Our ‘Ins and Outs’ 2024 Review

Before we start 2025 with a new list of ‘ins and outs’, has anyone checked theirs from January 2024?

To move forward, we look back…

Ins

More focus given to passion projects.

Not to start off all cheesy but Figure Eight is a huge passion project and we definitely ‘held space’ for our little company in 2024! Away from the yachting world our homes were our passion projects. I have a watertight extension to house the best bath ever and Thea has a brand new and improved galley…sorry my mistake, I believe they call it a kitchen on land…weird.

A snazzy new website.

Thanks to our resident tech Jedi, Erin, our new website went live on May 18th 2024 which was the IMO International Day for Women in Maritime. We hope our website will be a source of useful information for both crew and yacht owners and everyone in between. Check out our other blogs and don’t hesitate to contact us to let us know if there is anything else you wish to see there!

Making time for healthy habits and nourishment.

I’m not going to lie I’m writing this after two weeks of cheese, chocolate and a few mulled beverages. I briefly joined the gym in 2024 and swiftly cancelled my membership when work and other commitments (the aforementioned extension) took over…might have to put this make on the list for 2025!

Earlier Bedtimes.

While Thea managed to go to bed ‘on time’ a lot more in 2024, she completely undid this good work by lying there scrolling until it was too late. For 2025, she’ll be using the app OneSec to try and minimise screen time, and taking her Kindle to bed instead. If she’s got to stare at a screen, might as well read something useful.

Having a Plan and Sticking to it!

On reflection this was a bad choice to add to the list. Sometimes, you just have to admit that plans are bad and they should be thrown away or more often the plan needs to evolve as you go along. We definitely want to caveat that with ‘plans are the best starting points for all decisions and actions’. We are very proud of the plans that have come to fruition in 2024…more of that please for 2025!

Using Tech to Keep Track of Qualifications and when they expire.

We are still on the lookout for the perfect app to enable crew to keep track of their qualifications and expiries…if you’ve found one let us know! Until that time you can’t go wrong with a good old list and some calendar notifications. If you work as a pair make sure you keep track of each others too as it makes sense to refresh together. If you are a Captain you should know when all of your crew members qualifications expire and factor in time in the yacht’s schedules to keep everything updated.

Using trending audio even if it has nothing to do with the reel!

Absolutely guilty. Our original ‘ins and outs’ reel was to the very of the moment banger ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’. It had absolutely nothing to do with yachting or the New Year at all but there’s only so many times you can use Rod Stewart or Lonely Island…right?

Outs

High Screen time when not working.

This can always be improved (see Thea’s earlier admission)! When all of our life is on our phones it takes extra grit to put the screens down. Interestingly, I found this much easier when working on board and especially during charter when I wouldn’t want guests to see me on my phone. Tricky when weather, menus, access to amazing Management Companies and information is all stored on your phone! A simple swap that I have really benefitted from is reading a chapter of a book instead of scrolling before bed. I’m not perfect and sometimes the draw of the screen is too tempting but on a whole a big improvement.

Not planning time for qualifications and refreshers in your schedule.

Very much linked with one of our previous ‘ins’. Make a note and set reminders well in advance. Time management is one of the key attributes of any good yacht crew so plan ahead and don’t ruin your chance of employment with out of date certificates.

People who are unable to ‘reply all’.

I mean we can’t really ‘out’ none reply all-ers because being fair, we’ve all done it. Personally I blame mobile phones!

FOMO: it’s ok to ‘miss out’.

We are really torn with this one and think our ‘out’ was a bit too general. What we got right were those repetitive crew beers in the same bar just for the sake of it…Did we need them? Did it make us feel less tired? Did it prepare us for the next charter? Did it feel like a celebration of a job well done? Nope not really…it was just part of the routine…almost part of the charter itself. For the above we realised it is 100% ok to miss out. A date night at a family taverna, a walk in land or just an early night was 100% worth it. What we did have fomo of…the events that we couldn’t attend because we were on board…weddings, birthday parties, gigs and shows or even just some ‘normal’ day to day land events.

Shoes that don’t have arch support.

Thea highly recommends Crocs and Fit Flop twin buckle slides. Socks and sort-of-sandals never felt so good. Erin’s arch support flip flops this season were from a brand called Archies and saved her feet last summer. In fact she calls them the ‘bomb diggidy’. I, however still think I’m in my early twenties and bought predominantly impractical shoes last year…I will however give a huge shout out to my O’Neill wet shoes as I never travel abroad without them.

People who send emails to Yacht Management companies addressed ‘Dear Sir’.

Ok, we’ve learnt to accept this, it’s not our favourite thing in the world but we promise we will reply…we might even ‘reply all’!

Stopping at procrastination station.

One thing that helped me towards the end of 2024 was diluting my jobs lists so it wasn’t just a never ending list that seemed impossible but short snappy lists that were achievable. Don’t get me wrong there’s always jobs that I would prefer not to do but they will hopefully be in the minority moving forward.

We often move onto the next year without truly looking back on what we set out to do the year before. We also convince ourselves that we can’t carry things over into the following year as if on New Years Day we have to completely reinvent ourselves and revaluate everything about our lives.

On reflection of our ‘ins and outs’ from 2024 we were completely split between ‘ticked off’, ‘could do better’ and ‘didn’t manage that’…and that’s ok!

I also want to celebrate all the things that didn’t go on a list but were accomplished! Although I do love a list, the whole year doesn’t have to be decided in the first week of January.

That being said…look out for our 2025 ‘ins and outs’ coming soon.