How I Got a Yacht Job FAST With No Experience

Hello and welcome back to my channel. I'm Abby. I am a surf and travel influencer and I'm currently staying at my friend's property. Link here below. It's this amazing bungalow with my own little pool, actually surf spots out there, there's a yoga deck, and she does private massage here today to talk to you about the yachting industry. Before I was ever a influencer, I did lots of different things to keep traveling and keeping up this lifestyle. One of those things was getting into the yachting industry. I was a deckhand on super yachts for three and a half years. Break down how I got into the industry with zero experience. I literally am from Colorado. I didn't know anything about boats. Let's break it down exactly how you can get into the industry as a greenie. Greenie is someone or someone who is green and who's completely new to the yachting industry. They're considered green until they've been in the industry for about six months. If you have zero experience, so you're green. How did I get into the yachting industry? I'm going to be breaking it down exactly how I got into the yachting industry so that you can also do this too. First start out with how I even found out about the yachting industry. I was living in Australia and I had met this cool girl who we bargained with, became really good friends, told me all about the yachting industry. Her boyfriend had did it and then she was like moving to Europe to go get into the yachting industry and she was telling me all about it. And she's like, Oh my God, my life's amazing. Snorkeling with guests like in Croatia. I'm living on this boat. It sounded like a dream. Oh yeah. And she was also making hella money. That's queen. I want to do this too. She told me, I think you should be a deckhand, like it would more suit you. I had no idea about these different roles that are on a boat. It was just like, my friend thinks that I would be a good deckhand. I go into the yachting industry being like, I'm going to be a deckhand only to come to realize deckhands are generally a very male dominated role. They do think that females can't lift as much as males can, which is so not true. I was stronger than so many of the guys that I worked with. However, the main issue is, is usually cabin arrangements. On a yacht, everyone shares a room with somebody and they usually have it to be the boys share with boys and girls share with girls. Kind of difficult when sometimes the numbers are uneven because they're stewardesses or chefs. Depending on how the crew cabins are kind of depends on if they can hire a female or not, or if they have space for a female on the boat. The other part is all just pure sexism. And my friend tells me, since you are from the U.S., you should go to Fort Lauderdale. That's one of the yacht hubs. There's other yacht hubs in the world, which are the best places to get started in yachting because all of the boats go there. More mass sum of boats. It's a lot easier if you go to somewhere like Antibes, Mallorca, or if you go to Fort Lauderdale, Miami, those areas are very populated with yachts. Go somewhere that's populated with a ton of yachts. I am also a citizen. I have legal rights to work. I was going to Europe and a lot of people do this. They all go there. They don't have work visas and they just like try to get work in the country. But if they do get a job, sometimes they have to literally fly out of the country, fly back to accept the job offer and then fly back. So it's kind of all like everyone, everybody does this no matter where they're from, because once you start to work on a boat, it doesn't really matter. You can have any type of passport, like since you're in waters. Anyway, since you are in the ocean, there's different rules and laws that happen out at sea. So you don't necessarily need a permit to work in those countries unless, but then if you do, the boat will usually provide it. Like you'll need a Schengen visa to go to Europe. If you're not from the US, you would need to get a B1, B2, but usually the boat would provide all of these visas and stuff. However, if I went to Fort Lauderdale, it's in Florida, I was like, I don't actually have to, I can legally work. I can legally work for work. So I look up a crew house. Crew house is kind of like a hostel and the hostel, but it's more expensive. I think at the time, this was back in 2019, I paid around $200 a week to stay in a twin shared room. Actually, I only really stayed there for about a week, but you could just look up crew houses and that way you can meet other people who are also trying to get into the industry. However, I will say that in these crew houses, I have found that most people that stay in crew houses are people who are looking to get into the industry. And one of the biggest ways to get into the industry is to meet other people. This industry is all about who you know more than what you know. So your connections matter so, so much. So networking and being around other people who want to get into the industry is fine. However, you want to be friends with people who already are in the industry because they're constantly looking for workers. They're constantly looking for day workers or people to do things like there's always a shortage of good quality people. So if you can connect with the right people, you'll have so many jobs, you won't even be able to turn it down. So remember that. But