More from the former mate of the Good Ship Lady Lola.

I joined the Lady Lola at the beginning of August, 2003. I was in San Francisco at the time, and I guess mine was the cheapest airfare to get to Seattle. The average turnover for crew at this stage was one new person every 3 weeks. Churn n burn.

As a rule, annual operating costs run about 10% of the purchase price, or $5 million for a $50 million boat, but not much of it goes on the crew. I asked the chef what the budget was for crew meals and found it was $10 per person, per day. What a crock! No wonder the food was recycled over and over. When we did get a 15 minute break to eat some food, the Hagadones
would tour the guests through and make patronizing comments about how great it smelt. I was tempted to point out that we were re-running the lunch time meal, but decided it was better to just eat. The girls would break $500 plates or $1500 vases on a daily basis, yet all we got was $10 a head for meals!

We had satellite DirecTV in the crew mess, but they couldn't see the benefit of paying an extra $80 a month so we could all get the internet as well. Much better to make the crew members run to the Internet cafe through the bums of Seattle after working a 15 hour day.

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