My harrowing life below deck: Former superyacht chef reveals she was left on the brink of SUICIDE after working 18-hour days, catering to demands from the uber-rich, and facing sexual harassment
- Melanie White, 30, worked on superyachts during her twenties
- She said the experience caused her to have a breakdown as depression hit
- During her time, she sailed to the Mediterranean, Caribbean and the Arctic
A former superyacht chef has revealed how working in the industry pushed her to a state of burnout and she was on the brink of suicide.
Melanie White, 30, who is now based in London, opens up about her traumatic time at sea in a tell-all book titled Behind Ocean Lines: The Invisible Price of Accommodating Luxury.
In the tome she touches on the grueling schedule she was subjected to, working 18 hour days non-stop for 11 months of the year, and how she was shocked by the nonchalant attitude among crew towards sexual harassment.
At one point she reveals: ‘On anchor, when a man touched me without my consent, I experienced loneliness and fear on another level. I told two people what happened. It won’t surprise you that they weren’t shocked. They didn’t give me sympathy, and I didn’t want it, but they did support me.’
Melanie White, 30, who is now based in London, opens up about her traumatic time at sea in a tell-all book titled Behind Ocean Lines: The Invisible Price of Accommodating Luxury
In the tome she touches on the grueling schedule she was subjected to, working 18 hour days non-stop for 11 months of the year
Before entering the world of superyachting in her twenties, Melanie was working as a publishing editor in Cambridge.
But she decided to leave ‘the monotony of office life’ to pursue a career in the yachting industry.
She managed to get a job through her boyfriend George as he was working as a commissioning skipper for a luxury boat builder.
At one point, she was making more than $47,000 a year and she was able to save for a deposit on a house because she didn’t have any expenses such as food and accommodation.
While the money side of things was a big perk, this was outweighed by the negatives, and Melanie said after a stint below deck she ‘no longer found a scrap of myself I could recognise.’
While working on one particular million-dollar sailing yacht, Melanie says the conditions were pretty unbearable.
On the boat, the fridge was located on the starboard side and as a result, when she opened the door the contents would often roll out.
She mused: ‘Thrice I’d been flattened by a jar of gherkins… Life at sea was officially a puzzle for my body to piece together until I felt 107 whole again.
At one point, she was making more than $47,000 a year and she was able to save for a deposit on a house because she didn’t have any expenses such as food and accommodation
On one boat Melanie worked on, the fridge was located on the starboard side and as a result, when she opened the door the contents would often roll out
In the book, the brunette also paints a damming picture of some of the uber-wealthy clients who chartered the boats
‘I welcomed at least five new bruises, or ‘boat bites’ as yachties like to call them. My body readily slammed into worktop corners and bulkheads (walls) without my permission. The ocean was my boss now.’
Along with unstable conditions, Melanie said the logistics of cooking at sea was also a challenge.
She offers an example for readers, stating that for a two-week trip with three meals a day, she would need to stock up on enough ingredients to make forty-two meals before casting off.
Then, the next challenge was that she only had a domestic-size fridge-freezer to store the chilled and frozen produce in.
In the book, the brunette also paints a damming picture of some of the uber-wealthy clients who chartered the boats.
She says she ran into one of her friends who was working on a 141-foot motor boat that cost $150,000 a week and they said their guests had complained about the temperature of the water.
Melanie wrote: ‘Could they do something about it? Perhaps heat the Adriatic?’
The superyacht guests also had very high expectations, which meant she was working around the clock to make sure she would avoid ‘a bollocking’ from the captain.
Demonstrating how overstretched she was, Melanie wrote: ‘Excellent service is when beds are miraculously made despite the guests having full table service during mealtimes. When the shower is bone dry, just five minutes after taking one. But wasn’t Mel serving me champagne?
‘When the hand towel is inexplicably refolded and replaced, and there’s not a single watermark on the tap after every wash of the hands. But I didn’t see her go into my cabin? The fact that a guest went to the toilet mid-race and failed to put the toilet seat down shouldn’t make a difference.
Melanie said the superyacht guests had very high expectations, which meant she was working around the clock to make sure she would avoid ‘a bollocking’ from the captain
As a result of the high-stress situation, Melanie said she became dangerously thin and she could see hip bones that she hadn’t seen since she was 12
The cook, who has since become a mother, hopes her book will help others in a similar position to get the help they need
‘The fact that their two-hundred-euro bath towel fell down the toilet should never even turn up in their conscious mind. ‘It’s important for a guest to feel welcome. Regardless of how tired or overworked, we try our best to keep it under the radar.’
As a result of the high-stress situation, Melanie said she became dangerously thin and she could see hip bones that she hadn’t seen since she was 12.
At one point she got a kidney infection because she hadn’t drunk enough fluids and further down the road she had to fly home to her concerned parents and was put on antidepressants by a doctor.
Things spiraled even further and Melanie admits at one point she contemplated taking her own life.
Behind Ocean Lines: The Invisible Price of Accommodating Luxury details Melanie’s eye-opening experience
She wrote: ‘I’d slipped underfoot in the mud that reeked of depression into another pit. Surely this isn’t what it feels like to be suicidal? The severity of this final, desperate word ‘suicide’ scared me to such an extent I turned the heat of the shower up to scolding hot to use as a deterrent from my own mind.
‘This was it, this was rock bottom, and I was adamant that if I uttered this terrifying thought to anyone, I’d never be given a chance to claw myself out and approach the problem with the resilience and willpower I knew I was capable of. I didn’t want medication or doctors’ appointments.’
In a bid to cure herself, Melanie said she felt she had to go back to sea but in the end she realized it was better to quit the industry all together.
While she thought yachting would be an adventure, taking her from the Mediterranean, to the Caribbean to the Arctic, she said ultimately it was a harrowing experience that broke her.
She reflects: ‘I didn’t know who I was at a desk and neither did I know on a boat. Which is worse? The latter, it turns out. I was a shadow of my former self, unable to figure out my place in it all.’
The cook, who has since become a mother, hopes her book will help others in a similar position to get the help they need.
She writes in the preface: ‘It’s difficult to support someone experiencing a decline in their mental wellbeing ashore, so imagine how many more hurdles there are to support someone at sea.
‘It’s not going to happen overnight and we’re not going to always get it ‘right’, but increasing awareness of the mental health challenges seafarers face is a start, and therefore I am sharing my story.’
Behind Ocean Lines: The Invisible Price of Accommodating Luxury, published by Lemon Quartz Publishing, is available from Amazon
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