July 19th and a couple of days ago I’ve returned home a from what was supposed to be a nice sailing job in Greece. The flotilla skipper job is awesome to do but there were some events that made me leave. But let’s start this post from the beginning.
After lifting BAIA out for the summer & winter I packed my things into my VW Caravelle Van and got ready for the road trip to Greece. I drove roughly 750km per day and stopped in Chemnitz Germany, Balaton Hungary, Vranje Serbia and arrived in Lefkas on the 4th day. The Van drives amazing and comfortable. After one night on a campsite in Lefkas the company gave me a hotelroom for two nights to sleep well and get ready for the work at hand.
The first week I just had to come on board with the current flotilla skipper and his wife. They work here as a couple but were to leave to another assignment in a couple of weeks. For me it was supposed to be just going along for the ride and learn the area and meet the local contacts.
During the first morning of that week a couple of flotilla guests asked for some pontoon bashing training as they felt uncomfortable docking the boat. Which surprised me because you can’t rent a boat without RYA Day Skipper (or equivalent) license as a minimum? A couple of insecure skippers got put on one of the boats and I had to come along just to observe.
It became very clear that even after this session some people still were insecure and needed assistance. As I was extra I offered to hop on with them and do some more teaching along the way. It was a nice day sailing and the couple were thankful for this opportunity.
The next day another boat asked for me to hop on and he wanted me to teach his daughter to drive the boat. So I did and had her drive the boat off the dock right from the start. It was funny because she was anxious but learned quickly and followed up my instructions perfectly. Her mother was so proud that day. It was a nice day of sailing and I rigged up fender Bob to do a man-overboard drill with the father.
The next days I was back on the lead boat just along for the ride. We visited several stops and I found the route to be easy but still interesting enough. I wasn’t really impressed with the state of the lead boat. A 35ft Feeling that felt like she’s sunk at least three times. Not what I was expecting at all and I already found numerous safety issues with the vessel.
The next two weeks I was to do two cabin charters on a 51ft Ocean Star. While preparing the yacht for the cabin charter I got harassed on the dock by a colleague. He wanted me to help out with the flotilla preparations too. I’m happy to help but first my own work needs to be done. He didn’t agree and responded aggressive to me. I just ignored it and went on with my work.
My first week of cabin charter for this company is a book by itself. The guests were amazing and I made new friends. The Ocean Star had numerous issues and I spent most of my time repairing them. Unfortunately some issues were to major to fix on the go and had to be repaired back at base on turn-over day. This charter week was the highlight of my whole experience in Greece.
On turn-over day the colleagues at the base were not very happy that they had to do these repairs. Note that these repairs were needed because of neglected maintenance and poorly installed electrical components. After walking through the list with the chief engineer and making sure he understood what needed to be done I went out to decompress and have lunch somewhere off base. I was basically working non-stop with roughly 4 hours of sleep per night and I needed to be away for a bit.
Within an hour my phone blows up and the aggressive colleague from the week before demanded me to return immediately. He isn’t my boss so I was a bit surprised by his attitude. I said I’ll be back after lunch as I just ordered. Upon returning there was no panic and the engineer asked why I was there and not to bother him. In hindsight I think the guy was just being annoying. And for sure he made a scene again by literally shouting and screaming to me aggressively for no reason. I was really fed up with his attitude and told him leave me alone.
I got ready for the next week of cabin charter and with my list of issues fixed I was looking forward to another nice week of sailing. Hoping the new guests were just as amazing as the last group. The vibe on board was completely different. Three guys traveling alone so it took me some time to get them to work together. Everyone basically went their own way after docking the boat and they were all introverts so it was a bit strange at times. But by the end of the week I got them to all work together, communicate and literally sail the boat by themselves. I just sat at the nav station listening in and feeling how they sailed the boat. It made me proud that I could get these guys to actually work together as a team. So another good week in the books apart from some small issues breaking on the boat.
I made another list of repairs and cleaned out the boat as I’d no longer be sailing her after these two weeks. It was back to the lead boat and start with my first flotilla week.
My first mate arrived by ferry in Vasiliki but there were no taxi’s available to bring her to the base and nobody from the company was willing to go pick her up. Everyone had something better to do (like relaxing, having fun and drinking). I was appalled by this attitude and drove my van down to pick her up. She looked friendly, but that changed quickly.
When we arrived at the lead boat she demanded the bow cabin as the stern cabin was too small for her. I reminded her I’m twice her size and that I’m the captain. So making demands isn’t really acceptable. She got angry straight away and I just went on my own way. I thought she had some experience on yachts but she was acting like a spoiled kid.
Next day we started to make the flotilla ready to receive guests. We split up tasks and went our own way. I found out that one of te boats on the flotilla was a skippered charter. Which means one of our guys would be skippering that particular boat. I asked the aggressive guy (on purpose not naming him in this blog) who that would be and if he’d mind to do the prep and check-in for that boat himself, as I had a dozen other yachts to work on. Apparently that question wasn’t something I was allowed to ask as he became aggressive immediately again. Talking about that wasn’t that skippers responsibility etc. (I disagree, but okay)
I let him rage again and then walked away and ignored him from then on. It was clear that teamwork only works one way: Me helping them, but the other way around I could go pound sand. I got on with the prep work and by the end of the day I was really tired but it was done.
After the Monday morning briefing done I helped the boats depart the base and my first mate was nowhere to be found. It became clear to me the term first mate wasn’t appropriate as she acted more like a hostess.
