How did you get into this line of work?

When the opportunity to join some yacht deliveries arose at the beginning of Australia’s COVID lockdowns in 2021, I jumped at the chance for a new adventure. Having grown up around boats in a sailing family and competing in racing on Sydney Harbour and up and down the Australian coast most of my life, I saw it as a chance to build on my experience of previous shorter deliveries to the Whitsundays and from New Caledonia back to Australia.

Over the last two years, I have had the privilege of visiting about thirty countries, many of them more than once, taken well over 50 PCR tests, spent plenty of time in quarantine facilities and airline lounges, rolled out my yoga mat in some exotic places, and swum laps in swimming pools of all shapes and sizes. I have covered 35,000 nautical miles on yachts from 38 to 100 feet long, both catamarans and monohulls, and it has been amazing.

During my travels, I also used the time to complete my Certificate II in Maritime Operations (Coxswain) studies and keep my First Aid and Safety at Sea qualifications up to date. I am now working towards my Certificate III in Maritime Operations (Master up to 24m) while running my business remotely.

I’m currently crossing the Pacific Ocean on a 78-foot classic yacht, one of only three in the world by Hoek Design and the sister ship to ‘Drumfire’ on Sydney Harbour. We picked up the yacht from a marina in Papeete in Tahiti and sailed via the French Polynesian islands of Huahine, Raiatea, Tahaa and Bora Bora with the owners on board before departing on a passage of 1800 nautical miles to Port Denarau in Fiji and then on to Sydney. This is a journey of 3,300 nautical miles in total with a crew of four onboard.

So - what is involved? What is delivery life really like?

You need to be very open minded and flexible in your outlook to enjoy deliveries. Things don’t run to a schedule and there is a lot of ‘creative problem solving’ required. You are building relationships with yacht owners, crew, and trusted suppliers around the world. Managing expectations for these people is important and takes time as they are entrusting you with one of their most valuable assets. Clear communication and lateral thinking are key - especially when there are several different languages involved.

My role as the Logistics Manager for each trip begins with research on the destinations, we will be collecting the yacht from, and those we plan to stop at along the way, with regards to entry requirements, visas (Crew or Seafarer), COVID testing and vaccination rules.  These are constantly being amended by various authorities so it’s a moving feast of regulations to keep up to date.

When we have new crew joining us, I collate all the paperwork required and manage the passports for Border Force, Customs, Immigration, and port control.  We need to prepare copies of crew lists, authority letters from owners, copies of registration, previous entry and exit papers and yacht insurance.

I look after the flight, accommodation, vehicle, and marina bookings as we move through various countries. Meticulous record-keeping and tracking all expenses is ongoing.

Once we arrive on the yacht, we conduct a full inspection and ensure it is ready to undertake the passage ahead. This includes safety gear, engine servicing and spare parts, test sail, calculating fuel and water consumption and requirements, first aid needs and navigation charts.

It is important not to have a fixed date in mind for departure or arrival – we can only leave when every aspect of the yacht is ready.

I have several checklists to work through that are refined each time we leave. Labeling the location of all the important items on the yacht and learning the various systems like autopilot, water-maker and generator ensure operations run smoothly. I enjoy the navigation and take responsibility for radio communications and our courtesy and quarantine flags along the way.

Provisioning is important to keep everyone happy and I use a spreadsheet to estimate amounts for each item based on time to next port.  We eat a mix of fresh and canned food depending on the esky/fridge/freezer on the boat and what methods of cooking we have – on the racing yachts this is often super basic – a butane cooker on the floor. It’s useful not to rely on only one source of power – if there is an issue with an inverter, microwaves and induction cooktops quickly become useless. Modern yachts need a good understanding of electrics/power to keep everything running.

Once we have cleared out and are on the water, we move into watches and settle into life at sea.  Watches run 24 hours a day - either three hours on/three hours off if we are two-handed or two hours on/four hours off if fully crewed.  Decisions are discussed and made as a team. Keeping a vigilant lookout is important – many vessels don’t use AIS and fishing nets are a constant through Asia. Fishing platforms, oil rigs, squid boats, and reefs are other distractions.

