Last weekend started off with an amazing dinner at some
friends of B’s- Amanda and Mark (she’s a Sand he’s a Kiwi). We pretty much got
cooked a gourmet 3 course meal, complete with dessert and Hennesy. First proper
meal I’ve had since I’ve been here so I was in heaven!
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| Me, Stu and Amanda |
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| Me and B |
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| B-dog |
The next day I decided to go to Monaco to do a bit of dock
walking and had a look around. Wasn't as “wow” as I had expected it to be, but
then again I did just go to the port.
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| Monaco |
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| A superyacht |
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| Sic Audi |
I treated myself to a Ben& Jerry’s cookie dough (just to had to my growing consumption of unhealthy eating since ove been in France. What with macaroons, crepes, baguettes, I swear ive put on another 2kg’s).
That afternoon was the rugby- so we headed out with some of
Mark’s kiwi friends, then myself, B, Amanda and Stu supporting the SA team! We
went to a rad little bar in Juan le Pin and played some pool and had some
cocktails, but as you know we lost miserably!
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| Me and Gemma |
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| Amanda and Gemma |
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| Stuey |
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| Tiff and B |
Some daywork went up on the Crewhouse board over last
weekend. Now I knew half the crewhouse would be applying for it, along with
whatever other crewhouses the boat who needed the dayworker had decided to
contact. I was desperate. So instead of writing and giving the usual spiel, I
wrote a desperate mail pretty much begging for the work. The mail subject line
was “Humble plea for daywork” and it went something like this:
I know you have
probably had a flood of requests for the day work you have available. I have
been in Anitbes for 2 weeks and have been struggling to find work even though I
have been doing a lot of dock walking up and down the coast! I need to make a
call next week about going home as I am almost out of cash, but would really
like to stay a little longer to try and find a permanent job. So this is a
humble plea to please hire me as a day worker, so I can
try to stay here a little bit longer!
Kindest regards,
Tiffany
Kindest regards,
Tiffany
Well I’ll be damned
but it actually worked. The chief stewardess phoned me and offered me the
daywork. I apologized about my grovelling mail as I now felt a bit embarrassed.
But she was lovely and said we’ve all been there and if you don’t tell someone
your situation they wouldn’t know! I was excited. This would be my first time
on a superyacht! She said she needed me for a few days at least, and daywork
pay is around 100 euros a day, so this would pay for another weeks rent at the
crewhouse and food and a bit extra. As the boat was in a shipyard 2hrs on the
train from Antibes, she offered that I could sleep and eat on the boat.
I arrived at the yacht and was shown to my “cabin” that I
would be sharing with another girl. It resembled what I had always imagined
Harry Potter’s “room under the stairs” at the Dursleys would look like- pretty
much the size of a small walk-in cupboard.
Nevertheless it was all really
exciting. I was on the top bunk and I had a porthole that looked out onto the
water and some of the other superyachts!
Each cabin has its own aircon
controller and each bed has a screen that folds down from the roof (or for the
person below, from underneath the top bunk) which you can watch satellite TV or
DVD’s on.
The “crew mess” is the crew eating/hang out area. We had a
large table and comfy sofa seats and a big screen TV with satellite. The chef
on board cooks 5 star gourmet meals. So we for lunch and dinner we would get a
buffet of food- at least 2 different meant dishes, roast veggies, different
salads and sides (pates/scotch eggs etc) and crusty baguettes. It was a feast!
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| Roast chicken, veggie dishes, salads, eggs, parma ham, crostinis, farm terrine, melon, pineapple |
And then the cupboards (and this is just for the crew hey) are fully stocked
with everything you can dream of- chips, nuts, dried fruit, chocolate,
biscuits, cereal bars, you name it. The fridge has a wide selection of cheeses
from gruyere to brie to special French market cheeses and a whole cold meat
selection (this is also available each lunchtime and is part of the buffet). I
now understand why girls who work on yachts get what is called a “stew bum”-
the food is just so good and so available so you just eat it.
The work I did for the week pretty much considered of 60% laundry
(including loads of ironing which I’m surprisingly pretty damn good at) then
general cleaning (vacuuming and mopping of all floors every day, polishing all
the handrails, making beds and cleaning
bathrooms) and “detailing” i.e. using cotton buds to clean the smallest spaces
like air vent grids. So to all of you who thought I couldn’t suck it up and get
my hands dirty- ha!
I got a call on Wednesday from one of the biggest superyachts
in the world. The Swedish girl that phoned was the head of service and said
they are looking for a junior service stewardess. She couldn’t remember how she
got my CV and neither do I, but she said she just wanted to call as you can’t
get an idea of someone’s personality from a CV.
So we had what was pretty much a phone interview. She told me a bit
about the boat and its owner- it’s all very high security and a lot of
discretion so I’m not going to say what boat or who. But the yacht travels all
over the world. They’ve just been to Alaska and are heading to the Pacific now
(Hawaii, Fiji). As it’s so big, it doesn’t need to re-fuel/re-stock as often,
so it can go to much more remote places. I asked if they were currently in
Antibes and she said no, Vancouver! It’s currently in the shipyard, the leaving
7 November, so they need someone to start pretty much immediately.
The perks are amazing- large crew gym, paid international
flights 2 x per year, 2 x one month holidays/year. It’s an amazing opportunity,
not just to see the world, but also due to the status of the person who owns
the boat. She asked if I wanted the job and I was like yes of course! She then
asked if a had a B1/B2 visa and I said no- but that I just need boat papers
from them (letter of employment) and then I can go and apply for one at a US
embassy (usually in Paris or Madrid and not normally a problem if you have boat
papers. It then takes about a week to get). She said she’d need to discuss it
with her head of interior and one of them would get back to me.
I didn't want to get
my hopes up but was obviously staring at my phone for the last 2 days, willing
it to ring and jumping every time it did. But I didn't hear back from them. I
had an interview on another boat whilst in La Ciotat- slightly odd... the
owner is 84 and his wife (his 3rd) is 40. They have 2 kids of 7 and
5- both who apparently know they are rich and that if they press a button
(literally they have buzzers), a stew will come running to their attention.
They are Orthodox Jews so are Kosher, but are concerned that the chef might
“contaminate” something in the kitchen by accident, so the whole boat is
strictly vegetarian. The head of interior, who interviewed me, said that to
satisfy their meat cravings, the crew have a weekly barbeque on the dock when
they are at the shipyard, or grab a steak at a restaurant. But when the boss is
on and you are out at anchor for 5 weeks, you’re pretty much screwed. I love my
meat (as us saffa’s do) and hate most vegetables so the thougt of a veggie boat
isn’t exactly thrilling, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth-
they are crossing over to the Caribbean so would be amazing to get on it. I
will find out on Tuesday if I got through to the 2nd round.
I arrived back in Antibes yesterday from La Ciotat and my
friend Harry was down for the weekend from Marseilles. After dinner at the
local Indian “Bollywood”, a bunch of us decided to head out to Juan-le-Pin, the
next suburb, as it’s kinda like a Camps Bay and has some (supposedly) cool
nightclubs and bars. Well...... We went to a club called “Le Village” and after
playing a 20 euro cover charge we were subjected to the WORST and I mean the
WORST music I have ever heard in my life. It can only be described as French
R&B dance. I can’t even think of an adjective to describe how awful it was.
We kept hoping that the set would soon be over and some better music would come
on (house or even commercial) so we stuck it out for a bit, but it just got
worse. We were all making hanging hand gestures and pointing our fingers at our
heads like guns because we just couldn’t take how totally kak it was.
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| Le Village |
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| Peter, Heaher, Mel (crazy Irish chick we met that night), Raph (crewhouse manager), me |
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| Mel and Raph |
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| Table dancing with Peter |
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| Shoot me now before this awful music does |
I woke up this morning feeling a little bleak. Being out at
such a shitty club last night really made me miss Cape Town and all of you
guys. It was a really stunning day so I decided to go to the beach- being in
the sun always makes me feel happy and positive. I decided to quickly check my
mail first as I hadn’t checked it since Thursday evening. Well what I surprise
I got! The head stewardess of that big famous superyacht had mailed me to say
she hadn’t forgotten about me, the interview process was just taking a little
while due to the many people involved but was hoping to let me know after this
weekend. As I was replying, I saw that she had then sent me a follow up mail
yesterday, saying they are really interested and am I still available or have a
I accepted another job. I literally squeaked with excitement and quickly
whizzed off off a mail saying yes I’m still available and would be thrilled to
work on the boat. I am hoping to hear back from them tomorrow evening! Please
all cross fingers and toes!!
xxx
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