however, before I moved to Fort Lauderdale and moved into a crew house, I had to get my certifications done. I needed to get an STCW, which is like a safety life to see thing that lasts 10 years and you have to get it renewed every 10 years. Anyways, this is basic for cruise ship members, people who work at sea, doesn't matter. You have to get this, which like, you know, you can fight a fire, do CPR, all that kind of basic stuff, good knowledge. You learn a lot about it. And then you need to get an ENG, which is pretty much like just a physical. If you ever got a physical in high school and that's around a hundred dollars, you have to find doctors that do ENGs. But I didn't get that done until I moved to Fort Lauderdale because it's a random test that not a lot of places offer it. You have to look up specific doctors, which they're usually around the yachting areas, like in Fort Lauderdale. And then you can get your ENG done there. Super simple. And once you have those two things, you can get a job. You really don't need anything else. However, I wanted to go down the deck route and my friend was like, you should get your powerboat license. So I paid a few hundred extra dollars to get a small powerboat license. And I got that course done in Fort Lauderdale. And then I, which was cool. Cause I just kind of like met people and, you know, I was getting into the industry, but it kind of also feels like a lot of people are it's like a college experience. It's like pay for this, pay for that, pay for this, pay for this. And then you can join the industry. But like, again, the most important things and the only things that you need is an STCW and an ENG, the rest, like the boat will take care of or help you or do whatever you need to get. The most important thing that you need to focus on is not spending money, but it's on making those connections. I'm a very sociable person. I know that I'm relatively good looking. So I got all of my stuff together and I knew that with my personality and I looked that I could get a job. I was just like, I'll be fine. And also like meeting people in general for me is really easy. I'm always find a job. People always want to hire me. I'm a very likable person in general. So I know how to win people over. So I was like, I can do this because I can only have to focus on if they like me or if I'm a good hard worker, easy done. I just need to meet as many people as possible. That was my philosophy for going in. And at this time I really liked to party. I was a party gal, which by the way, there's a lot of partying. Like I probably partied the hardest of my entire life in the yachting industry. Like yachties like crazily. And anyways, I partied a lot, but I was like, okay, girl, you can't just go out and party. When I moved to Fort Lauderdale, you need to be making like actual connections and connecting with people. So I decided to make business cards and my business card had my photo on it, had my name and it said like Abby Little, Deckhand, and it had my phone number. And so anytime I met any yachty in the industry, I just gave up my business card. And I told myself, all right, I have to give out 10 business cards per night. And I tell you what, every single time I would someone who texted me or someone who called me and gave me a job opportunity. I kid you not. And then I had met this guy who later turned out to be my boyfriend who was already in the yachting industry about a week in, and he was super helpful. So he helped me with my CV. He helped me get into the marinas because another thing is dock walking that I would highly recommend doing is you need to like, you have to sneak into these marinas. Cause like they're not like allowed. So you need to either like, but he had the key to the marina. So he like let me in in the mornings and I like dock walked. And so no one was around. And I just like, and since I'm legal to work in us, I could walk around to each one of these boats and I would go. And he also taught me this. He taught me go up to the boat and say like, is the captain or the chief officer on board? That's who you want to talk to. You want to, don't want to talk to some like deckhand or some stewardess or a chef. They're not going to get you anything. You need to ask directly, say, Hey, can I speak to the chief officer or the captain on board? That's enough. You take out your hand, you shake their hand, you hand them your CV and you say, Hey, nice to meet you. My name is Abby. I am very new to this industry. I'm super keen to get eager and join this boat. I was wondering if you guys needed any day workers today or in the future, I would love to help and learn and gain some experience. That's it. I just gave myself, I don't know if that was the exact like, you know, speech that I gave, but it was a lot better. And I got better at doing this little speech. So I would go up to the boats and I would cold call, sell myself to these boats. Cause I was thinking about a numbers game. I was like, if I hand out 10 to 20 CVS a day, at least one or two people would call me. And I had work right away. It literally took me four or five days to get a gig offers on these boats. And it was crazy because I was putting in the effort of meeting as many people as possible, introducing myself with confidence, explaining that I didn't have any experience, but I want to gain experience. And I want to do this because your personality matters the most. And the