Offboarding: From Stew to Sustainability

Lauren Wardley’s love for the ocean took her from working on it to helping save it.

Entrepreneur Lauren Wardley left Sydney for a career as a stew. She then left that to found Ethical Yacht Wear – but those are just two of the changes she’s made by always being willing to try something new.

How and when did you get into yachting?

I got into yachting about seven years ago. I was managing a hotel back in Sydney, Australia, and a friend of mine had told me that I could combine my love for the ocean and my passion for hospitality and quite literally work on top of the ocean. I was in Sydney, and I’d been at the hotel for a while. I loved it, but I was ready for a change. Within a matter of weeks of him telling me that there’s this industry called yachting, I flew over to Fort Lauderdale, quickly did my STCW, and before I even finished my STCW I was already applying to jobs. On the Wednesday before I finished on the Friday, a boat contacted me and said, “We leave for New York on Saturday.” I hadn’t even finished my STCW keep in mind, but I said, “Yeah, that sounds amazing.” I finished the STCW and a day later I was on my way up to New York on my first boat, which was a 38-meter Benetti to start with, so a smaller crew.

How would you describe Ethical Yacht Wear? 

It’s essentially a sustainable crew uniform company. We supply sustainable crew uniforms to yachts with a giveback business model. We provide a percentage of our profits back to ocean cleanup and research, through two main ways. Through a company called The Plastic Bank we give a percentage of the profits back which pays people in poor coastal communities to pick up plastic as jobs, so we help reduce poverty and we prevent plastic from entering into the oceans. The second way we help save plastic is by incorporating oceanbound plastic bottles into our polos; we use a hat company that incorporates plastic bottles into the hats; and shorts and skorts are made from a recycled polyester incorporating fishing lines and different contents of plastic. Essentially, we provide organic cotton and recycled material crew uniforms and then we go the extra mile and make sure we just do a huge part in preventing plastic from entering the ocean as well. 

How did your experience in the yachting industry help you start Ethical Yacht Wear and make it successful?

I’ve worked for a lot of amazing humans in the sense of, they’ve all done something well enough to have enough money to own very expensive boats. Whatever they’ve done, whether it’s something that is of interest to me or not, they’re successful people. I think being around such successful people and almost emulating them in a way and understanding how these people operate, it’s been really helpful. With that being said, I acknowledge that it’s an environmentally adverse industry and it’s also put me very directly in contact with the ocean, so it’s just about acknowledging different industries on the planet and how adverse they are. The industry has resources like no other, so it’s a cool industry to create a business within and see how successful people conduct themselves, what they’ve done, hear their stories and learn about them.

What has been the biggest challenge so far with starting Ethical Yacht Wear? 

When you have your own business, especially when you don’t have a team or a crew, you’re kind of on your own a lot. You’re dedicated to this business you want to create, but you’re not waking up with a team and a crew who you can connect with, and I think it’s quite isolating. You have to say no to so many things because you don’t just get a paycheck anymore from somewhere and you don’t just have to show up and do your day’s work and go home again. If you put your head down and work hard, it always prevails, but it’s not so easy to do when your hours are your own and your time is your own.

Do you have any advice to yachties who want to make a transition from working on yachts to either starting a business or working ashore?

I think if somebody’s business-orientated, if they have an idea, just start it. Give it a shot. I had a cold-pressed juice business in Sydney, like seven years ago, and now I have a clothing company. I never expected to have a clothing company, but that’s what worked. I tried a bunch of different things, and I ended up with this and it became something really amazing. My suggestion is don’t worry about creating the thing you think that you’re going to do for the rest of your life, just do it. I learned so much from my juice company that I’ve been able to put it into Ethical Yacht Wear that I never would have known unless I just started something. It’s never going to be perfect and it’s probably never going to be what you end up doing, but if you start something you’re going to learn so much. 

Do you miss working on yachts?

Yes, I love the industry. I love the camaraderie and the crew, it’s super awesome. As I said, having your own business is very isolating, it’s a lot of hard work, it’s a lot of time on your own, so I miss the crew the most. I also miss the adrenaline of charter, it’s kind of like being on a show. It’s hard work but it’s pretty rewarding at the end of the day, so I miss all those things for sure.

What does the future hold for Ethical Yacht Wear?

We’re expanding into other industries, but we’re going to continue to do our work within the yachting industry. We are a uniform company, but we are also a huge sustainability advocate. We’re not just about selling you shorts and skorts, we’re about educating you on better decision making, consciousness around the ocean and what you can do. We run sustainability seminars, we partner with boat shows, we just do a whole massive campaign on sustainability. We’re also branching into other industries like hotels, resorts, and marinas management companies, so just starting to grow outside of boats as well.

Check out Ethical Yacht Wear’s website, Instagram, and LinkedIn!

Offboarding is a Triton series that highlights the many ways crew use their yachting experiences to build new careers ashore. Got a story to share? Let us know at [email protected]

Topics: