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ESSENTIAL READING FOR SUPERYACHT CAPTAINS AND CREW — DOCKWALK.COM

The Environmental issue April

2019

CLEAN ECO CHECK

& GREEN Hope for the oceans’
Is new tech
transforming plastic problem
hydrogen into
a safer fuel?
Too Good to be True?
The science of the
background check

Losing Your
Religion
Is there room for
crew spirituality?

PLUS: The 2019 Miami Yacht Show and exploring the Galapagos Islands
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 1800 SE 10th Avenue, Suite 340, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316
Tel: +1 954 522 2441 • Fax: +1 954 522 2240

EDITORIAL
Editor: Lauren Beck, lauren@dockwalk.com
Managing Editor: Laura Dunn, laura@dockwalk.com
Associate Editor: Aileen Mack, aileen@dockwalk.com
Contributing Med Editor: Claire Griffiths, claire@dockwalk.com
Contributing Technical Editor: Bransom Bean

ART/PRODUCTION
Creative Director: Christopher Whale, christopher.whale@boatinternationalmedia.com
Art Director: Adam Price, adam.price@boatinternationalmedia.com
Ad Production Coordinator: Cheri Betz, production@dockwalk.com

ADVERTISING SALES
Vice President of Sales (North America):
Jennifer Chiles, jennifer.chiles@boatinternationalmedia.com

Account Manager
North America/Caribbean: Douglas Hunter, douglas@dockwalk.com

CONTRIBUTORS
Thierry Ameller, Tom Andrews, Bransom Bean, Louisa Beckett, Mike Blake,
Peter Brooke, John Devolle, Suki Finnerty, Patrick Folan, Dave Gomersall,
Gemma Harris, Kate Lardy, Rubi McGrory, Ted Morley, Kylie O’Brien,
Guillaume Plisson, Gavin Rothenburger, Gavin Thomson, Sara Ventiera

Published by

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4 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

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 contents
April 2019 | Volume 23 | No. 4
Fixing the Plastic Problem 23
The conversation surrounding plastic pollution has changed 8 Editor’s letter
from a decade ago — more awareness and media coverage
has spotlighted the problem. Companies, organizations, and CREW LIFE
individuals are all stepping up to reduce consumption and waste. 12 News
Find out more about their efforts from ocean cleanup initiatives to 14 Dockwalk.com
innovative waste products and what crew can do to play their part.
16 Word on the Dock
19 Dockshots
23 Fixing the Plastic Problem
27 Losing Your Religion?
30 Training
32 Finance

CAPTAINS
Losing Your Religion? 27 36
39
New Launch
News & Gear
According to a seafarers’ wellness survey, about half of yacht crew 43 Fueling Efficiency
respondents had unmet religious or spiritual needs. Given the 49 Skeletons in the Closet
nature of the yachting industry, it’s not surprising that crew felt
54 Worst Case
they neither had the time or space for spirituality on board. Crew
share their struggles to maintain their spirituality and the creative
CREW
ways they’ve used to incorporate it into their lives on board.
ENGINEERS
58 Tech Talk
59 Engineer’s Insight
CHEFS
60 Dishing it Up
62 Chefs’ Corner
STEWS

Fueling Efficiency 43 64 Inside Job

66 Design
Is hydrogen the fuel of the future? While it is the most abundant DECK
chemical element in the universe, it traditionally has had issues. 68 Top Deck
But has new technology finally made it a viable fuel alternative?
69 Take Five
Find out what problems have to be solved for it to lead
a new fuel revolution, and what’s happening in the
superyacht industry that could make it possible.
DOWNTIME
72 Wish List
74 Escape
80 Last Laugh

MARKETPLACE
76 Classifieds

Skeletons in the Closet 49

In a global, transitory industry populated with people of different
nationalities, it’s hard to know everything about the people who
work for you or those who want to. Thanks to modern technology
and resources, reference and background checks have become
easier. Crew agencies and captains share some close calls,
red flags, and what to verify when hiring.

ABOUT THE COVER

Photographer Guillaume Plisson captured crew
navigating the tender alongside Turquoise Yachts’
77-meter M/Y Go.

www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 7

 editor’s letter

Good & Green

The environment takes up a lot of room in today’s headlines,
for good reason. As The New York Times reported earlier this year,
2018 was the fourth warmest year on record, and the trend has
been on the rise — in fact, the Times reports that the last five years
have been the warmest in our history. The ocean is feeling the
heat, literally, as it has absorbed more than 90 percent of the heat
trapped by excess greenhouse gases. As an industry that depends
on the oceans’ beauty and health as the basis for our livelihoods, it’s
a staggering fact we can’t afford to ignore.
Sometimes it’s hard not to get lost in the morass of bad eco
news dominating the headlines. But it’s not all negative press.
Kate Lardy does some digging to unearth the silver lining to the
darkness — in this case, how many companies are working to
eradicate plastic from our oceans. Check out “Fixing the Plastic
Problem” on page 23 and take some inspiration to begin making a
difference aboard your vessel.
Working with good crew can make all the difference in your job
satisfaction. But in a global industry, how sure are you that you
really know your job candidate? And in an exclusive industry like
yachting — can you afford not to know all the nitty gritty details
about your potential hires? Louisa Beckett speaks to placement
agents for their insight and advice on performing the essential
background and reference check. Stay safe on board — read
“Skeletons in the Closet” on page 49.
Ask any captain or crewmember and you’ll hear about the frantic
pace of crew life. One element that might end up falling by the
wayside is your religion or spirituality. Studies have demonstrated
that spirituality has many benefits, but most crew find there’s no
time to squeeze it in — and some believe they might be ridiculed for
their beliefs. Sara Ventiera shares the benefits of practicing your
beliefs on board in “Losing Your Religion?” on page 27.
Companies are always looking for new, more eco-friendly
fuels. Hydrogen, while not new, may have received a new lease on
life. The issue with the gas — which can be lethal under the wrong
circumstances — has always been collecting, transferring, and storing
it. Now, one captain may have found a solution. Learn more about the
technology in Bransom Bean’s “Fueling Efficiency” on page 43.
So go on, get out there and do something good for your
environment.

Lauren Beck
lauren@dockwalk.com

8 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

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 crew life
engineer stew chef deck

Miami Magic
The 2019 Miami Yacht Show moved to its new location this year and SuperYacht Miami at Island
Gardens Marina kicked it up a notch just down the causeway. Pictured here: (standing) Second Officer
Henry, Chief Engineer John, Second Engineer Thomas, Chief Stewardess Waldi, Steward Greecy,
(sitting) Second Stewardess Elle, and Chef Nate of M/Y Lazy Z

FIXING THE PLASTIC PROBLEM

page 23
PHOTOGRAPHY: AILEEN MACK

LOSING YOUR RELIGION

page 27

THIS MONTH: Solutions to the plastic crisis, finding your religion as crew, and hot work operations
crew life
N E W S engineer stew
INDIA LIFTS TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS
The New Year rang in some big changes in India’s travel sector. According
to Asia Pacific Superyachts Andaman Islands, India, foreign tourists can fly
directly to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This is a direct result of India’s
government designating Port Blair airport as an authorized immigration
check post — as long as individuals have valid travel documents for entry into
and out of India.
In other news, boats are no longer restricted by the 30-day stay
regulation. The restricted area permit is completely removed, meaning
tourists (with visa validity) can stay as long as they want.
Rathnam Rathnasamy, director of Asia Pacific Superyachts, says this is
a permanent arrangement. “[The] government of India has planned for this
with a long-term vision to make Andamans as the new gateway of India and
for the growth of tourism in Andaman Islands.” He adds, however, that the
CREW CREATED / OCEAN-SAVING TEES
Few people better understand the need to save our oceans than those in the
superyacht industry. Stewardess Lauren Wardley of M/Y Samadhi launched
her company One Back in 2018 to attract an ocean-conscious audience to help
save our environment. “The development for this came about while I was
working on my Med season last year,” Wardley says, adding that she thought
there was something missing in the buying process. “I therefore decided to
create a company that for every product bought, something is given back.”
Wardley worked tirelessly to put One Back together. “I did the development
by contacting companies and freelancers online in my two-hour breaks each
day on my back-to-back charter season last year and launched it when I finished
the season,” she says. Every item in the One Back collection carries several
internationally recognized certificates to acknowledge their fair trade and
organic attributes. To Wardley, it’s important to give back to the planet and
people around us that need love and compassion the most. Her shirts are 100
percent organic, natural, and designed to benefit both you and someone else
— they give back to fighting ocean pollution, plastic pick-up, and research via
an organization called Plastic Bank. Each T-shirt (which come in women’s and
men’s sizes) is US$18; AU$25.
Wardley also sells loose-leaf tea, which is 100 percent organic and in line with
One Back’s sustainable, health-conscious, planet-concerned mission. Teas come
in 50 and 100 grams with prices ranging from US$8-$12 (AU$12-$16). “Each tea
sold goes back to helping women stuck in India’s Red Light [District] industry
to leave the horrific sex trade and become seamstresses,” says Wardley, who
explains that they work with Freeset, an organization that trains these women
for a new line of work and empowers them with the life skills needed to be free
from human trafficking and the sex trade. “[The organization is] on the front
12 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com
chef
government has the full rights to withdraw the facility at any point of time for
safety and security purposes.
“As such, no local yachting industry exists in Andamans,” says Rathnasamy.
“This will give the opportunity to the Indian entrepreneurs to venture into
yacht tourism in [the] Andaman Islands.” And once tourism starts to grow
there as a result of this new arrangement, it will create huge employment
opportunity in the islands, says Rathnasamy.
This news came just in time for the second annual “Sail the Andamans”
Yacht Carnival & Rally that took place February 20 to March 21. Rathnasamy,
who is the founder and event director of the rally, says that though this year is
too soon to see real benefits to sail there, they should see the payoff in 2020.
— LAURA DUNN
Sunset at Neil Island beach at Andaman and Nicobar islands, India
line aiding these women to find the courage to
leave what they are doing as a means to support
themselves, their families, and children, and
become seamstresses,” Wardley says. Freeset also
provides counseling, support, shelter, health care,
PHOTOGRAPHY: (TOP) ROOP_DEY/ISTOCK; (BOTTOM) COURTESY OF LAUREN WARDLEY
and everything needed to bring these women and
their families into better lives.
“Samadhi had recognized this side business I
had, as [One Back] was on my résumé and was a
strong factor in deciding [on] me for the position,”
says Wardley, who says Samadhi does their best to
conserve any sort of waste and plastic use, being
as conservative as possible. Her crew steers away
from plastic bottles and plastic wrap — instead
always using Tupperware. “Other crewmembers
are always looking for ways for me to progress my brand, promote my message,
and get out there as much as possible,” says Wardley. “We all incorporate plastic
and trash pickup in our exploration of the different places we travel to.”
When it comes to saving the planet, Wardley knows that every action counts.
“The superyacht segment should do the best possible it can, as it is already
environmentally adverse,” she says. There are many ways that yachts can give
back, such as crew gathering and delivering aid to areas where natural disasters
have struck. “As crew are always traveling — we can pick up plastic wherever we
go and do our best to consume less and give back more,” she says.
One Back gives back at least 10 percent of profits on any purchase to the
specified cause outlined in the description. To learn more, visit @One1Back on
Instagram. www.oneback.com.au; www.freesetglobal.com — LAURA DUNN
 C RE W W I T H A C AU S E
You could argue that crew thrive on challenges. Well, these
five men have taken it to the next level after deciding to
compete in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, an
ocean row in a 28-foot open, unsupported rowing boat.
The challenge means the team — the Ocean5 — and its 27
competitors will be tasked with rowing 3,000 miles from
the Canary Islands to Antigua beginning December 2019.
The Ocean5 team — Lead Deckhand Will Hollingshead
of M/Y Siren, Kevin Gaskell, Officer Chris Hodgson,
former crewmember Sam Coxon, and Matt Gaskell — was
formed by Hollingshead, who was inspired after hearing
Kevin Gaskell speak at an event. When asked what
adventure Gaskell would want to do that he had not already
completed, Gaskell answered that he wanted to row the
Atlantic. Hollingshead never forgot those words, but it
was only six months later after an injury had laid him up
for three months — offering ample thinking time — that
Hollingshead had what he called a lightbulb moment. Why
not row the Atlantic and raise money for ocean issues?
“I then sent Kevin a message on LinkedIn and asked the
only two of my friends I knew who would be crazy enough
to come along (Sam and Chris), [and] twelve months later
we have a boat, a team, and are now [eight] months from the
December start date,” Hollingshead says.
Prepping for the challenge is not easy, but it’s not
all about the glory. The team is racing to raise funds
and awareness for The Plastic Soup Foundation, which
is fighting to combat ocean plastics. “… I was looking for
the right-sized charity, who did very impactful work on
the global stage but who we could make a big difference
to,” Hollingshead says. “Our aim is to give The Plastic
Soup Foundation a check for £250,000 to help in their
efforts of changing minds and policy worldwide in
regard to plastics and microplastics.” According to The
Plastic Soup Foundation, 393 million tons of plastic is in
the ocean, although just 246,000 tons is visible on the
surface. While the plastic debris is bad enough, chemicals
released by these plastics damage organisms’ feeding and
reproduction, impairing long-term survival. The foundation
PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY OF OCEAN5
| ROW I N G FO R O C E A N REL I EF
focuses on curtailing the increase in plastic polluting by going
to the source and influencing change.
Its “Beat the Microbead” campaign is supported by 98
NGOs in 44 countries — and 119 cosmetic brands have
eliminated microplastics from 448 brands. The Foundation
has also developed a “Plastic Diet,” which demonstrates how
companies can reduce their Plastic Mass Index, thus reducing
their impact on the environment.
The 3,000-mile journey is not for the faint of heart — the
preparation for the non-stop row (two hours on, two hours off
for 24 hours each day) means putting in some serious work
beforehand. “We have a Concept2 rowing machine on board
[Siren] and weights that I use regularly,” Hollingshead says.
“When we’re alongside in a marina for an extended period of
time, I get a short-term membership to a gym to do heavier
weights and more intense gym sessions.” Crossfit, he says, is
also a good method of training. “As a team, we also have some
dates booked in this year to get out in the boat together for a few
days at a time to all get comfortable living, working, and rowing
in such a confined space,” Hollingshead says. “One of the most
important things is mental preparation.” To help, he’s reading up
on the conditions they could face, in addition to the physical and
mental hardships that previous rowers have experienced. The
team has to carry all their food, safety, and medical equipment on
board, plus produce their own freshwater through desalination.
They will also carry 1,000 “backup” liters of water as ballast. The
Top: Kevin and Matt Gaskell object is to keep the boat as light as possible.
Middle: Will Hollingshead “It’s definitely not something to enter into lightly, but anyone
Above: Chris Hodgson
Bottom: Sam Coxon who’s considering doing an adventure similar to this — [which]
can take two years of planning and preparation — should talk to
their captains and crew as the support I’ve found from current
and former industry colleagues is amazing,” he says.
You can show your support, too. The team is looking for help
with race sponsorship. “We have a great team who are fired up
and in serious training with our goal to achieve the world record
for a five-person team in rowing the Atlantic,” Hollingshead says.
Help them achieve their £250,000 goal — follow the team on social
media and donate to the cause. www.theocean5.com;
www.plasticsoupfoundation.org — LAUREN BECK
www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 13
 Dockwalk.com
CREW
HIRING
TRENDS
Looking for a new
position? With the 2019 Med
season approaching, find out
what crew agencies from both
sides of the Atlantic have to say
about recent placement trends.
bit.ly/dockwalk145
if not lower than they were a decade ago.
ST. MA ARTEN MARINA
COLLECTS EXCESS
CHARTER FOOD
TO DONATE
The Port de Plaisance Yacht
Club and All About a Smile are
partnering to collect food donated
by yachts and deliver it to those in
need on St. Maarten/St. Martin. A
fridge and freezer were purchased
to make it easier for yachts to make
donations. bit.ly/dockwalk146
Send your crew photos to aileen@dockwalk.com!
PHOTOGRAPHY: (FAR LEFT) COURTESY OF ALL ABOUT A SMILE; (TOP MIDDLE) COURTESY OF M/Y PURE INSANITY; (MIDDLE) DINOSOFTLABS/ISTOCK; (TOP RIGHT) AILEEN MACK; (BOTTOM RIGHT) @VELA.CODE ON INSTAGRAM
#NaturalBeauty SUNNY MIAMI
Take a look back at the Miami Yacht
Show in its new location with the photo
album on our Facebook page. Pictured:
Lead Deckhand Tyler, Lead Deckhand
Tim, Chief Officer Tommy, Deckhands
Josh, Zach, and Culver of M/Y Kismet
Capt. Jason Downing captured the
gorgeous Key West sunset behind his
charge, 34-meter M/Y Pure Insanity.
DECLINING
SALARIES?
A Dockwalk.com member believes that
salaries in the industry are the same,
Yacht Designer Sails
Are salaries on the decline despite boats
getting larger? Share your thoughts and
Atlantic to Raise
observations: bit.ly/dockwalk144 Eco-Awareness
Dan Lenard of Nuvolari Lenard
departed on a transatlantic crossing
aboard a 33-foot sailboat from Spain in
January and arrived in Fort Lauderdale
on March 3. His crossing, completed
with no instruments, engine, electronics,
or compass, aimed to raise awareness of
the need for ocean preservation.
EU Tariffs Affect
2019 Med Season
The European Commission’s 25
percent retaliatory tariffs on U.S.-built
yachts will have consequences on the
upcoming Mediterranean season.
The exact details of this tariff remain
unknown, along with how
Catch up on these
long it will last. Stay tuned to
stories and other
Dockwalk.com for
yachting news from
more updates. the past month at
bit.ly/dockwalknews.
CONNECT WITH US
 W O R D O N T H E D O C K

How are you

eco-friendly on board?

