Meta billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is the owner of a two-year-old mega-yacht called Launchpad that is 387 feet long, has a steel hull and is propelled by four engines capable of generating 5,846 horsepower apiece.
But when a small skiff was in trouble off Alaska last week in the same waters as Zuckerberg’s vessel, it was a 42-year-old tour boat called Wilderness Legacy that steamed to the rescue, according to the Coast Guard.
And when the captain of the tour boat announced Zuckerberg’s cutting-edge cruiser, which cost between $300 million and $390 million to construct, had been closer to the stricken skiff and hadn’t answered the radio call for help, “there was near unanimous booing,” passenger Michael Love posted on Bluesky.
The Coast Guard got a call for help just after 9:30 p.m. on Aug. 3 after a 21-foot skiff ran out of fuel between Petersburg and Juneau, the Coast Guard said in a statement to the Alaska Beacon.
“At approximately 9:56 p.m., the Coast Guard determined they were not in distress and issued a marine assistance request broadcast on their behalf,” the statement said.
The Wilderness Legacy, which was completed in 1984 and is a replica of turn-of-the-century coastal steamers complete with Victorian-style wood cabinetry, was the first to respond.
It scooted around the Launchpad and towed the stranded skiff back to the safety of Farragut Bay, the news outlet reported.
The local story went viral after Love, a software developer from New York City, posted about the incident on Bluesky.
“I’m on a small-ship Alaska cruise with my son; our boat rescued a stranded vessel last night and apparently we did that after the Coast Guard radioed Mark Zuckerberg’s yacht — which was closer — and they repeatedly refused to respond,” he wrote.
Zuckerberg spokesperson Brian Baker said the skiff was already in the process of being rescued when the Launchpad crew learned it was in trouble.
“As the Coast Guard noted, the boat was not in distress, and by the time the crew reviewed the Coast Guard contact on a different radio channel from the one they were operating on, the assist was already underway,” Baker said.
“We’re grateful all parties are safe,” he said.
Baker added that neither Zuckerberg nor his family were aboard the Launchpad at the time.
The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, or SOLAS, which is an international treaty that was first adopted in 1914 in response to the Titanic disaster, lays out what’s been called “one of the oldest duties in maritime law.”
“The master of a ship at sea, on receiving a signal from any source that a ship or aircraft or survival craft thereof is in distress, is bound to proceed with all speed to the assistance of the persons in distress informing them if possible that he is doing so,” it says.
