by Captain Lee
We arrived late, about nine hours after we’d been expected. It was pitch black, and I had to dock the boat with just one engine and a bow thruster, and there were a lot of moving parts with that operation, but we managed to put her where she needed to go.
It took about three months in the yard to get everything cleaned and fixed. They actually tried to blame the engine failure on me. When the manufacturer’s rep showed up, he went right to the starboard engine and pulled the dipstick out. He looked at it and then over to me and said, “Were both mains carrying the same amount of oil?” I said sure, within a couple of quarts I suppose. He then asked me why I would overfill the engines with oil and that was probably what caused the oil pressure to rise and blow the plug out of the port engine. Therefore, they were under no obligation to pay for anything. I told him the starboard engine wasn’t overfull. Bullshit it’s not, just look on the dipstick, it’s way over the full mark, he says. Which it was, but you need to take a closer look, I told him. Wipe the oil off the stick and tell me what you see. He did, and then he got this sheepish look on his face because he knew he opened his mouth before he put his brain in gear. Clearly stamped on the dipstick were the instructions to only check the oil when the engine was running and hot. That was his “oh shit” moment. I fired it up, let it get warm, and had him pull the stick again. Whaddya know, right on the money.
When they found out it was the O-ring that was defective and the wrong size, they did a recall on the engine. We were the first ones to have this happen. The manufacturer did a recall of the motors, replacing the O-rings on them all. They also checked our port main for damage, found none, and totally cleaned and repainted the engine room, just like new.
It was an adventure, and a trial, but we made it back. There are good owners and bad owners, good captains and bad ones. I learned something from each of them, no matter their experience or temperament. That’s what I was there for. I took those jobs so I could get the hours to move on to bigger and better boats, but I also took them to learn a thing or two. And whether it was storming outside or smooth as glass, dealing with owners that were drunk or sober as a Mormon in church on Christmas Day, there was always something new to learn.
And then, if you’re at it long enough, and you work your ass off, pay attention, sprinkle in some luck, soon you could be the one that’s dispensing the lessons. That doesn’t mean you stop learning, though. That never stops. Unless you’re one of those captains who thinks he’s God.
Chapter 7
Don’t Let Your Mouth Write a Check That Your Ass Can’t Cash
“We need a new chef,” the mate said.
Damn.
It wasn’t uncommon to lose a chef in the yachting world. Chefs, in general, are nomadic, temperamental, chaotic, unconventional, and rebellious. They tend to be nocturnal, working all night, partying once the job is done until the sun starts to rise, and then sacking out until the next shift. They’re like vampires who roll out their own pasta.
And that’s just your garden-variety chef, the kind that works in a city and rents an apartment. But yachting chefs? That’s another breed. Those are the group that say, “I love the nights and the chaos and the fast-moving knives, but I’d rather have no fixed address.” This sect particularly embraces the kind of pirate life that one gets working on a boat, moving from one Caribbean island to the next, from one coastal town in Florida to the next.
This is to say, even if they were talented and hardworking, you couldn’t exactly pencil these guys in for forty years of service and a gold watch at the end.
The bad news was that it meant that I needed a replacement chef.
Even worse, this happened right in the middle of a situation.
I was the captain of a 120-foot Broward. The owner, Doug, had very generously offered his financial consultant, Fredrick, the use of the boat for two weeks for his wedding and honeymoon. We were in Maine for the wedding, but we had only a couple of days to get everything prepared before the big event. Then we were going to Boston the following day to pick up the bride and groom and start their honeymoon cruise. Not sure why they weren’t going to stay aboard. Could have been they needed to see some family, or return some gravy boats, or whatever it is newlyweds might do after the big ceremony.
So, I had only a day or two to find a chef who would be diving right into the deep end of the pool.
Picking a chef was part of the job, and the first thing I did was go through my Rolodex of competent people to see if I could find someone who wasn’t currently committed. But that’s the problem with keeping a list of good people—they were in high demand. It would have been a lot easier to find a total fuckup with an open schedule, but who wants a total fuckup grilling your steaks?
