How did I land a job on a yacht without previous experience?

Yes I'm still amazed. There was a lot of pure luck involved and I happened to be in the right place at the right time, but I do believe few things helped me out quite a bit. Here's what I thought were the most essential factors landing me a job many people only dream about:

(This was just another evening in the office. That's one of the boats I worked on.)

1. Get on boats, sailing clubs and marinas. I did my holiday trip on the same boat I later worked on. Being social and building connections is the most helpful thing not only when hunting a job but in every aspect of life! When you help out others or just be kind and friendly, people usually remember that. I became friends with the crew and later on met their friends and their bosses just by hanging out with them which gave me the opportunity to just show up to the office one day with my resumé and a huge smile on my face. I had never been on a boat before or even cooked professionally. While waiting for all this to happen I was working on my laptop every day in a cafe in the marina and chatted with many people. Yes, I got a few job offers even by just chatting with total strangers! Boating community is rather small and once you meet about 20 sailors, you're already connected to about 200. When 200 people know you're looking for work, chances are that either they or the 2000 sailors they are connected to might have something available. So brush your hair, pick some nice, tidy clothes suitable for boats and get out there and be ready to be social!

2. Build a resumé that stands out! Find out, what type of a resumé is the best one for the country or are you are in - for example just in Australia they prefer different content in different states. In Victoria your age, sex or appearance wasn't important and the recruitment professionals even guided us to leave all that information out. In Queensland on the other hand they prefer all that information. The more people you ask their opinion about your resumé the more you can polish it! In marine industry and boating communities they prefer any experience about boats or being on the water. If you don't have experience, don't worry - you can still land a job on the boats! There's plenty of entry level positions you can start with. But if you don't have any experience at all, highlight your other skills, eager to learn more and other experience that might help such as customer service jobs you've done before.

3. Get experience and necessary qualifications. Many sailing clubs organise free introductions to sailing. In Airlie Beach it was called Twilight race and took place every Wednesday at 15:00 at the Sailing Club. That's when sailors gathered to the club to take people for a small sail with them. Of course this was always dependable on the weather and sometimes none of the sailors could show up, but still it's a perfect opportunity to gain experience - for free! So far all the sailing clubs I've seen organise this sort of happenings so check them out. They also offer sailing courses that are usually anything from one to a few days and cost from 100-400 Aud. There's usually training programs as well and one day classes to get qualifications. You can start working on boats without any qualifications but they will require you to get them in a few weeks or months. If you already have them while applying for the job, you've gotten yourself a headstart compared to the most other applicants. For my job I needed to take part on CPR, First Aid and Oxygen provider classes and also get my recreational boat license. There's a course I would have needed to take if I had stayed and worked on boats in Australia longer called ESS (elements of shipboard safety), but since I moved to Gold Coast I'm going to leave it for now. Also I'm not sure if I should just do STCW 95 straight away, because that is usually the minimum requirement to work on boats cruising international waters. Check the prices for the courses - my friends traveled to do their courses in Philippines and the course plus the two week holiday, accomodation and flights and all wasn't even nearly the price of the course here in Australia.

4. Learn online! Before even realising I could actually work on boats I had been watching hundreds of videos on YouTube about sailing and boats. I learned the vocabulary before even stepping my foot on a boat for the first time. And oh boy, sailing vocabulary is wide!

5. Contact a recruitment agency. Especially if you're looking forward working on superyachts internationally I would sign myself in an agency. Maybe that's my next step as well? Who knows where the path takes me!

(One of the last trips. Yes that's me being a monkey.)

Experimenting with bliss balls #1

I did my first bliss balls about a year ago. And I would have done them much sooner, if I knew how easy it is! Now that I've mastered the basic coconut ones, I've started experimenting different combinations. Here's what I came up with today:

Ingredients:

• Pitted or medjool dates (but remove the stones if using fresh ones!)

• Oats

• Coconut oil

• Dried goji berries

• Liquorice (I used natural, black soft liquorice lollies, but you can just add a bit of liquorice flavouring as well)

• Shredded coconut

1. Add about 8-12 dates with half a cup of coconut oil, handful of goji berries, half a cup of oats and a few liquorice lollies in a food processor. Mix it all up.

