Waiting for the mail... 180 Degrees South

Back when I was in the mountaineering biz I remember I once advised Yvon Chouinard that as good as his guide sweaters were they were just too pricey for climbers and just maybe Great Pacific Iron Works should stick to their forte of great climbing hardware... I don't have to tell you, dear readers just how dumb I was way back when and luckily Yvon and the folks at GPIW took no notice of my less than astute advice and went on to form Patagonia and bring climbing chic to the world, become a household name, and a force to be reckoned with in the whole universe of sustainable and green business practices.

Just for the record I'm still pretty dumb but a hell of a lot older...

Which sorta/kinda brings us to a film I have been waiting for and hopefully will be showing up in my mail package any day now... "180 Degrees South"




To say I have great hope for this film is some kind of serious understatement and a friend who saw it some time ago at a film festival compared it to my all time favorite Mountain Gazette story by Dick Dorworth "Night Driving" which as far as I am concerned is a slam dunk...

Making money on boats...

Being a minor cog in the charter trade (we have a charter yacht brokerage), I hear a lot of questions from cruising folk about doing yacht charter as a means of making those ends meet (or in some misguided cases getting rich).

The first thing to be aware of is "rich" and "doing yacht charter" do not quite fit into the same sentence! Which is not to say that you cannot make a reasonable income but getting rich is simply not in the cards.

It is also a LOT of work... Clients demand a lot and the work is 24/7 and in between charters you wind up fixing those things that broke on charter, so as they say...The work never ends!

The good news is that it can also a very rewarding line of work in that you meet some interesting people (in all meanings of the word "interesting") and if you have what it takes (many don't) a decent income.

Maritime Moose will be coming out with a DVD in the not too far distant future..."Not Getting Rich...The Business of Charter" will cover the basics of how the charter business works and how to get started in more or less the right direction as well as survive once in. There has been a need for just such a resource for a long time and as now there really is  shortage of good yachts and crews the timing seems apt.

In the meantime, a really good first step is to actually do a crewed charter as a client as most of the cruisers asking questions really don't have a clue on how a crewed charter actually works and have a lot of misconceptions... Though many seem to have the idea that they can do it better... Sort of like going into the cafe business without ever having eaten in a cafe or writing the great American novel without ever having read a novel. Common sense of course but it does need saying...

We'll have more info on the production soonish...