A buffet at 3am, guitar playing on an iceberg and other crazy superyacht crew member stories
Hiring a helicopter to go golfing, avoiding topless women on board, flying 34 hours to pick up a bag, and other unbelievable superyacht crew demands
Working on a superyacht is gruelling. There are long hours, never-ending cleaning chores and demanding guests and owners. But there are salacious stories, too.
Business Insider recently polled superyacht crew members to get an inside look at life on board. And when asked for the strangest request they've ever received from a guest or owner, they had several stories to share.
Whether guests are paying millions to run the yacht or hundreds of thousands to charter it out for a week, they expect to get their money's worth – as well as everything they want.
That leaves many superyacht crew members running around trying to meet the highest expectations. From the funny to the ridiculous to the tedious – and not excluding the salacious – here are some of the strangest requests they've received on the job.
Some are extreme sports fans
Michael, a former yacht captain who worked on yachts ranging from 130 feet to 170 feet, recalled a time when a superyacht owner wanted to watch the NBA basketball team he owned play in the semi-finals or finals. At the time, the yacht was anchored near a reef off of eastern Honduras, where there was terrible satellite coverage, he said.
“He also owned a small network that broadcast the game and paid to have the satellite footprint moved to cover our area, which [cost] tens of thousands of dollars,” he said. “Still we did not get the game. The only image that came across of the game was his mother, who loved the team, sitting next to Stevie Wonder.”
Beach toys are important