Rough life of crew on superyachts

What’s it like to work aboard a superyacht? Not as glamorous at it looks. Away from shore, depression is rife among crews as their stinking rich bosses push them to their limits

ONE day, not very long ago, a boat owner’s wife woke up on a superyacht in the Caribbean, miles away from habitation, and decided she wanted 1 000 white roses. In the world of the super-rich, staff have to be able to get anything from anywhere within 24 hours – so the crew arranged for the flowers to be helicoptered from Miami, then brought to the yacht in time for dinner.

The next morning, the Mrs wanted them gone. Unable to chuck them into the sea and too far away to drop them at a port, the crew had to jam them into their tiny quarters.

Tales like this aren’t all that unusual in yachting circles. I’m at the superyacht industry’s mecca, the Monaco Yacht Show, where, for a week, more than 580 exhibitors set up stalls around the marina. There are ship designers, brokers, interior decorators and crew recruitment agencies. Here, if you can pay, you can have whatever you want: Swarovski-encrusted anchors, gold dumbbells for your gym, personalised loo rolls, and diamanté light fittings.

In the water are 125 boats. Some are newly built for private owners and brought here by the shipyards as an advert to other buyers. The remainder are second-hand, here to be rented or sold. The biggest superyacht at the show is Tis: 111,5m, 18 guests, 31 crew, a cinema, helipad and spa, and chartered for £1,7million (R33, 15m) a week. Plus expenses.

Walking around the show, several people stop dead in front of me, dumbstruck that I haven’t moved out of their way. Two stewards try to cordon off a jetty so an incoming boat can be parked.

“Surely we don’t have to wait,” drawls an American woman in a Louis Vuitton visor, as she unhooks the rope and walks across anyway.

The show is one of the only times owners can see one another’s boats, because with extreme wealth comes extreme privacy. Yachts are often registered offshore and the names of their billionaire owners kept anonymous. They’re used as offices, holiday homes or hiding places. And what happens on board, stays on board, with members of the crew often signing non-disclosure agreements.

So, what does happen on board and below deck? Many crew members are reluctant to speak to me, fearful of lawsuits from their bosses – who are, after all, the richest people in the world. The ones who do, describe glamorous destinations and large, tax-free pay packets – mixed with long hours, isolation, sexual harassment and depression. It’s a combination that people call the “golden handcuffs”.

ASUPERYACHT is defined as being longer than 24 metres. In the past decade the worldwide fleet has more than doubled. It’s estimated there are nearly 5 000 currently in service, with more than 800 in the process of being built.

Like the navy, the management system on board is hierarchical. The captain – who, according to Boat International, can earn up to £13 000 (R253 500) a month, has the final say. Meanwhile, the “interior” team – mostly women, called “stews” – do the housekeeping, laundry and guest service. They earn up to £6 000 (R117 000) a month. Then there are the chefs at around £7 000 (R136 500), engineers, who can earn £ 10 000 (R195 000) and finally, the mostly male deck crew who are paid up to £6 000.

Karine Rayson, a former stew, joined the industry for the travel and adventure, but ended up feeling like a glorified cleaner. “It’s back-to-back all summer,” she says. “You’re vacuuming the same

spot you vacuumed half-an-hour ago. You clean with an earbud, you polish the inside of a tap with a toothpick, you go completely mad.”

The superyachts in Monaco are spotless. I’m told every time a guest goes down to their room, a stew will go in after them to reposition the towel sculpture or refold the end of the loo roll.

A trained counsellor, Karine now provides FaceTime therapy for people working at sea. She goes by the name Crew Coach. She tells me crew turnover is high, sometimes because impatient owners suddenly decide to fire someone, but mostly because of “crew burnout”.

In a survey by the International Seafarers’ Welfare and Assistance Network, 75% of respondents indicated they “often” or “always” worked more than contracted hours. Crew talk about relentless summer seasons, providing “7-star” service, working up to 18-hour days, for weeks on end. Karine remembers being woken up at 3am to get the owner’s 10-year-old son some ice cream. The crew is at the beck and call of the most spoilt people in the world.

The longer you stay in the industry, the harder it is to get out, Karine says. The pay is high for the skills required to be a stew (essentially a housekeeper).

“If you’ve been polishing with an earbud for five years, you’re not upskilling as you would in a land-based job,” she says. “It’s hard to know where to go next.”

The money, sun and travel keep crew coming back, despite ill treatment. Hence the golden handcuffs.

