VIEW LOCATION IN MAP

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Float-on / float-off (flo-flo) yacht transport.

Legend Yacht Transport is always looking for better ways to help you ship your precious cargo. Our f loat-on / float-off transport services are another way to ensure your yacht shipment experience will be secure and hassle-free. As the leaders in high-end yacht transportation, our reputation and customer service will indeed surpass your expectations.

We count on a global network of agents and partners to arrange all the logistics of transporting your yacht from virtually any port in the world. Whether you are moving your boat from New York to Florida or Europe, our team is here to help.

Our f loat-on / float-off yacht transport services include everything you need to help coordinate your yacht transport.

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Port-to-Port Yacht Transport Services

Our team is wholly dedicated to providing first-class accommodations throughout the shipping process, guarantees a worry-free experience, and ensures your highest satisfaction with our comprehensive transportation process.

White Glove Attention

Our door-to-door services allow you to get your yacht transported at the convenience of your schedule. Our team will take care of every logistics-related detail to ensure your shipping stays within your timeline and expectations.

Customs & VAT Assistance

Our team of experts handle all the paperwork, customs clearance, and other logistics related to your yacht transportation. This ensures you can complete the shipping process efficiently and promptly.

Float On/Float Off Transport

At Legend Yacht Transport, we take the transportation of your yacht personally – that’s why we provide the best and most innovative services for your transportation needs.

Float-on / float-off transportation services make loading your vessel easy onto our yacht carriers. We use heavy transport vessels modified to serve luxury yachts. These are semi-submersible carriers that can safely accommodate boats during transport.

After submerging our transport vessels to create a floating marina, your yacht is quickly loaded into our carriers. Once all boats are positioned and secured, the yacht carrier starts its journey. Throughout your yacht’s travel, this innovative system ensures they stay secure and protected from the elements until your yacht arrives safely at its new destination.

Luxury Yacht Transport Solutions Tailored to You

If you’re searching for a yacht float-on/float-off transport service, it’s important to ensure that the company has a reputation for delivering your yacht safely and on time.

A float-on/float-off shipment method is a great way to move your boat from one destination to another while protecting it from the elements. As the leading international yacht transport company, Legend Yacht Transport provides first-class service every step of the way.

Our seasoned team is dedicated to providing reliable, safe, affordable international transportation for all charters.

If you need complete logistics services or assistance with customs, you can trust our team to deliver the highest quality service while keeping your budget, timeline, and needs in mind. No matter where you are and where you’re going, our team is here to help you make it happen.

We Are Legend

Discover why we’ve earned our remarkable reputation over the years. 

Yachts Shipped

Nautical miles, countries covered, 5 star reviews, client reviews & testimonials.

But don’t just take our word for it!

Our satisfied customers speak for themselves. We have numerous customer testimonials and case studies demonstrating our success in providing top-quality yacht transport services for US sailings. With Legend Yacht Transport, customers can rest assured that their yacht or boat will be in good hands and arrive at its destination safely and on time.

Having worked with Dave and his team for years, I would not use anyone else. They offer a service that is second to none.

Captain Simon Cox

They were able to get our boat to the Bahamas almost immediately. Just in time for a last minute family trip. Great experience.

Kate Rayner

The team at Legend Yacht Transport are very responsive and experienced. They made the process so easy.

Luic Guzmán

I used Legend to transport a client's yacht to a boat show on a tight timeline. They delivered and were so nice. Five stars.

Annabelle Cristo

Start your yacht transport now.

Discover why Legend Yacht Transport is one of the best yacht shipping and boat transport companies in the industry. Get a free, instant quote today.

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Check out Moscow’s NEW electric river trams (PHOTOS)

Water transportation has become another sector for the eco-friendly improvements the Moscow government is implementing. And it means business. On July 15, 2021, on the dock of Moscow’s ‘Zaryadye’ park, mayor Sergey Sobyanin was shown the first model of the upcoming river cruise boat.

The model of the electrical boat with panoramic windows measures 22 meters in length. The river tram - as Muscovites call them - has a passenger capacity of 42, including two disabled seats. The trams will also get cutting edge info panels, USB docking stations, Wi-Fi, spaces for scooters and bicycles, as well as chairs and desks for working on the go. The boats will be available all year round, according to ‘Mosgortrans’, the regional transport agency. 

Passengers will be able to pay with their ‘Troika’ public transport card, credit cards or bank cards. 

The main clientele targeted are people living in Moscow’s river districts - the upcoming trams will shorten their travel time in comparison to buses and other transportation by five times, Mosgortrans stated. 

As the river trams are being rolled out, Moscow docks will also see mini-stations, some of which will also be outfitted with charging docks for speed-charging the boats.  

Moscow is set to announce the start of the tender for construction and supply in September 2021. The first trams are scheduled to launch in June 2022 on two routes - from Kievskaya Station, through Moscow City, into Fili; and from ZIL to Pechatniki. 

“Two full-scale routes will be created in 2022-2023, serviced by 20 river trams and a number of river stations. We’ll continue to develop them further if they prove to be popular with the citizens,” the Moscow mayor said .

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