Day Captains - Food for thought

I see you like sleeping with one eye open. Hampton Bays happens to be one of the cheapest places to live on Long Island and $1,200 is probably a small 2 bedroom. Growing up my father taught me that 1 weeks take home should equal 1 months rent. By that formula you need to be earning $62,400 a year net. Since you have to be available for that customer who calls in January to move a boat you really can't take another job in winter that is worth anything (and who needs you anyway when you'll be gone when spring arrives). So that means you have to earn it all in 26 weeks or $2,400 a week. Since the season actually kicks only from about July 4th to Labor day it's really only about 8 weeks. So during that time you need to earn about $3,500 a week NET. Working 7 days a week that means you need $500 a day to live modestly.
Florida does have the benefit of getting a lot of dreamers who move there to follow the sun. They can afford to use them up and send them home when their reserves run out. More will come in behind them. Moving to Long Island is a very expensive proposition and people have to work where they can make a living. This year I've seen a lot of captains go into other fields and only captain on their days off. That means they don't run boats much more than the owners do. If a boat's owner has access to a good captain, boat washer, mechanic or any other trade that they need it would be a smart idea for them to make sure they are earning a decent living or very soon they'll be washing their own boat when they're not running aground or laying the boat up for the entire season as they wait for a mechanic. Some of the older folks may still remember things like Peconic Bay scallops, clams from Great South Bay and Long Island Lobsters. Pretty soon they may be fondly remembering the days of clean boats that left the dock.

Actually, to wash my '02 Hyundai now costs $20 . I do think your situation may have been misconstrued though. I have a young girl (87) walk my dog when I'm working. I've been trying to get her to take $20 but nearly have to tie her down to take $10. She likes to be needed and kept busy and to me it's a godsend having her. Even though she is happy for the job I strain my brain constantly trying to find ways to show my appreciation becuase I know the job is worth so much more and by hook or crook I'll pay what's right. Tonight I'm taking her to dinner. There is no way I could look myself in the mirror paying someone who needs to make a living $50 for taking care of a 70' , $3.5 million yacht in a place like Vancouver.

Same here in Fort Lauderdale ... the car washing guys come to our parking lot and get $20 to wash outside and clean inside.

I don't begrudge them a single dollar, they earn it and it seems like a bargain to me.

That is a bargain. For that $20 I go to the drive-through. The come-to-your-house guy is $50 (and my car is not 70'). I'll use him when I can afford that BMW. Anybody ready to pay $1,000 a day for a captain or boat washer? I'm waiting patiently for your PM .

Not quite as true as you'd like to believe. The UAW forced the formerly-big three to continue to pay wages to non-working individuals (the jobs bank), in addition to paying union dues for those non-working collectors. The union dues were over 50% of the hourly take-home of the wage workers ($14 for the UAW, $25 for the paycheck, $15 for benefits and taxes).

As jobs were reduced, it was the cost of maintaining those non-workers on the books, in addition to providing them health care from retirement until death, plus a pension that really screwed GM. Why did the UAW fight to keep the jobs bank for so long? The unions were the fattest fat cats in this whole mess.

Know what the retirement package was for salaried employees? Ten years. Ten and done. No health care, no pension, no nothing come day one of year eleven. Too bad, so sad, should have planned better.


By the way, the going rate for licensed security guards in the NY/NJ/CT area is $10 an hour. The guy you're betting is going to keep theives from stealing the electronics off the boats in the marina is getting paid less than the boat washers, and not as scab labor.

This makes me wish we hadn't sold the house in Port Jeff in 2000.

Unions are a necessary evil. But in many cases they're as big an abuser of the working man as the employer. I didn't mean to say the Insurance companies and pension fund administers were the only ones with their hands in other's pockets. Just that it was not the line worker who brought these companies down.
There are jobs where $10 and no benefits is acceptable. Jobs for students who are subsidized by their parents for example, or jobs that require neither brain nor braun such as a night watchman (remember, his job is only to act as a deterant by his presence) which can be filled as a second job by say cops or P.O. workers who already have benefits and a decent wage. Nobody is going to wash boats all day as a second job for long. It's hard work.
Once we hit a certain point in life we have a moral obligation to assist others who are less fortunate, and certainly not to increase our profits at the expense of the poorest among us who have no more power than to hold out their hands and say please.

Man Oh Man What A Conversation

The Cheap Travler Who Washes And Runs His Own 3.5 Million Dollar Boat

If you really think those rich Americans don't dump huge piles of boat money into the U.S. economy you need to spend less time washing boats and more time learning about the industry.

And thank Heavens they don't pay American wage rates, there wouldn't be many crew available to them.

Marmot,
I'm not clear what you mean by this. Do you mean that American Wages are low and that others wouldn't work for American rates?
Or do you mean that if there were more US flagged yachts, there would be a shortage of US crew to staff them?