I came up empty. Then I started asking other captains, other owners, other brokers if they knew anyone who might be a good fit. I finally struck gold when I talked to Matt. I’d worked with him in the past, and, if I’d been able to make him a better offer, would have loved to have him running the galley. He was a talented chef who got along well with everyone and really brought everything to the table that a captain would want. But even if he was committed to another job, I still trusted his advice.
“Matty, how’s it going?”
“No complaints,” he said.
“I’m going to be doing a honeymoon cruise in a couple of days, and I’m in desperate need of a good chef. Know anyone who’s looking?”
“Actually, yeah, I know a guy who’d be great. Luke. I’ll get you his number.”
Under ideal conditions, I like to provide a pretty comprehensive screening process for a new chef. I’d interview him, talk to his references, maybe ask him to cook a meal for the crew to see what kind of food he could make and see how he could get along with everyone else. But time being short, I barely had time to call him up, find out that he was available, and fly him up to Maine.
“If you can get to the boat before the wedding, you’re hired.”
Problem solved.
But, like everything in life, solving one problem just gives you opportunities to notice new ones.
The new chef, Luke, seemed great. He had plenty of confidence, told me of all the big yachts he’d worked on and the famous clients he’d cooked for, yadda yadda yadda. Chefs have been known to be a wee bit, shall we say, arrogant. Heard that spiel a few times before. Now I was hoping he would deliver and not be just a big bag of wind. I didn’t need my sphincter tickled by him blowing smoke up my ass—I just needed a competent chef.
He arrived with a duffel bag full of clothes, a laptop, and a pretty nifty case holding his chef’s knives. A chef’s knife kit is like a portable résumé and is often the most expensive thing he owns. Luke’s laptop probably cost about $800 or so, but I’d wager that knife case held over $2,000 in high-quality steel.
I shook his hand and gave him a quick tour of the boat.
“When do you want me to get started?” he asked.
“Why don’t you get settled. Stow your gear, take a look at the galley, get accustomed to where things are and where you want them to be. We’ll get underway right after the wedding, so why don’t you figure on making breakfast for the crew tomorrow morning, and then we’ll talk menus for when the guests arrive.”
“Breakfast for just the crew? No guests?” he asked.
“The bridal couple aren’t coming on board until two days after the wedding, and we’re picking them up in Boston.”
“Sounds good.”
There were going to be, eventually, a lot of guests. The honeymoon party that we’d be hosting was going to be twelve strong. It was a big boat, with six staterooms for guests, but twelve people was still going to be a mighty strain on the crew. We had only enough real estate to bunk seven crew, unless we started adding new people to sleep on the decks or double up in other people’s bunks, and I would have to veto that first idea, and my wife, Mary Anne, would undoubtedly veto the second one.
Usually, you wouldn’t want to have more than a 1:1
ratio of guests to crew. We didn’t know exactly how hard these guys were going to party, but if they were up all night, the crew would have to be there with them. And no matter how late the diehards went, the crew would have to be ready, bright and early, to greet the first early riser with coffee or tea. Being able to have some crew tasked with late night and some with early morning would put less strain on everyone involved, but for this pleasure cruise, we were just going to have to make the best of it. To handle all twelve guests, it was just going to be me, the first officer, the chief stew, an engineer, the first stew, a deckhand, and the new chef.
The trip from Maine to Boston was uneventful, and Luke did a good job at breakfast. Nothing extraordinary—just bacon, eggs, sausage, toast, and English muffins, but he worked quickly enough, and everything tasted good. He didn’t bark at the crew, and nobody played any practical jokes on him, like insisting that the meal include vegan bacon or some shit. Though that would be a great way to haze the chef, not to mention the bacon-loving skipper.