By Aileen Mack

With all their adventures, crew know better than just about
anyone how beautiful this planet is and why it’s important to do
our part in protecting it. Whether it’s reusing and repurposing
items instead of throwing them away or recycling when possible,
every small effort helps and it all adds up. What eco-friendly
practices do you employ on board?

“We have a water filter on board and use as little

plastic as possible. No plastic straws.
Coasters instead of napkins.”
Stewardess Jennifer Joseph, M/Y Leading Fearlessly

“Recycle. Use eco-friendly soap

and natural products.”
Chief Stewardess Anna Mikolajcik, M/Y Cachée

CREW PHOTOGRAPHY: AILEEN MACK; ILLUSTRATION: OCELOTI/ISTOCK

“We use paper straws. Recycling — but not all
marinas have [those facilities]. [We] use eco-friendly
cleaning products and have a watermaker on board.”
First Mate TJ Sohn, M/Y MB3

“We use biodegradable products and

eco-friendly boat supplies, like soaps.”
First Mate Christian Book, M/Y The Rock

“Recycle when possible; a lot of places don’t

support it. Save water with shorter showers and doing
as much laundry as possible in one load. Handwash
dishes carefully. No plastic straws at all.”
Co-Chief Stewardess Jenn Solomon, M/Y Horizons II

16 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

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Located across from the National Aquarium and minutes from Camden Yards,
there are a plethora of activities surrounding our marina. Inner Harbor Marina
is walking distance to popular attractions, and amazing food.
Services vessels up to 300ft.
135 boats slips available
Restaurants, Shopping, and Museums

Inner Harbor WEST Marina

This is an exclusive marina that offers annual and seasonal slips for rent,
with great amenities including a pool and fitness center.

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Inner Harbor Marina

Inner Harbor West Marina
FEDERAL HILL
Lighthouse Point
Managed by

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 The experts in service, repair
and refit for superyachts for
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Sales@Bradford-Marine.com
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Fort Lauderdale, Florida Freeport, Grand Bahama
954.791.3800 242.352.7711

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Specialists for Superyacht Equipment, Provisions, Supplies, and Global Logistics
 crew life
D O C K S H O T S

Golfe Juan
Port Camille Rayon
Engineer
Lawrence
of S/Y Chief Officer
Wellenreiter Paul, Senior
Deckhand Jonel,
and Capt. Stuart
of M/Y Kalinga

Deckhand Cadet Deckhand Maximilian and Deckhand/

Eugene, Steward Damian of M/Y Sur L’Onde 2
Chef Stuart,
Capt.
Robert,
Stewardess
Sonita, and
Engineer
Hector of
M/Y Sea
Bluez
Engineer
Darius of
M/Y EOL B

Chef Lisa, Bosun Stef, Chief Stewardess Kelly,

and Stewardess Polly of M/Y Lazy Me

Second Deckhand
Stewardess Chloe of M/Y Skyfall Stewardess Jack of M/Y
Hazel of M/Y Raasta
Moon Sand
PHOTOGRAPHY: CLAIRE GRIFFITHS

Deckhand Reinhard-Mark
of M/Y Toute Sweet

www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 19

crew life
D O C K S H O T S

Miami
The 2019 Miami Yacht Show & SuperYacht Miami
First Officer Hendrick and
Deckhand/Engineer
Bosun Sello, Deckhand Brandon, Capt. Alberto, Chief Stewardess Grethe, Justin of M/Y
Second Stewardess Cilene, Mate Simon, and Engineer Morgan of M/Y Praxis Dream

Sitting: Stewardess Lauren, Hair/Beauty Amanda, Deckhand Wade, Capt. Dave,

Deckhand Culver, Yoga/Stewardess Alicia, and Deckhands Zach and Josh. Back row:
Purser Claudia, Lead Deckhand Tyler, Deckhand Drew, Second Lead Deckhand Tim,
Second Stewardess Keeley, and Chief Stewardess Melissa of M/Y Kismet First Stewardess Marlen, Second
Stewardess Coralia, First Officer
Rodrigo, Engineer Ascanio,
Deckhand Alberto, Chef Miguel, and
Capt. Claudio of M/Y Tremenda

Stewardess Nadine, Chef Charlie, Deckhand Luis, Capt. Guy, Chief Stewardess
Lucia, Second Stewardess Vikki, and Engineer Roger of M/Y Grey Matters

First Mate
Second Stewardess Gaylaine, Bosun Ryan, Chief
Austin, Chef Sean, Lead Deckhand Sam, Stewardess
Fourth Stewardess Giselle, Deckhand Julie, and Capt.
Gareth, Chief Stewardess Rebecca, and Tom of M/Y
Capt. Mark of M/Y Broadwater Silver Lining

PHOTOGRAPHY: SUKI FINNERTY

Chef
Johnny,
Bosun
Sean, and Chief Stewardess Jessica,
Deckhands Capt. Bill, Bosun Kobus (kneeling),
Capt. Andre, Second Engineer Rob, Chief Engineer John,
Kevin and Second Stewardess Caley, Chief Engineer Billy,
Chef Nate, and Bosun George (Mayor) of M/Y Lazy Z
Christin and Third Stewardess Jess of M/Y Usher
of M/Y
Shadow

20 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

Managed by

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 crew life
engineer stew chef E C O

Fixing the Plastic Problem From ocean cleanup initiatives to new ways to reduce plastic
consumption and waste, change is happening. Here’s how you can help.
By Kate Lardy
PHOTOGRAPHY: (TOP TO BOTTOM) COURTESY ©THE OCEAN CLEANUP; COURTESY OF EURODESIGN; COURTESY OF THE WATER BUOY; COURTESY OF BAMBU

The Ocean Cleanup system deployed.

It’s been a decade since Dockwalk first ran a story about the massive
quantity of debris polluting our oceans. So much has changed since
then, and little of it good. According to the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP), a staggering amount of plastic continues to enter the
ocean, between eight and 13 million tonnes every year, it estimates.
Ten years ago, it was an underreported issue. Not anymore. Awareness
has grown considerably, culminating with the United Nations first-ever
Ocean Conference in 2017, which came to a startling conclusion widely
reported in the media: at the rate we are going, there will be more plastics
than fish in the ocean by 2050. The conversation has changed from focusing
on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to the ubiquitous plastics degrading in
all ocean gyres, being consumed by and killing marine life. More than 660
species of ocean animals have encountered plastic pollution, which has also
been detected in our seafood and water supply.
With this growing consciousness has emerged some hope:
there are those who refuse to concede to the rumblings that Put old plastic to good use on board with Composite Teak Decking
cleanup is impossible. “Single-use plastic” is becoming a dirty by Eurodesign. The durable decking, which received a special mention
word, and scientists are coming up with some truly innovative
ways to reduce and recycle plastic waste.
new plastic, that’s when the recycling industry is going to take off.
“We are getting close to that precipice,” he says, pointing out the upward
trend of stocks relating to recycling. “The industry knows that to keep
cheaply making those products where plastic is really needed, they need to
stop making products that are bad for the environment because they are not
going to be cost-effective in the long run.”
Since the UN launched its #CleanSeas campaign in February 2017, 57
countries, accounting for more than half the world’s coastline, have joined
them, pledging to pass new laws to ban plastic bags and microbeads and
organize beach cleanups.
In the Caribbean alone, Barbados is the latest country to join Jamaica,
St. Lucia, Grenada, Dominica, and Antigua and Barbuda to ban the
importation, retail sale, and use of petro-based single-use plastic products.
Encompassing more than just bags, products non grata include plastic and
MAKE A DIFFERENCE
at the 2018 DAME design awards, is made of 30 percent recycled
plastic and 60 percent recycled teak dust. www.eurodesign.se

Stopping It at the Source Make your next regatta plastic-bottle-free with The Water Buoy, a
When yacht captain Sean Meagher’s hometown in refillable water dispenser that can be lashed to the deck, operates while
Massachusetts joined 80 others, including Boston, in banning heeling, and keeps 19 liters of drinking water cool under UV-resistant
single-use plastic bags, he was amazed that not one person from insulation. It can be personalized with a boat’s logo and stores flat
the plastics lobby bothered to show up. Compare that, he says, between regattas. nikki@sailutions.eu
to the tobacco industry, which, even after they understood how
deadly their products were, still fought tooth and nail to keep
Ban plastic straws and cutlery on board. Bambu sells
cigarettes in restaurants, nightclubs, and vending machines.
reusable glass straws and elegant disposable cutlery
“It is incredibly telling; even the plastics industry knows the
made from organic, renewable bamboo that’s completely
jig is up,” Meagher says. He is feeling optimistic. Referencing
compostable. www.bambuhome.com
plastics manufacturing’s dependency on oil and gas, he says,
“when the price of plastic becomes too expensive to produce

www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 23

Styrofoam cups, cutlery, stirrers, and straws. racers, Greenpeace, and Sea Shepherds, have tagged 18 ghost nets in the last
Meanwhile, famed sailor Ellen MacArthur is tackling another major year, and at press time six more trackers were on vessels crossing the Pacific.
source of pollution: packaging. More than 290 companies, such as H&M, This May, the Ocean Voyages Institute is heading out to pick up the ghost
Kellogg, L’Oreal, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola, representing 20 percent of gear. To increase their yield, they will use drones to survey the area around
all plastic packaging produced globally, have signed the New Plastics tagged nets, as Crowley has witnessed the ocean’s amazing ability to sort
Economy Global Commitment, led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation objects that have been floating for long periods. “We believe where we have
in collaboration with UNEP. They have all committed to eliminate one tagged ghost net, there probably are six or seven more in the same area,”
unnecessary plastics and implement 100 percent reusable, recyclable, or she says. With 42 more trackers on hand to tag large floating plastic debris, the
compostable material for necessary packaging by 2025 or earlier. institute is planning another cleanup operation in 2020.
Much of the sea litter originates in underdeveloped countries lacking Taking a different approach with the same aim, The Ocean Cleanup has, in
waste-management infrastructure. The Plastic Bank works here, in Haiti, fact, invented something new. It bills itself as the largest cleanup in history, and
the Philippines, and Indonesia, stopping plastic from entering the sea by its goals are just as lofty — to clean up half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in
making it a valuable commodity. Funded by donations, it pays above market five years and 90 percent of all ocean plastic by 2040. The system it developed
value for plastic waste, compensating people with money, schooling, food, autonomously roams the gyres, working on the principle that debris moves with
or bitcoin. The waste is then ground into pellets and sold to manufacturers the current, but wind and waves will push the 600-meter-long floater faster,
as ethically sourced raw material. hence trapping the debris within its three-meter-deep skirt. Every few months,
Specifically for superyachts, Dutch design firm Vripack is looking to ships — like garbage trucks of the sea — will come and collect the debris.
eliminate plastics completely. “We’re looking into a number of The operation has had some teething troubles. While the first system,
actual and practical design solutions that would ‘design out’ dubbed Wilson, was deployed to the North Pacific Gyre last
straight from the beginning the need for plastics on September, it is currently in Hawaii for repair after an
board,” says Creative Director Marnix Hoekstra. 18-meter portion detached; all parts were recovered
TAKE WATER SAMPLES
The International SeaKeepers Society, and the team is also using the time in port to work
Cleaning It Up www.seakeepers.org out why Wilson is attracting and concentrating
Mary Crowley is one of those who became TAG PACIFIC GHOST GEAR plastic, but not retaining it.
acutely alarmed about the pollution around Ocean Voyages Institute, +1 415 332 4681 “We are confident that, with the necessary
a decade ago. But unlike most, she didn’t adjustments to the system, we will return to
JOIN THE CLEANUP
just sit back and take it. “There was a lot of cleanup@oceanvoyagesinstitute.org the Great Pacific Garbage Patch this year
talk saying the ocean is too large, the debris and will be able to collect the estimated
DONATE
is too far away, cleanup is impossible, or mary@oceanvoyagesinstitute.org; theoceancleanup.com one thousand kilograms of plastic a week,”
cleanup is futile. That bothered me,” she says Eline Weltevreede, on behalf of the
EDUCATE YOUR GUESTS
says. “The middle of the ocean doesn’t seem Caribbean Yacht Brokers Association, organization. Eventually, the goal is to scale
that far away to me. It feels like a precious cyba.net/goinggreen up to 60 systems to make a significant dent in
part of our planet where I enjoy to spend time.” GO PLASTIC NEUTRAL the cleanup.
As founder of both yacht charter company Offset your annual plastic usage with
Ocean Voyages and the nonprofit Ocean a $44/year subscription, Getting Rid of It
www.plasticbank.com
Voyages Institute, Crowley diverted resources Then comes the problem of how to dispose of all
from the charitable sail training programs the this rubbish. The Ocean Cleanup plans to recycle it
institute had been running and set off in search of into upscale branded goods that it will sell to finance its
answers. In 2009, she organized a five-week expedition from operation. Other end products are more outside the box — like jet
the institute’s base in Sausalito, California, to the North Pacific Gyre with fuel. Agilyx, an Oregon-based environmental tech company, converts waste
scientists and sailors who had engineering and building backgrounds plastics into low-carbon fuels and chemicals. Last November, it entered into
on board, and the following year she did another month-long voyage. In an agreement with Delta Airlines to supply 2,500 barrels of jet fuel a day made
addition to the two-and-a-half tons of debris they collected on each trip, from difficult-to-recycle mixed waste plastic streams. Sir Richard Branson is
they came back with ideas. “At that point, we put together a Marine Debris an early investor in the company.
Collection Think Tank,” Crowley says, using the brainpower of marine Carl Allen, owner of the Westport 164 Gigi and 55-meter Damen support
engineers, naval architects, oceanographers, and fishermen. “We sat down vessel Axis, is investing in another cutting-edge technology that may herald
and analyzed the best way to attack and clean up the debris.” the future of waste management — thermic aerobic waste digestion. It uses
They began by classifying the debris into different categories to devise bacteria from sub-oceanic volcanoes that are inert until superheated. At
the best solution for each. From repurposing fishing boats to fish for around 300°F to 400°F, the bacteria thrive and eat plastic biomatter, able to
plastics, to using oil skimmers to pick up small plastic pieces in current reduce 400 pounds to four. Allen has plans to use the system on his Bahamas
lines, their approach is to adapt equipment found on existing vessels to island, Walker’s Cay, running it on solar power. “In conjunction with our
efficiently remove debris, rather than create something new. recycling policies, this innovative technology will result in zero waste to
Currently, the Ocean Voyages Institute is taking on abandoned and lost landfill,” says his representative, Cray Quinn.
fishing gear, referred to as ghost nets, which by weight account for 46 to 70
percent of all macro plastics in the ocean, according to UNEP, and are hugely Doing Your Part
detrimental to sea life. “Last summer, we bought and designed satellite For yacht crew, the failure point is ports, says Capt. Meagher. While some, like
trackers that we could use to track ghost nets,” says Crowley. Most vessels Nantucket, make you separate your trash into biodegradable bags, others, like
aren’t equipped to haul out this very heavy gear, but they can attach a tracker Hyannis on Cape Cod, will take anything. “The town doesn’t care and doesn’t
to it. Volunteers, including delivery skippers sailing to Hawaii, Pacific Cup have the infrastructure,” says Meagher. “So what do you do? Stop using single-

24 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

 Top left: Accumulated plastic at one of
The Ocean Cleanup system’s booms.
Below: The Ocean Voyages Institute in
use plastics, then you can dump your trash anywhere and it doesn’t matter. action and showcasing debris removed
from the sea.
“On all of my boats, for the most part whenever we can, we ban single-use
plastics,” he says. “You can buy stainless straws on Amazon and they last
forever, and you don’t use plastic bags when you go to the store. We made
sure our watermakers produced good water. There are units that can put the
minerals back into the water and make it taste like anything, Evian, Fiji….”
This is something the Charter Yacht Brokers Association encourages
brokers to make known to guests, suggesting that the yacht’s water be
included as an option on the preference sheet with verbiage explaining how
pure it is. It has even produced a sample letter to guests, available online, as
part of its “Going green to save the blue” campaign.
SeaKeepers, the organization that connects private yachts and scientists,
PHOTOGRAPHY: (TOP LEFT) COURTESY ©THE OCEAN CLEANUP;

is now tackling plastics as well. It just launched a program where crew provide
(REMAINDER): COURTESY OF OCEAN VOYAGES INSTITUTE

water samples to Florida International University’s lab techs to analyze for

concentrations of microplastics. Called SARAH, the initiative’s name is an
acronym for the process: sample, aggregate, return, analyze, help. Crew can
borrow a net from SeaKeepers in Miami; they then follow a standardized
procedure for collecting the sample anywhere in the world, and at their next
port mail it back. Program Director Tony Gilbert says he hopes the data
collected will help make a change, both at the legislative level and with
consumer habits. It’s well overdue, he says; his trial run with the net in
Biscayne Bay yielded not only microplastics, but also visible plastic pieces.
Crew can also donate their time with the Ocean Voyages Institute
(see sidebar). Lastly, Crowley adds, “One of the major things we need
to do ocean cleanup is funding. Donations of any and all sizes are
extremely important. Right now, everyone agrees it is important to
clean up our oceans, but few are stepping up.”