The owner’s wife is often the most difficult to deal with, says Anna Petchell, a former crew member. “The wives are lonely and miserable and there’s usually a mistress,” she says. “These women have no real purpose in life, so they come on the boat and get very nit-picky.”

Today, Anna owns a company that helps people exit the industry and reintegrate into the regular job market.

It’s mainly men looking at yachts at the Monaco show. They’re all variations on the same model: pastel shirt pulled taut over a fat belly, slicked-back hair and big sunglasses. The few female customers I see are nipped, tucked and plumped.

Most of the women at the show are there because they’re working. There’s a reception desk on the jetty behind each boat. Hostesses hired by brokerage companies perch on high stools, letting potential buyers on board. On the boat, stewardesses are giving tours. Most are dressed in skimpy shorts.

All the crew I see are slim and attractive, and the longer I’m here, the more it makes sense. You’re buying a superyacht – your perfect pleasure palace. You can choose its length and height and where the helipad goes. You pick out the colour of the cushions, the number of crystals on the chandeliers, the bed sheets. The

final accessory? The staff. In the superyacht world, having identical-looking female crew is a status symbol. Blondes are bought to match.

ALICE Tiller (33) was in the superyacht industry for eight years. At the beginning of her career she worked on a private superyacht, which also had a “shadow boat” – generally a decommissioned oil-supply boat converted into a luxury storage unit. It follows the main boat, carrying gyms, spas, casinos, meeting rooms, gadgets and garages for supercars and motorbikes.

“I was doing 18-hour days for six months while the boss was on board,” Alice says.

It’s difficult to make generalisations about how yachts operate because everything depends on the owner. Some spend their whole summer on their boat in the Mediterranean and then Christmas in the Caribbean. Others will leave their yacht in a marina for 360 days of the year and use it for just five. Others charter their boat out for week-long stints, all year round.

There are also different ways to hire crew. “Green” crew, who are just starting out, often “dock walk”, handing out their CVs in marinas and asking for any jobs going. Vacancies are also advertised by word of mouth or on social media. Otherwise, there are recruitment agencies.

“Every morning, the owner took the female crew to work out with him on the shadow boat,” Alice continues. Why? “I don’t know – it was just one of those things. I was new to the industry, so I didn’t really know otherwise.”

In the gym, the owner would touch her and other crew in a way she felt was “inappropriate”. Alice now sees it as harassment. But even with hindsight it would’ve been impossible to refuse. You either say yes or get fired.

The same owner offered to fund breast enlargements for his six female employees. Alice declined.

When you’re applying for a job in the superyacht world, your CV must include a photo and often, says Alice, a full-body shot, plus your height, age, weight and dress size. “I’ve been there multiple times when captains have gone through a pile of girls’ CVs and they’ve said, ‘Too fat, too short, too ugly.’ That happens regularly.”

On one recruitment website it states: “Insert photo here, smile . . . Remember that this may be presented to the owner and first impressions count!”

Danny McGowan, who works for seafarers’ trade union Nautilus International, seems unsurprised by this. “It’s a very superficial industry.”

Often, he continues, superyacht crew are scared to report employment issues to their representative body. “Contracts can have a ‘for any reason’ clause within them, making it very easy for employers to fire someone. There’s real fear there.”

Alice says on that same boat she had to share a room with the captain and, looking back, is “really not okay with what I put myself through”.

The captain would try to open the bathroom door while she was in the shower. “It was always put down to ‘just banter’,” she says. “He’d get into my bed when I was asleep and try to kiss and touch and feel me. Multiple times he tried to make it lead to more. He was my boss.”

In Monaco in 2018, the Professional Yachting Association presented the results of a survey on sexual harassment in the industry: 40% of respondents said they’d been the recipient of unwanted physical contact while working, mostly from a fellow crew member.

The closest thing a superyacht has to “human resources” is the captain, but he answers directly to the owner. In Alice’s case, both the captain and the owner were the perpetrators.

Why didn’t she just quit? “It was my first job. If I told the agent I had to leave because inappropriate things happened, I’d have been seen as a troublemaker.”

The final option is to report the crime to the authorities. But this is also tricky as incidents of sexual harassment are subject to the laws of the flag state where

the vessel is registered, as well as whichever country’s waters the boat is currently in. The layers of regulations are difficult to navigate. To complicate things, you must be present in the country to report the crime.

