While celebs like Beyoncé and Jay-Z — not to mention Karlie Kloss, Paul McCartney and Barry Diller, all recent guests on David Geffen’s floating mansion — are relishing in the luxury of yacht life this summer, it’s not all champagne bubbles for the crews of other boats.
Brooke Laughton, who appears on Bravo’s “Below Deck” and works as a stewardess aboard mega-yachts, told The Post she often has to put aside her own values in order to make guests happy.
At the Cannes Film Festival two years ago, Laughton said, one yacht owner’s grown son and his pals had prostitutes come aboard while their wives were out shopping.
“Our [staff] would be radioing from ashore to make sure the prostitutes were gone before the wives returned,” said Laughton, 27. “So in that 20-minute period, I’d have to change all the sheets and get rid of any sort of telltale signs, like condoms, that anyone else had been there. It’s gross. It’s so gross.”
According to Mark Cronin, creator of the Bravo reality series that follows luxury yacht crews, “It’s a standard thing that a boat has two configurations: one for the wife and one for the mistress,” he said. “It’s common for the staff to redecorate in between visits — remove photographs and change the bedspreads because the one the wife likes is different than the one the mistress likes.”
“That’s the worst,” Laughton said. “You have to turn a blind eye. There is a price . . . You wonder where your values stand if you are an accomplice to it.”
Ursula Ebinger, who is based in Miami and has worked as a yacht stewardess for over a year, said one upside of being privy to such indiscretions is the potential payout.
“One weekend I had this man and his wife and two small kids charter a 70-foot boat,” said Ebinger, 22. “The next weekend the same family man comes with three hookers. He just looks at me. And I gave him the look: ‘What is the price to pay for secrecy?’
“He tipped me $2,500 for the one-day charter.”
Staff has to be prepared to deal with any kind of whim, from the immoral to the outrageous.
Brooke LaughtonZev Schmitz/BravoRoger Norton, who is based in South Africa and worked on luxury yachts for four years as an engineer and deckhand, said privileged guests won’t take no for an answer.
“The most ridiculous was when we were in Corsica and one of the girlfriends of the Russian oligarch [who owned the boat] requests blueberries for breakfast the next morning — but a very specific blueberry from a very specific shop in her hometown in Russia,” said Norton, 33. “These were the best blueberries in the world and she needed to have them.”
Norton and his colleagues had a courier pick up the berries in Russia and take the package to an overnight express flight, which sped it down to Corsica where it was picked up from the airport via taxi. At 5 a.m., a crew member was ashore, having boated four miles on a smaller vessel to retrieve the fruit.
“By 7 a.m. she had the blueberries for breakfast,” he said.
Former stew Julie Perry, who wrote a book, “The Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Yacht Stewardess: Confessions from My Years Afloat with the Rich and Famous,” told The Post that in 2000, some members of a famous family chartering a yacht demanded that we “fly by helicopter Domino’s pizza to the boat.”
Even when the demands are illegal, some stews find ways to rise to the occasion.
“It was very common for a lot of chief stews to have a Rolodex that they shared: ‘When you’re in Capri, this is who you call for prostitutes and for drugs,’ ” said Perry.
Laughton said she’s had guests in Ibiza request “party bags” — baggies of drugs meant to be taken while out carousing.
“Personally, I didn’t go ashore and get them, but the [other employees] did.”
Cronin says yachting can bring out the worst in people — especially charter guests.
“In some types of people, they feel like it gives them a license to be a jerk. That whole thing where the staff can’t say no [because] you’re paying a lot,” she said. “The boats that we use [on ‘Below Deck’], 150-foot yachts, cost $150,000 a week. To even feel like you’re getting your money’s worth, you have to be demanding.”