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www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 25

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 crew life
engineer stew chef R E L I G I O N

Losing Your Religion?

In the hustle of the crew job, finding room for spirituality can be tricky.
By Sara Ventiera

Capt. Lee Carlson is a Zen guy. Literally. The off-
and-on 41-year yachting veteran has been a Zen Buddhist
for the past three decades. He generally wakes up at 4 or 5
a.m. every morning to meditate in his bunk for 30 minutes.
His spare daily practice is all about letting the mind and the
unconscious melt away to discover a deeper, universal truth.
“It has the same feeling of being at sea on a sailboat for a week
out of sight of land and everything drops away,” says Carlson.
Over the past 30 years, Carlson has managed to find a way to
blend his spiritual practice with his yachting career, although
he admits it’s easy to get distracted with pressing work duties.
However, it turns out that many crewmembers have been
struggling to maintain a fulfilling spiritual or religious life
while working in the industry. To combat those feelings of
frustration and loneliness, crew who want to feel fulfilled
spiritually have had to get creative with their faith.
FACING THE ISSUE
Before we dig into crews’ inner spiritual lives, let’s first look at
the issue. According to a seafarers’ wellness survey — conducted
by the International Seafarers’ Welfare & Assistance Network
(ISWAN), along with MHG Insurance Brokers and The Mission
to Seafarers — of the 402 yacht crew respondents’ 48
percent “had religious or spiritual needs that
are not fully met in port/at sea.”
That result was unexpected for many
involved with the survey, including Mark
Bononi of MHG Insurance. “When I think about
a crewmember on a yacht, I don’t think about someone
who is particularly religious — that’s a stereotype, obviously,” he
says. “To hear half the people who completed the survey were
not having their spiritual needs being met was quite a surprise.”
Of those who said they didn’t feel like their spiritual
PHOTOGRAPHY: MIODRAG IGNJATOVIC/ISTOCK
time, told Dockwalk that even though he’s figured out a way
to work his Zen Buddhist practice into his work life now,
it’s still a struggle especially when the boss is on board.
With late nights, early mornings, and a never-ending list of
responsibilities, Carlson can often get pulled into checking
charts, the anchor, or attending to little things that need
addressing when he gets up in the early hours of the morning.
LONG-TERM EFFECTS
Reverend Canon Andrew Wright, secretary general of The
Mission to Seafarers, found it interesting — and unsurprising
— that so many crewmembers felt that they had neither
enough time or space for spirituality on board. His youngest
daughter works aboard motor yachts, so he knows that
yachting, by nature, doesn’t offer much of either one for the
crew. But he worries about how that lack of time and
space may affect crews’ physical and mental wellbeing.
“Humans need space and time and an ability to
reflect and express themselves even if they’re not
religious,” he says. “Spirituality in the broader sense
is about the values that enable us to be fulfilled
human beings.”
There’s been a lot of research to back up
Wright’s point. One 2012 study published
in Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin found that daily

needs were being met, time and space seemed to be the

biggest issues facing them in keeping some sort of routine.
One person said, “Not religious but even finding time to
reflect spiritually is tough.”
“Whoever gets given the time to go away and meditate on
their own?” another asked. “You’re seen as ‘unsocial’ or ‘not
a team player’ if you’re not joining the crew to go off and get
drunk somewhere on your days off.” One captain responded,
“As a committed Christian, it can be hard to find time to get to
church/meet with others.”
Carlson, who has clearly
been practicing for a long

www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 27

spirituality can positively affect meaning in life and
self-esteem. The Public Religion Research Institute,
an American nonprofit, nonpartisan research and
education organization found that “more than six in
ten (61 percent) spiritual but not religious Americans
and seven in ten (70 percent) spiritual and religious
Americans are very or completely satisfied with
their lives overall,” a marked increase from the 47
percent of Americans who are neither spiritual nor
religious who say they are satisfied with their lives.
And numerous studies have found that spirituality
(spanning the gamut of practices from religious
observance and belief in a higher power to prayer,
meditation, and straightforward mindfulness) has
many benefits for stress relief and mental health.
That relief from mental and emotional strain
is critical in yachting. For many crew, working on
a boat can feel like living in a pressure cooker and
ISWAN’s report supports that broad sentiment.
Eighty percent of female respondents reported
suffering from one or more episodes of work-
related stress — including a staggering 91 percent
of stews. Fifty-four percent of men and 49 percent
of captains reported the same. The overarching
impression that yachting is filled with a pervasive
sense of stress was summed up by one respondent,
“It comes with the job.”
Another person said, “I think there are very
few crew that haven’t [experienced stress] — even
if it has never fully emerged. I think the industry,
unfortunately, is very toxic and has stress associated
with many factors, and the answer as seen by many
is ‘deal with it or leave.’ Often you need to take
significant time off between boats to fully get back
to being well rested and in a good mindframe.”
THE JUDGMENT ZONE
But it’s not just the lack of time and space — and the
stress that comes with the lack of both — that keep
spiritual- and religious-leaning crew from getting
their spiritual needs met. Many feel a need to hide
their beliefs from their fellow crew.
In response to the question of whether or not
they feel their spiritual needs were being met, one
crewmember commented, “Actually, if I try to do so
it would be the joke of the day.” It’s easy to understand
why that person would feel that way when reading
through the comments to the survey. The question
provoked some pretty strong reactions with answers
such as, “Religion and spiritual needs do not belong
in the workplace” and “Really? Since when did
religion become a topic in a seafarer’s life? As an
American, this survey must have been written by an
American.” Eighty of the 402 people surveyed did not
answer the question.
And when Dockwalk raised the question on
Facebook, the vast majority of a couple of dozen or
so people who commented on the thread wanted to
discuss what spirituality and religion meant to them,
28 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com
“Humans need space and
time and an ability to
reflect and express
themselves even if they’re
not religious. Spirituality in
the broader sense is about
the values that enable us to
be fulfilled human beings.”
highlighting that there are plenty of crewmembers
who either follow some sort of faith or would like to.
But quite a few jokes were made such as, “I’ve
prayed to the porcelain god after a crew night out...”
and “Sometimes when I wake up, I pray my wallet
is in my pants from the night before. Also for rain.”
One commenter facetiously replied with a link to
the Church of Satan’s “The Eleven Satanic Rules
to the Earth” — which are shockingly apropos for
yachting, for the most part.
The wisecracks caused some of the
commenters, who wanted to discuss their
beliefs, offense. One stew-masseuse we spoke
to (on the condition of anonymity) considers
herself a pagan, who essentially worships nature
through ceremonious acts like going to the beach,
watching the sunset and moonrise, and keeping
track of the moon’s phases and how it affects us.
Early on in her two-year yachting career, she was
told by a fellow crewmember that she shouldn’t tell
people about her version of spirituality because
others will think she’s into witchcraft. “I just
educated her that is not the 1600s and people are,
or should be, allowed to practice any faith they
want without facing prejudice.”
But even though she feels like people should be
able to practice their personal form of spirituality
without being judged, this stew does struggle
with people’s perception of her faith, which is very
similar to what many would refer to as mindfulness
these days, and that comment has made her nervous
about opening up to other crew about her beliefs.
While she uses tarot cards as a form of divination
to help her see current life situations from a different
angle and has read them for yachting friends when
asked, she says there’s a part of her that wants to hold
back and say no, because she’s worried about the
way senior staff will view her.
Fifteen-year yachting veteran Ann Marie
Skordy wouldn’t even tell most of her fellow crew
she got up to meditate in the morning. She was
especially quiet about the voices she was hearing
when she sat still. About four years ago, Skordy
discovered that she was a trance channel — a person
who goes into a trance and is taken over by energy
that speaks from a higher realm through her
mouth, she says. She quit yachting two years ago
and has since started her own South Florida-based
business as a channeler and healer, Streamliner
Spirit, but she kept this all to herself while working
PHOTOGRAPHY: GWENGOAT/ISTOCK
in the yachting industry. “I was like, no way I’m
telling anybody: they’re going to think I’m nuts,”
she says. “Being in the closet with anything, you’re
denying who you are, it’s not good for you.”
Even crew who follow traditional, more broadly
accepted faiths feel the need to keep it hushed. Capt.
Marvin Wilson, a lifelong Christian, knows many
of the other Christians who work in the industry.
There are Christian Facebook pages for crew and
 other community groups, but the 15-year yachting
veteran is generally reserved about broadcasting
his faith to others in the industry. He feels like his
beliefs are often challenged by others who dislike
Christianity for one reason or another. “In yachting,
you have to be quieter than in regular life,” he says.
“A lot of people just want to start arguing with you.”
Wilson has found it extremely difficult to make
it to church. “I’ve traveled to ninety countries and
probably have made it to church three or four
times,” he says. But Wilson managed to find other
ways to get his fill of faith through regular prayer,
reading the Bible and other faith-based literature,
and listening to Christian Internet radio and
podcasts. He even streams sermons from his home
church in Atlanta so he can discuss the message
with his family.
As part of his faith, the longtime captain has
PHOTOGRAPHY: GWENGOAT/ISTOCK
PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH
Many of the crewmembers who spoke to Dockwalk
have figured out creative, nontraditional ways to
incorporate spirituality into their lives aboard
yachts. Stewardess Walkyria Whitlock’s personal
spiritual practice follows the vein of what many
consider mindfulness in a very openminded way.
To her, spirituality isn’t about finding special
places or circumstances, it’s more about conscious
and intentional actions with values that can be
Many crewmembers feel a practiced throughout the day. The stew likes to visit
need to hide their beliefs and learn from different churches and places of
worship of different faiths, ranging from Christian
from their fellow crew. and Catholic churches to Buddhist temples,
Muslim mosques, and Jewish synagogues, at times
bringing other crewmembers along with her.
As part of her daily and constant spiritual
practice, Whitlock uses her breaks for 15-minute

always tried to demonstrate his values by trying to
help others. After three years of volunteering in his
downtime, Wilson took a full-time job as a skipper on
Christian medical ship M/V Pacific Hope about a year
ago, helping people in developing countries receive
surgeries for cataracts, dental work, and medicine.
His Christian network in yachting has volunteered
during their downtime as well. “This past year, I’ve
had more than ten yachties volunteer on the ship.”
meditation sessions and does a yoga nidra
meditation before going to bed most nights.
When she’s not on charter, Whitlock wakes up
to do a 10-minute affirmation meditation before
starting her day.
“It’s been a practice of learning how to make
time for that, but it’s definitely necessary and worth
it,” says Whitlock. “It makes the biggest difference
in my attitude and gratitude.”

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www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 29

crew life
T R A I N I N G engineer stew chef deck

Hot Work By Ted

Morley
Hot work is one of the leading causes of fires and
casualties during a yard period. For those of you
in the U.S., the CFR 33 126.30 and the NFPA 51B
guidance document will provide the regulatory
information for vessels entering shipyards or
dockside facilities. The MCA details the information
in the Code of Safe Working Practices for Seafarers,
Chap. 24 and MSC/Circ. 1084. The USCG modified
several of the regulatory criteria, as did many
Captain of the Port (COTP) after the tragic accident
on board the OMI Charger in 1993. That accident
class or flag state, or by local authorities. Permits
help mitigate the risks as they provide a checklist of
precautions to have in place.
The vessel’s master is the only person on board
who can authorize hot work; the master may
designate a responsible officer to oversee the hot
work and ensure that all safety, health, and fire
precautions are followed. In the U.S., the COTP may
require an operator of a facility or the vessel moored
at the facility to contact them prior to any hot work
and obtain permission to proceed. This requirement
exists outside of the U.S. as well, so it’s important to
determine what the local requirements are prior to
work commencement.
extra vigilance
is a must.
Hot work
produces volatile
gases, heat, and smoke
— these must be properly vented. Also, as with any
fire or process of pyrolysis, the oxygen in the space
will be depleted so atmospheric monitoring is a
must. Most hot work permits have a section for
atmospheric testing and many shipyards will have a
certified marine chemist available to come aboard to
certify the space. Hot work permits have a duration
of work and expiry time, along with an authorized
person to oversee the work. It’s vital that the work not

occurred as a result of hot work to remedy a small
hole in a bulkhead and not only was the vessel
declared a total loss, but it also resulted in the death
of the welder, the fire watch, and another crewman.
Hot work is any work that requires the use of gas
welding or electric arc equipment, heating or spark-
generating tools, cutting equipment, or any other
naked flame. Most yachts do not have a certified
workshop space and therefore should follow the
guidance for Hot Work Permits, as required by their
PHOTOGRAPH: MICHAL-ROJEK/ISTOCK
Fire watches are a must! If hot work is being be conducted outside of the approved window.
conducted in a compartment or near a bulkhead, you Everyone aboard must be aware of the hot
also need a fire watch on the other side of adjoining work and its hazards. Stop the work if you see
spaces. A crewmember tasked with fire watch duties something wrong and don’t assume that smoke
must have no other duties and must be properly in a passageway is fine just because hot work has
trained and equipped to handle duties. Many times, been approved. If a fire or any other hazardous
the fixed fire detection and fire suppression systems condition exists, all hot work must be stopped until
may be out of service during maintenance periods so the risk to the vessel and crew can be assessed.
Capt. Ted Morley is the COO at Maritime Professional Training in Fort Lauderdale. He currently holds several
licenses, including a USCG Master Unlimited Tonnage. +1 954 525 1014; training@mptusa.com; www.mptusa.com

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 crew life
F I N A N C E | G L O B A L V I E W

Quality Why Bother

Matters!
The Thickest, Longest Lasting &
Investing?
By Peter Brooke
Best Value Control Available Many of us are lucky enough to get to the end of each month and have
a little cash left over from what we spend. Our parents tell us to save and
invest any spare cash we have, and people like me — financial advisers and
wealth managers — make a living from helping people decide what to do
with their hard-earned cash. But why do we bother at all?
Taking a simplistic view, in my opinion, there is one main reason to invest
money — inflation. It’s a guarantee of life that the cost of goods and services
will increase over the long term as demand grows due to a greater population
and a greater desire to improve our collective quality of life. This means
that €100 will buy less in 10 years’ time than it will now. We must therefore
constantly strive for greater returns on our spare capital, otherwise our
buying power goes backwards, and we end up poorer in our old age than we
are now, even if our bank balance remains the same.
The principle basis of any investment should therefore be to beat inflation.
The type of investment we use purely depends on how much we want (or
need) to beat inflation by and over how long. There are many different
assets that can be invested into to make our money grow and “work harder
The Only for us” and the selection of these should be carefully considered based on
5 Gallon Refill an understanding of each asset class’s fundamental features and our own
Bucket Available
attitude to the inherent risks that come with each asset.
When it comes to expectation of risk and return, it’s vital to consider
the return you expect from each type of asset before committing to an
investment — expectations are often wildly different than the actual return
we’ll likely receive. That’s why it’s important to quantify a realistic return.
Another life guarantee is that the greater the return, the greater the
risk we must take. Risk can be measured in many ways, but it should be
considered as the chance of a real (after inflation) loss. For example, today
cash can be considered a high risk — interest rates are lower than inflation,
which means capital sitting in a bank account is guaranteed to be worth less
next year than it is today. There are other reasons why we must invest too:
Fightt Mega Yacht STATE OR PRIVATE PENSIONS / Many state retirement systems are
under serious strain as the number of older retired people taking money out
Mold
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are very unlikely to find a yacht that funds a corporate “pension scheme” and
so investing for long-term returns is becoming more important for all of us.
FORCED HABIT / Many people invest to force themselves into saving for
their future. This gives many people a feeling of security, even if the portfolio
value is volatile — I call it the “at least I haven’t spent it” mentality. ILLUSTRATION: PHOTOROYALTY/FREEPIK

So, if we have capital or income that is not needed in the short term and
we know we need to get a greater return on them, some form of savings
or investment “vehicle” is required. The intelligent choice of “asset” and
“product” will ensure it fits with our needs and attitudes.
Airborne Mold & Odor Eliminator Taking independent, regulated, insured, and qualified advice should help
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has created HORIZONS, a unique financial solution just for yacht crew at
www.my-horizons.com. contact@my-horizons.com

