Interview with Yacht Engineer

Yachts Engineer - Paul Clarke

After applying to various shipping companies, I was successful in gaining a four year Marine Engineer Cadetship course with P&O. So started the making of a marine engineer. Four years of hard slog, academically and practically, had passed. (The third year was spent at sea on various vessels where I did the course through correspondence.)

My future brother-in-law then had just come back from the south coast of England, where he had been on a sailing holiday. Armed with Yachting World and knowing that I was frustrated at home, he showed me the magazine, where I found ‘Freedom Yachtings’ advertisement. So we both set about compiling my CV. It was sent to Antibes and three weeks later I was in Viarregio, Italy on a new build Benetti Classic, 35m, as the owner’s engineer. So started the private yachting side of my career.

You cannot bluff your way into a chief’s job on a private/commercial yacht, nor should you be able to. It is important to realise that the MCA are there to help and not to hinder.

This is where the owner and more so the captain come into their own from an engineer’s perspective. Especially when the engineer needs spares, etc. It’s important that the captain understands the responsibilities the engineer has. It’s no good having an owner who is tight with money and for the most part that is not the case. But there are owners out there who cannot understand why the vessel needs x amount of $’s for spares etc, when he has just spent $20 million on buying the vessel in the first place.

What I am saying here is stick to your guns, you are the engineer and you are responsible. You may upset some people, but you will feel better knowing that the services and maintenance have been done, and so will the captain in the long run. Talk to him, do not keep him in the dark. Although any good captain should be asking you what’s happening anyway.

Every engineer has his own way of dealing with problems and recording logs, spares used, maintenance done, etc. There are some very good computer programmes out there for this, one in particular is called Ideal Yacht Systems, which I have used successfully. However, maybe because I am from the old school, everything I do is hand written in log books. You cannot back yourself up if the system crashes or you have not downloaded everything to flash drives.

It is also important for the engineer to set aside some time to train designated members of the crew how to locate and start the main and auxiliary fire pumps and shut remote fuel valves. If this is done for one to two hours every week, over a period of three to four weeks, people will soon get the idea, and they welcome something different from their own tasks.