The first day was pretty interesting: within an hour one of the boats had completely jammed the furling main sail. Apparently they had no experience with such system and didn’t speak up for some additional training. The next day a boat anchored for lunch and ended up on the rocks and both me and the skippered charter boat went there to help. As he arrived first he took charge of the ‘rescue’ and didn’t even discuss a plan with me. So we spent 2 hours pulling a boat off the rocks with a couple of dingles like headless chickens. I would have done it differently and more controlled, but at least we got the boat out and after a thorough inspection and phone call with the base manager the boat could continue with the flotilla.
The week was a lot of fun but also hard work. Most boats needed a lot of assistance when either departing or arriving and I was surprised by the competence level of most skippers. Who in their right mind would rent a 45+ ft yacht while they have no clue on what they are doing? Who gave them their Day Skipper license to begin with? So many questions went through my mind. But I didn’t get time to think about that as I was working non-stop.
My first mate didn’t really help either. Her attitude was still a problem and got worse by the day. I was in touch with the country manager and said on numerous occasions he had to have a good chat with her or I’d leave her on the dock together with her personal problems and bad attitude. Eventually it was decided that she was going to be replaced in two days time when I arrived in Vathy. I didn’t speak with her about this as she was informed by the office people and I wanted to keep the vibe on board as positive as possible. She still kept her bad attitude and even got mad at me for going to a different town than the one she wanted to go to.
The previous flotilla skipper worked out that Frikes was too small for a big flotilla and they favored Kioni for numerous reasons. I agreed with the reasoning behind that so I sticked to the plan and took the flotilla to Kioni. She apparently had friends in Frikes and thats basically the only reason she wanted to go there. I told her this is not her holiday, she’s here to work. That night she took a taxi to Frikes and showed up next morning clearly hung over and not in work clothes. She didn’t want to do the briefing either and she told me that she didn’t intend to do any work that day. I don’t like playing games so in the briefing I announced to the guests that she would happily release all the longlines from the rocks. Haha gotcha!
When all the boats had departed she came on board made some aggressive comments and went in her cabin. I sailed the boat solo to Vathy (no autopilot) and didn’t see her come out. I guess she was packing.
Upon arriving in Vathy I prepare the boat for docking. She comes out with her attitude again and says she’d help me dock the boat and then I could go $!@#! myself and that she didn’t want to help with the docking of the flotilla boats. I kept my calm and said I could park this little boat by myself and that I don’t need her assistance. I told her that once we docked she had 10 minutes to get off the boat as I assumed she was packing for the last three hours.
She got really aggressive again: hitting and kicking things, throwing items through the salon, spitting on my laptop. And she was insisting that she decided when she would leave the boat. I calmly instructed her to go to her cabin and chill. I docked the boat and she was still screaming in the cabin. The guy on the dock asked what was going on. So I explained she had to leave. Luckily his wife knew this girl and she had a talk with her while I was waiting on the dock. She was also aggressive to this lady so it was clear that she had to leave. I focused on the arriving flotilla boats and saw her getting off the boat so I was happy with that.
I organized a paddle board / SUP race that was a lot of fun and people went nuts during that event, super competitive. I flew my drone to capture it.
SUP race rules:
- Start with the bow of the SUP on the beach.
- Team can consist of any number of members but the members starting on the board must be the same ones finishing it. Team members not on the board may be in the water as saboteurs.
- No fins or paddles!
- Start is on the beach, round the anchored dingy back to the beach.
- First team to reach the beach wins!
As you can see on the video the “Cornish Pirates” had a great tactic by just putting one of their team members on the paddleboard and have the rest as saboteurs. It was complete mayhem in the middle. So much fun!
After the race I got introduced to my new first mate and she seemed much nicer than the last one.
Next day the flotilla had their free sail day so we went back to base and cleaned out the lead boat to get ready for the next flotilla. The next day the flotilla boats came in and I parked them all one by one. No sweat and the guests were happy that I came on board to do the tricky maneuvering in this poorly placed pontoon. The concrete mooring blocks are so shallow you can’t go over them or the rudder or keel will hit. So who thought this was a good spot for a flotilla base?
Obviously the aggressive guy was there and he was still aggressive towards me. And several things happened that made me consider if I’d actually want to stick around or just leave. I can handle aggressive people, intimidating people too. But when people actually start threatening me I can either go in the offense or just avoid it. The workload and the low pay made my choice easy as I decided the latter so I packed my stuff and got off the boat. I didn’t choose this life to be harassed. The aggressive guy was dancing on his deck as he was happy to see me leave. He actually thought I got fired, I just ignored him and I believe in karma so his day will come.
I drove to Igoumenitsa and was very lucky so got on the first ferry to Ancona Italy: only 2 hours before departure so it felt as if it was planned. It took around 18 hours for the crossing and I found out next morning that I could have slept in my van instead of this uncomfortable “airplane seat”.
Getting off the boat into Italy it was instant chaos similar to Greek roads, didn’t expect that at all and the whole route through Italy was chaotic with lots of roadworks and traffic jams.
When I finally crossed into Switzerland I booked a small hotel near Lucerne to stay for the night and have a good sleep. Next morning I got a coffee and drove 825km straight home going trough France and Germany. Total driving distance 4758 km happy to be back home and ready for my next adventure.
My departure from that company also doesn’t seem to make any difference. I sent an e-mail to one of the bosses and did not get any response. I asked for the feedback from the flotilla guests and apart from one (very needy) boat’s minor complaints they didn’t send me any feedback or other communication. So I guess I made the right decision by leaving as I was clearly not in the right place.
Looking back after being home for a couple of days. It’s been an interesting experience and I believe I’ve done a good job as almost all boats left happy. I’ll probably not accept a lead flotilla skipper role again as I’d rather stick to deliveries and private charters.