32 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

 F I N A N C E | U . S . V I E W

IRS Phone Scams

Are Still a Threat
By Tom Andrews Incoming
TM

IRS
The IRS has received almost 100,000 complaints
from taxpayers who have received unsolicited
calls from individuals demanding payment
while fraudulently claiming to be from the IRS.
This can be especially troublesome to yacht
crewmembers, most of whom travel frequently.
Many crewmembers are away from home for extended periods of time.
This sometimes leaves doubt as to whether or not they may have lapsed in
filing a tax return or making an estimated tax payment. I have had several
clients and their families receive these calls and luckily none of them have
handed over confidential information.
Every year, our office has several clients that are contacted by individuals
claiming to be from the IRS. Two years ago, we had a client living in England
receive a phone call from a predator claiming to be from the IRS. Since she YOUR GLOBAL
has been out of the United States for an extended period of time, she was
led to believe that she had missed some important tax-filing deadlines.
FULL SERVICE DIVE
Upon calling our office, we were able to reassure her that the phone call she
received was a phone scam, later confirmed after calling the IRS.
OUTFITTING STORE
IRS commissioner John Koskinen has stated, “Taxpayers should Onboard repairs • Global service
remember their first contact with the IRS will not be a call from out of the
blue, but through official correspondence sent through the mail. A big red
New build dive locker design
flag for these scams are angry, threatening calls from people who say they Local dockside pick-up & delivery
are from the IRS and urging immediate tax payment. This is not how we
operate. People should hang up immediately and contact the IRS.” • Scuba gear sales & service
Additionally, it is important for taxpayers to know that the IRS: • Scuba training
/ Never asks for credit card, debit card, or prepaid card information
• Variable speed electric systems
over the telephone.
/ Never insists that taxpayers use a specific payment method to pay • Tankfill systems (Nitrox & Helium)
tax obligations. • Water toys (Seabobs, SUPs and more)
/ Never requests immediate payment over the telephone and will not • Spearguns
take enforcement action immediately following a phone • Freediving gear
conversation. Taxpayers usually receive prior notification of IRS
• Medical kits & service
enforcement action involving IRS tax liens or levies.
This warning should also extend to the families of yacht crew. Many
of the victims have been elderly parents and grandparents who are bullied
over the phone — sometimes the fraudster will tell the victim that the
police will be dispatched to their residence unless they resolve the issue
Brownie’s Southport Divers. 1530 Cordova Road.
Fort Lauderdale, FL. 954-524-2112
immediately with a credit card. One of our clients recently informed us
that their elderly mother had been scammed out of almost $2,000. The Brownie’s Yacht Toys. 2301 S. Federal Highway.
ILLUSTRATION: JOHNDORY/FREEPIK

scammers informed her that the police would be at her home within Fort Lauderdale, FL. 954-463-9446
minutes. She was so frazzled and caught off guard that she provided them Brownie’s Palm Beach Diver. 3619 Broadway (US1).
with her credit card details in hopes to avoid arrest. If you do get a phone Riviera Beach, FL. 561-844-3483
call from someone claiming to be from the IRS, you should contact the IRS
immediately at +1 800 829 1040 or contact your accountant.

This tax advice is not intended, and cannot be used, to avoid any penalties
as a result of taking any position from this column. YACHTDIVER.COM
Thomas Andrews is a CPA and a principal of AvMar Accounting Services.
+1 954 764 0404; www.avmaraccounting.com

www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 33

 LUXURY MARINAS IN
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 captain
captain engineer

Capt. Simon Johnson, M/Y Go

Capt. Simon Johnson of M/Y Go understands well the importance of good crew. “Now we have signed
up with Burgess for $1 million a week charters and we fully intend to always hit things high. That requires
top skills and a well-trained crew,” Johnson says, who hired his crew from all over the world, most of whom
worked for him on a previous vessel. “I always say that we each have to make the person above us look
good. They in turn make the person above them look good. They then make me look good. If I do my job
well then that makes the owner look good. Making the owner look good must be our ultimate goal. The
success of this project is entirely due to this amazing crew.” Read more in our New Launch
on what Johnson says are the three things necessary for any captain.

FUELING EFFICIENCY
page 43
PHOTOGRAPHY: CLAIRE GRIFFITHS

WORST CASE
page 54

THIS MONTH: Hydrogen’s fuel viability, the art of the background check, and dealing with fatigue
captain
N E W L A U N C H captain

All Systems Go
By Claire Griffiths

Born and bred in landlocked Zimbabwe, Capt. Simon

Johnson developed his passion for boats from reading Swallows
and Amazons and sailing his dinghy on the lakes near hometown
Mangula. Johnson was the youngest Yachtmaster when he
qualified, and he set up a RYA sailing school in Gibraltar (the first
outside the UK). With a record as a successful charter captain,
Johnson has skippered many yachts since, including M/Y
Southern Cross III, M/Y Shergar, M/Y Samar, M/Y St. David, and
M/Y Lioness V before embarking on 77-meter M/Y Go.
Johnson became involved in the build of M/Y Go, the largest
yacht built by Turkish shipyard Turquoise Yachts, 10 months before
launch and put together 25 crew and the equipment — from tea
towels and teaspoons to tenders and safety equipment. During
the build, Johnson had weekly meetings with the shipyard. “The
meetings were valuable to integrate the operations side of things
into the build. The success of the project relied on Right-First-
Time, with such a tight schedule,” Johnson says. “During a build,
it’s important to be a diplomatic captain, to make things work
smoothly. There are a lot of egos around. We’ve had a lot of high-five
moments and we’ve achieved an awful lot.” Johnson shared that the
owner and guests arrived just a day after the vessel was signed over
in June 2018. Their full summer schedule took them from Istanbul
to Bodrum, through the Greek islands, back to the Med through
the Corinth Canal and closed out the Med season at the Monaco
Yacht Show. “To date, we have completed just shy of ten thousand
nautical miles in just six months,” he says.
M/Y Go has an owner’s deck with a forward-facing suite, views over
the bow, and access to a private outside deck area and spa pool. There’s
a five-meter pool on the sun deck and a 162-square-meter beach club.
Space in the garage takes a limo tender up to 10 meters and a multi-
purpose tender up to eight meters.
She can accommodate 12 guests
with crew facilities for 20.
“We’ve had the usual few problems with setting up the technology and
fine-tuning it,” says Johnson. “For example, there is an interplay between the
final load characteristics, the adaptive mode settings of the stabilizers, and the
reactions of the autopilot — all of which require sea trials and experimentation
to set it up properly, usually over weeks rather than a few days. And that is just
one of the many integrated systems aboard, as is Dynamic Positioning. Time
was always of the essence and owing to the most exemplary determination of
the crew, we managed to hit every target.
“I am not interested in the interior décor, I like things simple —
straightforward propulsion systems and gearboxes, for example, that go ‘clunk-
click’ like the Caterpillars we have, and the rest of the hardware on the boat,”
Johnson says. There are some designs that haven’t worked so well, like
the crew lounge, which is so rarely used as it’s on a different level from the
mess dining area. This, Johnson says, is a waste of space better used for
more specialized crew needed to run a high-end, successful operation. “I
find the new-tech world in general frustrating. There ought to be backup
analogue switches to turn on and off lights in case the iPad controller fails
to control the mood lighting, blinds, surround sound, etc. It sometimes
can bring a little embarrassment if the guests are unable to make it work,”
he says. “I want knobs, not touchscreens that don’t work with sticky
fingers. We are probably no exception, but the bridge does not even have
a helmsman’s wheel, which might be considered quite useful for steering
a compass course if ever the gyro fails, or for trickier pilotage operations,
like the Corinth Canal. Not everything can be done on autopilot.
“After now some thirty-six years at sea, I believe there are three
important things to have: a good boat, a good owner, and a good crew,”
says Capt. Johnson. “Oftentimes, one might have two out of the three,
but to have all three together is nothing short of sensational. We have
all three.”

36 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

 Clockwise from top
right: beach club,
engine room, Dale
Chihuly statement
art, main salon
and dining room,
bridge, master
suite, and sun deck.
Previous page:
bow and Capt.
Simon Johnson
PHOTOGRAPHY: GUILLAUME PLISSON

SPECIFICATIONS

Builder: Turquoise Yachts Construction: Steel hull; LOA: 76.75M/251'10" Classification: Lloyd’s Register, 100 Max speed: 18 knots
Naval architecture: Turquoise Yachts aluminum superstructure Beam: 13.05M/42'10" A1 SSC YACHT MONO G6, LMC, UMS Cruising speed: 14 knots
Exterior and interior design: H2 Yacht Design Gross tonnage: 2,008 GT Draft: 4.1M/13'5" Engines: 2 x CAT 3516C Range: 5,500 nm at 12 knots

www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 37

WATERFRONT
SERVICES & SUPPLY, INC.
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
P.O. Box 13279, San Juan, PR 00908-3279
Muelle 15 (Talleres), Calle Miraflores-final, San Juan, PR 00907
 captain
N E W S & G E A R engineer

Addressing
During the Miami International Boat Show, Evinrude
announced a $2 million donation of their outboard
the Need
engines to the American Boat and Yacht Council (ABYC) for Marine
Foundation. A third partner, “The National Marine
Distributors Association (NMDA) also brings to the table
Technicians
their network of marine distributors and can help target
local schools that support marine dealerships,” says Jeff
Wasil, BRP Evinrude Outboards’ engineering manager
of emissions and regulatory development. As part of
this partnership, they are providing funds to help pay
for tools, test tanks, and shipping costs so that schools
have everything needed to implement an accredited
and successful marine training program. Evinrude’s
endowment will go towards helping students in high
school and college across the U.S. and Canada.
“One of the biggest challenges facing our industry now
is the shortage of qualified technicians,” says Wasil. “It’s
nearly a crisis as many marine dealerships across the U.S. and Canada
just simply cannot find qualified, technical hands-on personnel.” This is a
problem since boats have become increasingly more integrated — which
increases the importance of finding technicians that are both mechanically
skilled and have the ability to work with sophisticated electronics and
controls used in modern boats and engines. “The goal of this program
is to increase the number of technicians entering marine service and to
increase their knowledge by providing relevant training
materials that reflect modern technologically-advanced boat
and engine systems,” Wasil says. That’s why Evinrude is
providing free access to all their online training curriculum.
They partnered with ABYC, “as they have a complete
turn-key accredited training curriculum targeted for high
schools and colleges,” says Wasil, who calls this partnership
important, “as our Evinrude training curriculum focuses
primarily on the engine, whereas ABYC provides training
on all aspects of the vessel — from electrical systems to shop
etiquette and everything in between.”
The donation includes 100 Evinrude 3.4 Liter V-6 (200 to
300-hp) outboard engines. “When you couple the number
of engines donated together with the ABYC accredited
curriculum and the substantial financial commitment
from NMDA, we could easily [and] significantly increase
the [number] of schools training marine technicians,”
Wasil says. ABYC will also provide up to $150,000 in scholarships that
will be used to help offset tuition costs. “These needs-based grants will
be available for students entering or enrolled in traditional accredited
post-secondary schools, continuing education events, marine certification
courses such as ABYC and NMEA, or specialized product training courses
from manufacturers such as Evinrude,” Wasil says. www.evinrude.com
— LAURA DUNN

BUILDING THE BUDGET SMART YACHTING

Luxury Yacht Group, which handles crew HAS ARRIVED
placement, and yacht management, charter,
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las
and sales, has unveiled the third version of
Vegas in January, the biggest ticket item was
its Cost Calculator. “I believe that it’s a super
a $5 million, 78-foot “smart” yacht. Built by
tool for a captain to use,” says Rupert Connor
Numarine, the Furrion Adonis is a concept
of Luxury Yacht Group. “What better way to
that showcases Furrion’s tech. Its racy lines
start a conversation with an owner about
notwithstanding, the yacht’s main talking point
budgeting than use this as a starting point?”
is Angel, a virtual concierge/mate gifted with
Luxury gathers the figures from its yacht management accounts, extrapolating the data
great memory and facial recognition capability.
from its 18-year history of accounting services. If you’re not a captain experienced in accounting, this tool
It can plan itineraries, make reservations, or
could really save your bacon. Connor points out that many captains lack the accounting skills to create a
order food from the galley (while keeping an
solid annual budget. “This tool gives them a template and accurate starting point that will give their employer
eye on your waistline) and respond without ever
confidence to make decisions based upon the information here,” he says.
losing its cool to voice commands or messages
The calculator’s third version — which took more than 3,000 manhours to create — includes several
sent from near or far. Angel controls most
major advancements. The account chart has jumped from about 20 categories to six major categories,
electronics on board, including Smart Mirrors
with the addition of more than 100 sub-categories. The new version uses much larger behind-the-scenes
that function as tablets, ultra-thin HDTV sets,
PHOTOGRAPHY: (TOP) COURTESY OF EVINRUDE

math to calculate major expenses. “These formulas are much more complex with factors from multiple
and Adonis’s onboard drone. www.furrion.com
sliders impacting costs in each category,” Connor explains. The salary data is also now tied to Luxury’s live
salary guidelines so that as guidelines change, the reports will automatically update. “We spent a lot of time
calculating the surface area of ‘typical’ yachts so that our capital repair numbers could be realistic,” Connor
says. “We added capital repairs and reserves to create a more inclusive budget. Most yacht budgets exclude
capital reserves, which is why we wanted to include them. If you run a yacht for $2 million per year but then
spend an extra $5 million in a five-year refit, your employer may get upset as you ‘sold’ them the $2 million
number when really it should have been $3 million per year on average.”
As Connor points out, “Many yacht owners want to know that they are not getting ripped off in yachting.
If their spend is significantly over what our calculator is suggesting, then there is probably some wastage
being experienced.” The tool is free to access — anonymously — through Luxury’s website.
www.luxyachts.com/yacht-cost-calculator — LAUREN BECK

www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 39

 KEEP COOL FOR LONGER
“It’s an exciting time to be working in the
solar industry,” says Davey Jones, business
development director for ACOPower, a green
power explorer for home and outdoors. The
company is focused on manufacturing portable
energy products and solutions to off-grid power
— and it might be a good solution to those guest
picnics on the beach.
Their newest product is the X Series
LiONCooler, which arrives by the end of April
2019. The X model has larger wheels than its
predecessor and a slick battery design that’s similar
to most power tool batteries with an “easy snap in/
out” action. In other words, customers have even
more portable power options — spare batteries can
be purchased for extra back-up and the battery
solar panels to recharge the unit,”
he jokes. “And yes, we also sell
fantastic small, foldable solar
panels!” The solar company also
has a Bluetooth app.
Jeffrey Tang founded ACOPower eight years ago.
“He actually conceived the solar-powered fridge/
freezer as a parent sitting on the sidelines watching
his son play soccer,” says Jones. “Jeff wanted an easy
way of chilling cold drinks for the kids that didn’t
require lugging ice around but a product that also
had a solar powered design feature.”
Though Tang shopped around and
found several electric fridge/freezers,
they were either too expensive or
needed to be plugged into a power
IN BRIEF

PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY OF ACOPOWER

can be recharged outside of the cooler. “Our ‘go
anywhere’ LiONCooler has a built-in Lithium-ion
battery, which gives you up to ten hours portable
cooling before the battery needs to be plugged in
to recharge. Our ‘secret sauce’ is the best bit,” says
Jones, explaining that it has the ability to recharge
the battery several different ways: AC/DC or by
solar. “Personally, I think our designers were a
bit generous here because customers can use any
source in order to work, says Jones.
That’s when he came up with their
first product, the LiONCooler, which
can run on an independent battery
and be charged using solar power.
That was launched in August 2018
and comes in different sizes that retail
from $585 to $739. www.acopower.com
— LAURA DUNN
MB92 Barcelona has received the ISO 50001 certificate for
energy management by Lloyd’s Register to complement
the ISO 9001 and 14001 already in place. www.mb92.com
/
The 2019 Miami Yacht Show experienced a 7.23 percent
higher total attendance from last year in its new location.
The five-day show took place February 14–18 in downtown
Miami at One Herald Plaza between the MacArthur and
Venetian causeways on Biscayne Bay.
www.miamiyachtshow.com

