Guns, Money and Drugs

As a yacht agent the requests that come in are quite varied. The requests usually come in via email, some times by phone or in person at which point some basic research is involved and then usually a conversation about how to proceed and how much it will cost, then coordinating the goods or services and then following up.

Vessel names are not included for privacy reasons.

We had two main client yachts for the summer, and some other smaller yachts, one even American flagged, just not familiar with the area that used our services. Yacht 1 was a 250+ft yacht flagged in Europe that was cruising north to meet up with the owner and family arriving via their private jet. This was not without issue along the way. There was a mechanical issue with the yacht when it arrived at our dock and the first concern was repairing that and whether that meant it had to go back south to Vancouver or Seattle for this work. Luckily we have a ferry building and repair facility in town so we were able to find out they could be accommodated and started setting up all the pieces to the puzzle to do that. Well then it was decided that the issue could be fixed while the yacht was still in the water, so crisis averted there. But new issues were then cropping up in that the parts had to be flown in from Europe and then the engineers to do the repairs had to be flown in as well as a dive team assembled to do the in water work. Problems solved at a cost of nearly a week more at our dock at a cost of $3/ft/day. $$$$

The list goes on… The bodyguards on board(this kind of surprised me, but when you are an old rich dude you can have bodyguards!) were concerned about bear protection and wanted to bring their guns, but taking their weapons into American waters and such isn’t allowed, so after much research we found that we could rent them guns for the summer! Who knew! So two brand new shot guns were purchased and their associated ammo in time for the yacht’s arrival. Well of course the owner doesn’t want to have to worry about going to an ATM, I mean what billionaire wants to do that! So we were wired 5 figures of money and had that ready in 100s, 50s, 20s, 10s, 5s and 1s. So we happened to have the money and the guns ready for delivery on the same day and yours truly leading the way with cash in hand “Permission to come on board with the guns and money?” Going on board isn’t just as easy as when I was living on the Conch Pearl or Clementia, this included wearing booties or removing your shoes, signing in to the official register, and wearing a guest id tag around your neck. Oh and of course being escorted the entire time. So I sat and watched the money being counted while the boss man gave the run down on the guns. All in a days work!

On to the drugs! And don’t worry not illegal drugs!! So we get a phone call from the captain of Yacht 2 via satellite phone saying that the owner’s wife has lost(or maybe run out?) of her bottle of Prozac and is having a bit of a melt down, is there any way we can get a bottle from town and have it flown to the yacht which is about three hours flight time round trip away. I reply, “Well, we’ve never done that, but I’ll see what we can do.” So after a phone call with a local pharmacy which included lines like, “yes sir, I said this is going to a 150ft yacht” followed by “no I don’t think we will worry about getting her insurance information, they are having us charter a plane to take the bottle directly to the yacht, just go with full price.” So from initial request to the drugs being onboard was about 4 hours. Not bad for our first time!

Other projects included sourcing kosher fine cuts of meat over the weekend. Our usual source in Seattle is closed on the weekend so we had to come up with plan B. This was a project for a boat that was unhappy with their current agent’s performance and wanted our help. So we were able to place the order and to complicate things further the rich guy in this case owned a motor yacht and a sailing yacht so the order would need to be in two boxes because the boats were docked at different marinas. Oh and those two marinas were in the capital city of Juneau, hours away from us. So the boxes were flown from New York City to Juneau but of course with delays along the way! Luckily the courier service we selected in Juneau is friends with the employees at Alaska Air Cargo and was able to get the meat slipped out the back door at nearly 11pm. Then I get a phone call at about 11:30pm of the boxes aren’t labeled! So I instruct the courier to open one box and tell me the contents and I will look at the original order to figure out which one is which. Crisis averted and kosher meat in hand, only a few hours late.

Yacht 3 is a nearly 300ft long yacht cruising with the owner and family. On their to do list for us was a varied list, the highlights include: track down a Pilates chair that had been leapfrogging up the coast following them, secure permits for the yacht and tenders in the national parks and wildlife viewing areas, hire floatplanes out of Juneau to bring their guests out to the yacht, and since it’s raining the owners didn’t want to go to the airport to meet their private jet by boat, so I drove them in the company minibus, three dogs, one infant and all. That was my first time driving on to the ferry to the airport, as well as my first time ever driving on the tarmac of an airport. Oh and of course with the dogs barking in the excitement of it all.