At the 2010 Monaco Yacht Show, Will Black (28), a Brit working on the deck of the superyacht Burrasca, went missing. He was last seen driving a rigid inflatable and it’s thought he was knocked overboard after it collided with another boat. The superyacht he worked on didn’t request divers to look for his body.

By the time Will’s family arrived in Monaco, the yacht crew had thrown flowers overboard, given his bags to the police, raised anchor and left.

“We’ve never heard from the owner,” says his mother, Judith. “We still don’t know who he is. All I want to hear is, ‘I’m so sorry’.”

CARA Edson was just 19 when she was employed as a deckhand on a boat in northern Europe. As the only woman working on deck, she says there was a lot of “hardcore banter”.

Then, one night, while the boat was in a Dutch port for repair, the crew went out together. “I know I didn’t drink that much,” Cara (now 25) says. “My drink must’ve been spiked. The last thing I remember is going home and throwing up, then I was in someone else’s bed. I was terrified. I had no idea where I was but I looked around and I was next to another crew member.”

She says she still has flashbacks of being raped by him. The next morning she reported what had happened and the captain fired the alleged perpetrator.

“The thing that still sits with me is that we never went to the police,” Cara says. “But how do you deal with it in a foreign country? What processes do you have to go through? The crew are all from different countries, you’re not in one place for long, plus the boat is registered somewhere else.”

It’s a stateless existence, so institutions and authorities feel meaningless.

It wasn’t until Cara got home to New Zealand, 18 months later, that she felt able to address her depression and went to therapy. She still works in the industry.

Littered among the many anecdotes she and other women share are references to moments of real sadness. I ask them what they mean when they say “shower cry”. “We might sound like we joke about it,” says Sophie Woodly (24), a British deckhand. “But there’s nowhere else to go. You’re being cheery for the guests, working long hours, weeks at a time of not being on land, sharing a small bedroom. The shower is the only place where you can lock the door and be truly alone.”

Crew living quarters vary in size and comfort. Each boat I visit in Monaco has hidden stairs that go down into its guts, which are generally cramped and dark. There’s a table surrounded by sofas – the crew’s eating and living area – and windows are thin slivers above head height.

Two people share a bedroom, sleeping in bunks. There are a few drawers and a small lavatory and shower room.

If the yacht is at sea and a crew member wants to have a private phone call, they must wake up in the middle of the night or go into the engine room. When they do speak to people back home, it’s difficult to articulate the intensity of the environment. Everyone thinks they’re living the high life – and to an extent they are.

Tonight, we’re eating at an expensive restaurant in Monte Carlo. The crew order truffle risotto and spend a long time deciding which wine they fancy. But tomorrow they’ll be back on a boat, cleaning with a toothpick.

Sophie is an outspoken campaigner for mental health in the industry. Three years ago, while working on a superyacht, she became depressed and struggled to socialise on her days off. It was made worse by difficult relationships with her colleagues.

“On numerous occasions, when we’d be out at sea doing long trips, I’d be on watch at 2am. I’ve gone to the back of the boat and stood there on the edge, looking out into absolute darkness. And I’ve thought to myself, ‘If I stepped overboard right now, nobody would know.’ It just felt all too easy.”

Last year, a British superyacht crew member, Andrew Clapham (32), took his own life in the Caribbean. A few months before, Sinead McNamara, an Australian, killed herself in Greece, while on board the £108m (R2,1 billion) Mayan Queen IV.

For her part, Sophie began taking antidepressants and slowly got stronger. She claims one day she asked her captain for permission to go ashore to pick up some more pills and was fired on the spot.

“He used the words, ‘ Your condition will be a burden on the crew. If you’re not capable of doing the job, then you shouldn’t have the job.’ I was capable, but this world has an obsession with everybody being perfect.” She boomeranged back to the industry, got a job on another yacht and is still working. What keeps her on superyachts?

“This is a very nomadic life and it suits me. When I get a couple of months off, I can travel wherever and I don’t have to stick to a budget – it’s freedom. In the end, the pros far outweigh the cons.”

Today, in Monaco, Sophie is sunny and full of life, putting the cushions away on the top deck of the yacht, laughing with her colleagues.

She’s started Skype therapy sessions with Karine and feels everyone on board should have counselling.

The super-rich hover above the real world. They get whatever they want. In this world, a pinch on the butt comes with a whopping tip; 18-hour-days with three-month breaks; ridiculous demands with exotic backdrops. If you pay someone enough, their answer will always be, “Yes.”

‘The shower is the only place where you can lock the door and be truly alone’