On board the Bad Company fleet with angler Anthony Hsieh

Ask an owner about the features of their dream yacht and answers might include “a glass-bottomed pool”, “a wine cellar for 300 bottles” or “a semi-submerged viewing lounge”. But for Anthony Hsieh? As long as it’s clean, functional and reliable, that’ll be enough.

That’s to be expected when a yacht is merely a tool for an owner to pursue his dream: fishing. Hsieh doesn’t have bucket-list destinations, he hasn’t kitted out his new 53-metre with wow-factor design or must-have amenities and he’s not planning on sipping cocktails in the sun.

“The purpose is not to go and have mai tais,” he says. “The purpose is to fish.”

More precisely, the purpose is to fish in every corner of the world – places where modern sportfishers have yet to cast their lines – and have a fleet of yachts posted around the world to facilitate that. Hsieh has a total of 12 boats, including the brand new Damen Yachting 53-metre Bad Company Support, and one that’s on the market — his smaller, previous Damen Yachting 45.6-metre Bad Company Support, currently listed for $15,500,000 with Superyacht Sales and Charter. The 12 boats form the Bad Company fleet, which travels the world to fish for black marlin, the world’s fastest fish.

Hsieh’s fleet has taken him around Cape Verde, Cabo, the Azores, Australia and Hawaii to name a few destinations, and he documents his journeys for his 109,000 Instagram followers. His social media fans are as fishing mad as he is, and Hsieh likes the idea of sharing his “world tour” experiences and letting his fans live vicariously through him. Hsieh has loved fishing since he was a child and when he was younger he would approach sportfishers he saw around the docks of California, where he grew up.

“I remember feeling stupid, when I would want to have a conversation because I’m in awe of their equipment, I’m in awe of their boats.” But they didn’t want to engage with him. “Some people with money can be mean,” he says.

Of course, Hsieh is technically “people with money” now – but it wasn’t always that way. He was born in Taiwan but his family moved to the US when he was eight and he went to school in Los Angeles. “I kid you not, [the American kids] were still trying to figure out what nine times seven is,” he laughs. “I had already passed algebra.” Maths came in handy when he founded loanDepot in 2010. He is the current chairman of the board and took the company public in 2021.

“Biologically, it’s real hard
on our bodies”

Bad Company Support’s launch ceremony in Antalya, Turkey, is a symbol of this success: the first yacht commissioned by Hsieh, as opposed to purchasing second-hand. It must have been a strange feeling for Hsieh, seeing his new toy roll down the slipway against the backdrop of the Taurus Mountains. Here she was, one of Damen Yachting’s finest models yet, heavily customised to support Hsieh’s global fishing adventures and described by the yard as one of the “most exciting projects” it had ever worked on. But Hsieh will barely be spending any time on it. “The time that I’m going to be on this boat is to sleep,” he says.

Day to day, it’ll be one of the smaller boats that he’ll be physically on board, fishing for his prize marlin. Fishing is his passion, the Bad Company fleet is an “enabler of [his] lifelong dream” – and he’s incredibly disciplined when it comes to angling.

This isn’t fairweather fishing; this is weeks at sea in remote locations and a rigorously strict agenda that starts at 5am, winds down at 7pm and pays no mind to foul weather, boiling waves, jet lag or dangerous destinations that require a bulletproof van when on shore. Hsieh says the fatigue is what gets him. “Right now, we don’t even know what time zone it is,” he says at the launch. “Biologically, it’s real hard on our bodies.”

Hsieh requires something no frills and no fuss to take him from A to B. “At the end of the day, you want the mothership to be self-contained [and] with the least amount of maintenance [and] trouble. They’re not shiny vessels and the systems are much simpler,” he points out. After a good experience with his first Bad Company Support (the former Pink Shadow) he didn’t have any trouble picking the yard for his new build.

The new Bad Company Support is the same hardy cruiser, but with modifications. She has no interior dining saloon, just an al fresco dining area, and ample space to store Hsieh’s beloved Bell helicopter. Hsieh is a pilot and, apart from the flexibility the craft offers in flitting between destinations, it also allows him to get better visibility on the fish from above.

Other modifications include a 15-tonne deck crane for hoisting up the other members of the Bad Company fleet, including his 9.7-metre Blackfin, the first twin-diesel boat he bought more than 30 years ago. “My last boat is going to carry my first boat,” says Hsieh. It will also carry a 15-metre sportfisher, the largest carried in sportfishing history.

There are other full-circle moments, too. Once the world tour is over in 2025, the fleet will shrink to six or seven and the remaining boats will spend time in Hsieh’s “three fishing homes” of Hawaii, California and Cabo.

Further afield, Hsieh’s angling approach is twofold – half is the sport and the other half is fuelling vital research into marlin. “Marlins over 350 pounds [160 kilograms] are female, they’re the breeders,” says Hsieh. “They’re obviously critical for reproduction. But there’s very little information on them.”

Commercial fishing could be severely depleting their numbers, but it’s impossible to know without the research. Hsieh works with a programme pioneered by Stanford University, which aims to tag marlin and track their location, as well as other vital information such as depth, speed and swimming patterns. A missing piece of information is location.

“No one really knows where these big fish go,” says Hsieh. “They move thousands of miles every year and they’re following the ocean for two reasons. Number one is to mate and number two is to eat. It’s a big ocean out there.”

That big ocean is Hsieh’s playground and he’ll essentially be “following the fish” on the next leg of his multi-year voyage. He’s toying with two main options. The first is Brazil, followed by the Ascension Islands, Angola, Cape Horn then the Indian Ocean. Option two is the Mediterranean, down the Suez Canal and then Oman. “If I feel comfortable with the weather and going around Cape Horn, I will probably do that. That sounds like the more hardcore option,” he muses.

For these “hardcore” adventures, finding the right crew is critical. He’s not looking for captains to drive the boat, deckhands to clean the decks or stews to turn down the laundry – he’s looking for seasoned sportfishers willing to spend all day on deck, casting lines and reeling in giant fish. This fundamental difference in crew requirements underscores something that Hsieh wholeheartedly believes – that “yachting and fishing is like oil and water”. It may be true that the two don’t mix naturally, but Hsieh has years of experience toeing the fine line between them and his latest undertaking is proof he’s no fish out of water in the yachting world.

First published in the January 2024 issue of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.