What It’s Like to Work on a Megayacht
Personal-finance columnist Charlotte Cowles asks the nosy, revealing, sometimes uncomfortable questions about money so you don’t have to.
Personal-finance columnist Charlotte Cowles asks the nosy, revealing, sometimes uncomfortable questions about money so you don’t have to.
Few things on earth are more expensive than a megayacht — it’s a private, fully staffed, floating resort for the ultrawealthy. Shows like Below Deck provide a glimpse of life onboard, but the reality is even more surreal, says a former stewardess who worked on yachts for more than a decade. Her bosses were yacht owners (so, billionaires), and her job was to anticipate and manage their every whim in close quarters. Here, she talks about what yacht crews hate the most (inflatable slides), the indignity of scrubbing self-tanner off of white upholstery, and the weirdest ways that the super-rich spend their money.
Working on a yacht, you’re in a very intimate space with these extremely wealthy people. What is that like? You’re a fly on the wall, but it’s very one-sided. You learn so much about the owners and guests, and they’re not learning anything about you. As a stewardess, I was doing food service and housekeeping and going through people’s personal belongings, folding their underwear and putting it away. I would overhear conversations, on the phone or in person. This is kind of graphic, but you even learn stuff like how frequently they poop. In yachting, anytime somebody washes their hands, the stewardess dries out the sink afterward. If they put something in the trash, you empty it right away. Every time you go check the bathroom, you make it look untouched. So you learn all their habits. With my previous boss, I would get a sense, like, “oh, he hasn’t eaten in a few hours. He probably wants a snack.” And I would put together a snack for him, and he’d come out and say, “Oh, I was just about to ask you for this.”
