This past spring Maxim had the honor of attending Yacht Club de Monaco’s annual Oceans Week, which for the first time partnered with legendary New York institution The Explorers Club. Founded in 1953 by Prince Rainier, YCM has a long history of not just luxury yachting but true nautical expedition. Meanwhile The Explorers Club is the not-so-secret cabal of the world’s most acclaimed explorers, scientists and adventurers since 1904. Think true giants like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (first humans on the moon), Robert E. Peary and Roald Amundsen (first to the North and South Poles, respectively), Sir Edmund Hillary (first to summit Mt. Everest), Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh (first to dive the Mariana Trench) and Prince of Monaco Albert I—ruler of Monaco from 1889 to 1922. A distinguished oceanographer and Arctic explorer in his own right, Albert I established the Grimaldi royal family’s long-standing commitment to aquatic caretaking.
During Oceans Week, we had the kismet of sitting next to one of the great explorers of our age, Bertrand Piccard—grandson of Auguste Piccard, the first man to reach the stratosphere (and namesake to “Star Trek” character Jean-Luc Picard), and son of the aforementioned Jacques. This is the type of American and European exceptionalism that only happens when the Monaco Yacht Club collaborates with The Explorers Club. On that very day, March 21, Piccard celebrated the 25-year anniversary of his record-breaking circumnavigation of the Earth in a balloon aboard the Breitling Orbiter 3. He then followed up his accomplishment with Solar Impulse in 2015—the first full circumnavigation of the globe in a solar-powered plane. The Swiss psychiatrist now prepares for his third globe-circling in a hydrogen-powered plane, the Climate Impulse, to further promote clean technologies. During our lunch, Piccard shared
