Majority of my content in Wild Reverence is obviously based on the lifestyle I am living now, on land, with my animals, a somewhat “normal” life compared to one on the water. But I thought I would explore a little bit of my previous career (which I won’t lie, I have considered going back to) especially for those curious to know what it’s like to live as a stewardess on a yacht, the actual work and demands of the job without those pretty Instagram stories to make you think you are missing out on a glamorous life.
A day in the life of a yacht stewardess is not the same for every stew, obviously, but it is more or less the same in terms of the work, the hours and the amount of tasks that build up that you may not even be able to complete in a day. It does depend on your ranking, chief stew, second stew, third stew or more, depending how many stews are needed on the yacht, and of course, sole stew. I was generally stole stewardess with a few deckhand tasks in my five years of yachting, as I started off as a sole stewardess before making my way to slightly bigger yachts.
I will take my second last boat I was on, last year, as a day in my life on there. This is where I was technically sole stewardess, but I had a cook/stewardess to help me if she was available to assist and I therefore put on my cv after the season “Head Stewardess.”
This boat was particularly extremely busy for the amount of crew we had onboard, as the more guests there are and the less crew, the more work there was for the crew, particularly the interior crew. It was exhaustingly busy and I cried many times from the stress, the overload of work and the pure exhaustion I experienced as the season progressed. I understood more than anybody that working on a yacht was a lot of work, but when your own rights in the contract are being violated, that’s when things can get tense and complicated; because of the lack of breaks/rest the two of us got in the day.
I won’t go too much into detail about that, it’s over and I learnt a lot from that boat about life in general. A typical day would work based on the cook/stew and I’s “shifts.” Not that we got shifts, we were absolutely worked to the bone, but eventually we came up with a system and a routine between ourselves that was as close to sustainable for both of us as possible.
Once waking up from the night, I would get up, go to the bathroom, splash my face, brush my teeth, ask myself in the mirror why I put myself through this, do my hair and go back to my cabin to get into my uniform for the day. Depending on the time I woke up, I would either let myself wake up a bit more before heading onto the deck or I would just go straight outside and inhale the peace before the guests and other crew woke up to disturb that peace. I would message my mother, maybe try call her and then go to the galley to prepare everything and set the table for breakfast.
The cook/stew would wake up not long after me, and would begin breakfast preparations. Depending who was onboard and if a guest was already awake, I would generally offer them something to drink or if they were hungry and didn’t want to wait for the owner to wake up, they would order their breakfast and I would run downstairs and quickly do morning turn ups. This consisted of neatly making their beds, or changing the linen if they were there for long enough, a quick dust of the cabin, a fast tidy up of their items and obviously take their dirty clothes to be washed. The same went for the bathroom, a quick clean up of the sink, toilet, shower and take the small bin bag out. I would sometimes have the cook/stew help me with these, especially the master cabin which is the biggest one onboard and always needed the most attention.
After this would be breakfast service, which went pretty quickly generally. I would then clear the table and continue in the cabins afterwards if I didn’t have enough time before breakfast service. Depending on the plans of the day, which were generally spontaneous on this specific yacht, I would assist with mooring on deck, if we were going anywhere else, or I would start with the washing.
At some point lunch would be ready which was most of the time interrupted by the demands of the guests, otherwise I would try take a few minutes to enjoy my lunch. But from breakfast into lunch, which was always late afternoons, cocktails and drinks would be ordered and I would be bartender from the afternoon until very late in the night. Lunch would be served and I would remake the table before preparing drinks for the guests and serving the drinks.
It was constant demands, constant needs and constant chaos. I rarely had moments where I could just breathe and relax. Luckily for us, majority of the time the owner and guests would go ashore for dinner which reduced our stress and work time drastically. I still had to complete turn downs for each cabin and sometimes had help, which was closing the curtains, preparing the bed in a fancy way, tidying up again and cleaning the bathrooms, including the shower which had to have not a hint of water on the glass at all times. It was intense.
This was usually the time we got to wind down if we were lucky. After the turn down, I obviously had to wait up for the guests to come back from their dinner, which was around or past midnight, more often than not.
The system that the cook/stew and I came up with eventually was that if guests were gone off the boat for the evening, or when she was done cooking and preparing deserts and cleaning the galley, she could go straight to bed in order to wake up early. Then I would be the late shift and stay up until whatever time they wanted things and then I would wake up slightly later. I wanted us to take turns with that, but it didn’t make sense if she was the one who had to prepare breakfast in the mornings anyway, especially if guests were up earlier on certain days. So for weeks and months at a time we began to rotate like that and I did my best to incorporate a break time for her and eventually for myself. It was unfair to demand so much of our energy when we were just two and not let us get enough rest or breaks.
Depending on the mood and the amount of friends they had onboard, I would either be asked to make tea when they came back from dinner, or I would be asked to make Aperol spritz. My heart would always sink if it was the latter. I would get so tired and sleepy that I would almost cry sometimes.
At the end of the day, or until the early hours of the morning, it was go, go, go. Once I was excused or once they had all gone to bed, I would quietly race around the boat like a silent mouse, turning off certain lights, locking up the doors and eventually creeping into our tiny crew area and hop in the shower. I would eagerly climb into bed and feel the relief in my aching feet. My feet always ached whilst working onboard a yacht.
That was one general day in the life of a yacht stewardess, specifically, on a 30m yacht that runs with a total of four crew. In between all of that, there are some good moments, there are many bad moments, but at the end of the day, it was all a life experience that I will not forget for a very long time. As I said, every boat is different and I actually think it’s much better if there is at least more than two stewardesses onboard, so that you can equally get enough rest in the day and split the workload. That boat I was on felt absolutely insane to be working the way we did.
But I have lived it, I have learnt from it, and now here I am, basking in the glory of Wild Reverence and following the life I truly wish to live. I hope you are inspired to do the same, even if your dream is to work on a superyacht!
