Superyacht Captain: Life and leadership in the world's most incredible industry

WAS VERY INTERESTING

The billionaire world of superyachts are a world away from me. Yet I was drawn to this book, and after some months of dithering I jumped in to read it. And what a read!While I can relate conceptually to the author’s childhood, the details of his career offer valuable insight into billionaires. I have had to think hard to get my mind around staffing levels, superyachts just been a platform (and a home), and how different billionaires do things, from egotistic to helping the world, as well as the commonalities, like precision and time valuation.Through this personal life story combined with billionaires stories, philosophical insights abound, and lots of good advice for anyone and everyone, that can be used in our daily lives.All in all a fascinating and worthy read. Whether you have an interest in superyachts, billionaires or simply self improvement.This book hold a lot of energy.

Libro comprato per regalo a mio marito, visto che fa lo stesso lavoro, ma appena finisce di leggerlo lui, lo leggerò anche io. L’introduzione era già bellissima!

I've had many careers in my 35 years of working life; Navy (military), commercial corporate in multi-billion dollar companies that span the globe, and more recently as a commercial boat operator in tourism. For all of those settings there are insightful lessons in this book which can be applied to probably any role someone might have at any stage in their career. Wonderful to also get some insight into the workings of such a unique profession. Well done Brendan for sharing those personal and at times, not so private, experiences.

I spent weekends for more than 30 years, exploring the backwaters and gunkholes of the Chesapeake Bay on my beat-up but dependable trawler. So I came to the book with questions. How is a superyacht captain different than a seagoing amateur? What ship handling and seamanship techniques might I learn from someone at the top of his nautical game?Here are some of the things I learned we both did as we honed our seamanship skills: we bet our ego and training against mother nature...and lost; we thought we knew how to handle our vessels under all circumstances...and failed; we let others do important planning...and paid the price for their lack of thoroughness.My boat, of course, was not worth the 200 million euros his vessels were worth. I worked for myself while he worked for many of the world's richest billionaires. I supervised family members, he supervised crews of hundreds of people afloat and ashore.My absolute enjoyment of this book came from surprising directions. He speaks with candor about his mistakes as he rose the ladder of success. He speaks with real insight of the lessons he learned along the way, the people he came to depend upon and the challenges of leading diverse people from different backgrounds in a common goal: provide the best possible experience for the yacht owner and his or her family.I found myself marveling at his management skills and insight into how people behave and react to challenging -- and sometimes very dangerous -- situations. Indeed, the book gave me more insight into effective management strategies than any I can recall ever having read. (Too bad it came a couple of years after I retired as a senior manager.)If there's a young sailor, young manager or young budding billionaire in your life, do them a favor and gift them a copy of this book. Tell them the author is a man they just might like to work for some day.