Sunday, August 24, 2014

Steve - A Profile of Following Your Passion into a Dream Career

Steve is in the green shirt.  I'm in white.
My family met Steve on our summer vacation in 2013.  We were looking at spending an afternoon sailing on the Sechelt Inlet and the local Visitor Information Office highly recommended BC Sail Tours - Steve's company.  We sailed with him for an afternoon and discovered that he also pilots a float plane part-time with with a local airline called Tofino Air!

Can you imagine - Sailing and flying as a career?  That's what I'm talking about.

It wasn't all 'smooth sailing' (pardon the pun) for Steve, though.  He had to make some sacrifices to get to a point where he had his own boat and had the flight hours to fly commercially.  I don't remember all the details, but he was telling us stories of how he was 'quite busy' working and living extremely frugally to get money so that he could pay for flight hours to get his license.

Steve has a Master Limited 60 Ton Captain's License and has sailed over 20,000 miles in South America, Hawaii, and North America. He fondly remembers surfing waves while sailing to Hawaii.  He's also been flying float planes commercially for the past 12 years.

If you grew up in a land-locked town or city (like me) you wouldn't necessarily think of sailing as a way to 'get paid to see the world'.  I certainly didn't consider it.  Here's some sailing careers I've heard of now that I wouldn't have guessed exists before:

  • Like Steve, operate your own sailing tour outfit (or sail for one)
  • Sail other people's boats to ports where they want to pick them up.  I had a friend who did this in the summer
  • Teach sailing.  My previous manager did this for extra money during his summer holidays.
  • Work on a Cruise Ship - you don't even need sailing experience for this.  They are looking for Cooks, Musicians, Event coordinators, Childcare workers,  Life guards, etc.
To read other career profiles check out my Career Path Profiles page here.


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