It's not that American wages are low, but if we compare apples to apples, an American youngy with equal skills and experience working for an American owner on an American flag vessel in American waters and paying American taxes would be living in poverty compared to what he or she would make on a foreign flag yacht in the charter fleet. Since young Americans have just as much chance at sailing on a red flag boat while being paid Euro competitive salaries and taking their own approach to taxation, there is little reason to believe they would do better under the American flag.

I don't think it is reasonable to compare the yachting industry to the flag of convenience deep sea fleets when it comes to the reasons for an American owner to flag out. This is one of those cases where the crew actually benefits in many ways.

I think the idea that an American owner is somehow getting away with something is absurd. Many of them buy American built yachts outfitted with American equipment and machinery and use American yards to maintain them. The amount of money this owner puts into the American economy is beyond the comprehension of the casual observer who only sees a pretty yacht with some strange flag on it.

Though it wasn't what I meant,that may well be the case. It is difficult to crawl through the hawsepipe these days and few academy grads are willing to go into yachting for a myriad of reasons. The oil patch and the brown water fleet offer lower level American license holders far more security and advancement opportunities than the yacht industry.

I very rarely see an American CV come across the desk. Maybe if we had more large yachts more would be interested but given the ease of obtaining MCA licensed crew for flag of convenience boats there is little to benefit an American owner to flag American.

It is certain that there are people who practice the "art" of stinginess throughout their dealings with people who provide services, not only with their boats. It is their way, their character. We can strive to find better characters.

They made enough money to buy the yacht by knowing how to avoid paying more tax than they are obligated to pay. Most owners didn't steal the money and most didn't make it by running slave gangs in their offshore sweatshops. They are not ripping off the US taxpayer or worker, they pay for their pleasure and a lot of people make a good living and pay a lot of taxes with what those owners pay.

Most foreign flag yachts enter the US on a private registry and pay sales taxes to the yards and suppliers just like you do. You would probably like to make what they pay in taxes.

Most owners pay the going rate for crew. The state of the economy and the availablility of crew determines the pay scale. They can't run without crew and they pay what it takes to hire them. Plus fees, plus insurance, plus transportation, plus vacations, plus meals, plus uniforms, plus cars, plus plus plus ... and they pay American taxes on what they buy here.

Does your position change depending on who you are responding to?

You are muddying the waters. American flag vessels cannot hire Filipino crew. We have laws that prohibit non-citizens from working on American flag vessels (with a couple of exceptions). Red flag vessels can hire anyone they like and Filipinos are generally excellent seamen. They get paid the same as an American or Brit would be paid for the job they fill on the yacht. The position determines the pay, not the nationality of the person filling it.

As far as American captains and crew complaining, that is a specious twist of an issue that has nothing to do with yachting. The existence of the American merchant marine is threatened by the existence of a fleet of flag of convenience ships whose owners hire villagers from 3rd world nations and pay obscenely low wages and work them without offering the social benefits which we consider normal and expect.

It is the equivalent of competing with products made by slaves, or if the county sheriff decided to hire out his prisoners to wash boats in Sag Harbor for almost nothing just to keep them busy and provide money for candy bars.

A lot of that goes on outside my office window, it keeps a lot of dayworkers and freelancers alive while they look for a permanent job ... besides, didn't you just write:

"I believe it's anyone's right to negotiate any pay scale they think they can get and it's any owner's right to try to negotiate in whatever they think their best interest is."

Wait a minute....
ending up with a million dollars in this buisness IS a very easy thing to do.....


The first step is to start out with three million dollars

I beg to differ. It's not what you make, it's what you do with it.

If you're a Captain or Engineer full time on a yacht, or have a good management business, if you can't put away 30-50k a year, especially if you live on-board, something is definately wrong. After 3-5 years of that, and compounding, in 20 years you can retire very nicely.

Well, 30-50k was easy up till 2008. The last 2 years were not fun for me or from what I have heard from others. 2011 has begun very well though!

I had 3 different months spread out in 2009 that were dead, but finished the year down under 10% from the previous year, since then I was up 20% in 2010, and up even further 2011. Although my business has grown a minimum of 10% a year for the last decade, with the exception of 2009 which wasn't bad, and I had a banner year in 2008.

The biggest thing is keeping your expenses in check, and I see a lot of people that feel they need a huge office at such and such marina, all of these company vehicles that sit around, and so forth and so on.......They also feel they need to get bigger than their britches, and then their overall quality and quality control goes down and they end up spending too much time babysitting employees and/or replacing good customers that they lost.

I wouldn't lump in Zoroastrians with Scientologists if I were you.

The US shipping industry is incredibly constrained by stringent flag rules.

For starters ships in domestic or intra-NAFTA trade should be allowed to employ anyone from the three NAFTA countries, and ships in international trade should be allowed 50% NAFTA and 50% foreign crew. The Merchant Marine act of 1920 is an antiquated fossil. What the US needs now is a growing, competetive shipping industry, not a stagnant one. If you Americans call yourselves capitalists you should understand this.