Ragged Clown

It's just a shadow you're seeing that he's chasing…


Feb
19
2022

I could’ve been one of these things first

After I left the navy and got back from a year backpacking around the world, I was 23 and I didn’t know what to do next. I had five different ideas and couldn’t decide between them so I let fate decide.

My choices:

1. Teach English as a foreign language. I applied to a school that would send me off around the world.

2. Apply to Cambridge University. I wanted to study physics.

3. Take an adult education class in software engineering. I had been good at programming as a kid. Seemed like a good way back into it.

4. Get a job on a superyacht. I applied for a job in Antibes in the South of France.

5. I was trained as an electronic engineer in the navy. I applied for a job maintaining satellite monitoring equipment on Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

I decided to apply for them all and whichever came in first, I would take. The software thing happened first so that’s what I did but on the very first day of my class, I got a big fat envelope from Antibes inviting me to fly down for an interview on that superyacht. The Fates had already decided I was to be a sofwtre engineer so I followed their will but I often wonder what would have happened if I’d gone down to Antibes instead.

It turns out that there is a school for superyacht crews in Bristol Harbour. I wonder if they accept old men like me?

Bristol 24/7FROM BRISTOL TO BARBADOS: CHARTERING THE WORLD OF SUPERYACHTS