That is something that drives me absolutely nuts, and something mostly on display in younger crew, this weird aura of entitlement. I would interview prospective crew, stews, or deckhands or what have you, and usually, I’d want to see two things: knowledge of the job and the right attitude. But I don’t care how much knowledge you have if your attitude revolves entirely around you getting exactly what you want all the time. Yachting may be plush, but it’s still a service industry. We serve at the pleasure of our owner and the clients. And it’s a lot harder to do that when you have people who insist on serving themselves first.
When I ask someone if they have any special needs or considerations, I’m prepared for things like “I’ve got asthma” or “I’m allergic to bees” or other things I can deal with. But I sure as hell don’t need comments like “I’ve decided I might be gluten sensitive, so I don’t want any bread around me” or “I’m vegan and so I’d prefer that all the crew meals be vegan.” That’s not how it works. If you don’t eat meat, then by all means, don’t feel pressured to do so, but we’re not tailoring the menu to the junior stew’s demands. You’re on a raw food diet? Whatever floats your boat, but pack your own carrots because the guests are going to be enjoying grilled salmon. I’ve had a vegetarian chef work for me, and she made some killer steaks, because cooking for other people is the job. Not everyone gets that. Those that do can work for me. Those that can’t—there’s always beauty school.
I was glad that Luke seemed capable of doing the job, and on such short notice. After breakfast, he came up to me with a sheepish look on his face.
“Cappy, is it okay if I leave the boat to get rid of some garbage?”
I guess he could have asked the deckhand, but I was glad he wasn’t afraid to do his own dirty work. “Fine by me,” I said.
He smiled, nodded, and I saw him a few minutes later, walking off the gangway with a couple garbage bags in hand.
That was the last time I saw him. And I do mean the last time. I’ve never seen him since.
Around six, the first officer came to see me.
“Captain, do you know when chow is?”
“Why don’t you ask the chef?” I asked.
“I would, but the thing is . . . I can’t find him.”
Shit.
There could be lots of reasons why the chef wasn’t in the galley at dinnertime, and none of them good. Maybe he was sacking out in his bunk, drunk off his ass. It could happen. Maybe he was the kind of guy who liked to put a lot of product in his hair and ended up snapping his neck after slipping on his own hair gel. Maybe he fell overboard. Maybe he hanged himself in a botched attempt at autoerotic asphyxiation. With chefs, it could be anything.
“Let’s search the boat,” I said.
First, we looked in his cabin. His clothes were still hung up in the closet, still had his duffel bag there. But no sign of Luke. I didn’t see his computer, either.
“Okay,” I said to the first officer, “what did you do to piss him off?”
“What? Nothing.”
“How about anyone else? He make a pass at someone? Get hazed? Lose some money at cards?”
“Far as I know, everyone got on fine with Luke.”
I nodded. I certainly hadn’t seen any grab-ass or beefing. And there just hadn’t been any time for something like that to explode. We’d only picked him up eighteen hours before, and half of that time he’d been sleeping.
We expanded the search and looked in every cabin, every workspace, every crawlspace. Nothing.
Now things were serious. If he wasn’t on board, things could have gone really wrong. Even though he had just left the boat to drop off the garbage, it was a bit of a hike from the boat to the Dumpster, maybe a ten-minute hump. There was a chance that, on that long walk, he got injured, maybe mugged. Hell, guys see a nice 120-foot boat come in to the dock, they might think everyone coming off it is rich.
That’s when we started making calls.
We called police stations, hospitals, and morgues. Anybody see a skinny Caucasian male with brown hair and a few tats, probably carrying a couple bags of trash and willing to talk at length about demi-glaces and the difference between a coarse chop and a brunoise?
Nobody.
It was a mystery, but not one I could allow to occupy all of my time. Hell, it had already been a crisis when I first hired him back in Maine. Now we needed a second replacement, and with even less time to fill the vacancy! I sent word out to the grapevine, and quickly got a recommendation.