reason your personality matters the most in the yachting industry is because we have to live with you. You have to share quarters with them. You have to work with them. They're sometimes the only people you have any type of relationship or communication with for months. Okay. So liking the person is very important. It's honestly more important sometimes in a role than if you can do your job well, if you are a likable person, if you get along with a lot of people, if you are a hard worker, you will be fine. That's all that really matters is your personality and your work ethic in the beginning. And then you built agency. I never found a job through an agency. I think agencies are fine, but I just never had one connect with me in a way that worked well. I had to have other friends who have had that work yet again, I wasn't really in the industry for that long. You can still sign up, but I think the best way to get in is to connect and meet with as many people as possible. Because whenever a job offer does come up, they will be like, Oh, they could think of you. Or if they hear someone else, because the industry is really small. The other thing that I did was because of the guy who isn't my ex-boyfriend helped me out. He was like invited me to crew parties and crew outings. Like he was my in. So you kind of need to find someone in the industry who is social or knows social events that are going on. And you need to go to every single ******* one of those events. You need to show up at the Marina. You need to hand those business cards out and you need to network and do not get that fucked up because you need to be able to like transition yourself, have some drinks, have some fun, be yourself. That's the most important thing. You don't want to pretend to be somebody and then all of a sudden you're on a boat and you have to act in this behavior. Like that would be like the worst possible thing. So please just be yourself. Talk about day rate and salaries. So again, this was my experience in 2019. It is now 2026. So these rates may have changed and applied, but back in the day, this is what I was getting per day. I generally get on average $150 to like $200 a day for day work. That's what I would charge. And that's what they were giving me and everything. And then my starting salary was $3,200, $3,200. And generally the first starting salary back then was like $2,500 to $3,000 for a deckhand. But I argued a little bit to pay $32,000 because I was like, I'm an American, I have to pay taxes. And if you're not from the US, you don't have to pay taxes because you can do certain things and apply for like a tax break in your country. However, if you're a US citizen, you pay taxes the day that you die. It's the most expensive subscription I know. However, you still... Anyways, so I was able to negotiate a little bit more because of that. So if you're an American, I say that you need to advocate for getting paid more because you still have to pay your taxes while everyone else does not. So that is money that you were missing out on. So if you need a pay raise, I would just calculate how much you have to pay in taxes and then add that on top of what they were going to pay you anyways, or just ask for a little bit more. I also did a delivery, which that was super fun. I highly recommend because I got a lot of C time. So if you're looking to get your captain's license, that's amazing because that stays at C because you really need to be at C as much as possible. And I got, I think that one, I only got like 175 or maybe 150 per day, but it was like eight or nine days. So it was super nice. I also made a lot of money during the boat show. Oh my God. Boat shows are so much fun. The one time I was a stewardess was during a boat show. And I, so funny because they were like, Oh yeah, you could be a deckhand and we'd pay you 150. But if you want to be a stewardess, we'll pay you $300 a day. I was like, okay. And so I was like, I will put on a mini skirt. I will do it. And you know, it's even funny the more that I was in the industry, I had been offered multiple jobs where they would tell me that they would pay me more to be a stewardess than to be a deckhand. But I always turned it down because I didn't want to stay inside and I didn't want to clean toilets. Like, I'm sorry. That's just like, I would rather be outside rinsing and doing more of the fun stuff. It was not worth an extra couple thousand dollars. And also why would you not just pay me to do that outside? Like, why do you need me inside with makeup on the skirt? The yachting industry is weird. Just, you know, one of my friends taught me this. When I got into the yachting industry, he goes, if someone ever double pays you, sometimes it happens. It happened to me once. Like I was doing the boat show and I was working for this agency and that's the one who paid me $300 a day to be in a mini skirt and like literally stand on a boat. And then I told the owner, I told them, I was like, Hey, I got a job doing a delivery to St. Martin. I'm not going to be able to finish like doing the whole entire boat show. So it was two weeks. They were like, Oh, it's okay. Like whatever. And the owners were like, so grateful to me for coming on the boat. And they were like, Oh, we're going to pay you in cash. How much was it per day? And I was like, $300 a day. So they paid me out. I don't know. What was I maybe doing it for like eight days, $300 a day for eight