Do you know what this is? Insurers explain it to us after last month’s Bridge. Vol. 3, No. 10
YACHT CREW: GENDER SPLITS
The Triton survey has more vessels and more crew. This month, we look at the jobs most commonly held by women and by men, plus how certain key roles break down. A16-17
Captains find crew the oldfashioned way In addition to brokers, business people and media walking the docks at St. Maarten’s boat show were crew looking for work. Some went down to volunteer for the show, hoping that if they hung around enough, they might find some day work. Others came to find full-time positions. From the Bridge Walking the Lucy Chabot Reed docks is a bit easier in the Caribbean than it has been in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. So that got us wondering if captains in need of crew follow the same, haphazard way of finding crew in the islands as they do in the states. With pressures high and the next charter right around the corner, how do captains find crew in the Caribbean? As always, individual comments are not attributed to any one person in particular so as to encourage frank and open discussion. The attending captains are identified in a photograph on page A20. “You look down the dock for unhappy crew,” one captain said, only half joking. See THE BRIDGE, page A20
Meet the host Network at St. Lawrence Gallery.
A9 Starting anew The former M/Y Argus continues its rebirth.
A26
B1 January 2007
www.the-triton.com
Fewer brokers, boats haunt start-up show The third annual St. Maarten Charter Yacht Exhibition wrapped up in early December, no closer to finding an identity than it was in years one or two. When the show first began, the industry saw it as competition with Antigua’s long-running Editor’s Notes show. People Lucy Chabot Reed predicted then that St. Maarten would draw the power boats and Antigua would draw the sailboats. Year two disproved that, with about the same number of power boats at each show (albeit a much lower percentage in Antigua, to be sure). Last year’s perception was that St. Maarten’s show would turn into the American boat show, Antigua the European boat show. While that held true a bit this year, there were still a few European brokers walking the docks, taking meetings and bucking the edict that they keep their distance from St. Maarten this year. Bottom line, though, is that the docks held fewer than 30 boats instead of the 43 showcased in the show catalogue.
Deckhand Johnny De Waal tends bar on M/Y Tooth Fairy during that yacht’s 1920s-themed yacht hop. For more from the 2006 St. Maarten Charter Yacht Exhibition, see pages A6-7. PHOTO/LUCY REED “Fifteen or 16 boats cancelled,” said Mark Boxshall, contracted to produce the show with his partner, Lucille Frye, both of the St. Maartenbased Super Yacht Services. “That’s the nature of the industry.”
Winds were heavy in early December, keeping several boats in Ft. Lauderdale and points north. Other yachts were delayed for other
See SHOW, page A9
Lesson Learned: Withdraw entry, skip Houston By Lucy Chabot Reed Eng. Kieran Kelly was home in England for Christmas this year, a far cry from his planned holiday skiing in the United States. But thanks to previous crew stories about troubles with U.S. immigration officials, he wasn’t deported. Kelly, an Irish citizen, was the engineer on M/Y Que Sera, the 122-foot Delta, for two years but had taken on a refit project in Mexico recently. After three months with limited time off, he was on his way back to Ft. Lauderdale in midDecember for a break and possible a holiday. His flight took him through Houston, a hub for commercial, big-ship crew for the oil industry. When he handed the U.S. immigration official his passport and B1/B2 visa, the officer looked closer at his computer record, asked why he didn’t have a C1/D visa, and escorted him to another room, he said. “They asked me a lot of questions about why I was here
so long, why I went out and came back in so much, why half of time I came in on a B1, the other half on a B2,” Kelly said. “I explained to her I work on a yacht, I was here because the yacht was here, that I don’t decide where the yacht goes. “She told me ‘you’re crew, you’re meant to have a C1/D,’ and I told her I’m a yacht worker, not a ship worker,” he said. “They didn’t have a clue. They didn’t even know what a yacht was.” Pulled aside in that little room, Kelly called his former captain, Dave Reams of Que Sera. Reams faxed over copies of stories from other yacht crew that appeared in The Triton that included statements from immigration officials that yacht crew need a B1/B2 visa. Houston officials weren’t interested, he said. “Once I realized they weren’t going to let me in, I asked to withdraw my application and leave the country on my own,”
See LESSON LEARNED, page A21