Did this new chef candidate follow his grandma’s recipe for delicious handmade ravioli? I had no idea. Shit, I didn’t even have time to check if he had a criminal record for sticking a meat thermometer into his last boss’s Adam’s apple. He had a recommendation, he was available, and he had a pulse. As far as I was concerned, he was perfect. We were getting close to starting the honeymoon cruise, and I had to get someone ASAP while the guests were still off the boat checking out Boston.
Chris, the new Luke, showed up, and impressed the hell out of me by not vanishing in a puff of smoke.
“You take a look at the galley?”
“I sure did. Everything looks good.”
“You got all your gear?” I asked.
He held up his chef’s knife kit to indicate he did.
That made me think.
“Did you find another one of those lying around the galley anywhere?” I asked.
“Nope. You lose one?”
“I thought someone had.”
That’s when I realized what happened to Luke. His clothes were still on board, but his knives weren’t. The only explanation I had was that someone stole them after they figured he’d gone, or he’d taken them off himself. And there was only one good reason why he’d have taken his knives and equipment off the boat: he wasn’t planning on coming back.
“That son of a bitch jumped ship,” I said. A classic case of someone writing a check with their mouth that their ass couldn’t cash.
“What’s that?” Chris asked.
“Nothing. Why don’t you start getting things squared away the way you like them in the galley, because things are about to go from zero to one hundred.”
He nodded, left, and, hopefully, remained on the boat.
I figured Luke had taken a new job. That’s why his knives were gone. That’s why his computer was gone. He took the expensive stuff, left the thrift-store threads, and bounced.
What an asshole.
These things happened. A guy takes a gig, gets offered more money somewhere else, and he jumps at the chance to make more dough. After all, the best negotiating position one could have was as a man already employed. “Yeah, I’d love to take the job, but I’m already getting paid a fat wad to cook on another boat, so you’d really have to make it worth my while . . .”
It probably would have been more convenient to employ a full-time chef, but a lot of those guys preferred being freelancers. In part, it was for the freedom, but it was also partly becaus
e the money was a lot better that way. If a chef took a salary, he might make $75,000 to $100,000 a year, which wasn’t bad considering he might not have to pay for rent or food. Still, that broke down to about $200-plus a day. Now, if that same guy wanted to work freelance, he could make up to $500 a day. If a chef got steady work, he could stand to bring in almost $200K per year. Not a bad living, if you could do the work.
And that work wasn’t a piece of cake. When you’re the chef on a boat, you’re working constantly. If the guests plan on being up at 6:00 a.m., then you’d better wake up at 5:30, fire up the cooktop, and have flapjacks and sausages ready by 6:15. When breakfast concludes for everyone around 9:30, that gives you plenty of time to clean the entire galley and start prepping for lunch, served promptly at noon. After the guests depart for a digestive stroll or nap around 2:30, you get to clean things up and prep for dinner, so lobster and filet mignon are ready to go at 6:30. And then, once the last guest finishes her final bite of chocolate lava cake and raspberry sorbet, then you can call it a night, right?
Nope.
After the chef cleans the galley for the final meal, he still has to be on call for the rest of the night. If one of the guests wants a lobster roll at midnight, then the chef has to pry himself out of bed and make it, served with a smile. If a guest has a few drinks and maybe a hit or two from a joint, not that we allow that, but shit happens, and gets the munchies at 2:00 a.m. and absolutely has to have some fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, then the chef would be more than happy to accommodate that request. And then breakfast is just a few hours away . . .
So, I was pretty relieved when Chris said that he’d be able to fill in at the last minute.
I just hoped he managed to actually stay on board for more than twenty-four hours.
On our last day in Maine, our owner, Doug, arrived to check out the boat, introduce the guests of honor, and attend the wedding. As soon as the wedding was over, Doug would take off, the happy couple would zoom off to Boston, and then we’d pick them up there a few days later. Doug was a pretty big wheel. He sold his business for about a billion dollars. He was a good owner, and clearly a sweetheart of a guy, since he was just gifting his boat to his financial advisor/friend for nothing. If we had sold that as a charter, it would have cost about 250K. Not a bad wedding present.