Blow the code
Fire marshal calls on industry help with paint sheds. B1
Lay off Jones Act
Spinning wheels The marine industry rolls for a cause A10 Vol.8, No. 3
Thoughts from the American Superyacht Forum. A18
www.the-triton.com
June 2011
Lasers quick, The shirt worked: They took him to the Med convenient, safe when used correctly By Dorie Cox
The crew of M/Y Northlander after landfall in Horta in the Azores in May. Deckhand Ricardo Pires holds the PHOTO FROM RICARDO PIRES shirt that got him noticed for the crossing job.
Deckhand’s last-ditch effort to get to closer to home pays off By Dorie Cox Ricardo Pires wanted a job as a deckhand on a yacht and he wanted to get closer to home in the process. After nearly two months searching for work, Portugese-born Pires was getting desperate. Prior to the Spring season, herds of crew handed out resumes, knocked on boat hulls and visited
TRITON SURVEY
Have you ever lost a tender? No, and it won’t ever happen – 8.9%
No, but it could happen – 51.5%
Yes, but it was recovered – 35.6%
Yes (vessel was lost) – 4.0% – Story, C1
agencies in a bid to beat other applicants to jobs, and 25-year-old Pires was in the fray. “I was doing day work after day work, doing the dock walk, looking for a new yacht to work on, and changing crew house to crew house to find the best place,” Pires said. “I was having financial difficulties and thinking that, if in that week I couldn’t find a crossing to get closer
to home, I would get a one way ticket to Portugal.” Time to innovate, he decided, when he met a clerk in a T-shirt shop that suggested he advertise. She asked him exactly what he wanted and she applied the wish to a white T-shirt. “take me to the Med. Deckhand.” was all it said.
See SHIRT, page A13
The charter yacht has back-to-back trips and the interior staff starts the day with hurried showers in cramped quarters. With six interior crew, and tiny shower stalls, leg shaving can get tricky. Late afternoon comes and brings another rush through showers for evening uniforms. “We, as female yacht crew, rarely have time for proper beauty regimes,” said the chief stew on a yacht more than 200 feet. “Most of us are over attempting to be the beautician and give ourselves a leg wax in rolling seas, or try and explain in broken Italian that we need our eyebrows waxed but not completely removed.” These scenarios lead some crew to seek laser hair removal solutions for personal hygiene. But using one day off and a nearby spa is not necessarily the safest option, both doctors and patients said. “There is a part of your industry that is beauty-based and we are getting more crew asking about laser hair removal,” said Dr. J.A. Astaphan of Silk Laser Aesthetics Center in Ft. Lauderdale. “But they need to understand what they are doing.”
See LASER, page A12
Future of yachting lies in new breed of owner It feels like the end of an era. Long gone are the wild days of yachting where anything goes, bar no expense, and the world’s billionaires were in a contest to sail the longest yacht. But gone, too, are the bleak days of mothballing where yachts were From the Bridge tied to the dock Lucy Chabot Reed and crew let go. As the weather warmed in 2011, two of yachting’s best
known vessels were put on the market, the 143-foot Heesen M/Y Octopussy and the 151-foot Feadship M/Y The Highlander. And while we’re not exactly sure what to make of that, it sure feels like the end of an era. So at the end of something, we naturally wonder, what’s next? What’s the future of yachting look like? “You’ve got to follow the money,” said one captain at our monthly captains roundtable discussion. “And right now, the money is coming from Russia, China, Southeast Asia.” “New money is where yachting is
heading,” another captain said. “Lots of old money brought the old traditions of yachting. A lot of that is dying out. “Who turns the blue light on at night anymore?” this captain said. “Who takes the flag down at night? A lot of traditions have already gone.” 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 A15.
See BRIDGE, page A14