It is very difficult to make a career out of racing or sailing, especially if you haven't been involved in the sailing scene all your life. Most of the people who make a living at racing started very young and raced in high-school, college and afterwards.

IMHO, if you really want to make a living centered around sailing and sailboats, your best bet is to become a delivery captain and/or sailing instructor. Get your RYA Yachtmaster or USCG Captain's license... get your STCW 95, and work as crew to gain experience.

 

Making racing work as a career is extremely hard. The more traditional ways to do it are to crew on a commercial vessel or yacht or to do deliveries. The commercial vessels that I refer to generally do daysails,several night trips or longer voyages. They typically make their money carrying passengers, the real difference is how far they travel. These boats can be small (~40') or well over 100 feet. The pay tends to be pretty low on these boats but the works tends to be really fun and adventurous. Many of the vessels are willing to take on a green crewmember from time to time. Sometimes, it is best to volunteer or be an apprentice for a few weeks to prove your worth and then you will get hired or referred to another vessel.

Working on yachts is another route to take. If you work on a charter yacht, you will have guests on board the whole time and you are essentially in the hospitality business. If you work on a private yacht that does not do charters, it is usually just the crew onboard moving and maintaining the boat. The pay is decent on the yachts but you need to make sure that you get a good owner. You can often get a job as a relatively green crewmember, just be prepared to spend a lot of time cleaning.

Deliveries is another way to go and not quite as steady work but a lot of people like it for all of the offshore passagemaking they get to do on other people's boats. You need to be very experienced to be a delivery captain and this is normally a good step after working on yachts.

 

Yacht maintenance is another route. Many folks want their boat ready to go at a moments notice. They are not interested in brightwork, engine repair, installing electronics, fixing heads, bottom paint etc..

Not glamorous, but much work in yachts is just that - work.

 

I'm a professional sailor, and I've been lucky enough to try my hand at just about everything in the industry from racing schooners across the atlantic to driving day boats in Newport to racing megas in Antigua. I highly recommend the yacht route. It pays about four times as much as the day boat or schooner jobs. It's usually steady work, unlike deliveries which are highly seasonal. You can get on somewhere as a deckhand if you don't have any licenses. You'll spend most of your time cleaning, do maintenance and picking up after rich assholes but you'll be on the water. If yet get on a boat with a decent owner or one that's fairly busy in the charter industry you'll get to do a fair bit of sailing. The best sailing as far as yachts are concerned is in the Med on the classic boats.

The industry has a extremely high burnout rate because you're essentially married to the boat. It's very hard to see friends and family, and virtually impossible to do things like make it to weddings and funerals. You basically have to write your real life off. But if you're cool with that than yes, you can sail for a living.

 

I'm a professional sailor, and I've been lucky enough to try my hand at just about everything in the industry from racing schooners across the atlantic to driving day boats in Newport to racing megas in Antigua. I highly recommend the yacht route. It pays about four times as much as the day boat or schooner jobs. It's usually steady work, unlike deliveries which are highly seasonal. You can get on somewhere as a deckhand if you don't have any licenses. You'll spend most of your time cleaning, do maintenance and picking up after rich assholes but you'll be on the water. If yet get on a boat with a decent owner or one that's fairly busy in the charter industry you'll get to do a fair bit of sailing. The best sailing as far as yachts are concerned is in the Med on the classic boats.

The industry has a extremely high burnout rate because you're essentially married to the boat. It's very hard to see friends and family, and virtually impossible to do things like make it to weddings and funerals. You basically have to write your real life off. But if you're cool with that than yes, you can sail for a living.

How would one find these yacht jobs?

 

Walk the docks, knock on some hulls, do some day work and make some contacts. If you hang out in a yacht haven like Lauderdale there are plenty of opportunities to grab a berth if you're in the right spot at the right time.

 

Q1. How much do you want to make to have a "good" living?
Q2. Can you sign-off your personal life in exchange of time on the sea?
Q3. Are you comfortable being bell-boy, waiter, housekeeping and deckhand to wealthy pricks?

If the answer is less than 35K net, willing to live for the love of the sea and nothing else, and are comfortable playing the invisible man role whenever the boss & kids are around, it may be for you.

Otherwise the best bet to making a living is to save up about $200K, buy a >45 footer, and charter when you need some money - you could charge out about 2000€ a week net in the Med for 8 weeks, head across the Atlantic and do the spring charters in the Carribean for about the same - work 22 to 24 weeks a year, cash in the same, and have all the rest of the time to yourself, family, friends and fun.

 

I'm intrigued by the seemingly general assertion that successful people who have made a lot of money (and generally enjoy the same stuff the we do, sailing) are assholes and pricks.

Sounds like serious jealousy to me.

(Apologise for possible thread hijack)

 

I'm intrigued by the seemingly general assertion that successful people who have made a lot of money (and generally enjoy the same stuff the we do, sailing) are assholes and pricks.

Sounds like serious jealousy to me.

(Apologise for possible thread hijack)

Certainly a generalization on my part and I'll be the first to say that you can find pricks in all social classes without exception....

Having worked with a number of boat yards on Cape Cod in the 80's / early 90's I'd have to say that there is a big minority of jerks - specifically those that pay someone year round to take care of their boat and get them from point a to point b.

I've met a large number of very nice ones as well so the spectrum if wide but there is that tendency...

I've sailed with a couple of year round boat-sitter / captains and their feedback (although in the Med) is that you have a majority of people that are just there to have fun but expect you to bend to their will (not that type of bend...) and whim...

Not my cup of tea.

 

I didn't mean to make a generalization that they're ALL assholes and pricks. Some of them are very nice indeed. But I will say that enough of them are jerks that you wouldn't go too far wrong stereotyping.

It's really not that they're horrible people, it's just that the majority of people who can afford a $100,000 + a week vacation are used to being waited on hand and foot and are thus generally helpless to do anything for themselves. So they expect things to be done for them and can get quite unhappy if everything isn't perfect. Now couple this mentality with the situation of being on a boat, where things very rarely, if ever go as planned simply because of the nature of boating. You have a recipe for some diva behavior. This is exaggerated by the fact that despite how much these folks claim to know about boating they are really usually pretty far out of their element and comfort zone.

I do have some experience in this area, I'm the chief officer on a 112' yacht that does about 25 charters a year. In fact we've got a group of undesirables on the boat as I speak. To emphasize my point I will add that in the past hour I have been asked to "please make the boat stop rocking" and to " take me to a beach with more sun."

 

I have been asked to "please make the boat stop rocking"

I got asked that one in the first 2 weeks that I worked 10 years ago and didn't even know what to say at that point.

Personally, I spent my time working on commercial sail vessels like the Maine windjammers and avoided yachts but my friends who did the yacht thing always had some eye opening stories. We had to deal with our share of people that shouldn't have been aboard but for the most part, I really liked our passengers.

 

Thank you everyone for your responses. That is a lot to think about.

 

I have no experience with that kind of sailing at all.....and precious little of any kind so I can't and won't say a word about that part. I just want to say don't take a hobby you love and turn it in to a job you hate. I did that as a sports car mechanic 30+ years ago and it took those 30+ years to even look at a car, let alone a sports car. Finally got back into the hobby 2 years ago and it's fun again. Just a life lesson. Good luck to you.

Vic