40 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

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YOTHA PLAYS
YOTHA is a new digital technology MATCHMA KER
that makes it easier, more
efficient, and accessible to book a yacht charter.
Launched worldwide in January 2019, the service,
available via app, already has 130 luxury yachts
available for charter on the platform.
Philippe Bacou, the CEO of the yacht charter
platform, founded it after 15 years of chartering his
own yachts and creating several broker agencies.
Marketed as the first online, interactive marketplace,
YOTHA offers a direct connection between yacht
owners and charterers, letting them negotiate
directly about price. “Think of us as the matchmaker
between boat and guest, enabling a seamless charter
experience for all,” says Bacou. “We offer an end-
to-end online charter, meaning there are no lengthy
conversations or fiddly papers to sign. Everything is
done digitally.”
YOTHA lets the client chat directly with the
captain before arriving on board, as opposed to the
traditional method where a broker would send guest’s
wish lists back and forth, risking information getting
lost in translation and details missed. YOTHA’s app can
keep track of what guests are spending on charter.
“With this, they can see in real time where funds are
being allocated for fuel, berths,
and food and drinks, leaving
nothing to surprise at the end of the charter.”
YOTHA’s secure and simple platform offers a
tailored user experience because “guests can create
a bespoke experience at sea, whether it’s selecting a
fine wine, exploring a remote island, or booking a yoga
class on deck,” says Bacou.
While this service is greatly improving the
chartering process, it isn’t meant to replace yacht
brokers. Instead, it’s designed to work with charterers
and everyone involved in the charter process. Bacou
says he wants to bring trust, transparency, and
convenience to the charter market by reimagining the
charter experience and allowing everyone to benefit.
Bacou came up with YOTHA in 2016 alongside
yachting professionals and tech experts, designed
with the intent to work with and add the best eco-
conscious boats to their platform. “I believe that we
share our oceans and therefore have a responsibility
to safeguard them,” he says. “Whether it’s practicing
considerate anchoring or giving back to local sailing
communities, we are making sure that everything we
do is a step toward mindful conversation at sea.”
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www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 41
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 captain
engineer E N E R G Y M A N A G E M E N T

Fueling Efficiency
Can hydrogen overcome its issues to
lead the new fuel revolution?
By Bransom Bean

“Hydrogen has the greatest promise,” says Megan Hickling, who

is currently studying ship science at the University of Southampton and
preparing a thesis on alternate sources of power for superyachts. As far as
alternative fuels go, hydrogen is a bit of a disappointment. In fact, the standing
joke has been, “Hydrogen: It’s the fuel of the future — and it always will be.”
Hydrogen is performing well in fuel cell technology, but only once it actually
gets to the fuel cell. Fuel cells are ubiquitous, it seems. Certainly, they’ve come a
long way since 1838 when William Robert Grove created his “Grove cell,” a piece
of platinum immersed in nitric acid and a matching piece of zinc electrode in
zinc sulphate that generated a hopeful trickle of 12 amps of current. There is no
debating that fuel cells do in fact convert an incredibly high percentage of the
chemical energy in the fuel to electricity. With fuel cells efficiencies up to 60
percent, fuel cell power plants are almost twice as efficient as their conventional
cousins. And fuel cell technology just keeps getting better.
Because fuel cells generate electricity chemically rather than by combustion,
as in a petrol/gasoline or diesel engine, they are not bound by those pesky Laws
of Thermodynamics that limit conventional power
RENDERING: COURTESY OF H2-INDUSTRIES
which was why it was used to provide buoyancy for the great airships of the
early 20th century.
Hydrogen is an element, usually found as a gas, that consists of just one
proton and one electron. So, if there’s so much of it and fuel cells using it are
so efficient, why haven’t all those CATs, MTUs, and Northern Lights already
been replaced by hydrogen fuel cells? Wouldn’t nice, clean, bountiful hydrogen
make the perfect restitution for all the environmental indiscretions that
superyachts get accused of?
The problem has been handling, transporting, and storing hydrogen,
which as a gas is second cousin to dynamite. To appreciate the instability and
explosive personality of stored hydrogen, remember the German passenger
airship, LZ 129 or the Hindenburg, crashing in an inferno in New Jersey on
May 6, 1937. Of the 97 souls on board that day, it’s hard to believe 62 actually
managed to walk away from the flaming wreckage.
Once you have it inside an engine or fuel cell,

plants, which, bottom line, means fuel cells can
wring more energy from a fuel.
The Problem with Hydrogen
But still hydrogen has a problem, which is
unfortunate because hydrogen (H) is, in fact, the
most abundant chemical element in the universe
as far as we know it, making up 75 percent of
normal matter by mass and more than 90 percent
by number of atoms. Hydrogen is also the lightest
existing gas, seven percent the density of air,
hydrogen has not been the issue. The problem has
always been having a way to collect, transfer, and
store it. Getting that wrong is, at best, problematic,
H2-Industries’ technology if not downright lethal. “Hydrogen gas is absolutely
transforms the storage and dangerous when it’s in close rooms. The lower
transport of otherwise highly explosion limit of hydrogen is 4 vol.- percent,”
explosive hydrogen gas into says Michael Stusch, the yacht owner, captain,
and entrepreneur who founded H2-Industries,
a simple, safe, and almost a Munich company developing energy
conventional process. storage solutions based on liquid organic
hydrogen carrier (LOHC) that “makes

www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 43


71-meter concept;
renewable energy available around the clock.”
assembly sequence
These LOHCs and Stusch are joined by a 30-meter yacht at
Nobiskrug in refit and conversion to all — and we do mean ALL — electric
propulsion and 600 kWh power generation with scalable energy storage up to
15,000 kWh and supply units combined with a 15,000-liter LOHC tank system
being installed. When delivered later this year, the twin-screwed electric
yacht should have a range of 1,000 nautical miles at 10 knots and a top speed
of 12 to 13 knots. Stusch’s 71-meter vessel, which is currently in the planning
stages, will have a range of 5,000 nautical miles.
So, with the Hindenburg in mind, knowing there’s a tank of hydrogen lurking
on board your yacht somewhere under your swimming pool might detract
from the overall ambiance of the superyacht experience. And should that tank
filled with explosive hydrogen have a tiny leak and catch fire, pure hydrogen-
oxygen flames are almost invisible and odorless — remember those crystal clear,
flameless pictures of the exhaust directly under the Space Shuttle’s main engine.
If Stusch succeeds, LOHC may change all that for vessels like yachts. And
perhaps just as interesting is that after all the hydrogen is extracted from
the LOHC, you still have the same amount of fluid, which means the yacht’s
displacement has not changed.
Storing Hydrogen, The Old Way
As dramatically explosive as the Hindenburg proved it can be, hydrogen’s
energy content by volume — volumetric energy density — is actually quite
low. So, to store the same energy as is contained in petrol/gasoline or diesel,
hydrogen tanks must be much larger.
Of course, you could produce the hydrogen on board, but that takes lots
of energy, which defeats the objective. During the Cold War, hydrogen was
actually a waste product of the process that made oxygen for the crew to breathe
on nuclear submarines — the hydrogen was as quickly as possible discharged
to the sea through a small, stainless-steel pipe at the back of the sail. The
process, though, was considered more hazardous than the torpedoes or the
nuclear reactor itself. Using their surfeit of nuclear energy, the boat first simply
distilled the salt and other impurities out of the seawater surrounding them,
hiding them from detection, and then used the resulting pure “distilled” water
in a process called electrolysis. Remember your high school science teacher
with those two water-filled, inverted test tubes, each with a bubbling wire,
one connected to the positive side of a battery and the other to the negative
(the cathode and anode respectively)? The electrolysis resulted in one test tube
Previous page:
H2-Industries’
helicopter pad filling with bubbles of pure oxygen, O2, while its opposite number
filled with bubbles of pure hydrogen, H2. Most superyachts,
of course, don’t have a convenient nuclear power plant. Without one, you’re
forced to store hydrogen, which classically means high pressures and
very specially constructed tanks if the whole vessel is not to end up a huge
hydrogen tank with guests and toys clinging to any free space.
Normally, hydrogen is carried compressed in trucks under high pressure
at 300 to 1,100 bar (one bar is approximately one atmosphere or approximately
14.5 psi/29.5 Hg), which translates into 300 to 1,000 kilograms of hydrogen per
truck. Of course, this must be backed up by a massive high-pressure storage
infrastructure and filling stations built for purpose.
No Pressure LOHC
LOHC storage technology makes it completely safe to handle, store, and
transport hydrogen, which is good news for superyachts. At the 2018 Monaco
Yacht Show, Lloyd’s Register and H2-Industries announced their collaboration
on safety standards for all-electric vessels based on LOHC power storage
technology seeking the approval in principle for the use of LOHC technology
on ships covering refueling of vessels with LOHC, storage of the energy carrier
(the fluid) on board, as well as the process of power generation on board. “The
collaboration between Lloyd’s Register and H2-Industries marked a milestone
in the development of emission-free shipping,” says Stusch.
LOHC carriers are already being shipped around the world at one bar and
ambient temperature in existing tanks carrying 1,800 kilograms of hydrogen
and pumped using normal equipment. “As a concept, LOHC has actually
existed for many years,” says Stusch. “At H2-Industries, we invented the
release unit and the storage unit that makes using it practical. We had also
had to find the right fluid to carry the hydrogen.” H2-Industries’ technology
transforms the storage and transport of otherwise highly explosive hydrogen
gas into a simple, safe, and almost conventional process.
Very simply put, instead of storing hydrogen in a special, costly tank under
high pressure or happily evaporating liquid hydrogen from the liquid-state
like the LNG in tanks aboard LNG tankers at sea, with LOHC hydrogen is
actually safely “stored” in an oil-like fluid or “carrier” that is hydrogenated
or infused with hydrogen. The LOHC as the carrier is an organic, oil-like
substance that binds chemically with hydrogen. There are various carriers.
H2-Industries uses dibenzyltoluene, whose physical and chemical properties,
changes, and reactions are very similar to diesel fuel, but less toxic. The carrier

RENDERINGS: COURTESY OF H2-INDUSTRIES

Left: LOHC engine room for vessels over 100 feet

Right: LOHC engine room for vessels up to 100 feet

44 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

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can be charged and discharged (hydrogenated and dehydrogenated) with
hydrogen as often as needed, which is why the vessel’s displacement remains the
same. The LOHC cycle is closed.
Producing “LOHC Plus”
Once the carrier is charged with hydrogen, it becomes LOHC+. The chemical
process to store the hydrogen within the LOHC is performed under pressure
to allow an electrolyzer (a device that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen
using electrical energy) to deliver the hydrogen directly rather than waste
energy with a subsequent energy-wasting compression.
The actual chemical reaction takes place in a hydrogenation unit with a
bed of porous noble metal (a metal such as gold, silver, ruthenium, or platinum
resists chemical action) catalysts and metered LOHC. The exothermic
reaction releases heat, which can be used downstream in the process. Then
the hydrogen-charged LOHC+ (perhydro-dibenzyltoluol) is simply pumped
like diesel fuel into a storage tank to await delivery.
Releasing Stored Hydrogen
Stored as a stable, benign liquid on board, when needed by the fuel cell
associated with the vessel’s power plant, the LOHC+ is pumped into a
dehydrogenation unit where, in the presence of a catalyst and heated to 250°C
to 300°C, it releases its hydrogen as a gas to be converted into electricity in a fuel
cell. One liter of LOHC stores one kilowatt hour of electricity and one kilowatt
hour of thermal energy as hydrogen. Reconversion via a fuel cell “releases”
the electrical energy. The result is electric power and discharged LOHC
(dibenzyltoluol) liquid, or “LOHC-,” which is stored aboard in a tank to be
replaced and recharged.
PRODUCING HYDROGEN
Hydrogen is produced in various ways — the method that’s the cheapest, most
efficient, and not surprisingly most common is using natural gas in a process
called reforming/gasification. A mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and a
bit of carbon dioxide is first generated by reacting natural gas with superheated
steam. The carbon monoxide then reacts with the water, producing hydrogen.
In another gasification process, coal or biomass can also be exposed to
superheated steam and oxygen under pressure. The resulting hydrogen and
carbon monoxide gas is separated by the steam. Similarly, in a process called
renewable liquid reforming, a renewable liquid fuel like ethanol is exposed to
superheated steam to produce hydrogen. And as the gaseous proclivities of
cattle to produce methane come under fire from environmentalists around
the world, fermentation of a different kind using sugar-rich feedstocks can
produce hydrogen.
In electrolysis, an electric current splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. If the
electricity is produced by renewable sources, such as solar or wind, the resulting
hydrogen will be considered renewable as well, and has numerous emissions
benefits. Power-to-hydrogen projects are taking off, where excess renewable
electricity, when available, is used to make hydrogen through electrolysis.
For all vessels, LOHC tech is impressive — it’s safe, environmentally friendly,
offers unlimited storage capacity, and is rechargeable and stable for long
periods of time. Most importantly, it’s compatible with existing infrastructure.
At SMM, Hamburg’s 2018 international maritime trade fair, Dutch company
Port-Liner and H2-Industries announced the development and construction of
all-electric inland vessels based on LOHC. Combined with wind, wave, or solar
energy systems, LOHC technology may restore hydrogen’s good name.

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 captain
engineer stew chef B A C K G R O U N D C H E C K S

Ske etons in the Closet

Why new-hire reference and background checks can save your bacon.
By Louisa Beckett

With a global industry like yachting She was horrified because she knew the couple
that employs crew from countries all had gotten into trouble for drug use and
over the world who are continually other misbehavior in the past. “Their
moving from one boat to the next, it’s [reference] letters were false, and they
difficult to know everything there had some deckhand sitting by the
is to know about the people who phone pretending to be the captain
work for you. And yet, yacht when I called,” the captain says.
owners routinely entrust their “It was a horrible situation to be
multimillion-dollar assets — in to have to tell the owner!”
in fact, their very lives — to
their crew. Reference Checks
“It’s in the best interest Thoroughly checking the
of the owners, guests, and references furnished by
crew that you know who the candidates for open
you’re bringing on board positions on yachts is a
and that you know and trust critical security service
the source you are hiring that placement agencies
from,” says Angela Wilson, provide to their clients. The
Elite Crew International crew agents we spoke with reported
agent and marketing director. that a surprising number of
“By employing crew without the candidates furnish inadequate,
support of an established MLC, misleading, or even wholly
2006 crew agency, you can run the fraudulent references.
risk of hiring someone who has no place Some crew will put the captain or
working in this industry.” chief stew of a previous boat down as a
Wilson continues, “For example, just today reference without asking them first. Taken
we verified the license of an engineer who has by surprise when a crew agent calls to check the
worked in yachting for fifteen years and the issuing reference, they won’t always give the candidate the
authority found it to be fraudulent! He’s been employed on some glowing report he or she had hoped for. “Make sure you have alerted
ILLUSTRATION: CIRIPASCA/ISTOCK; HAILSHADOW/ISTOCK

very reputable mega yachts and has very good references, yet he’s continued
to work as a chief engineer with fake documentation. The actual valid license
he has wouldn’t qualify him to meet the MSMDs [Material Safety Data
Sheets] for the positions he’s held. Had we not followed our procedure, it may
not have been caught.”
The captain of a 60-plus-meter yacht, who wishes to remain
anonymous, tells the story of an even bolder scam he was subjected to not
long ago. He interviewed a couple who presented themselves via a crew
agency as a chief stewardess/head chef team. The reference they provided
from the captain of their previous boat checked out. So, the captain
arranged for the couple to go to his boss’s home and cook for him and his
family. “I picked up some provisions and they did a three-hour chef test in
the owner’s kitchen,” he says.
The captain was at the point of offering the couple positions on the yacht,
but first, he mentioned their names to a different crew agent acquaintance.
your reference and gotten their permission,” advises Liam Dobbin, managing
director wilsonhalligan Yacht Recruitment.
In the volatile yachting industry, it’s also important to keep in touch
with the people you plan to use as references, so you’ll have their updated
contact information when you need it. “Don’t give out their private contact
information,” Dobbin adds, recommending that instead, job candidates put
on their applications that they’ll provide that information on request.
It’s okay to use peers as references, but not in place of the captains and/
or heads of department a candidate has worked for in the past, according
to the crew agents we spoke with. “A red flag for us is if the reference details
provided are from fellow crewmembers (bosun, second stew, third officer) but
not the candidate’s immediate manager, e.g. chief stew/officer/engineer, or the
captain,” says Tim Clarke, Quay Crew director.
Even when written references do come from the candidate’s
managers, crew agents say they can be incomplete, since some yacht

