Field Note: Following the Yachts
When the United States rolled out sanctions on Russian oligarchs, I ended up on a task force in New York with an assignment I never expected. We were supposed to track their yachts.
It sounded absurd at first, but then again most real assignments do.
These were not boats. They were floating cities, hundreds of feet long, worth hundreds of millions, owned by billionaires who had built entire ecosystems of lawyers and shell companies to keep their names off the paperwork. But that was exactly why we were there. Offshore accounts could disappear on paper. Yachts could not. They needed fuel. They needed insurance. They needed crew. Follow those things long enough and you find the truth.
Everyone on the task force was assigned an asset. Some got aircraft. Others, real estate portfolios scattered across the world. Mine was a 464-foot superyacht.
We started to dig, the way you do when you know the truth is out there somewhere, buried under too much paper. Registries, filings, bank records, spreadsheets that looked endless. Many of the yachts were flagged under small jurisdictions or “owned” by companies that were little more than mailboxes. The clutter was intentional.
Most days it felt like swimming through fog. But every now and then the trail lit up. A payment that didn’t fit. An address that reappeared in two places. Or a crew member posting a sunrise photo from a harbor we were still trying to locate. Sometimes that was all it took.
I followed mine from Western Europe to the Indian Ocean. For a while we thought we might have her. The paperwork was lining up, cooperation was coming together. Then one night she fueled up and ran. Six thousand miles of open water, straight to Vladivostok. Out of reach.
That was the lesson. No matter how powerful someone is, or how many layers they build to hide behind, the trail always exists. It might be buried under bureaucracy or time, but it’s there. Following that one yacht taught me patience. It taught me how to keep working when time, politics, and luck are all pulling against you.
Years later I was watching an episode of Below Deck, and there she was again. Anchored off the Seychelles, drifting across the screen like she had never left. For a second it didn’t feel like work anymore. Just recognition.
That work changed how I see everything. The subjects are different now. A corporate executive moving money through side accounts. A spouse leading two lives before a court date. A company hiding its weaknesses before a merger. The details change, but the process doesn’t. You sift through the noise, follow the small anomalies, and trust that the truth always leaves a trail.
It was never glamorous. I wasn’t boarding yachts or drinking champagne. I was sitting in an office, racing a clock I didn’t control, waiting for calls that took too long to come. But when the lines finally connected, it reminded me why I love this work.
Big or small, international or close to home, the story is always in the trail. And the job is to find it before time runs out.
