Salary survey
Part I: An overview plus a private/charter breakdown.
Adventure
Read about the rescue of R/V Atlantis II. B1 Vol. 4, No. 10
A16-17 Visa jostling
A push is on for St. Maarten to postpone a rules change. A6
www.the-triton.com
December 2007
40-YEAR-OLD WOODEN YACHT CATCHES FIRE
The captain and crew had only a few minutes to escape; regular drills keep crew ready for emergencies that can happen to anyone.
PHOTO/CAPT. JOHN CRUPI
M/Y Dorothea burns, sinks; crew rescued unharmed By John Freeman The 40-year-old classic wooden megayacht Dorothea was consumed by fire in late October about 220 miles off Costa Rica and sank. All of her five crew members were rescued and were unharmed Capt. John Crupi will never forget the sight of the 107-foot yacht he
piloted going down in flames. “You always read in books that things happen so fast, and they did,” Crupi said from Ft. Lauderdale in early November. “We didn’t have much time to abandon ship, maybe a few minutes. The next thing we all knew, we were sitting in a life raft, watching her burn. It’s the captain’s job to know when to say when. We had nothing to fight.”
Crew agent Carole Manto dies By Lucy Chabot Reed Carole Manto, one of the yachting industry’s most influential crew placement agents, died Nov. 12 after a long battle with a chronic pulmonary disease. She was 55 years old. Manto and her husband, Richard, ran the successful Drumbeat charter fleet out of St. Thomas for more than a decade in the 1970s and ’80s before coming ashore in Ft. Lauderdale. Manto then began working as a crew placement agent. She steering the placement department at Bob Saxon and Associates into a money-making division, giving crew the benefit of her experience as a successful crew member.
“It was Carole Manto, when she was with Bob Saxon years ago, who told me I wasn’t qualified to cook on yachts because I didn’t have any real culinary training,” said Chef Mary Beth Lawton Johnson of M/Y Rebecca, a position she has held for almost a decade. “It was her words that made me go back to school to earn two culinary designations and a host of other awards and honors in the culinary industry,” she said. “If it weren’t for her foresight and honesty, I probably would have never gotten as far as I have. She motivated me.” Countless crew can pin their careers on the support and motivation she
See MANTO, page A26
The harrowing experience served as a tragic reminder to Crupi, 34, about the value of fire-drill training. The crew had undergone its quarterly abandonship drill just 10 days earlier. “There’s a stigma in our business that ‘this can’t happen to me,’” he said. “If anyone can learn from our disaster, so much the better. I highly recommend all the training and drills that captains
and crews can do. Because truth be told, your boat can burn up.” According to Crupi, the fire’s source was “somewhere between the engine room and the exhaust fidley and mast.” Smoke quickly engulfed the pilot house and flames were visible in the mast, within 10 feet of a 400-gallon fuel
See DOROTHEA, page A21
The thorniest issue: salaries Salaries are a sticky, complex topic. How do you know if you are earning enough? How do you know if you are paying enough? (And just what is enough anyway?) There is no science to how much one individual pays another to do a From the Bridge task. Salaries in Lucy Chabot Reed most industries depend primarily on what the market will bear. This yachting market of plenty-of-captainsand-not-enough-stews is no different. So we asked captains gathered for our monthly roundtable discussion to
talk money. “We’re paying too much for the quality we’re getting,” one captain began. “I don’t mind paying for quality, but not for what we’re getting.” What do you mean by quality? “You show up, you do what you’re told,” he said. “I mean, we’re paying $5,500 a month starting for a mate. That really is a lot of money.” 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 A18.
See BRIDGE, page A18