www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 49


“…Just today we verified
the license of an engineer
who has worked in yachting
programs have a policy of saying very little or for fifteen years and the
nothing at all about previous employees. “For the
most part, we find captains and other employers
issuing authority found
to be very candid with their feedback on a it to be fraudulent.”
candidate’s performance,” says Wilson. “There is,
however, sometimes a fear that by being truthful
it will damage someone’s career or get back to the crewmember; however,
referees are given the option to share the information confidentially.”
“With written references, a lot of captains and heads of departments won’t
put what they actually think of the crewmember,” Dobbin says.
“Written references are ‘nice’ but not terribly reliable,” says Rupert
Connor, president of Luxury Yacht Group. “Sadly, too many employers send
crew off with a very warm written reference when in reality they wouldn’t
hire them again and often removed them with cause. Also, we have identified
hundreds, if not thousands, of fraudulently produced written references so
we never rely upon written references,” he continues. “Our candidates are not
submitted for work until one of our staff has a verified reference on file from a
confirmed employer.”
When it comes to American crew, Connor adds, “We also ask the
‘standard’ question: ‘Is the candidate eligible for re-hire?’ which in the USA-
based HR system is the only legally permissible way for someone to provide a
negative reference.”
Some crew agents feel that checking references verbally rather than by
email or some other written method yields far more insightful results. “We
verbally reference-check every single candidate,” says Clarke. “We feel it is
essential as we take verbal references all the time that bear no resemblance to
50 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com
the written reference. Some of the horror stories we hear are unbelievable
and sometimes a little scary.”
Since the yachting industry is fairly small, he adds, it’s not difficult for an
experienced crew agency to discover the truth about a candidate. “We have
good relationships with a lot of senior crew, which pays dividends on the
reference front…,” he says.
“We speak to people who are on [the candidate’s] reference list, and
people who are not down as a reference,” says Dobbin, adding, “We’ve
seen many [references] that are not legitimate — [the candidate] has
written it themselves.”
Dobbins tells crew, “Your reputation is everything,” and advises them never
to leave a boat on bad terms if they can possibly help it. But, on the other hand,
he has seen some captains, chief stews, or other heads of department overlook
a poor reference if it dates back to a time when the candidate was simply too
green for a particular job. “A lot of captains, engineers, and chief stews will give
people a second chance, as they might have had one themselves,” he says.
“We allow crew to exclude us from contacting former employers and
this is fair and reasonable,” says Connor. “Not every job is going to be
perfect and why encourage contact with an employer who didn’t work out
and won’t say nice things when you have three other former employers
who love you?” However, he adds, “We will analyze the volume of blocked
references and if you only say that it’s okay to contact one employer in
ten, then we may be concerned about that. We will also flag the account if
you provide us a written reference but say that we cannot contact them to
verify…. Not suspicious at all.”
Background Checks
Infrequently — in less than 10 percent of
new hire situations, according to one crew
agent — yacht owners will require that a full
criminal background check be performed on a
potential job candidate. “We have some clients
who want them…it’s on a per-client basis. It
usually depends on the corporate culture of the
owner,” says Michael Reardon, president/yacht
manager Reardon Yacht Consulting.
“It generally comes about when an owner
has experienced a situation in the past, such as
driving, drug, or theft issues,” says Marcy Williams, crew services manager
for Northrop & Johnson Crew Services.
While some owners and captains carry out these background checks on
their own, many crew placement agencies offer them for an additional fee.
The process can be costly and time-consuming, depending on the candidate’s
country of origin. “There’s a huge difference… Americans are the easiest, and
Europeans are the next easiest, although [stricter] privacy laws come into
play,” Reardon says. “If the person comes from Australia or New Zealand, it
will take some time.”
Some captains encounter even more specialized circumstances when it
comes to checking out potential crew. “Since on my boat, the interior team
PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTNEYK/ISTOCK
all need to be Russian-speaking, I am often working with the crew agencies
in Odessa,” says Capt. Tripp Hock of M/Y Amore Mio. “Unfortunately, those
agencies I have discovered in the past will coach their candidates how to
falsify their résumés to appear better on paper, so fact-checking is essential.
Procedurally, now I have a person who first combs through any potential
candidates’ Russian social media accounts, then a person who conducts a
Russian native fluency assessment and educational checks, and I
finally come in with both an online interview, thorough reference
checking, and a mandatory in-person interview up in Odessa
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with my chief stew,” he says. “I feel it vitally important to be as critical and
thorough in the selection process as possible to avoid headaches later on.”
Some crew agencies have in-house teams that perform candidate
background checks, but more commonly, they are outsourced to specialist
firms that have relationships with Interpol and other governmental
authorities. In addition to checking for a criminal record, they also will
look at the candidate’s social media postings. “Sometimes
their social media lets them down,” Dobbin says,
citing the example of a crewmember who
repeatedly disclosed his yacht’s location
on social media, despite the program’s
confidentiality policy.
Legally, before undertaking
a criminal background check,
a crew agency, management
company, or captain
— or gracefully drop out of the candidate pool. “If something’s going to show
up, tell us,” advised Williams. “Don’t waste people’s time and money.”
“People sign [the background check release] obviously knowing that
they’ve got thirteen pages of stuff, and they still let us go through the exercise,”
says Reardon, who stresses the importance of being honest about any possible
infractions, no matter how minor, that may turn up. “I have more empathy for
[candidates] when they are professional and up front,” he says.
Some yacht owners have a strict policy of
disqualifying any crew job candidate who fails
a background check, no matter what the
cause. “Sometimes bouncing a check six
years [ago] will flag a crewmember,
even if they disclose it up front,”
Connor says.
In other cases, being
transparent about an old

PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREYPOPOV/ISTOCK
must get the candidate’s offense can work for
physical signature on a candidate. “Some
a permission form. employers will say… ‘I
This procedure gives like him; he’s honest,’”
the candidate an he reports. “Thankfully
opportunity to let the vast majority
the agency know of our industry is
in advance if any hardworking, honest,
skeletons in the closet and haven’t been in
are likely to turn up trouble with the law.”

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captain
W O R S T C A S E engineer stew chef

Asleep at the Wheel

By Kate Lardy

“Eating and sleeping are signs of weakness; you can rest when you’re yachting,” he continues. In his role as Designated Person Ashore, when
dead,” was the running joke on board the charter yacht Power Through. auditing a yacht, he considers crew hours of rest and levels of crew fatigue to
The 40-meter motor yacht was nearing the end of a nonstop Med season; be one of the most important areas to evaluate. “Yachting will always require
turnarounds had been too short for any real time off, and all seven crew long hours to deliver the high standards that are expected and paid for by
were showing signs of burnout. our clients,” says Connor. “To achieve this requires careful monitoring of
The first mate was really feeling the long season. He was having trouble hours of rest and personal levels of performance.”
sleeping during his breaks; naps didn’t come easily to him and he hadn’t had Designed specifically to combat fatigue, minimum rest requirements
more than six hours break a night this whole last charter, and at varying are specified by STCW and MLC, 2006. Crewmembers must get at least 10
times due to the rotating anchor watch schedule. hours rest per day, which may be divided into no more than two periods, one
Tonight they had an overnight run to drop the guests in Monaco and the of which needs to be at least six hours long; work between these rest periods
mate had the midnight to 4 a.m. watch. He cannot exceed 14 hours. In a seven-day
knocked off at 6 p.m., but since his schedule period, there must be at least 77 hours of
had been all over the place, he couldn’t fall rest. The 2010 revision of STCW (the Manila
asleep until after 8 p.m. At 11:45 p.m. his alarm Amendments) allows the master to make
roused him and he dragged himself out of exceptions, temporarily reducing hours of
bed, grabbed a Red Bull, and went up to the rest to 70 hours per week or dividing the 10-
bridge to join the deckhand on watch. The hour rest into three periods instead of two.
captain briefed him before retiring to his But, as Connor points out, “simply
cabin. It was a straightforward run, the seas because someone has been on duty for
were tolerable, it was more than 20 nautical less than the maximum number of hours
miles until the next waypoint, and there hadn’t (of work) doesn’t make them safe… there
been much boat traffic to worry about. The are many external factors to consider.
mate settled into one of the helm chairs while Very often working longer hours doesn’t
the deckhand went to do an engine room produce better results and that is something
check and fix a midnight snack. He glanced that often runs contrary to most people’s
at the AIS — all clear. He felt incredibly mindset. Being perceptive of fatigue is an
tired, keeping his eyes open seemed like a essential skill that our captains need to have.
monumental task. “Come on Red Bull, kick I repeat over and over to the captains in
in,” was his last conscious thought. whom I don’t detect that perception the need
He woke to the sound of the deckhand for rest, and insist that they and their crew
yelling for the captain as he turned hard to
“Very often working longer get time off regularly.”
starboard. Unfortunately, it wasn’t soon enough In Capt. Francisco Chadinha’s experience,
to avoid the fishing boat, invisible to AIS, that
hours doesn’t produce better fatigue is a reoccurring issue on yachts and
had appeared out of the dark…. results and that is something a gray area in this industry when compared
Being fatigued behind the wheel is a that often runs contrary to with the commercial world. “The reality of
hazardous combination. “Despite wide-ranging it is that with the amount of crew you have,
research and well-publicized information about
most people’s mindset...” especially on smaller yachts [where] the same
the dangers of excessive sleep-loss, fatigue demand of service is expected, it is not always
continues to be a leading cause of accidents possible to eliminate fatigue,” says Chadinha,
in all modes of transportation,” states the National Transportation Safety who currently runs the charter yacht Remember When. “I find that the best
Board (NTSB) in its Safer Seas Digest 2017, in which fatigue was a factor way to manage this scenario is to have a well-structured break schedule
in four collisions and groundings. In addition to the obvious risks that within your departments for when you have guests on board. It is no doubt
ILLUSTRATION: INUENG/ISTOCK

come with falling asleep on a navigational watch, lack of sleep also affects
responsiveness, decision-making ability, judgment, and productivity, says
the NTSB. “It puts mariners in danger.”
Yet in service-oriented yachting, where guest demands come first and
sleep a distant second, it is widely accepted as part of the territory. “Too
often working long hours is seen as a badge of honor — and not in a good
way,” says Rupert Connor, ex-captain, now president of Luxury Yacht
Group. “In my opinion, fatigue is the single most important risk factor in
challenging to accommodate the hours of rest on a busy charter or owner’s
trip, but I do feel that MLC has made it a better and safer environment.”
For yachts not under the MLC thumb, Connor says it well: “Private
or commercial… understanding and managing hours of work or rest are
critical to running a safe vessel.”
The onus to recognize the effects of fatigue and get adequate rest also
falls on the crewmembers themselves, says the NTSB, which sums it up:
“Fatigue is not a badge of honor; it is a recipe for disaster.”

54 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

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 crew
engineer stew chef deck

On Deck
Photographer Thierry Ameller captured the chief officer
in action of Admiral’s 73-meter M/Y Planet Nine in the Riviera
in May 2018 during an intense four-day photo shoot. The boat
was launched in 2018.

INSIDE JOB
page 64

DISHING IT UP
page 60
PHOTOGRAPHY: THIERRY AMELLER

DESIGN
page 66

THIS MONTH: Artificial intelligence, the agonies of avocado, and A-list animal gear
 crew
T E C H T A L K
AI: FRIEND OR FOE?
By Michael Blake
Artificial intelligence (AI)
has been the foundation of
sci-fi movies for a very
long time with
HAL in 2001: A
Space Odyssey
being the more
dramatic AI
antagonist of the space
station. Today, we hear it
being discussed in the news and
we generally just gloss over the impact
it has and will have on our everyday
lives. AI has the potential to be one of
the most important revolutions that
our society will see, since its potential
impact is magnitudes past anything
we can imagine.
Will it affect us in the yacht
industry? The answer is a definitive
yes. Let’s look at a few ways that
AI will eventually be integrated
into yacht operations. Intelligent,
voice-activated devices have
become our personal assistants.
Siri, Google Voice, and Alexa are
driving the convenience of not only
having the wealth of information
contained in the Internet available
at a simple request from the tip
of our tongues, but we can also
control our lights, security, room
temperatures, appliances, etc. That’s
why it can learn our patterns and
adapt to us as unique individuals.
This same concept will be applied
to our yachts, allowing the owners
and their guests to take control
over their environment or for the
environment to adapt dynamically to
them. That’s why stewardesses could
play a more diminished role when
it comes to simple requests from
owners and guests. However, that’s
not necessarily a bad thing — this will
enable them to be there to serve the
more important functions.
Captains make important
decisions in yacht navigation, but it
Michael Blake, president and CTO for Palladium Technologies, has more than 50
years’ experience building high technology companies. www.palladiumtechs.com
58 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com
has been proven that AI
systems are able to be taught
and can learn these complex
evaluations as well. A number of
years ago, I gave a talk on the future
of autonomous yacht navigation,
and I had many skeptics. But if we
look around us, autonomous cars
are being tested and by the end of
2019, the Tesla will be ready for
complete autonomous operation.
Today, the first commercial
ships are being commissioned for
complete autonomous operation on
the high seas. The systems on board
continue to become more complex,
putting most engineers in catch-up
mode with system maintenance
and support. By integrating an AI
preventive maintenance processes
that monitors and controls these
complex systems, we can move
towards yacht systems that are
repaired or replaced before they
fail, proving a nearly 100 percent
uptimes and availability for the
demanding yacht owners.
There are so many areas that will
benefit from the implementation
of AI that it would require a much
longer article to discuss them all. I
submit that if you keep a very open
mind to how we can use these AI
systems, not only can they make our
ILLUSTRATION: AQABIZ/ISTOCK
jobs easier and more efficient, but we
can also use them to make a more
pleasurable experience for owners
and their guests. I’m willing to say
the experience on these yachts could
even be near perfection.
 E N G I N E E R ’ S
CHIEF ENGINEER
ADAM MERCER
By Laura Dunn
If I weren’t on a yacht, I would
probably be working offshore
or starting a land-based marine
service company back home in
Rhode Island.
Funny story about how I got
started in yachting. I had just
finished up college and was on
vacation in Florida and met a
girl on Tinder who was a yacht
stewardess. I went out to dinner
with her and her crew and couldn’t
believe this cool of an industry
existed. I got my STCW the next
week and the rest is history!
I’d say the hardest part of my
job is staying on top of the planned
maintenance, which can be
challenging when bigger projects
arise. Working with IDEA yacht
management software is a huge
help to stay on top of the daily/
weekly/monthlys.
The worst mechanical failure
I’ve experienced as an engineer
was when we ruptured a shaft
seal coming into Nassau. It was
frightening seeing a couple feet
of water in the bilge. We were able
to slide a spare seal in and had no
further damage.
The biggest issue facing yacht
engineers today is rotation.
PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY OF ADAM MERCER
I’ve been tempted to try out the
commercial side because of steady
rotations and set time off for a
similar yearly salary.
My advice would for those
looking to get started is to make
connections. Join groups on
Facebook and attend Dockwalk
events — networking goes a long
way in this industry.
I N S I G H T
NAME: Adam Mercer
POSITION: Chief Engineer
VESSEL: Avalon
LOA: 46M/151'
BUILDER: Delta Marine
YEARS IN CURRENT POSITION: 2
YEARS IN INDUSTRY: 4½
PREVIOUS VESSELS:
M/Y Usher,
M/Y Just Enough
NATIONALITY/COUNTRY:
American
My advice for those looking to
impress on the job is to keep your
head down and work hard. Hard
work doesn’t go unnoticed.
Naturally I’ve always been
hard on myself and doubted my
abilities, but through yachting, I’ve
learned I’m very capable when my
back is against the wall and I put my
mind to it.
My most significant
achievement is earning my third
assistant unlimited license through
the USCG. I studied every night and
every weekend for months while
working full time and I was still
able to pass all nine modules the
first time around.
The best part of my job is
traveling to places I likely would’ve
never been able to in my whole life.
Also, being able to use the tenders
and fishing gear.
www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 59
crew
D I S H I N G I T U P
Avocado Agonyy
By Rubi McGrory
Netflix is experimenting with all
kinds of crazy shows. Not all of them
will get green lighted. Not all of them
will spark joy. There may or may
not be chatter about a scripted show
called List-Less. It’s a mockumentary
based on the real-life hot messes that
yacht chefs and stews find themselves in
when the principal charterer doesn’t
know how to fill out a preference
sheet. The episodes exploit our
deepest anxieties of scrambling
to fulfill last-minute demands on
the high seas (and shallow anchorages).
There will be the predictable standards: Our poor chef never suspected that 24
the guests who say they don’t eat pork
but devour three pounds of bacon every
avocados wouldn’t be enough for one
morning. They’ll assert that bacon isn’t night, let alone the whole trip.
pork, with a piece of bacon clinging to
their lower lip. Or the guest who informs
you on day three that she is gluten- and dairy-free, and the guest who doesn’t
understand why you don’t regularly stock caffeine-free Diet Coke.
Start looking for trailers soon featuring a harried chief stew, struggling to
help her guest understand that there is no Goop outpost in the Exumas. She
explains that despite their selection of more than 32 proprietary tea blends,
they do not, as a matter of basic subsistence, keep a one-month supply of
organic, ceremonial-grade mushroom Matcha with Lion’s Mane and CBD oil.
I’ve been privy to one episode in which we spy on Mr. K and his guests.
On their preference sheets, they ticked a little box indicating that they
like avocados. They also checked that they liked beets, kale, carrots, and
jalapeños, among other things. Their first dinner goes off without a glitch,
no surprise Keto or Whole30 diet. Our chef is as smooth as chocolate
pudding and silky as nut milk. Right after dinner, all of the guests don their
tightest pants and fancy shoes, and head off to the casino.
Five hours later, at 3 a.m., they tumble back aboard stinking like casino
sweat, spilled drinks, and cigar smoke. Three guys battle for control of the
Sonos. They’re each convinced they know the best yacht rock song. Everything
happens at top volume. One of them orders avocado toast, not looking up from
his phone as he sends Hall & Oates to the sound system. Our hapless chef
throws an apron over her PJs, fires up the toaster, and gathers her avocados.
As she prepares the feast, we hear her voiceover about how she’s chosen
her produce in various stages of ripeness so she won’t be forced to make
guacamole on day three of the trip and have no avos on day 11. She lines
up eight utterly perfect avocados, which are creamy, silky, and delicious.
She cuts and spreads them on the toast. The platter of the platonic ideal of
avocado toast gets a finishing sprinkle of sea salt that she harvested herself
(see directions) before the stew whisks it away.
The chef is about to pat herself on the back for exceptional midnight nibbles
when the stew pops in with an empty platter looking for the next round. This
happens twice more. Except the avocados are no longer ripe enough. They are
60 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com
firm. The chef tries mashing them with a
fork, microwaving them, throwing them
in the food processor before she settles on
shaving them with a veggie peeler.
The next scene opens on the sun rising
into a galley empty of avocados. The
morning stew walks in with a breakfast
order of more avocado toast. Our poor chef never suspected that 24 avocados
wouldn’t be enough for one night, let alone the whole trip. Cut to her feverishly
taxiing to the only store on the island. Cut once more to a closeup of an empty
bin — save for three shriveled dark brown avocados. We watch one squish open
as she pushes her finger against it.
In the taxi, the chef breaks the fourth wall. Looking directly into the
camera, she says, “Well, I’ll be BLEEP.”
Back on the boat, the camera follows her pen doodling a crude conga
line of avos as she talks to her provisioner back in Fort Lauderdale. She
explains that she needs a case of ripe avocados on the next plane out to the
island. Next, you see a memory montage of some of the crazier requests the
provisioner has had to fill, including overnighting three cases of prune juice
to a sailboat in Maine and trying to push a mini-pony up a passerelle for a
toddler’s birthday party in Miami Beach.
The camera switches to following the just-ordered case of avos. The journey
takes us through the warehouse, checkout, car trunk, into a golf cart, a plane
hold, in a customs queue, another car, another golf cart, and finally to the galley
counter. The chef kisses the box. A stew holds a platter awaiting avo toast.
The next shot is a closeup of one of these fruits banging against the galley
counter. The noise is sharp and cracking, like a bowling ball. They are so
very hard. Cut to a deckhand organizing a betting pool to guess how long it
will be before the avos are ripe enough to use.
ILLUSTRATION: JOHN DEVOLLE
In the next scene, our chef suggests nachos as an alternate to avocado
toast. The stew offers it to the guests, they decline. She offers chicken wings,
they decline. Deviled eggs? No. Mini pizzas? No. Chicken wings? No.
Cauliflower tacos? No. Grilled cheese? Maybe, let’s try it.
One hundred eighty-seven grilled cheese sandwiches later, the episode
and the charter ends, and the avocados still haven’t ripened.
I’m assured that every episode puts the crew in a terrifying position that
could have easily been remedied by the guests honestly portraying their

