I am back in Ft. Lauderdale, FL now trying to figure out what to do this summer. I have been dayworking on a 178′ Benetti yacht Starfire which my friend Owen is the chef on. They are heading to the Mediterranean in a few weeks and are in the process of looking for a deckhand. It is a really great boat, awesome crew, and one that I’d definitely bevery interested in working on. However, at the shipyard where they are currently docked, I noticed a research vesselcalled Weatherbird II which is owned by the Planktos organization. After googling the boat and finding out that they aregoing to be doing all sorts of cool research related to global warming, CO2, etc, I decided to stop by and introduce myself. They will be leaving in about a month for the Galapagos and South America for their first research sight, traveling through the Panama Canal. It sounds like there is a decent chance I might be able to work on the boat which would be so awesome. If I were to get offerred a job on both Starfire and Weatherbird it would be difficult to decide Starfire would be more money, muuuch nicer crew quarters, really fun people, but ultimately I think it would come down to the actual job and experience. On Weatherbird I’d be helping do research to benefit our oceans, and it would be a rare opportunity…whereas I feel I can always get on a yacht going to the Med another season. The people are more your typical bio-geeks I think, but I’m a bio-geek at heart so I’d probably fit right in. I’ll keep everyone posted on what happens over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I’ve been having a blast in Lauderdale because so many of my friends off other boats are in town and we have been living it up.

Posted from USA:

posted Thursday April 2007