UAE: Meet sailor who got her first captain licence at 21, braved the mid-2000s Tsunami
The Gulf region, and in particular the UAE is continuously developing as one of the best areas for yacht cruising. There is a shift in the GCC yachting trends as vessels are now heading East from the Mediterranean instead of West towards the Caribbean, as noted by Captain Patricia Caswell, General Manager of Gulf Craft Services.
She further explained how this progress is fueling the development of other supporting industries such as crew services, maintenance services, provisioning and chartering which helps the region emerge as both a luxury cruising destination and home base for global yacht services.
A sign of this development is the recent establishment of the Maritime Training Academy in Dubai, which focuses on training students for careers in commercial shipping, super yacht management or naval services.
Love for the sea
The tides of the maritime world are shifting because the 46-year-old Melbourne-born mariner, who has a wealth of decade-long experience and an unwavering appreciation for the sea, has been sailing since she was 12 years old.
The region continues to grow in fierce service compared to the Caribbean. “The GCC is becoming a serious cruising ground. Yachts are now coming here instead of the Caribbean. There’s a growing ecosystem, service, crew, provisioning, which is making this a real hub,” she said.
It is hard to imagine someone falling in love with sailing at 17, but that is exactly what happened to Caswell after her spontaneously sailing trip to the Whitsunday Islands. “My mom sent me on a boat sailing for the day,” she said with a smile. “I just fell in love with it. A couple of weeks later, I got a job…and I’ve been working on boats ever since.”
Navigating challenging waters
She was able to break into international yachting, a field dominated by males, where she forged pioneering routes for females, after obtaining the highest international yachting license and navigating some of the hardest waters around the globe.
After earning a captain’s license in Australia at the age of 21 and working as a sailor, she returned to land-based education repeatng progressively rising in both license grades and her levels of schooling earned; by age 30, she had her Master 3000 license, allowing her to serve as captain of some of the world’s largest super-yachts marketed. Exceeding earning potential comes at costs, however.
“Coordination is by far the keenest difficulty when it comes to moving across countries. I once was at anchor in the Maldives when the mid-2000s Tsunami was sweeping through: The water just started swirling and pulling us right on toward the reef. Meeting the aftermath’s devastation is a sight you cannot truly describe”
Breaking the glass ceiling
Though she is still a minority in her particular area of expertise, her sister’s achievement was remarkable. She, however, prefers to downplay her efforts associated with whittling down the glass ceiling. “It’s something I absolutely love doing,” she said. “A long time ago, there weren’t many women doing this. I’m tremendously grateful I had the opportunity, and I’ve always been proud to support helping women coming up through the ranks.”
For her, the yachting business holds great fascination, not just for its technical aspects, but also as someone who actively champions the need to change the culture within maritime industry.
Semi-retired from full-time husbandry work, she married seven years ago and currently supervises yacht testing and handovers at Gulf Craft’s expanding refit facility in Ajman. “It’s been an amazing evolution for me,” she said, “supporting the industry from the ground up through my operational background.”
Before, as Captain Caswell’s Quality Control Manager, she controlled every level of yacht construction in order to ensure compliance with internationally accepted standards.The sea also has her in its grasp. “In this week’s schedule, I need to be at sea for a full seven days; I will be ‘doing the Oman-Qatar trip’ (Qatar-Oman). I am still on the water two to three times a week,” she said.
What would her encouragement be for young women thinking about setting sail and taking on life at sea?
“The discussion can new quite easily. We, for example, already have a lot more female presence from Cyprus in the sporting domain. I mean, we have female representation in world summits and in world boat shows… In shipbuilding IT even cross ply construction, and every single panel has women sitting on them. The only problem is to get the information and help with the forums and the support networks that we have… It is done organically, all women have to do is provide support to it,” she replied.
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