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13 May 2026
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From afar, buying a large yacht looks straightforward. You have money, and you wish to exchange it for a large, shiny boat. You browse websites, attend some yacht shows, view some vessels, shake hands and sign an agreement – et voilà – it’s yours. Except, of course, it isn’t that straightforward. Beneath the perfect teak decks is a matrix of interconnected systems, built and maintained in accordance with specifications and regulations, and run by a community of skilled seafarers.
minutes
5
Reading time
13 May 2026
Last revised
From afar, buying a large yacht looks straightforward. You have money, and you wish to exchange it for a large, shiny boat. You browse websites, attend some yacht shows, view some vessels, shake hands and sign an agreement – et voilà – it’s yours. Except, of course, it isn’t that straightforward. Beneath the perfect teak decks is a matrix of interconnected systems, built and maintained in accordance with specifications and regulations, and run by a community of skilled seafarers.
Superyacht purchases demand specialised expertise beyond general business or negotiation experience.
Epistemic trespassing causes confident decisions despite lacking essential yacht-specific knowledge or skills.
Deferred maintenance, compliance, and operational realities often escape inexperienced yacht purchasers’ understanding.
The Dunning–Kruger effect encourages misplaced confidence while concealing critical gaps in expertise.
Successful owners recognise complexity and assemble strong multidisciplinary advisory and operational teams.
Thorough due diligence, realistic budgeting, and scepticism reduce costly superyacht purchasing mistakes.
The Dunning–Kruger effect encourages misplaced confidence while concealing critical gaps in expertise.
Successful owners recognise complexity and assemble strong multidisciplinary advisory and operational teams.
Thorough due diligence, realistic budgeting, and scepticism reduce costly superyacht purchasing mistakes.
Superyacht purchases demand specialised expertise beyond general business or negotiation experience.
Epistemic trespassing causes confident decisions despite lacking essential yacht-specific knowledge or skills.
Deferred maintenance, compliance, and operational realities often escape inexperienced yacht purchasers’ understanding.
WHAT'S TRESPASSING?
In his eponymous 2019 paper, Nathan Ballantyne, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University, defines what he calls ‘epistemic trespassing’. This is when someone who is an expert in one field trespasses into another – in which he or she lacks the knowledge and/or skills needed for good judgment, and yet confidently makes decisions anyway – leading to suboptimal outcomes.
In other words: just because you are brilliant at making money, you’ll still need help when buying. And that, argues the professor, is exactly as it should be.
Epistemology is just the term given to that branch of philosophy devoted to the study of knowledge: its nature, sources, justification, and limits. Epistemic expertise requires both sufficient knowledge and the skills required to use that knowledge properly. Being an ‘expert’ here doesn’t mean omniscience: experts can disagree with each other while still meeting the thresholds of knowledge and skill.
FORMS OF TRESPASSING
Specifically, trespassing takes one of the following forms:
Having the skills but lacking knowledge. For example, you’re excellent at negotiations, but lack certain technical facts – such as the realities of deferred maintenance.
Having knowledge but lacking the skills. For example, you’ll be shown the stability booklet but you haven’t got a clue what Hydrostatic Particulars are.
Lacking both knowledge and skills. For example, you don’t know what you don’t know about class compliance or charter restrictions.
Most trespasses occur due to the hybrid nature of the subject matter. So while you’ll be familiar with asset procurement, superyachts are a very different proposition to, say, real estate or aircraft. Similarly, your businesses may employ vast numbers of workers, but their rights and expectations will differ significantly from those of seafarers.
The Dunning–Kruger effect also comes into play. This is the academic label applied to situations where people who lack knowledge are also oblivious to their inexperience, leaving them unreasonably confident in their judgment. It’s a ‘double curse’ of inability, plus an inability to detect that inability. Trespassers may have just enough knowledge to feel confident, but not enough to avoid error.
NOT ALWAYS OBVIOUS
Buy why isn’t trespassing obvious to the trespasser? Ballantyne has identified three main defences, which, in the context of a superyacht purchase, are as follows:
You’re trespassing in a field whose experts’ opinions do not affect your conclusions. You might think that surveyors are pessimists, or that your crew can surely put things right later. You could be right. You could be wrong. We’ll see.
You’re trespassing, but you think that you already have all the knowledge you need. You’ve seen from your own inspection that everything looks fine, so it probably is. But that’s not knowledge: it’s vibes.
You’re trespassing, but you consider your existing skills to be sufficiently transferable and give you all the expertise you need. You’ll treat the purchase as just another deal to be completed, without sufficient though to the long term.
Superyacht ownership is not simple. It is a sustained exercise in managing complexity across multiple domains simultaneously - technical, legal, regulatory, financial, operational, and interpersonal. The people who do it well are not the people who understand all of it themselves. They are the people who understand that they don't, and who surround themselves accordingly.
PRACTICAL DOS AND DON'TS
So now we know that trespassing is a recognised behavioural pattern, what are the resulting dos and don’ts when buying a superyacht? Here’s ten of each:
Do:
Accept that you’re an expert in many things – but not everything
Put together a team, covering all aspects of the purchase, not just the technical, including legal and tax - in all relevant jurisdictions
Model a five-year plan of true likely operating costs and any charter income
Discuss the vessel and your itineraries with insurers as soon as possible
Start engaging with candidate shoreside technical managers if required
Obtain full references from candidate captains and crewmembers
Get to the bottom of what any recent ‘refit’ did or did not entail
Look out for obsolete equipment with poor support
Treat sea trials as screening rather than proof
Seek second opinions if need be
Don’t:
Accept a non-standard sale and purchase agreement: the industry standard contracts aren’t ideal but the parties’ positions are broadly known and understood
Allow ‘private use’ as an excuse for thin paperwork and a lack of certification and records
Skip any due diligence for the sake of beating a competing purchaser
Rely on charter projections without discussing with charter brokers first
Engage technical managers on a lowest-bid basis
Rely solely on the reputation of the builder
Treat any test or trial as conclusive
Think that your crew will be able to fix every defect picked up in the survey
Agree to any refit work without a works scope and fixed payment milestones
Dismiss bureaucratic stages and documents as mere paperwork
Nathan Ballantyne's paper Epistemic Trespassing was published in the renowned academic journal Mind in 2019.
Thank you to all our Members who contributed to this article. Unless otherwise stated, this article broadly describes, by way of illustration, the situation in the United Kingdom waters in respect of United Kingdom-registered vessels. This piece does not provide or replace legal advice.
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