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Published: November 9th 2007
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So on it was Beaulieu-sur-mer to join the motley crew of the motor yacht Moira. Well not so motley actually, I had worked with Toby and Rona, the captain and the chef previously on the S.S. Catastrophe where Toby was the first mate and Rona the Chef. We were all good friends anyway and since I hadn’t been directly responsible for the succession of calamities we had faced, Toby obviously felt that I would make a reasonable addition to the crew.
‘Moira’ is a 28 metre (90 foot) semi-displacement motor yacht built by ‘Cantieri Naval Falcon’ in Via Reggio, Italy.
http://www.falconyachts.com/en/90_nav.php
The boat pictured on the website is actually the very boat we work on as it was the prototype for the Falcon 90 and subsequently used for all the photo shoots.
She sails with four crew, and can accommodate eight guests, although during parties this number can swell dramatically until reaching a point where the owner’s wife gets pissed off and tells hopeful partygoers, in less than ladylike language, where to stick it. At which point Rona breathes a sign of relief, eyeing her dwindling supply of fillet steaks and monkfish cervice.
The boat is based in
Beaulieu-sur-mer which is on France’s south coast about halfway between Nice and Monaco. It’s a nice little place, quiet and out of the way-ish. To the south west is a spindly peninsular called Cap Ferrat which apparently is the most expensive piece of real estate in the world, 50 million euros will get you a worst-house-best-area type deal.
Just down the road from the marina is the Grand Reserve Hotel du Beaulieu where a bourbon and coke will set you back 40 euros and three stops north on the train is the principality of Monaco where Prince Albert’s nightclubs will make you wait at the door because they are ‘full’ and then let half a dozen beautiful (ie rich) people saunter right past you while you huff and puff and bluster about equality, fair play and the injustice in the power of the almighty dollar. (Really the euro I suppose but I didn’t coin the phrase so will have to leave it as is.) Curiously though, you tend to stay in the queue because as annoying as it is, that’s the way things happen here and to get all righteous would mean that you don’t get in at all, and
after a few vodkas all the rich chicks can’t tell the difference between Armani and Arnami anyway.
But the real purpose of me being in this part of the world in the first place was of course the work. I was employed as the mate/deckhand/engineer on a seasonal contract which started in May and finished at the end of October.
I was responsible for keeping the exterior of the yacht clean and all it’s bits and bobs maintained and in full working order. There was an awful lot of cleaning and maintenance to do as the standards are quite high.
I also stood a navigational watch when we were on delivery passages and followed the yacht in our tender when the guests were on board for weekends etc. This can be both the best and worst part of the job as I get to play about in the 25 foot, 260 HP Revenger RIB but I also have to spend hours droning along behind the yacht at a sedate 22 knots being very bored when we are going places.
We did a few trips this season, the first being down to Sotogrande in Spain about half way
between Marbella and Gibraltar.
Here is a statistical synopsis of out four week round trip:
Passage time in each direction: 5 days
Fuel used each way: 15,000 litres
Cruising days lost due to pea-soup fog: 6
Hours the owners spent on board: about 24
Hours I spent bored in the tender: 10
Bruises on my backside from
driving the boat home one day in
30 knot head winds: Couldn’t count them
Cars seen driving on the water: 1
We spent every day on stand-by, just in case they wanted to use the boat, which got very old very quickly. About the only plus was that we got to eat all the food that was prepared for them each day and never eaten. Eventually though it all came to an end and we gratefully buggered off and made our way back to France.
In the down-time between having the guests on board we spent our time keeping the boat up to scratch and doing little mods here and there. We also had to keep the tender in use which we did by doing a lot of wakeboarding. We were lucky enough to have as a temp stewardess early
on in the season an Australian girl who also happened to be a wakeboarding instructor, which was rather convenient actually. At first there was a lot of falling over resulting in salt water filled sinuses but over the season we improved a lot and have now learnt to hold our breath when we hit the water.
We did a few more trips throughout the rest of the season but generally it was pretty quiet. The season fizzled out a bit from September and finally came to an end in late October at which point I was lucky enough to have found a temporary job as Second mate on a 65 metre Feadship called M/Y Callisto. The plan is to head down to the Maldives and Thailand and maybe further, we shall have to wait and see…..
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