Across the great divide

I have been lucky enough, since I took my first steps into the sailing world, to be asked or paid to sail to, what I would consider bucket list locations. The first of which, and as the cruising bug first bit, was Thailand, when my brother and I chartered a yacht to do some island hopping around Phuket. When I wasn’t on the water, I watched sailing channels like SV Delos and dreamt of a Polynesian island hoving into view.

One day, I found myself walking along a sparse superyacht dock in Hong Kong. I stopped next to the transom of a very stylish, very large yacht and shouted up: “Got any jobs?” A South African first mate introduced himself and asked about my experience, to which I was forced to sheepishly answer: “None”. To my surprise, he broke the silence with: “Can you start Monday?” So before I knew it, I was working as a very green deckhand on a 65m (213ft) , sailing the waters around Hong Kong, down through the Philippines, eventually making the jump to the island paradise of Palau.