We work closely with an expert meteorologist to obtain relevant, timely weather updates to assist in planning routings, entering waypoints, and calculating sail time and fuel consumption.

It’s important to self-manage your sleep, water, and meals to keep yourself in great condition.  Using the time off for reading, podcasts and learning is ideal – we generally do not have internet when offshore, so I download audio books in advance using Apps like Borrow Box and Libby (free with my local library membership). I love learning about the areas we travel through and following in the footsteps of the previous explorers. Mental fitness is just as key as physical on the longer passages.

Tell us a about some of your previous trips….

During the past few years, the cost of freighting a yacht on a container ship has dramatically increased and the availability of boats available for sail in Australia has been restricted, so several deliveries have been from Asia back to Australia to new owners. These included two trips from Phuket – Darwin double handed, and the relocation of a Swan 48 for an owner in Hong Kong back to Sydney.

While travel restrictions applied, we were able to obtain special permits for work purposes to enter countries, such as Japan to return a race yacht that had been left in the Philippines after a previous regatta.

Ongoing work is also the movement of race yachts from their base to the start of the next event. A previous delivery trip from Hobart – Sydney – Hamilton Island – Rabaul – Palau – Subic Bay on the carbon fibre Scallywag 100 was completed with six crew over a period of five weeks.  Steering a performance race boat in 35 knots of breeze is something I would not have done if I hadn’t joined the delivery.  We then returned the yacht to Rivergate in Brisbane for a complete re-fit later in the same year.

After each major race in Australia there is always the need for reliable delivery crew to return yachts to their home ports – post Hobart and Hamilton Island Race week are busy periods with bookings made well in advance by owners.

When a yacht is a new build, we act as the owner’s representative as it comes out of the factory, is launched, has its rig installed and conduct sea trials.  Earlier this year we collected a catamaran from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to deliver it back to Airlie Beach in Queensland to go into charter.

Talk us through some highlights….

Taking in nature and wildlife is beautiful – until you have seen stars 360 degrees around you down to the waterline you haven’t lived! Jumping overboard as we crossed the equator, watching dolphins swimming in phosphorescence, seeing huge whale sharks, meeting new people, understanding maritime history, and learning about different cultures have all been unrivaled experiences for me.

The advantage of traveling via yacht is the slow arrival into a new country, often you can smell the land before you see it, then it’s a smudge on the horizon, then an island, a coconut, or other jetsam floats by, you see some small boats and then navigation leads and lights and finally trees and mountains and the harbour.  So different to landing at an air-conditioned airport and taking a bus to a hotel.  Immediately you must engage with local people and authorities during the clearing in process.

Most of our time is taken up sourcing jerry cans, fuel, spare parts, and food so it is standard procedure for me to find a driver, showing them images saved on my phone and asking them to take me to a store where I can buy something similar - usually with my limited French or in sign language. 

Travel reminds me that people the world over want to help and will go out of their way to point me in the right direction, let us ahead in a queue, share their drinks and food, and just generally want to understand where we are from and what we are doing.

Each time we arrive at a new port I take the time to explore a new destination when I can during our short stopovers.  We don’t drink alcohol on deliveries so a few cold beers and meals that someone else has prepared is always appreciated.

I take a lot of photos and make notes in my phone when travelling and enjoy sharing my trips with family and friends when I’m back in range.  I plan to stick with the delivery life for as long as I enjoy it.

Simone Hill

Simone Hill is the owner of My Crew Travel, an agency specialising in co-ordinating the global logistics for race yachts travelling to regattas and rallies since 2018. More recently she has added yacht deliveries to this list. Her experience as an event and project manager has proven invaluable.

by Kelly Clark, S/V Sanctum

I was going to write about our visit to Port Davey/Bathurst harbour but our adventures getting to and from Flinders Island’s Lady Barron still has “eeck” factor in my mind.

