In this era of superyachting, we are not used to the death of one of the inner circle, one of the founding fathers of modern superyachting. It is fairly easy to list the cavalcade of Hayati Kamhi’s achievements. Together with Mehmet Karabeyoglu, the elevation of Turkish yacht building from a pedestrian backstreet operation into a world powerhouse is partly due to the success of Proteksan Turquoise. It is arguable that every asymmetric explorer type yacht was built on the foundations of his own CAMELEON B, but none of that really touches upon who Hayati Kamhi was as an individual.
I first heard of him many years ago through my longtime friend Mark Hilpern of Camper & Nicholsons International. To be honest, my first meeting with Hayati was unremarkable. It was on board his yacht at the Monaco Yacht Show and he was hosting a party – one of those typical quayside MYS parties. My abiding memory was just how spacious this 42m yacht was. Hayati didn’t say much, he just let his yacht do the talking. Over the coming years our paths crossed several times. My family and I were in Bodrum a couple of summers ago and CAMELEON B was moored in a little bay around the corner from the hotel we were staying at. We joined Hayati and his family and some friends for lunch and had one of those afternoons in the sun which, in the winter of one’s life, one will always look back at fondly. It was my son’s first experience ‘at sea’ and, excitedly, he asked me why we couldn’t have a yacht!
As a host, Hayati was a generous man – warm and inclusive. He also had a deep sense of history; for him where we go as people is formed by where we have come from. He implored me to (and I did) read the fictionalised biography of the 15th-century Moorish diplomat Johannes Leo Africanus . Hayati was caught up in the stories of the Moors and Granada, the Ottoman conquests of Egypt. He was beguiled by the book. He was ecumenical. He was Jewish and had a half brother who was Muslim. His best friend when he was growing up was a Greek born in Istanbul who left in the middle of the night in September 1955. He recoun ted with enthusiasm the day many decades later he met up with this childhood Greek friend. I remember speaking with him about my favourite poem – Rudyard Kipling’s If, which as a Turk he took pride and amusement in the knowledge that the father of the Turkish republic had provided the definitive Turkish translation of the same poem.
In the days since Hayati’s passing, I have reread If and he was a man as Kipling would have thought a man to be. He dreamt but did not make dreams his master. He met triumph and disaster and treated both as imposters just the same. He talked with crowds and kept his virtue and walked with kings and did not lose his common touch. He was loyal to his friends and didn’t want to impose, but when he fixed on something he would “…fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds of distance run”.
Hayati Kamhi is a loss to superyachting. He is a bigger loss to friendship and good company.
This article originally appeared in The Superyacht Report.