Navigating Dreams: Becki Milton’s Journey In Yachting

While her passion and sailing experience could have set Becki on the path to becoming a superyacht Captain, a lack of female role models held her back from her dream and put her on a different yet equally fulfilling path.

This experience has made Becki more keen than ever to support young women in following their yachting dreams, whatever they may look like. We sat down with Becki to find out.

Bluewater: Did you have a childhood dream or another career you thought you would follow?

Becki: I actually wanted to become a forensic psychologist, but after my Social Psychology degree, I couldn’t face another three years of being ‘student-poor’, so I found the first office job I could, recruiting medical staff for the NHS in Brighton, UK! That seems like a lifetime ago, and I’m delighted to have ended up in the yachting industry ‘by mistake’!

So what did you do before yachting, and what’s your career path been like in the industry?

Becki: I came to Bluewater in 2011 from a very corporate world, running a large division of 60 medical recruiters for the NHS across the UK. I was completely burned out and miserable, so I came to Antibes for a ‘gap year in the South of France’! My main goals were to eat cheese and drink wine, but I also took a job utilising my recruitment skills at Bluewater. 13 years later, it’s the longest gap year ever!

I had my Yachtmaster qualification and a yacht racing background, so I already knew people in Antibes and felt immediately at home in the yachting industry. I started with Bluewater as a Crew Agent, then moved to be their Group Sales and Operations Manager, and finally, I bagged my dream of joining their charter team. The world of charter is very different from all the other roles I have played at Bluewater; some days, you’re a holiday planner, and some days, you’re a contract lawyer!

Given that you already had your Yachtmaster and loved sailing, did you ever consider working as crew rather than shore-based?

Becki: When I arrived in Antibes, I considered working as a deckhand or a skipper on a sailing boat because I had already done a tiny bit of paid work in the racing world. But it was so rare to see women in those positions I felt I didn’t stand a chance and didn’t have the self-belief to push myself forward or help break the mould.

Nowadays, females in the deck department are more common, although still under-represented, and women are even more rarely seen in the engine room. I think the reasons for this are a mixture of tangled social issues, ranging from perceived social norms on both the employee and employers’ sides to a lack of women in science and engineering in schools. I know there has been a push to increase girls taking science over the last decade, so that should help the future generations of female engineers, but there is always a time lag where societal values take a few extra decades to catch up. There is also sometimes a confidence issue that is pivotal to women breaking into territory that is deemed ‘male’. This lack of confidence comes from a complicated set of beliefs that have been subtly carved into your social identity from a young age and inform you of where women do – and don’t – belong, - and sadly, it was that which stopped me from thinking I belonged on the bridge of a yacht. I wish I could travel back 13 years and give myself a bit of a talking-to!

What do you love about the world of yachting, and what other ways do you think the industry will continue to evolve? 

Becki: I love how such a small industry with a limited number of assets (yachts) supports hundreds of thousands of jobs across the world and gives people like me a chance to experience luxuries and adventures that I would never come across in my everyday life.

As a Charter Manager, I hugely appreciate the number of committed and dedicated crew that go way beyond the call of duty for their owners and charter guests, from sleep deprivation and missing important personal events to dressing up as pirates for the entertainment of the kids on board.

In regards to evolution, the superyacht industry is still relatively young. It is constantly evolving for the better, especially in areas like crew training, where yachting is becoming better represented in the working groups advising the MCA and UK government, as evidenced in the new Small Vessel engineering structure. I would love to see a mentoring program evolve for captains and heads of departments who often find themselves in management roles that call for leadership, performance management, and conflict resolution abilities in which they may not have had any prior ‘managerial’ training. I am frequently in awe of how they deal with that learning curve on the job, but it would be great to have an official syllabus or formal mentorship in place for those areas, accessible to all who want it.

There are still parts of the yachting industry, except for safety, that are a little ‘wild west’ in my eyes, where industry legislation has not yet reached them. When you compare the regulation of the aviation industry with that of the superyacht industry, you will see what I mean. I think it is likely that one day, most areas in yachting will be more controlled, from brokers needing licences to crew having a union dedicated to yachting (instead of sharing a union with shipping). As someone who has worked in yacht crew recruitment and corporate ‘city’ recruitment, I am all too aware that our industry still allows for stereotyping and discrimination in ways other industries simply cannot get away with anymore. I look forward to seeing more diversity as the industry ages.

Overall, I am incredibly grateful to have stumbled into yachting and have met and worked with some of the most remarkable and interesting people. We are lucky to be involved in such a prosperous and dynamic world, where all levels of the hierarchy are accessible, and the sky is really the limit for anyone who wishes to set their mind to succeeding here.

Thanks for that fascinating insight into your career in yachting, Becki. We love hearing about all the unusual ways people find the industry and all the fascinating insights you’ve learnt along the way. In next week’s Women in Yachting profile, we’ll interview Jenny Matthews, one of the industry’s female Chief Officers and Founder of She of the Sea.