Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Issue #46 – Tuesday, March 12, 2019Posted by Denny Hatch
A Billion Dollar Website Waiting to Be Discovered! SERENE. Length: 439.30 Ft.
Owner: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman
A number of years ago Peggy and I sailed into the harbor at Valletta, Malta on a Viking ocean cruise ship. Docked nearby was the eye-popping yacht above.
After visually drinking her in, I ducked down to our cabin to go online and see who she was. I discovered:
• SERENE was owned by Russian vodka (Stolichnaya) oligarch Yuri Schefler.
• She is the 15th largest private yacht in the world with two helipads, three swimming pools and a crew of 52 looking after the ship and its maximum of 24 sleepover guests.
• SERENE was chartered by the Bill Gates family for a cruise off Sardinia. The tab: $3.5 million a week (plus expenses).
• Several years later—in mid-2015—SERENE was sold for $438 million to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (the notorious MBS), alleged murderer of Jamal Khashoggi, columnist for The Washington Post.
More on SERENE:
In Our Cruise Ship Cabin, I Found www.marinetraffic.com—Everything Needed to Become Billion-dollar Website! This extraordinary website tracks 550,000 ships worldwide in real time—freighters, tankers, cruise ships, tugs, river boats, ferries, private yachts.
A boat of any size—from 15 feet to over 1,000 feet with a transponder sending a signal up to the Automatic Identity System (AIS) satellites—shows up on the MarineTraffic.com map of the world. Among the smallest and largest vessels tracked by the amazing MarineTraffic.com website:
Right now I’m on my iMac in Philadelphia, Monday, March 4, 2019 at 08:30 hours. Below is Malta on the MarineTraffic website: Every dot represents a ship.
• Green Dots: Cargo/Container Ships
• Red Dots: Tankers (Oil and Chemicals)
• Dark Blue Dots: Passenger Ships (Cruise Ships, Ferries, etc.)
• Light Blue Dots: Tugs, Military Vessels
• Lavender Dots: Private Boats and Yachts
• Muddy Orange Dots: Fishing Boats
The big cluster of dots just to the right of “Malta." are ships in Valletta harbor and the Malta Yacht Marina. Enlarge the map and it reveals around 100 individual ships and boats of all sizes.
Pass your computer cursor over any dot and basic information appears.
In the Malta map above, SEE GREEN SHIP OUTLINE AT LEFT—MSC HAMBURG, Panama registry, speed 20.2 knots, Destination ESBCN—ES (Spain) BCN (Barcelona).
Double click on MSC HAMBURG green ship outline above left and here’s what pops up.
Double click on Vessel Details (green box above) and you hit the info jackpot—basic data plus specs.
Click on the blue bar at bottom right ("Ship Photos 55")—and you’ll discover 55 gorgeous photographs of MSC HAMBURG in ports all over the world!
This trove of data (and photographs) are available with a few clicks on your desktop, iPad or Smartphone—24/7 for 550,000 vessels anywhere on the planet!
Let’s say you have friends or family at sea or on a river; simply enter the name of the vessel they’re on and it will pop up on the map, so you can see precisely where they are!
This is dazzling technology!
While there are modest charges for advanced professional information, the basic service is Free!
Tiny Company, Giant Website • Exmile Solutions Limited, dba MarineTraffic.com
• Been collecting data since 2009.
• Incorporated 2012.
• 3,500+ AIS (Automatic Identification System). Stations in 140+ countries run by volunteers.
• Tracks 550,000 ships of all sizes.
• 6+ million monthly unique visitors.
• 1.1million registered users.
• 2+ million ship photographs.
• All photos automatically © copyright in photographer’s name.
Latest Financials—Year Ended Dec 2017
• Total Assets £2.83m
+£680.81k (+31.63%)
vs previous year
• Total Liabilities £-2.12m
-£283.05k (-15.4%)
vs previous year
• Net Assets £712.82k
+£397.76k (+126.25%)
vs previous year
• Cash in Bank £1.62m
+£495.36k (+44.12%)
vs previous year
• Employees Unreported
• Turnover Unreported
• Debt Ratio (%) 74.84%
-10.52 (-12.32%)
vs previous year
If the numbers above (and I have checked several sources) are accurate, next to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WeChat, Instagram et al., MarineTraffic is huge web service and a financial pipsqueak.
Why Do I Give a Hoot About MarineTrafic.com?
Fast Forward Three Years. Peggy and I downsized to a
2 BR apt on the 30th floor overlooking the Delaware River
I am now hooked on ships—giant cargo vessels, tankers, yachts, sailboats, tugs—pretty much anything that floats and carries people.
Okay, I confess.
I bought a Nikon camera and am one of MarineTraffic.com’s 29,000+ avid volunteer ship photographers worldwide.
The portrait of STOLT KIRI above was taken from my living room window. The gray warship in the background is the 888-foot WWII battleship/floating museum USS NEW JERSEY, the most decorated ship in the history of the US Navy. At left is a section of I.M. Pei’s iconic “brutalist design." Society Hill South Tower completed in 1964. The two tan smokestacks at bottom left are on OLYMPIA (launched 1892). She is the oldest battleship afloat in the world—famous as Commodore George Dewey's flagship in the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War in 1898. I have around 500 photos on the MarineTraffic.com Website. (It contains 2+ million ship images from all over the world.)