PHOTOGRAPHY: ANNA-OK/ISTOCK
eating habits. If this show does get the green light from Netflix execs,
it will be their first series classified as drama, comedy, and horror.
After 21 years on board yachts, Rubi McGrory founded Rubistudios.
She creates and curates custom tablescapes and theme packages for yachts.
Follow her on Instagram @rubistudios. www.rubistudios.com
SEA SALT
4-5 gallons of clean seawater
1/ Scoop some seawater from a clean place — not at a dock, maybe out at anchor
and not when the black tank is being pumped.
2/ Filter it through multiple layers of cheesecloth three times to remove impurities.
3/ Transfer the seawater to a large pot and set it on simmer.
4/ Slowly, slowly, slowly cook the moisture out. As it gets close to being nothing but
giant salt flakes, keep a close eye on it.
5/ It could take a couple days, but in the end, you will have a flaky, pillowy pile of
sparkly sea salt. It will impress the hell out of your guests and you can package it
in tiny jars for them to take home.
www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 61
crew
C H E F S ’ C O R N E R stew chef
A MINUTE IN THE GALLEY
Sole Chef Stefan Schenk of S/Y
Perseus^3 on discovering yachting
I was on a sabbatical from restaurant work
and backpacking in Southeast Asia when I ran
out of money and didn’t want to go home. I
found a job on a Dutch marketplace website
for a 112-foot sailing yacht. I had never heard
of the yachting industry, but I thought it
would be cool to work on a yacht and travel
a bit longer before getting back into the
restaurant world. That was nine years ago, and I haven’t been back yet.
I got my training when I did a chef’s academy in Holland with three years
of apprenticeships. In 2017, I went to Tokyo to attend to the Tokyo Sushi
Academy for a four-week course. While in Japan, I was invited by the Japanese
government together with six Michelin star chefs and butchers from Holland
and the UK to do a Wagyu beef tour to promote it in high-end kitchens.
My style of cooking is modern French with global influences, but my
favorite cuisine is Southeast Asian because I spend a lot of time in that part
of the world. The food in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and more are just
amazing. Unfortunately, they’re not my cooking specialties. Hopefully, one
day I can find a yacht in that part of the world and finetune my skills there.
My ideal guests are those with no dietary restrictions and who have an
adventurous sense for food. We have return clients on my current boat and they
loved to be surprised. They like to eat any style and type of food I make for them,
which makes it so much fun to cook for them.
Once I had an owner who screamed at me not to season his scrambled eggs.
He told me that he ate at the best restaurants and hotels in the world and
nobody ever seasons eggs with salt and pepper. I find it really weird to serve
unseasoned food.
Grounds for Concern
Start savoring your morning cups of coffee. Science Advances, a peer-
reviewed journal, published a study in January 2019 claiming that about
60 percent of the world’s wild coffee species are at high risk of extinction,
including Arabica and Robusta coffee species. The study reveals that 75 wild
coffee species are considered threatened with extinction. This development
is due to several factors, like droughts and the spread of fungal pathogens
as global temperatures rise. Humans aren’t above reproach either — we
contribute to deforestation and other kinds of human encroachments.
According to Dr. Aaron Davis, the study’s lead author and head of
coffee research at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, some coffee species
could become extinct in 10 to 20 years. “In many places, coffee farming
is a major cause of deforestation,” says Davis. “Whilst not necessarily
affecting wild coffee species, this is certainly causing significant losses in
forest cover and biodiversity (wildlife).”
Furthermore, coffee prices need to change. “Over the last two years,
coffee prices have been unsustainably low,” Davis maintains. He says
62 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com
Chef Feeds the When Chef Roberto Mendoza won $250,000
Needy with from a scratch-off ticket this past January, he
used it to help the homeless in Charlotte, North
Lottery Winnings Carolina, as well as for hungry children in the
Dominican Republic (DR).
Part of his generosity stems from his
traumatic childhood. “I grew up very poor,”
says Mendoza, who is from El Salvador. He
grew up during a war and even survived being
kidnapped. “Sometimes I eat, sometimes I
don’t,” Mendoza recalls. “…I tell God, ‘When I
grow up, I never want to suffer hunger again.’”
Now a successful chef — he’s cooked for three
U.S. presidents — he made good on his promise.
In 2013, when he was the chef in charge at the
NASCAR Cup Series, he had an epiphany after
seeing a forklift in action. “When I saw that much food, I said, ‘Thank you, Lord,
because I never see that much food in my life and thank you because I’m in charge
of it.’” For him, something clicked: “[It] is time to do something for needy people.”
Shortly after, he set up a program to use leftover food to feed the area’s homeless.
Two years later, the IRS sent him a $10,000 check after an audit. He used $6,000
to buy two acres of land in a very poor village in Bayaguana, DR, and the rest for
PHOTOGRAPHY: (TOP LEFT) LAURA DUNN; (BOTTOM RIGHT) NATHAN DUMLAO/UNSPLASH; (TOP RIGHT) COURTESY OF ROBERTO MENDOZA
materials and to start building a cafeteria that can hold 400 children. “Everything
is free for them; nobody pays a penny for it,” says Mendoza, who is still working on
the cafeteria building “because I want them to have a place to eat, a place to learn
and live. A place where we can change their lives.”
When Chef Mendoza won $250,000 through the North Carolina Education
Lottery, he decided to split it between his two humanitarian focuses. “When I won
that money that day, I got back home, and I said, ‘This is not my money…I’ve been
praying for it, something I’ve been asking for…and here it is.’”
If you want to take part in Chef Mendoza’s ongoing humanitarian efforts, make
a donation at www.thechefheavenskitchenusa.com/donations. You can also keep up
with Chef Mendoza on Instagram @chefrobertomendoza. — LAURA DUNN
that coffee farmers need to be paid fair
and sustainable prices for their coffee.
“Recently, low coffee prices have pushed
many farmers into low or negative
profitability. Coffee farmers around the
world are in many cases the guardians
of cultivated coffee’s sensory diversity for Arabica and Robusta coffee.” He
warns that if prices remain low for too long, some farmers will eventually
stop growing coffee, and we will lose much of what makes coffee special.
Due to market forces and possibly climate change, we’ve lost some
sensory diversity in Ethiopia. “It is entirely possible that some species may
go extinct in the short-term,” Davis says, urging us to take action ASAP,
so that the threats can be addressed and effective conservation measures
put in place. Being more responsible consumers may help halt extinction.
“Where possible, consumers should try to buy coffee from sources that
are not the cause of habitat destruction, and if possible, one that benefits
the environment, including those that prevent deforestation, such as
much of the coffee from Ethiopia,” Davis says.
So, for those who think life starts after coffee, it’s time to do your part
to keep your favorite kinds of coffee around as long as possible. Drink
responsibly. — LAURA DUNN
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I N S I D E J O B
The Superyacht Steward/ess and Going Green
“We are living on this planet as if we had another
one to go to.” – Terri Swearingen
In a time when it is no longer possible to ignore the needs of
our planet, there are ways that the yacht’s interior crew can “go green”
without reducing service standards. Thankfully, a lot has changed
in the 20-odd years since I started my yachting career. I am proud
to say that the superyacht industry as a whole has taken a collective
environmental leap forward.
To begin, superyacht owners are acknowledging the changes
that need to be made and are starting to invest in real, sustainable
ecological changes. This can be seen by looking at the new technology
that some of the yards are introducing, such as Feadship’s breathe
propulsion system and Oceanco striving for true zero-emissions
cruising. Furthermore, superyacht builders are enthusiastically
exploring new, practical, and applicable technological improvements
that will make these magnificent yachts go farther afield, with less
energy and emissions. Last but not least, the crew are embracing small
but practical green modifications by applying systematic changes,
such as recycling and environmental consumerism.
How to Go Green
The first things that come to mind when you hear the phrase “going green” is
to recycle and reuse. However, in the real world, going green involves much
more than that. Environmentalists define going green as the act of reducing
your carbon footprint. Going green means living a sustainable lifestyle by
playing an active role in maintaining balance in the ecosystem and preserving
natural resources. Going green also involves taking actions to reduce the harm
you cause to the environment. Practically speaking, you are going green if you
adopt the following principles: Reduce pollution, consumption, and waste;
conserve resources and energy; and protect the ecological balance.
You may contend that as a superyacht stew, many of these things are
unrealistic and out of your control. However, you can implement modest
changes on a daily basis that will make a difference.
Reduce
To decrease the level of a toxic substance released into the environment,
you can use natural cleaners, soaps, and shampoos instead of chemical
products. In practical terms, this can easily be managed by adopting
mindful consumerism. Take some time to explore your options, especially
when it comes to provisioning for bulk cleaners.
Conserve
Practically speaking, going green means conserving energy. All the sources
of energy used mostly on earth are natural, including coal, oil, etc. One way
we can save energy is by using a greener source of energy, solar, and wind
power. For crew in the interior department, start by turning off all unused
lights and checking with the engineer on board to see if there is an optimal
time to use the machines.
It is a necessity that we foster sustainability, which means using current
resources without compromising future generations. Even when guests are
64 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com
By Kylie OÕBrien
aboard, you can make
smart energy choices
without impeding
high standards of service. An easy way to immediately reduce consumption
and waste is to follow the three R’s principle: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
Reducing consumption means reducing production, energy, waste, and
pollution. Recycle things like glass and paper wherever possible and try to
phase out how much plastic you bring on board. When shopping, buy in bulk
when possible and always use recyclable shopping bags or foldable crates.
Protect
As you know, eco-friendly products are ones that have little (negative)
impact on the environment; here are a few easy hacks to help you do your
part on board:
/ Silicone teabags: made from FDA-approved high-quality silicone
/ Bee’s Wrap: made from organic cotton, tree resin, sustainably sourced
beeswax, and organic jojoba oil
/ Stainless steel straws: made from high-quality, corrosion-resistant,
stainless steel — this also meets the food grade requirement.
/ Reusable sandwich bags: made from reusable and washable cotton
/ Shampoo: package- and plastic-free
/ Reusable bamboo utensil sets: made from sustainable bamboo
/ Crew uniforms: made from sustainable materials, like organic cotton
These may not all work for the guest areas, but you can quickly
implement a few or all of these ideas into the crew area. PHOTOGRAPHY: CURTOICURTO/ISTOCK
Going green doesn’t have to be hard. Ask for advice from your fellow
crewmembers like the captain and the engineer, who know what is expected
from MARPOL. Better yet, educate yourself on these details so you can
more quickly make changes yourself and adopt a mindful consumerism
attitude. With some effort, operational planning, conscious shopping, and
a few more recycling bins, it’s entirely possible for the interior crew to go
green without limiting the standards of service on board.
Kylie O’Brien has more than 22 years’ hospitality experience, including time as a
chief stew on yachts up to 120 meters. She writes from her home in The Netherlands.
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crew
D E S I G N stew

Puppy Love
When the boss’s dog comes
aboard, there’s a new (small
and furry) VIP in town. Be
prepared to give Poochie
the A-List treatment with
these favorites.
By Rubi McGrory
PUPPY BANDANA
I can’t even — and you
won’t even, either, with
these totes adorbs puppy
bandanas. Make sure
your pup is as stylish as
possible with bandanas
like this “Down By The
Sea” dog bandana. $26.
www.thefoggydog.com

TREAT TOY
If you’re going to have dog toys underfoot, make them
beautiful. This treat-dispensing puzzle is made with an
eye towards design aesthetics. It doesn’t scratch your
surfaces, won’t roll too far away, is dishwasher safe, and is
available in a variety of colors. $23. www.updogtoys.com

DOG BOWL DOGGIE TREATS

Dogs don’t actually know when their
Please stop using your plastic containers for the
dog food! This hand-carved marble dog bowl will
birthdays are, so you can pretty much FURRARI BED
surprise them any time with this The boss’s dog is not truly pampered
match your flooring and keep your puppy hydrated.
festive cake, complete with until that pooch is on a Furrari on the
Prices start at $395. www.kellywearstler.com
dog-edible sprinkles. $8.99. yacht. This dog bed and
www.lazydogcookies.com its washable cover
makes pet cleanup
POTTY BOX
a little easier. $259.
This real grass potty box solves the problem
www.muttropolis.com
of where does Fido go when you’re at anchor,
and it’s available in a variety of sizes and
finishes. Prices start at $57.50.
www.freshpatch.com

66 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

crew
T O P D E C K
Post Op By Mx
It’s a yucky feeling peeling back the layers laid to
protect your beauty after a long winter refit. Nevertheless, it’s
also a profound relief to finally view her once she’s shed all
covers and is laid open to the blue skies as intended when the keel was first laid.
In the old days, a good, hard crossing would wash all the decks and leave
them gleaming. Although nowadays, it’s likely you may receive guests soon
after the yard period and the time once allotted to you has already been reduced
due to delays in the yard. Consider keeping one or two of your best dayworkers
— those who proved their worth every day, adding value and good cheer as they
muscled their way through the long task lists.
Your decks will probably require an exhaustive wash, and you must start
from the top and work down. This includes cabin tops, masts, roofs, and
anything above the deck level as all of it is likely covered with a film of grime,
and perhaps even oily residue. All of it will have to be soft-brushed with lots of
soap and water, and well rinsed before considering areas of special attention.
As it dries while you chamois, make note of any areas that were damaged
or require attention later and take a break to discuss with your mates what was
found under the film. A quick tea and snack later, get back to it and address the
decks, washing them down with water at first as another prepares buckets,
soap, and harder bristled brushes for all. Have at it with effort and intent,
again making note of areas of concern as you move down the decks, assuring
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scuppers are clear and all residue is removed.
You may note areas that need tape
or adhesive to be removed with acetone
perhaps, possible slight damage that can
be addressed with a light sanding, and even
areas where the paint has been damaged in
the scuppers, but all that may be addressed later. Mostly, you need to make sure
your decks are clean and free of growth, moss, fungus, and dark spots. They
should be left to dry naturally under the sun, hopefully with a light breeze.
Sit down with some good grub and lots of fluids to help you get going on the
next recovery phase. The brightwork, stainless, brass, and glass — if covered
prior to the refit — needs to be uncovered and primed. If left to the elements,
pull out your vinegar and polish and have at it with clean cotton cloths. It may
feel like a monstrous job, but the results are both immediate and amazing.
Early next morning, get set up on the dock to wash and polish your
PHOTOGRAPHY: 1001NIGHTS/ISTOCK
topsides. As you press her into the dock for this event, secure dock lines, and
be sure that her fenders are properly placed to avoid any possible damage.
Wash her down with lots of soap, then be sure to rinse her off well and to dry
her off with a chamois. If not already in the yard, consider a polish if your
schedule allows. If so, pull out your crew tender or request a floating platform
from the yard and sort out the other side of your boat, and within short order,
you will again have the best-looking boat in the harbor.
Mx is an experienced sailor and yacht captain currently managing
comprehensive yacht services in Cancun, Mexico.
 T A K E F I V E
Deckhand
Jonas Muro
Gomes
By Laura Dunn
I’d love to get to captain
someday on a sailing yacht, either
for racing or cruising around the
world. It’s been my life goal since
my teens.
If I weren’t on a yacht, I’d
probably be working as a sailing
instructor back home while
waiting to finish my deck officer
course in the Merchant Navy.
The toughest part of the job
has to be the distance from family
and friends. Then again, you meet
so many good new people in this
line of work that it helps coping
with it.
My advice for those looking to
get started is to give it a try even
if you have to fly a long way from
home to get to the yachting hubs. If
you’re a hard worker, you will find
the job you’re looking for.
My advice for those looking
to impress on the job is to be
reliable. Being someone who the
team knows they can count on
is a great attribute. That means
always being on time, knowing
your job well, offering help — even
if it’s outside of your department
— when you feel someone needs it,
and trying to support your fellow
crewmembers in general.
It depends heavily on the
PHOTOGRAPHY: LAURA DUNN
boat but having extra skills and
qualifications may open doors to
more job possibilities.
The value of having a good
relationship with the rest of the
crew is the most important thing
FACTORY TRAINED TECHNICIANS
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FACTORY AUTHORIZED REPAIRS
AUTHORIZED BOSCH COMMON RAIL &
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NAME: Jonas Muro Gomes
YACHT: undisclosed
BUILDER: Moonen Yachts
LOA: 36.7M/120'5"
POSITION: Deckhand PROVIDING QUALITY WORKMANSHIP
YEARS IN CURRENT POSITION: 1.5
IN SOUTH FLORIDA AND WORLDWIDE SINCE 1956
YEARS IN INDUSTRY: 1.5
PREVIOUS VESSELS: N/A
NATIONALITY: Brazilian
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2555 W. State Road 84, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33312
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The best part about my job is
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www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 69
 downtime
engineer stew chef deck

