Most Valuable Skills to Make a Few Bucks ?

[DaveSherman]

My vote would be to become a good sail maker (repairs) or diesel mechanic. Of course, you will have to lug around the right tools.

[Randyonr3]

Back in January we made the decision to sell the canvas shop,
www.stitches-n-snaps.com and head out AGAIN for a few years..
After a couple months of various offers we decided to go with "Plan B"
and take the business with us..
We posted it on a number of wourld cruising forums to see what type of feed-back we'd get.. To our surprise, we recieved a good number of positive results and a couple jobs to do along the way..
So the fold up table that is stock in our 42 has gone into storage and a newly designed table being built for a machine to be recessed into it.. My industrial "JUKI" is being modified with a MC-SCR 120volt DC motor and custom table being built for the cockpit..
Ours is a little different as its already established and just down-sizing for the boat but we'll still carry 5 or 6 different machines including an embroidery machine..
If you were to go out and buy the equeptment that we have, it would be and investment of arounf 10k and then the knowledge to do it.. we also know what it takes to do a job so we're planning on carring a few rolls of fabric..
BUT, as I said, we have a large 42 foot boat and its just the wife and I so we have the room to stock and store the needed equeptment to do the canvas work..

[CaptStarboard]

In crossing the Pacific last year, we found our main needs were in Sail and Canvas repair (as the yacht we bought had been sitting in the Mexican sun for five years). Most sailmakers in Mexico were fairly expensive, and we started to stitch and tape rips ourselves.

We did use several different sail and canvas places along the cruise and one of the best was near Bora Bora. We had a rip in the mainsail and had checked with the local sail loft, they were booked out for the next two weeks. The marina pointed us to a small sailboat where sail repairs could be done. We contracted with him and then tied up next to him, bow to his stern. Then just pulling off the mainsail cars from the track, and we fed the main sail into his cockpit for the repair. He had set up his sewing machine right there. It was brilliant! Twenty minutes later the sail was stitched and had extra material added. He also put on a few additional patches for strength. Good for us, as the sail loft would have been hundreds of dollars ($80/hour if memory serves) and he did it all for $30 with no lugging the sail around.

So I'm a BIG fan of other yachts that you can pull up beside and get work done! Sailmaking, canvas, welding, diesel repairs, refrig. There is some money to be made if you have the right tools and skills in the right place!

Jeff
Sydney, Australia
s/v Nemesis