“I was 26 when I suddenly realised that I wanted to be the one drinking cocktails on the aft deck,” explains Aaron Fidler, the proud new owner of41.4-metre Painter Johnson AK Royalty. “I had become chief engineer on a boat called Sea Bowld but I wanted to be an owner. I knew it was my time.”
It’s a punchy statement front a young man, but Fidler has that punch. And the proof is, as they say, in the pudding - or rather, in the Palmer Johnson. AK Royalty has just been relaunched after a custom respray, containing real 24kt gold, and is now for charter with Burgess in Dubai. When she’s not out paying her way with guests, the boat is there for Fidler.
Like all sea stories, this one started a long time before Fidler bought the boat in 2022, and in fact long before she was even built in 2009. This story begins in the 1980s, when he was still a kid growing up in Perth, Western Australia. “I grew up around the ocean - living in Australia, that