When we go on cruises, fellow passengers take photos of friends, family, historic sights and sites. I take boat pictures. The Glory of the Great Ships
Often, I go down to the Delaware to get close to these aristocrats of oceans and rivers. Here’s INDUSTRIAL SONG after passing under the Ben Franklin Bridge. Many of the ships I photograph are giant rust buckets. Yet they radiate majesty—the largest moving objects on the planet that account for 90% of world trade amounting to $4 trillion annually.
These breathtaking ladies (all ships are “she.") get beaten up in rough seas in all weather. Yet they soldier on. On arrival in port, the crews—many of them Eastern Europeans and Asians who speak no English—are forbidden to leave the ship for fear they might become illegal aliens. Many speak no English. They live a lonely, isolated existence à la Henry David Thoreau on Walden Pond.
Of all my photos, here’s one of my favorites:
In good weather I spend $7 for a ride this little guy and take ship pictures from her deck.
In short, I’m in love with vessels great and small that that traverse the seas and the waterways that make up 71% of the earth’s surface.
My opinion: MarineTraffic.com could become a billion-dollar website—the digital epicenter of the multi-trillion-dollar behemoth that is the world Maritime Community:
• 550,000 vessels worldwide. Every one of them should have its own website.
• 1.6 million professional seafarers on merchant ships.
• 250,000 cruise industry crew members.
• 28 million annual ocean and river cruise passengers.
• 650,000 Americans in the US Maritime Industry.
• 13 million registered boat owners in the U.S.
• Millions more boat owners all around the globe.
• Countless sailors in the world’s navies, port and warehouse workers, shipping companies executives, et al.
• MarineTraffic.com could become the first place to click on for anybody interested in the trillion-dollar universe of ships, boats and yachts: buying, selling and servicing them, chartering them, looking for jobs on them and, of course, traveling on them.
So, how does a lone-wolf geezer
with a dynamite concept get in the door?
I tried and failed.
As MarineTraffic.com photographer, I would love to meet some of my fellow camera fiends. I’d like to watch them work, learn from them, swap yarns, compare cameras, hoist a few with them and join them for some exotic travels and cuisine.
So I dreamed up a little side business to prime MarineTraffic.com's diversification pump:
Dear Denny Hatch,
As an official MarineTraffic.com ship photographer, you should know how proud and grateful I am for your contributions.
As well as creating an historic legacy, the ship photography project has given a dramatic new dynamism to MarineTraffic.com.
I am anxious for all ship photographers to have a home base at MarineTraffic.com where you can showcase your unique artistry.
With that in mind, I am launching the exclusive International Society of World Ship Photographers and am pleased to invite you to become a Founding Member.
Annual dues: $20. (As a Founding Member, your dues will never be increased.)Benefits of Membership
• Your own email address at MarineTraffic.com.
—I have taken the liberty of assigning you the address:
With your acceptance below, this will be activated, and you will be “open for business.."
• FREE Web Page on the MarineTraffic.com Website
—A Website that is uniquely YOURS!
—Your photographs showcased in format you choose.
—Show non-ship photos you are most proud of.
—Describe professional philosophy goals.
—Your equipment and how you work.
—Share stories about your experiences and challenges.
—Private invitations to tour ships docked in your area.
—Send and receive email.
—Your privacy guaranteed.
• Weekly eNewsletter
—News, How-to features, 10 Best photos of week
• Ship Photographers Idea Exchange (SPIX)
—Ask questions, contribute answers, start discussions.• Photographic expeditions to harbors and rivers all over the world with private tours of port facilities, cargo ships, cruise ships, tugs and yachts.
Again, my thanks for your wonderful work.
I look very forward to welcoming you into the MarineTraffic.com family.
Sincerely,
Click Here to activate your Founding Membership in
The International Society of World Ship Photographers
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The arithmetic: if 25% of their 29,000 ship photographers join, that’s 7,250 members x $20 = $145,000 revenue. Half the photographers would generate $290,000 revenue. Not chopped liver. Worth a cheap-o email to their own list? Sure.
I sent the proposition to MarineTraffic.com three times—by snail mail and email—to the address in London.
Never heard back. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Bupkis.
Here are others that do roughly the same thing.
With the exception of Fleetmon.com in Germany, these folks are all in the boonies, probably techie geeks who have no idea how to leverage their genius and make so much money they could charter SERENE with 22 of their family and friends for a month every summer.
Maybe one of these companies has an ambitious and energetic associate with knowledge, people skills and marketing savvy who could honcho this idea and perform a huge service for the trillion-dollar b2b, b2c and c2c maritime communities.
Me? At age 83, time is not on my side. Besides, I've got other fish to fry. In May we’re on a Viking River Cruise from Budapest to Bucharest. In November we’re set with Road Scholar for yacht trip in Croatia. This cranky little blog will go dark for those weeks.
P.S. I won’t forget my camera.###
Word count: 1764
At age 15, Denny Hatch—as a lowly apprentice—wrote his first news release for a Connecticut summer theater. To his astonishment it ran verbatim in The Middletown Press. He was instantly hooked on writing. After a two-year stint in the U.S. Army (1958-60), Denny had nine jobs in his first 12 years in business. He was fired from five of them and went on to save two businesses and start three others. One of his businesses—WHO’S MAILING WHAT! newsletter and archive service founded in 1984—revolutionized the science of how to measure the success of competitors’ direct mail. In the past 55 years he has been a book club director, magazine publisher, advertising copywriter/designer, editor, journalist and marketing consultant. He is the author of four published novels and seven books on business and marketing.
CONTACT
Denny Hatch
The St. James
200 West Washington Square, #3007
Philadelphia, PA 19106
215-644-9526 (Rings on my desk)
dennyhatch@yahoo.com
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