A bit more on making money...

Anyone check out the Eurovision song contest (Romania had me the moment they picked up those angle grinders), on being screwed, and another cool Simmons...

Since we were speaking of making money while cruising....

Admittedly not everyone is going to want to make handlines or fishing lures and some might eschew the whole manual labor thing because it doesn't fit their self-image or are less than handy... What to do?

Well, a lot of folks gravitate towards doing the charter gig. What's not to like... The whole charter captain gig or charter chef has a certain romantic appeal plus you get to sail and someone pays you lots of money to do it!

As it happens, we have a charter business and we book and have booked charters for over a decade. We don't do charters on our own boat but we're an agent for boats that do... In other words, we're boat pimps.

It is a good job as it goes. We get to sell our clients fun and a great vacation but it is hard work because the charter industry, on a whole, is pretty seriously screwed. So, while we pimp boats the hard part is more of a match-making and keeping our clients away from the bad boats and crews exercise. Sadly, the charter biz is a great example of "Sturgeon's Law" (ninety percent of everything is crap.).

Of course, not everyone is cut out for the charter business and, for example, if you think being a charter crew is "romantic" well, you're already excluded from those who should. For a quick reality check think about the romantic appeal of rebuilding a marine toilet in a head that has had repeated incidence of projectile vomiting recently. Then factor in that the clients have managed to take down every toilet on the boat so you need to fix them all amidst a group keen on projectile vomiting...

A quick hint to charter chefs everywhere... BEWARE THE FROZEN SHRIMP!

Yep, and that's not even a worse case scenario...

There are a lot of reasons you should consider anything else but charter and they range from the simple (you may not be a people person) to the mundane (you're useless around boats) on to the very real fact that the charter guest from hell really does exist and they are legion (see Sturgeon's Law).

Listening to Boz Scaggs

So it goes...