RIP Chris Cline

The details are still hazy, but the tragic outlines of what happened are not. In the early morning hours of July 4th, Chris Cline, the well-known coal magnate and philanthropist; his daughter, Kameron; and five other people took off in a helicopter from Big Grand Cay, a 280-acre archipelago in the Bahamas owned by Cline. Their aircraft crashed shortly after liftoff, and, sadly, there were no survivors.
Chris Cline has rightly been remembered as a coal industry visionary and quintessentially American success story – he famously started his career as a 15 year-old kid in the coal mines of West Virginia and worked his way to a $1.8 billion fortune. But we wanted to remember him as the highly-regarded yachtsman that he was.
Chris Cline’s first yacht purchase was “Mine Games”, a new-build 50-meter Trinity launched in 2008. That Trinity was sold in 2013 and now goes by “Amarula Sun”. A couple of years later, eager for an even bigger boat, Cline picked up a 2010 62-meter Benetti and called her, once again, “Mine Games”. She was sold just last year. Chris Cline’s reputation amongst crew members, yacht brokers, and others in our industry was impeccable.
While we likely could have guessed the name of Chris Cline’s next yacht – “Mine Games” worked too well to let go – we’re sorry that we’ll never get the chance to see what direction he went in for his third big boat. Rest in Peace.