I started my new job today. The guy I sail with introduced me to a guy he knows who needs crew for his boat (80 foot yacht, actually.) The guy is super rich (owned a chain of 48 gas stations/convenience stores and a few other things, he's very frugal though...he puts his car in neutral when going down hills to save gas and the captain warned us to not negotiate with him because he'll cheat us), and lives alone in this condo and is too old to fully run this thing himself. He has a captain that has run the boat for 15 years and came up last night from Florida to check on stuff and whatnot. Anyway so I got down there to get the lowdown on what the job will entail at about 9:30AM, and the captain explains for about an hour or so and asks me and the other 2 guys if we want to work today and we all agreed. Pretty much all I did today was work in the engine room (changing oil absorber sheets and stuff) and wash all the boat decks and such, and got paid $75. It's a little under the hourly rate that was agreed upon by me and the boats owner, but the captain just cut us all $75 checks so I really didn't say anything. It was decent for 7 hours of "work" which included briefing and him paying for our lunch at this local burrito bar which is so good (about $7.50 each.)
Another cool thing is the burrito bar I love going to anyway, and it's a block from the boat so I'll probably eat there a lot this summer. When you buy 7 burritos you get a free one, and I only had 2 on my card...thinking today will be my 3rd. Well the captain let me put all 4 on my card so now I'm only 1 away from a free one. =D
And the scheduling is for the most part very flexible, pretty much whenever I can work. The captain even offered to reschedule a boat trip this week to work around my schedule if I was unable to make it. Now there will be some instances where they'll need me and I'll have to come, but it's pretty fun work in something I like to do (even if it's mostly being a servent) and I'll learn a lot. Plus the owner of the boat is very well connected, for instance the captains wife got cancer and this guy was able to get like 3 doctors appointments for the next day for her.