Mark Zuckerberg’s enormous yacht is moored near Meta’s Seattle office, where hundreds of people just lost their jobs.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the $300 million, 387-foot Launchpad was stationed on Westlake, just a few blocks up Lake Union from Meta’s offices. The yacht arrived as news broke that Meta’s mass layoffs hit about 1,400 employees across the Seattle region.
“ My only thought was he should donate some money to the city and then go,” said Jo Ellen Hathaway, squinting in the sun at a deckhand wearing a harness to clean the top of the boat.
GeekWire, which first spotted the vessel, said crew members claimed Zuckerberg was not on board. The Seattle Times documented social media posts that indicate the Meta CEO was elsewhere.
Hathaway watched the Launchpad pull into Lake Union from the old wooden boat she’s called home for 40 years.
“ This is probably the first time I’ve seen a yacht this big,” she said. “I mean, it almost took up the canal coming through it. So yeah, it’s pretty amazing.”
Tori Parrott is president of the boat dealership Signature Yachts, which owns the marina next to the Launchpad. She said she’s used to having mega yachts next door because it’s one of the largest “slips,” that is places to moor, in the area.
“ We do see the big boats in preparation of going to Alaska,” Parrott said. “What’ll happen is they’ll come here, they’ll provision, they might do some repairs, they’re cleaning. The life of a deckhand on a boat like that is wax on, wax off, lots and lots of cleaning. So we see this pretty regularly every summer.”
It’s the first time, however, that Parrott has seen the Launchpad.
