Crew manuals are the key to keeping crew on the up and up. Especially when walking onto a brand new boat with all new systems. Learning the ways of the chief engineer and captain, are a must for me. Things become routine and make you're world much easier onboard. You can feel confident on a watch if you have a Manual on lets say anchor watch, right at hand. The more crew manuals, the better. The best way to "woo" you're owners/ guests is to show them that you know the systems like the back of your hand. > more

  It’s unbelievable sometimes the apparent disconnect between yacht owners and their crew.   For the past two weeks our crew has been on ‘stand by’ – standing by to standby as it were.   What I’ve discovered during my time working on the megayacht industry, is that there seems to be a characteristic that is common among superyacht owners, in that they seem to have very little understanding of what is involved when it comes to preparing a yacht for their impending arrival.   So for those of you wondering what’s involved – here are some of the items > more

... and have barely moved a muscle since touchdown last Wednesday. Today we're out and about though - with chums Candy and Dolly and our cumulative offspring. They live round the corner in London and quite coincidentally are in a villa about 30 miles from us (which is nicer than ours but we're not jealous). Just had a very passable lunch in Volterra at Da Bado, which we got out of the Osterie e Locande d'Italia - a.k.a. the "Slow Food Guide," our new Bible for eating in Italy. The first edition in English came out last year (after 20-odd > more

As we expect the first brush with a hurricane of the year, the signs are there that the summer is passing by. For most of us in South Florida that is a good thing as it means an end to the stifling heat. However the Autumn does have its problems which start with an influx of elderly road users who find 50 mph a little racy and have no real respect for those new fangled indicators. What really marks the end of the summer and the start o the Autumn is the Ft Lauderdale boatshow (we only have 74 days > more

Currently I am still varnishing, yes you read that correct, still varnishing. I am sure my english teacher would be rolling in her grave is she could see all the wonderfull grammatical mistakes I make. Hell some of the greatest minds can't tie their shoes and I slaughter the english language from time to time. Lately the days have been comprised of getting up at O'dark thirty and cursing the damned infernal bugs that have used my beautiful caprail as a deathstrip. What is it? The smell of acetone, the boquet of fresh Awl brite, the promise of catching a > more

And now a word of warning for male crew. They say that when you hit 25, things start happening to your waistline. It was certainly that way for me – in my early twenties I could eat anything and stay the same lithe, tanned, muscled machine I was. After 25, things changed – I noticed that my waistline started to expand, proportional to my food intake. The same holds true in other areas too. When I joined the yacht Mikado, aged 24, I was used to living out of a small bag, which contained all my worldly possessions. When I > more