days. And then I go do this delivery. They pay me to do the delivery, $150. And then I come back and I get a message from the boat show. They're like, Hey, you never picked up your check. And I'm like, what check? I literally got paid by the owners. They paid me in cash, but my friend was with me at the time. And he was like, do not say anything. He goes in this industry. We bust our ass off. We work so ******* hard. We get underpaid. We there's so much hell that goes on. So whenever you get extra cash or double paid, zip it. These people are billionaires. It's fine. It's literally fine. I go to pick up a check. And these people paid me $400 for two weeks. And I wasn't even there. I literally was doing a delivery. So I got triple paid at one point because I got paid cash by the owners paid for the delivery and that, but all I'm sharing this to say is that you're going to experience crazy money. You're going to get crazy experiences and it's okay to go a little crazy at times, but learn to control your money or else you're never going to leave the industry. And remember why you came in and what your goals are. One of my goals was to pay off my student loan debt. And I was able to do that because of the yachting industry, but I had to drill down and focus because I had 30, $40,000 that I needed to pay off. And I was like, okay, we can't just be stupid with our money. We need to actually put it into savings. And this was during the pandemic when pretty much the whole, they delayed the interest on student loans. And so I was like, this is my time to pay off my debt. That's so thank you to the yachting industry for that. But anyways, negotiate your rates higher. I'm not sure what the rates are now. And then the other thing is CV. I will display like one of my old CVs on here and then kind of what my business card is. I can link those below as well. Again, this was years ago. I don't know exactly what they would look like in this time being, but you know what you could do is you could, if you want to see what people's CVs look like, you could totally make a job post on a Facebook page and get people to send you their CVs. And then you'll get to see all the CVs of the people that are applying for the position that you want to be applying for. And then you could make a CV based off the best one that you see. I think that's a genius idea. And yes, so you also need to join Facebook groups. That is the way to go. Join the Fort Lauderdale Facebook yachting crew, the one in Antibes, Mallorca, all the ones. People post the same jobs in all of them, but make sure in all the yachting groups where they post day work and they post jobs. That's honestly the best way to make and connect to people. That's where I found day work and whatever. And yeah, CV, make sure you're probably looking like you're already a yachtie. Your appearance matters, whether people like to admit it or not. Just going to be super blunt. You need to be clean cut. You need to look like you're a Southern man going to church, kind of, the best way to put it. Clean shave. All right, boys, you need to be clean shaved. I'm sorry, but they clearly don't want that. And they want you to have short hair, well-maintained, like you need to look either like you came out of the military or you're going to church on Sunday. Same goes for the ladies, but also be pretty, put together. Obviously you don't have to do this, but if you are a good looking person, have a good personality and well-presented, you will find a job. So looks do matter in the industry. They can literally hire you based off if they think you're, I know I definitely got jobs based off my looks. I'm a hundred percent, like beyond a doubt. There's no way this helped me get into the industry. There's even a story about this one boat that he only wanted blonde women to work for him. And so no one could get a job if they weren't blonde. So, you know, but the thing is, when you're dealing with people that have this much money, they can literally do whatever they want. I mean, if I had a yacht, I could literally just request it to be like a bunch of hot dudes. That about sums it all up. So if I'm going to break it down for you again, I would say you need to get your SCCW, your ENG, you need to move to a location that is a yacht hub, and then you need to base yourself there. And then you need to network your hell out of it. Dock walk, go to parties, get business cards, make sure your CV is good, but B, look good, be clean, collective, look great, show your personality, and just literally remember that it's all a numbers game. The more you put out, the more you will receive. Good luck. And if you're interested about my other experiences that I had in the yachting industry, why I left the yachting industry and some secrets that I could not say on camera, if I wanted to go back into the yachting industry, I will leave that video there for you to watch. And if you have any questions whatsoever about the yachting industry, I will try to help to the best of my ability as I'm no longer in the yachting industry, but I can share my experiences or help you with any other resources. I'll also link other resources that I listed in the video down below, but I just wanted to say thank you for being here. I appreciate it so much. If you made it to the end of this video, can you please give me that like button? Can you hit that subscribe? It means so, so much to me. And thank you so much.