The ocean has always been my happy place. I grew up near the coast, my parents and grandparents sailed, and I joined Navy Cadets at school to learn the basics.
I discovered scuba diving in 2018 on a trip through Southeast Asia. I did my Open Water and immediately booked my Advanced the second it was over - I was hooked. After a brief stint at home to recuperate funds I headed to New Zealand then Australia, where I was living when Covid-19 hit.
With the yacht club I worked at temporarily closed by restrictions, I went home thinking it would be a few months, as I'm sure many of us did... It wasn't. I used the time to save money and make a plan, and the second things opened up I was off - Rescue Diver course in Spain, yachting tickets in Poole, dockwalking and dayworking in Antibes, Monaco, Nice, Cannes and La Ciotat, then back to Thailand for my Divemaster. Two months later I was qualified; two weeks after that I'd finished my Instructor course. April 2022, my first permanent yacht job. That's when I really understood the value of dual roles and additional skills and how they help you stand out amongst hundreds of candidates.
Covid-era yachting is its own experience: quarantine hotels and brutal 40 degree shipyards that made me question every decision I'd ever made. But I got through it, and on the other side was Bali, Komodo, the Philippines, Malaysia, and plenty of time in the South China Sea. Paddock passes to the Singapore F1, leading diving programmes for guests and crew, and a 50km solo run around a Malaysian island at 2am.
Then a new build in Europe, the excitement of kitting out the dive store from scratch, before a long delivery taking in Cape Verde, South Africa and the Seychelles, and on to Asia. Three months at sea, relentless watchkeeping shifts, and some of the most extraordinary skies I've ever seen. Throughout those years I used every leave period to keep building my qualifications - deck tickets wherever I could fit them in, and a trip back to Thailand for my PADI MSDT (Master Scuba Diver Trainer) specialities. I worked my way up to Bosun and learnt how to manage and lead a deck team.
Three years in, it was time to come home. I knew exactly what good crew looked like - I'd worked alongside them for years. And I knew the people hiring them didn't have time to waste. In January 2026 I started Surge Crew, built on that belief: that recruitment done properly means presenting fewer, better people.
