Yacht Circle

Just a quick note on South Africa and crew changes there. When I was in Cape Town in Janurary of last year, we came across an issue during a crew change. At the time, I worked aboard a traveling school ship, and as such we had large groups, say 24 students at a time leaving  the vessel and arriving every three months or so. During the previous year, we had had a group of students depart the vessel, and they were signed off the crew list as per the usual order of operations. We then had 24 new students arrive, and we signed them on the crew list which is where the problems began.

During our attempt to Clear immigration and customs, we requested the right to leave the country and we were denied at first. The reason being, the government of South Africa wanted proof that all of our previous crew (students/passengers) had actually departed the country before they would approve us to sign on the new arrivals. This was a highly unusual occurence, and we were fighting the immigration authorities on the grounds that we had no proof that they had left, execept flight numbers, and home addresses. Well according the immigration authority, they were required to find out where all of our previous crew members were, BEFORE they would process the new crew. He apologized profusely for the delay, recognizing that it would be very difficult to determine where those people all were at any given time, after all some may have remained and did exploring South Africa, quite legally on visas.

However, according to the immigration officer, ships were coming into Cape Town with African crews, among others, and unloading huge numbers of crew, who would then stay in the country illegally. So the authorities were tracking down as many crews as they could in a crack down. In the end it came down to 2 students, whom we had to prove were in the United States by looking at facebook pages of all ways!

The big irony here is that the South African immigration computers at the airport, are NOT available or connected to the ship immigration authorities, so finding out whether or not our crew had left was rather difficult. However, we had written down all crew’s flight details for just such an occurence and one by one the immigration authorities proved that our previous crew had departed on their scheduled flights.

Lessons learned, are to ALWAYS write down the flight details of passengers and crew when they disembark. This may be your only proof that your guests actually left the country. And hire an agent while in South Africa, as it can save a lot of time in the end.

After three days delay, we were allowed to leave South Africa by the authorities, until of course we discovered that in order to enter Brazil, we had to apply for Visa’s before we left South Africa! But that’s another blog….

Yes. Such a small word, three tiny letters that are barely heard. Yet it can contort and distort the realms of reality and it can bind yacht crew like rusty iron chains to the whims of the owner. Yes.

As all good yacht crew know a Captain is an all powerful being. A god of sorts on the yacht. He is to be obeyed, somewhat worshipped and most definitely a little bit feared. But he should also be a benevolent god, whose aim is to protect his crew at all costs, in both physical and emotional senses. They say however, that absolute power, corrupts absolutely. We know all to often how much this can apply to yacht captains.

There will always be the Captain Blighs, who rule the ship with a iron and uncaring fist. But Blighs also tend to control their vessels, and are almost 100% likely to say NO to an owner on a ridiculous request. They after all see themselves as in charge.

There is the Captain Friend, who fails to control his crew as well as he should. Discipline slacks, there is little respect for authority and the vessel kind of wanders of its own free will. This also kills crew moral and eventually the boat and owners pay the ultimate price.

Then there is the Captain “Yes”. This is a Captain who for whatever reason, refuses to say no to the owner. The Owner wants to eat a marsh deer, while sitting in Nassau, the Captain cheerfully says “yes sir”. The chef then spends the next 9 hours with the proverbeal spear, sitting the marshes of the local grocery store and he for all his good intentions comes up empty. After telling his skipper that marsh deer is impossible to catch, the Captain will say “well you go tell the owner he has to eat chicken”. And ultimately it is the Chef who becomes the bearer of bad news.

The Owner says, “I want the deckhands to do a wash down”, even though they have all already been up for 17 hours running guests to shore and back and putting in toys and tenders, “yes sir” says your captain. And there you are, 3:30 in the morning falling asleep in the tender, your head bobbing ever so softly against the hull, while your illustrious skipper is asleep in his cabin.

There is a saying in business, “under promise and over deliver”. It is folly to over promise and under deliver. Unfortunately there are Captains who just can’t say no.

Now it is our job to meet our clients every wish and desire. Our clients are all the very upper echelons of the world and they have certain expectations. We must never forget that it is their high standards that allow us the luxury of living in a 2o million dollar floating palace every day. We must as yacht crew say “Yes” whenever we can. However, a captain should never say that he can do something for the owner, when he in fact cannot. I see all to often in this business, Captains that will promise the client the world and when it proves to be impossible to achieve blames the failings, on his horrible crew.