Part 1 of 2. Caption: Stephanie at the Athens National Garden.
Not everyone spends their COVID-19 lockdown 5,000 miles away from home, working aboard a Superyacht, but Stephanie van de Riet is not just anyone. Born in Suriname but raised most of her life in St. Maarten, Stephanie is now travelling the world – as her dream has always been to do. Another part of the dream life? Being a mermaid.
Through her work aboard a Superyacht and now cruising the Mediterranean, she ended up spending nearly eight weeks of lockdown on board the ship, docked in her newly beloved Greece.
Here, Stephanie shares her story of becoming a crewmember, the lockdown experience, and destination Greece.
Where did your current journey start, and where are you now?
In 2013, I worked in office at Palapa Marina for Kurt and Valeska Luckert. That was my first taste of the yacht industry and I was hooked. After years of postponing the idea of joining the yachting industry as yacht crew, Hurricane Irma was the push I needed to actually do it, and in May 2018, I officially left St. Maarten to travel the world as a stewardess on board yachts, with the support of Kurt and Valeska.
Until very recently, I was in Athens, Greece, having been docked there since March 2020. Now, we’re cruising Croatia, Montenegro, France, Spain, Italy and Turkey for the summer. In winter, we will be docked in Greece again. I am a stewardess / masseuse / aesthetician on a Superyacht that charters extensively in the summer.
So, you’ve experienced the COVID-19 lockdown abroad, and on a yacht docked in Greece, no less. Tell us all about it!
On January 15, the yacht I work on was in the Caribbean and I flew from St. Kitts to Spain (where I currently officially live) for a six-week vacation. While I was in Spain, the pandemic hadn’t really hit Europe yet. During my vacation, my partner and I were closely following the news from China because we had planned to go to Thailand around October/November.
Around mid-February when it started to hit Italy, I was starting to get nervous, as Italy is a location we mainly cruise in the summer. I flew from Spain to Greece on March 4, and two days before I left, Madrid was starting to get more cases.
My experience in the airport was a bit of an eye opener as people’s paranoia defied logic, because protocols weren’t set in place yet. I was on a plane where three people had on DIY Hazmat Suits (Breaking Bad Style).
A week after I got to Greece, our captain imposed a voluntary isolation for us as crew and requested we not leave the boat unless really needed. Two weeks after that, Greece officially locked down all the Greek islands, their airports, and then daily life.
For 55 days, we couldn’t step foot off the boat. I honestly believe the reason we didn’t all go stark crazy was because we were still doing our 9-5 jobs as normal. The only difference was that we couldn’t get off the boat after hours.
The first few weeks weren’t too bad, as we did movie nights and BBQ’s on the weekend; but after a while, it starts to get to you. People you are isolated with get short tempered and start snapping at each other; other people pull away and hide away in their rooms and avoid contact. Thankfully, we all get along pretty well and we got out of it without killing anybody *smile*.
The lockdown, however, did make it harder for us to do a lot of our work. We couldn’t get certain shipyard work down in a timely manner, we couldn’t get new crew, some crew couldn’t go to do planned courses. So the lockdown delayed a lot of work-related plans.
As of the end of June, Greece has reopened their airports and no more self-isolating is required. There are social distancing guidelines in place. Stores, restaurants/bars have a capacity rule. You see people lined up outside of stores as they only let a certain number of people in.
I do personally feel that Greece did lockdown and quarantine correctly. They shut down early and imposed massive fines on people that didn’t adhere to protocols. And their numbers stayed relatively low compared to other countries.
Besides lockdown, what has been your experience living in Greece? What do you love most, and what not so much?
I absolutely LOVE Greece. We spend most of the time on the main island, but we also go to Crete, Corfu, Mykonos and Santorini. Greece is often seen as the ugly stepchild of the EU, but it has been a glorious time. The people are very friendly and the hospitality sector is on point.
Almost everybody speaks English and they are patient with you to help you if you don’t understand them. I love how proud Greek people are of their culture, their food, music and history.
My favourite part of Greece is exploring the ancient ruins and reading about their mythology and eating the best seafood. Other than their seafood, I am not a fan of traditional Greek cuisine.
The biggest surprises I have encountered are (positive): that Greek people LOVE their iced coffees – there is a coffee shop every 20 meters; and (negative) the littering around is horrible. EVERYWHERE you turn, people throw their trash. You will see a pretty rose bush in a park, and plastic bottles and cups shoved in it. All the beaches are covered in trash as well.
In the next edition of The Weekender, we’ll get to know a little more about Stephanie’s experiences abroad (and aboard).
