^{Meet captain} Len Beck

Len Beck has been a licensed captain for more than thirty years. Before joining April Fool in 2014, he spent a total of fifteen years on board the legendary globetrotter Battered Bull. Len has also delivered various Feadships and spent time at the helm of Trident, Secret and Bullish.

I can say with complete confidence that it is the overall quality of design and engineering that makes a Feadship so special. This ensures that the final product is easier to maintain, more durable and exceptionally robust. Battered Bull still looked as good as new when she was sold despite having 19,000 hours on the main engine. In addition to the original build quality, this shows the value of maintenance and having an experienced crew. Owners may provide the funds but captains have to manage them in a timely and professional way to ensure the boat always looks her absolute best. The finest compliment you can receive in harbour is to be asked ‘has your yacht just been painted?’

This desire for perfection reflects the fact that a Feadship is, in many ways, a captain’s home. My wife also used to work on board and our daughter spent the first five years of her life on Battered Bull. Mrs Flynn was like a grandparent to my daughter, often reading to her at night. We had an amazing travel experience with the Flynns covering over 200,000 miles and I was delighted when the new owners later invited me back on board Battered Bull to see how well they were maintaining her.

It is great when owners identify with their Feadship in this way, with a spiritual connection to their yacht and a synergy with the captain and crew. There are owners who buy a yacht as another toy in an arsenal of playthings or see it as another of their homes. In such cases it is up to us captains to guide them into seeing that a superyacht—and certainly a Feadship—is far more than just a seaborne extension of their life on shore. There is a reason that we are called crew, not staff. We spend vast amounts of time on board and the yacht is our home and our place of employment. Being a member of the crew is actually equivalent to a team sport and very different to being part of the staff in a luxury household.

The Captains Summit is the best possible place to interact with our professional colleagues and spend time with the people who build the best yachts in the world. I may have been doing this job for thirty years but I never get tired of hearing about new technologies and discovering the latest design developments. It was also valuable to talk about operational experience—it is very rare indeed to have so much knowledge in one place!

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