Heather Hauswirth used to work with me at a New York newspaper. I hadn’t seen her in a few years. But she turned up at the Palm Beach Yacht Club the other night. Hauswirth is now the director of sales and marketing for Triton Submarines. “We’re building dreams,” she told me.
Triton recently acquired Pagoo, the submarine the late Paul Allen kept on his 414 ft. yacht, Octopus. The 40 ft. long, 40 ton sub is rumored to have cost $30 million to build. “It looks like a private jet,” she said. Unlike the old windowless submarines that could cause claustrophobia, the new ones have plenty of glass. “You feel like you can reach out and touch the whale,” said Hauswirth.
The dinner was hosted by Kenny Baboun, the savvy and successful developer of ALBA, a 22-story condo going up (just above the fabled Rybovich Yacht Yard) with 55 units starting at around $3 million. Baboun favors more intimate properties where the owners share common values, as well as hallways.
Among the other guests were Adil Avunduk, of the ever-expanding Sant Ambroeus restaurant group, Jane Scher, mother of most happy divorcee Libbie Mugrabi, and the stunning Shari Anne Liu with her financier husband, Fred Fellows.
On the following evening, to add further perspective from the water, Doug Gray of Barton & Gray invited me onboard their new Daychaser yacht (a 48′ mahogany trimmed and seaworthy gem) for a cruise up to the ALBA development site. It’s a winning location, with ten boat slips already in place for ALBA‘s more nautically inclined owners. Capt’n Doug keenly quipped: “our yachts can pick up Barton & Gray members right at their doorsteps”. And not one wet foot.
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