Iconic Views
PHOTOGRAPHY: GUENTERGUNI/ISTOCK

Bartolomé Island offers some stunning sights, including breathtaking

volcanic landscapes and Pinnacle Rock, formed when magma was expelled from an
underwater volcano. At the base of the volcanic cone, the underwater landscape is
home to sea lions, rays, fish, and even a colony of Galapagos Penguins — the second
smallest penguin species in the world. While at the island’s beach, keep your eyes on
the sky because the island is home to blue-footed boobies that like to fish in the waters
off Pinnacle Rock. Check out more about the area in this issue’s Escape on page 74.
WISH LIST
page 72

THIS MONTH: Cool eco products, discovering the Galapagos Islands, and “good” boats
downtime
W I S H L I S T

THE REAL COSTA

Eco Ambitions It’s important to protect yourself when
saving the environment, so you’ll
need a good pair of sunnies. Costa’s
With Earth Day around the new sunglasses from their Untangled
corner, you might want to step Collection fits the bill in many ways.
up your eco game. Here are Unlike most sunglasses, their new
six items from eco-conscious award-winning line is made from
companies that are taking recycled fishing nets. Costa teamed up
action to help the planet. with Bureo to remove plastic from our oceans
and give fishermen incentive to turn in their
By Laura Dunn old gear. $219. www.costadelmar.com

PRETTY S’WELL
WATER WATCH
Trendy hydration accessories
“Waste” is a relative term these days.
company S’well has its heart set on
Watch company Breitling certainly seems
ridding the world of plastic water
to agree. Last October, they unveiled
bottles. Its CEO launched S’well in
their first watch with a strap made from
an effort to combine fashion and
recycled ocean plastic, the Breitling
function so people would stop buying
Superocean Heritage II Chronograph
disposable bottles. Their products are
44 Outerknown. The diver’s timepiece
non-toxic, non-leaching, and made
features a strap made from ECONYL,
of stainless steel, plus they keep
a fabric made from recycled fishing
drinks hot for 12 hours or cold for 24.
nets often used by sustainable fashion
Travelers’ water bottles range in price
brand Outerknown, and comes
from $30-$40. www.swellbottle.com
packaged in a fully biodegradable box.
£5,600. www.breitling.com

ELECTRIC
BLUE
In honor of
FASHION STATEMENT
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If you’re a big believer that “we don’t deserve
Day last year,
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London-based
you’ll love NAK — No Animal Killed — Fashion.
menswear
The cruelty-free, vegan shoe brand masterfully puts
brand
out lightweight, breathable footwear that is also
Frangipani
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renewed its
and women — are made of superior material that’s
long-standing
identical to animal leather. £320.
partnership with
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the Blue Marine
Foundation. To
SWIM FOR CHANGE support the important
Lilliput & Felix certainly knows how to put ocean conservation work
out gorgeous swimwear. More importantly, of the foundation, Frangipani
this humanitarian company creates swim has designed a limited-edition,
fabrics from recycled, discarded plastics and lightweight shirt called Blue,
fishing nets. That means fewer sea creatures Blue, Electric Blue with a sail
are in danger of choking on irresponsibly fish and wave motif. Twenty-
discarded plastic or getting trapped in ghost five percent of the sales from
nets. This Barre Bikini in Mango has an SPF each shirt will be donated
50+, comes with a quick dry feature, and is to the charity. £75.
super soft. £95. www.lilliputandfelix.com www.frangipani-style.com

72 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

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downtime
E S C A P E
A Wildlife Wonderland
By Gemma Harris
Dotted in the Pacific Ocean, about 1,000 kilometers
off the South American coast, is the volcanic
archipelago of the Galápagos Islands. A province of
Ecuador, the Galápagos National Park is a protected
marine reserve with UNESCO World Heritage status.
Comprising a vast array of landscapes — rugged and
stark volcanic formations, tropical beaches, lush
highland, and even cactus-filled forests — the islands
are some of the most biodiverse areas in the world,
covered in unique fauna and flora. With only four
of the 13 main islands inhabited, the islands’
location and ocean current pattern mean
they are home to varied endemic species.
Showcasing evolution, the Galápagos
were Charles Darwin’s inspiration for his
theories of natural selection. With two
ports of entry — Puerto Ayora on the second
largest island of Santa Cruz and Puerto
Baquerizo Moreno on the easternmost island of
San Cristobal — yacht crew will find themselves with
plenty of opportunities on either island for a day off.
Puerto Ayora is the tourism hub of the Galápagos
and also one of the best places to book a day tour. Most
tour providers will put together a day trip based on
your interests, budget, and time constraints. Start your
day with an introduction to the endemic species at
the Charles Darwin Research Station to discover his
legacy, see the famous Lonesome George Exhibition,
and take an interpretative walk through the grounds’
active breeding center for the famous giant tortoises.
Once you’ve learned about the conservation efforts, head
to the El Chato Tortoise Reserve to witness the giant
tortoises in their natural habitat.
Just west of Puerto Ayora is one of the islands’ most
idyllic beaches: Tortuga Bay, where you can spot the
marine iguanas basking in the sunshine and snorkel with
turtles in the lagoon off Playa Mansa. Farther along, Playa
Brava is a great spot if you fancy some surfing in between
spotting wildlife. For some land-based adventure, check
out the hiking trail through the Lava Tunnel. On the
island’s eastern side is Playa Garrapatero, often frequented
by flamingos and perfect for a beach day where you can
swim, snorkel, and kayak. To end a day off, book time at the
Finch Bay Galapagos Hotel for some gourmet dining. For
something more casual and to taste some of the freshest
fish, head down to the Los Kioskos for local street food.
If you’re anchored off San Cristobal, you’re a stone’s
throw from Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, Galápagos’ capital.
Here, the sea lions run the show, lounging everywhere
from benches, walls, roads, and boats. For a thought-
provoking start, visit the Interpretation Center to learn
74 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com
Clockwise from top:
Fur seals at Punta Carola
beach; Lava Tunnel in the
highlands of Santa Cruz;
aerial view of Puerto Ayora;
swimming with hammerhead
sharks; and the marine iguana
about the island’s history and conservation.
At its back is a loop trail through the I F Y O U G O
mangroves up to Punta Carola, another
PHOTOGRAPHY: (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP) ALBERTOLOYO/ISTOCK; DONYANEDOMAM/ISTOCK; 4FR/ISTOCK; JANOS/ISTOCK; REISEGRAF/ISTOCK
prime Galápagos surf spot. Or simply Calypso restaurant
+593 5252 0154
sunbathe alongside the marine iguanas (left).
Some of the best snorkeling is found at Tijeretas Charles Darwin Foundation
www.darwinfoundation.org/en
Bay, where you can snorkel with playful sea lions and
turtles. Just up from the bay on Cerro Tijeretas Hill, you Finch Bay Galapagos Hotel
can spot frigate birds swooping overhead. La Loberia, +1 888 229 3214
another picturesque island bay worth a visit, is just a www.finchbayhotel.com
40-minute walk from town. This unspoiled wilderness is Galápagos Fan Dive
home to one of the larger sea lion colonies on the islands — www.galapago-fandive.com
spend time swimming with these curious residents. Galápagos National Park
Up in the highlands is the El Junco Lagoon, one of the +593 5252 6189
few freshwater sources on the islands. Located in a crater www.galapagos.gob.ec
and home to a variety of birdlife, the short walk up
will offer panoramic island views. For some of the
best offshore scuba diving, take a full- or half-day
trip over to Kicker Rock with the guides from
Galápagos Fan Dive; this dramatic, rocky island is
a great place to swim with hammerhead sharks.
To refuel after an active day off, try the informal
Calypso restaurant with its great seafood dishes,
burgers, and salads.
From land to sea, with wildlife being the main
star of the show, the Galápagos are a once in a
lifetime, bucket-list destination, so be sure to
take full advantage of time here.
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Mel Bailey TRAVEL
It is with deep personal regret that we lost Mel Bailey, a special friend,
On Sunday, February 17, 2019. Mel was part of the RYC family. Each of
us not only grieves the passing of Mel, but also for the loss his family
suffers. Mel had been in declining health for several months.
Mel and I worked together after meeting in the early 60’s working behind
houses or wherever, just to find work. Eventually, Mel went off on his own
and I started my own business building my reputation. His entire family,
(father, brother and uncle worked together with us.)
He joined our team over 35 years ago. He was an essential contributor
to the success of Roscioli Yachting Center. He was passionate about his
job working in the Stockroom and the kind of person to not object when
asked to do his job. COME FLY WITH US!
His sense of humor made it a delight for everyone who worked with him.
He continued his friendship with many outside contractors and captains
over the years. He was a former US Army veteran. Mel will be greatly
missed by everyone at RYC. He will be in our hearts and memories forever.
Bob, Sharon, R ob, Heather and Employees

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www.dockwalk.com | April 2019 79

downtime
L A S T L A U G H

A Good Program
By Gavin Rothenburger

What makes a good boat good? Is it because the captain’s never

there? Because it never charters long enough for the guests to recognize
that you don’t do anything even close to worthy of a shabby tip at
Applebee’s, never mind the ridiculous amount of money gifted to you
that you’re soon to give away to a series of bartenders and professional
dancers. Or maybe it’s the owner who, unlike your last job, only
occasionally gives you reason to think about #metoo. I guess it could be
any of these things.
Being on a “good” program isn’t just about a “fun” boat where you’re
allowed to be hungover on any day the captain is — essentially meaning
every day. Inevitably — like the reasons you never did follow up about that
STD test you took — it doesn’t come down to just one thing. You can have
an easy program, which is great until you realize that the pay amounts to
a sum that an average seven year old would be upset to receive for doing
the vacuuming. You can have an exciting and meaningful program that
seems like the way to go until you realize that the only way to get a day off
is, when dropping anchor, to do your best to catch it with your teeth.
No, a balance is needed. I’ve seen boats where the crew work very little
and seem content to “lol” through their days, collect paychecks, and generally
be lovely people who take as much professional pride in their work as
you would take pride in whatever it was that unread blood test turned up.
Ambitious risers can join and attempt to inject life into these moribund
layabouts but they, inevitably, will be crushed into dispassion under the sheer
weight of such cathartic sloth. And to the neighbors, well, it’s “that boat,”
where, should your CV ever cross their desk and they see M/Y Donkeynaps in
your experience column, they’ll quickly ask you to leave if you can possibly
muster the energy.
More commonly, I see boats that have guests on
board 412 days a year (they overlap charters) where
there is often good money, a fun travel program, and
one hour off every second day so you can shower.
Ambitious risers can join to moving in to an oversized sardine can with 60
Before long, all the tips and exotic destinations and attempt to inject life into grumbling crew and four pursers. To each their own.
seen only through the porthole you’re desperately these moribund layabouts As I’ve often said, a healthy balance is generally
clawing at in a spirit-ravaged attempt to escape, the recipe. For me, I like a boat that moves now
but they, inevitably, will be
begin to lose their luster. It doesn’t matter how much and then but not constantly, where I work for
you get paid, eventually the itinerary will resemble
crushed into dispassion nice people, and I might even take a little less pay
something more like the Gulag Archipelago than a under the sheer weight of (though still more than any rational person should
Caribbean cruise. Like rehab, it might seem like a such cathartic sloth. consider giving me based on my work ethic) if I can
good short-term thing but not something you really have these things and the occasional weekend to
want to stick with for very long. visit my professional dancer friends. This is where
Good programs are also a matter of opinion. I, for one, really like having captains can work with owners and crew to try to create an environment
the boss aboard and would look forward to setting up a firm schedule where we that encourages hard work and diligence but that doesn’t lose sight of the fact
see him for an extended trip every February 29th. But I know many others who that people should enjoy what they do and not feel an irrational paranoia that
ILLUSTRATION: JOHN DEVOLLE

have a thirst for adventure, are still able to distinguish one tropical island from
the next, and who enjoy the thrill of constant movement even though it means
seeing loved ones is slightly less common than seeing a good night’s sleep.
For some, a good program is working as a cog in a machine, deckhand #12,
on a boat big enough to get lost on and starve to death, because there may be
more of an underlying structure (read: mandated time off). For others with
different sensibilities, they would prefer to crush their nether bits in a vise for a
day while listening to Nickelback on loop at high volume before they’d consent
security cameras have been secretly installed in their cabins.
A good program is one where all feel appreciated and welcome; if
people feel harassed and constantly watched, then the captain hasn’t done
the job right and needs to hide cameras a lot better. A good program is
personal. Like a bad one, I’ll know it when I see it and, until then, I’ll keep
collecting a paycheck and clawing at the porthole.
For questions, concerns, or for general badmouthing, you can write to me at
gavinrothenburger@yahoo.com.

80 April 2019 | www.dockwalk.com

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Fort
FortLauderdale,
Lauderdale,Florida
Florida Dania
DaniaBeach,
Beach,Florida
Florida Fort
FortLauderdale,
Lauderdale,Florida
Florida Amelia
AmeliaIsland,
Island,Florida
Florida

• •Yachts
Yachtsupuptoto135’
135’ • •Wet
WetSlips
Slipsupuptoto200’
200’ • •Mega
MegaYachts
Yachtsupuptoto200’
200’ • •1,000
1,000Linear
LinearFeet
FeetSide
Side
• •Olympic
OlympicHallHallofofFame
Fame • •Shorepower
Shorepowertoto480V 480V • •Heated
HeatedPool,
Pool, Tie
TieDockage,
Dockage,25’ 25’Depth
Depth
Swimming
SwimmingPools Pools • •Dry
DryStorage
Storagetoto50’50’ Luxury
LuxuryFitness
FitnessCenter
Center • •High-Speed
High-SpeedFuel FuelPumps
Pumps
• •Cable
CableTVTV • •Fuel
FuelDock,
Dock,BaitBaitand
andTackle
Tackle • •Full
FullResort
ResortAmenities
Amenities • •Laundry,
Laundry,Bait
Baitand
andTackle
Tackle
• •Wireless
WirelessInternet
InternetAccess
Access • •100-Ton
100-TonTravel
TravelLift
Lift • •Wireless
WirelessInternet
InternetAccess
Access • •Captain’s
Captain’sLounge
Loungewithwith
• •One
OneBlock
Blockfrom
fromthe
theBeach
Beach • •Marine
MarineServices
ServicesComplex
Complex • •24-hour
24-hourGated
GatedSecurity
Security Satellite
SatelliteTV
TVandandWireless
Wireless
Internet
InternetAccess
Access

Scott
ScottSalomon
Salomon Logan
LoganMoore
Moore Brad
BradSt.
St.Coeur
Coeur Joe
JoeSpringer
Springer
954.764.3975
954.764.3975 954.926.0300
954.926.0300 954.667.6720
954.667.6720 904.310.3300
904.310.3300
hfmarina@bellsouth.net
hfmarina@bellsouth.net info@harbourtownemarina.net
info@harbourtownemarina.net info@sunriseharbormarina.net
info@sunriseharbormarina.net jspringer@fbfl.org
jspringer@fbfl.org

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