On our way up the east coast of Tassie we had talked about wanting to get into Lady Barron, on the south side of Flinders Island.  The tricky part is navigating the shoals.   There are 4 general directions to enter Franklin Sound 2 from the west and 2 from the east. We pulled out every Tassie guide on the area, read everything about the shoals, which of the 4 directions to attempt, time of tide to enter, and the best weather.  There is so much water that flows through the Franklin Sound during tide changes that the current can run anywhere from 2.5 to 9 knots in places. 

We decided to come up the east side, skirting along closely to Vansittart island and follow leads up to Lady Barron.   We had no Easterly weather predicted, were arriving at Flood tide slack water (hopefully) and thought we would be able to shimmy alongside Vansittart Island easily.  

Ready with the best plan in our minds we stopped for the night on the South side of Eddystone Point. We planned to make the trek the following morning early.  We had a beautiful evening next to the lighthouse.

Evan woke early and suggested we leave straight away (which turned out to be the best suggestion). 

We left on a beautiful morning, the fog had settled in Banks Strait and with a 15-knot westerly we flew across the strait.  The fog finally lifted near Cape Barron Island, the sunshine highlighted the significant size of the mountains on the island.  We were able to check out some of the beaches on the southeastern side of the island as notable hiding spots, for the future, in a Northerly.  We made our way up the eastern side of Cape Barren Island and slowed as we were just about at the start of our tricky knuckle biting journey. 

The thing that surprised me to the core, after looking at charts of shoals was that I had envisioned (not sure why) that we would be surrounded by land with visible shoals.  To the contrary, had the island to our left and complete open water in front of us and to the right.  There was no ‘seeing’ shoals, there was no land, there was just our map to navigate by.

We started, Evan wanting to skirt right next to Vansittart island (which we should have done) but a book instructed us to start at a particular position and travel to 286 degrees from there.  We tried that,  we had 0 zero water under the keel very quickly (we have a 20cm buffer so not totally zero).  Evan tried moving port and starboard, but it didn’t look any better. Slight panic and we decided to abort this and instead back up a little bit and head east to join up with Potboil shoals and follow the instructions there.

This is what we see, nothing.

Nerve-racking is a little bit of an understatement. 

We were using Navionics and our chart plotter to navigate our way,  Knowing that the shoals change whenever they feel like it is nerve-racking. We ended up loosely following the red line in the image.  

I stood at the bow and with our headsets on and would let Evan know if I noted anything important.

It went okay with only one place where the water seemed to disappear under our keel. Evan made a quick, nervous, sharp right and found water again.  Phew.  Finally, we were able to get onto the lead lines designated by our chart plotter and with deeper water now under us could we start to relax.   We made our way to great dog island, turned 323M deg north and made our way safely to Lady Barron,  grabbed one of the two MAST moorings and with a sigh of relief, got to watch the sun go down.  We made it!

A disconcerting part of this journey was the crashing waves in open water around the potboil. Places where the sand creates a shallow area for waves to break.  We know that when we leave, we must follow lines that lead right out where the waves are breaking.    That is for another day though.  

We arrived in Lady Barron on Wednesday the 26^th April,  and we organised to hire a car for Friday and Saturday and the plan is to depart Sunday morning. We came all this way and wanted a chance to explore the island a bit. I won’t go into too much detail but to say that the island is beautiful.  It is very green, has more flat farming land than anywhere in Tasmania! And some craggy mountains just to remind you there is some wild countryside.

I have read that Flinders Island is about 75 km long and 40 km wide.  I was told there are about 800 to 1000 people living here.   There are two townships, Lady Barron and Whitemark. They are both on the south side of the island and if you travel north there is no food or fuel anywhere north of Whitemark.

We were able to restock food (they get a barge in once a week on Tuesdays with food and other stuff for locals) luckily, we arrived Wednesday as the shops were full! Did our laundry, refilled our two jerry cans with fuel and spoke to many locals.  The overwhelming majority of people said it was heaven living there.  They seem to have good amenities and a great community spirit. You simply must get used to waving at every single car that passes.  My waving hand was tired after two days.

You can fly into Flinders,  there are a couple of airports in the area, including grassy ones. I would wholeheartedly recommend a visit there. You can drive the island in not much time at all, there is great fishing and bush walking and beaches.