For Captain Sandra Yawn, the living is easy these days. She spends most of her time cruising the Mediterranean or docked along Italy's Amalfi coast and the south of France in a 138-foot yacht.
Yawn earned her captain stripes – or at least the cool-under-fire reputation that now accompanies them – under vastly different conditions. For Yawn, the hard way came in hostile waters in the Red Sea, dealing with fireballs shooting from an engine room and armed militants boarding her ship.
Capt. Sandra Yawn, 43, grew up in Bradenton Beach, Fla. working on boats.Back in late 2004, Yawn was on a trip to Dubai aboard White Star, a privately-owned, 131-foot Camper & Nicholson yacht. Once through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea, the ship's hydraulics failed and the vessel lost an engine. Yawn decided to set anchor on an island off the coast of Yemen, which quickly became hostile territory. The island was home to a Yemeni military camp, and the multi-million dollar yacht was boarded three times.
After five days of repair work, the White Star was back on course to Dubai, but a fire engulfed the engine room almost immediately. The crew extinguished it in minutes, but the White Star was floating adrift without electricity. Yawn was also well aware of other outside threats. The Red Sea is prime area for piracy – about 60 acts of piracy occurred in those waters that year – and the yacht was immobile, a sitting duck.
Yawn didn't panic. From listening to the VHF channels and monitoring the Automatic Identification System, or AIS, she knew there was a U.S. Navy ship patrolling the region so she radioed and told them about the White Star's vulnerable state.
"In the back of my mind I knew there was an American war ship in the area so I wasn't feeling threatened," she says. "I was too wrapped up in the whole thing to react without thinking logically."
The U.S. Navy ship arrived to tow her 60 miles into the port of Al Huydaydah, Yemen, where she spent 13 uncomfortable days as armed guards with rocket launchers stood watch outside the yacht.
"We're white and we're western on this big beautiful yacht so I sent the crew home and called in a security guard and for the next 10 days, it was just the two of us sitting there," she recalls with a nervous laugh. "But we survived. We just spent every day in this port and you couldn't go anywhere. There were guys with machine guys everywhere."
At one point, she was so put off by her hotel that she went back to the boat, which had no electricity and no water.
The harrowing experience in the Middle East earned Yawn the International Yacht Society's Distinguished Crew Award at the Miami Boat Show in February of 2005. The 12 crewmembers who accompanied her received the team Distinguished Crew Award.
Yawn, 43, grew up in Bradenton Beach, Fla. working aboard boats. Now her base is Ft. Lauderdale, where she owns a home, even though she's gone 11 months out of the year.
Her life may seem like a permanent vacation around the world, but it involves a lot of hard work.
"Being a captain, you get to go to all these beautiful places, but behind the scenes, it's a lot more difficult," she says. "You're the ship's counselor, financial manager and public relations specialist. Dealing with personalities in such a small space, well, it's not easy."