2. Roll into small balls and add shredded coconut on top.

3. Place into a fridge at least for a few hours before eating.

My experience working on a dairy farm for 88+ days

For the 417 visa holders in Australia you have to complete 88 days of farm work to get a second year visa. In this post I will tell you how did I find work and what was my experience like. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Would I do 6 months for a third year visa? Yeah, but I would choose something different. Here’s how it all went:

After we had had our month long vacation in Melbourne, we started looking for farm work. I had done strawberry picking before in Finland when I was young. Didn’t like it really, but it was easy and could do it again. So we focused on that first. We sent applications and called to about hundred places just to find out they prefer people who have their own car. Because usually the accomodations are far away from the farms. So we bought ourselves a car! I’ll write a whole another post about buying and owning a car here in Australia. First thing we did was drove to Ikea to get some Swedish food that reminded us about home!

After two - three weeks we started getting desperate. We had open applications in all the job seeking sites you can possibly imagine and called through 10-20 places every day, including the national harvest line which is usually a very good place to get some tips about open positions. We were also very active in Facebook and eventually managed to get in contact with a girl who organised pickers for a grape farm. It was in Robinvale near Mildura. I bet you’re never even heard about these places! They are in Victoria, about 5-6 hour drive from Melbourne inlands, nearby Murray river. We arrived, settled in a workers village which was just tiny cottages and shared bathrooms and kitchen. We met some nice people. The next day they took us to the farm. It was rows and rows of grape bushes, as far as you could see. They paid by piece rate, 1-3 aud/basket which fits around eight bags of grapes (the plastic ones you see at grocery shops). There were no bathrooms or any shades at the farm. Working days were from 8-10 hour long. When we asked how do we get to the bathroom the said we just go further away and do it between the bushes. By this point we were already shocked by the working conditions, but thought we could do it. The heat was insane. And no shade. The fertilisers and insect repellent they used on grapes leaves a powder on top of them. It was dusting in the air. Many of the other workers who had been at the farm for longer time were wearing face masks. In the end of the day I had filled up six baskets. I had earned six dollars. In ten hours. I was shocked. They said you’ll get a lot faster, but I was already doing it as fast as I possibly could. For ten hours straight. Without any breaks. When we asked about lunch break the supervisor got nearly mad. No breaks.

In the middle of the next day we quit and reported the farm because of very poor working conditions. We were staying in the village for about a week more trying to find another job. Nothing. Our contract leasing the cottage ended and we decided that if we can’t find anything by that afternoon we’ll just go literally knocking on doors. And then our beloved future boss answered us in his Facebook post about an available positions on a dairy farm. We were saved! We had a short interview in the phone and he asked us to come visit the farm and see if we were fit for the job. We were driving for two days straight and only camped for the night. Bought boots and suitable old clothes from the way. They offered us hourly paid job, minimum hours and an affordable own house from the farm! Hell yeah!

We did our 88 days and a bit more on that farm. From summer to Victorian winter, which was freezing. Some mornings we had buckets full of hot water next to us when we were milking, just to keep our fingers functioning. Thank goodness the cows heated up the milking shed a bit so it was alright to stand there for about three hours. Milking itself is an easy operation - gather the cows from the paddocks and get them walking to the station (okay, during the rainy days they got a bit stubborn) using a four wheel drivers, turn on the platform and get the cups on and off, making sure in the end that they were finished milking. They got a treat to munch during the milking so they were usually patient. Also our job included feeding the cows and calves on paddocks and in the feeding shed, helping the manager treat them if they got sick (yes, when there’s over 700 animals, of course they get sick or injured sometimes like people do too). We also helped carrying the calves from the paddocks to a feeding shed. Little calves don’t do well with rain and cold outside, even though when they get bigger they don’t mind the rain. Also we helped with maintenance and fixing things, cleaning up dwells. One day it was so cold and rainy, that after the morning milking our boss said it’s so cold we will not do anything today except feed the animals. How nice it was to get inside warm home at 11 am and have the rest of the day off!

We got ourselves gym passes for a month, because we usually had a bit of time between milkings and on our days off. I loved the rhythm farm life gives to you - you spend your days outside, wake up early, enjoy long brakes when you can cook and focus on eating healthy and even have a quick nap, you get off before 6 usually, have a nice dinner and relax at home. Already before 8 you’re usually so tired after a hard day of work that you fall asleep. And the sleep is so deep when you’re physically so tired! I was 10 kilograms heavier when I arrived in Australia than what I was in the end of our farm days. And I felt it, I felt so energetic and healthy! We didn’t have anything to spend on at the farm, so we ended up saving heaps. After the farm work we were able to just travel and enjoy for three whole months (and boy did we spend during those months!) before arriving to Cairns and having to plan what next.

What did I learn: cows are magical. And if you are planning on doing your farm work, I recommend trying to find an hourly paid position. You can have fun and get your 88 days from picking job at piece rate, but why not make some money at the same time? If you’re planning on working on a dairy farm, just remember that there’s literally shit everywhere. Yes, even on your face.