Time Flies When You're Drinking Rum...

Well, I got the job that I had previously written about – as sous-chef aboard a 175 foot motor yacht heading to the Mediterranean. It is a $40 million dollar yacht, privately owned and can be chartered for a mere $230,000.00 plus food, beverages and incidentals… There are 14 crew and we will take up to 12 guests – so each guest has 1 and 1/14th crew member waiting on them; including someone to unpack your bags, a Michellin star chef, and little ol’ me at your beck and call… On the yacht you will find gold and Lalique fixtures right down to the toilet bowl brushes and doorknobs! The dishes are Lamouge porcelain, the glassware is Lalique, the beds have duck down comforters and Egyptian cotton sheets. There is a sky gym with a 360 degree view, a hot tub, pop-up flat screen tv’s in almost every room (plus a “Personal Viewing Area” in the master bedroom), a massive dvd and music collection and top of the line hi-fi equipment. Should you decide to actually get off of the boat – there is scuba equipment, two speed boats with water-skiing and wake-boarding equipment, a hobbie-cat, a laser (single-person sailboat), kayaks, mountain bikes and a ton of other toys… And the great thing is that the crew gets to play with the equipment when we aren’t on charter.

The galley is quite big, probably close to 12 ft. by 15 ft. or there about with granite and stainless countertops; a combi-oven which can be used either to steam, roast or a combination of both (it is also a convection oven) which is excellent when you are cooking for large groups of people. We have a walk-in refrigerator and freezer and a 6-burner induction stove. Most of the boats that I have worked on have electric stoves which are complete junk. But the induction stove is definitely the best stove I’ve worked on in the boat world and out.

Induction stoves look much like electric – smooth, glassy top – but are as responsive, if not more so than cooking with gas. An induction stove has a power coil that produces a high-frequency electromagnetic field. The field penetrates the metal of the cooking vessel (a pot or frying pan) and sets up a circulating electric current, which generates heat. The heat generated in the cooking vessel is transferred to the vessel's contents and nothing outside the vessel is affected by the field and as soon as the vessel is removed from the element, or the element is turned off, heat generation stops. This means that you if you leave a spoon next to the stove, it won’t ever catch fire. If you leave the stove on, but there is no pan on it – nothing will ever burn because there is nothing to generate an electrical current. It’s really quite amazing. I can get a large frying pan smoking hot in less than a minute and I can bring a large pot of water to boil in less than three minutes. Also, the handles of the pots and frying pans never, ever get hot and the kitchen doesn’t get too hot either because their is very little residual or excess heat being given off.

Our crew quarters are very comfortable. There is a large crew lounge with a kitchenette (the majority of the food comes from the galley, the kitchenette is for midnight snacks, etc.). The stews do all the crews laundry so if I drop my clothes off in the morning, I get them back the next day washed, drip-dried, ironed and folded. We have satellite internet access, satellite tv and satellite phone so basically, we can surf the web even in the middle of the ocean. Our rooms are actually built for human size people instead of midgets like the quarters on the other boats I’ve worked. I have adequate closet cabinet space and a nice size bathroom and my roomie is a really cool girl from Australia, a bookworm and a runner. Our captain is British and a real joker, always having fun with the crew. I went out with everyone on Saturday night to bid farewell to the sous-chef that was leaving. The captain dragged us all out on the dance floor and did something he called dancing but it was more like Repoman vs. Bruce Lee (YIKES! I hope he never reads this!!!). As we were dancing to bad 80’s tunes, he said welcomed me to the boat and guaranteed me that I would never get a warmer greeting on whichever boat I went to next… Our captain has a house and wife and baby in Antibe, France, where our boat will be based out of for the summer and he promised us a big crew party.

Oh yes, so we’ll be based in Antibe, France for the summer and we leave for France on April 28th. We have about 6 charters for the summer, our first one being in Monaco for the Grand Prix and then we’ll be doing the French and Italian Riviera for the season. I can’t wait to see the markets in the south of France and Italy. I have a feeling the season is going to be spectacular.

We’re on charter presently in St. Barth for the St. Barth Bucket – a big regatta – really just an excuse for people to party and go sailing. But who am I to complain, our charter guests are taking us all out on their sail boat!!!

Cheers everyone, more soon…