These megarich are playing the game: Mine is longer than yours.
Reminds me of the skit by some comedians playing the game of of mine is longer than yours. After a few go arounds they unzip their pants and whip them out. Shirt tails that is.
Yeah, when you need to burn thru a serious pile of money to trump your buddies, there's nothing like a boat. Houses generally have zoning and other limitations, if planes get to big, they are hard to fly, but the Panama canal is the most expressed limitation for big boats [panamax] , and it's getting bigger soon. "Sure, with big payments, we can make it bigger"
I used to kid a buddy of mine that he better stop off at the refinery in Anacortes to fuel up, it's probably not a joke for some of these guys. Too much money creates entertaining absurdities.