Joanna Hirst

Joanna Hirst spent eight years crewing superyachts as a stewardess, on boats from 30m to 90m: motor yachts, sailing yachts and hundred-year-old classics, across the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Bahamas and both coasts of the United States. She left a career in public relations at a large London agency and moved to the South of France in 2014 to do it.

She went on to spend six years supplying luxury preserved floral arrangements to some of the largest yachts in the world, several of them over 100m, which meant coming aboard and touring them. The same company’s clients included Bulgari and De Beers. She has attended the major yacht shows year on year since, touring boats and keeping up with the crews.

Joanna is based in Philadelphia and knows the Mediterranean and the Caribbean best, with three winters spent in Antigua while working on board. Having lived aboard for so long, she can tell a group which features will genuinely matter to them, whether that is the water toy selection, the layout, the interior or the crew, and just as usefully what will not suit them.