My all time top 10

Raised so far $19.33 (come on guys we can do better!!)

People always ask me where is the best place you’ve ever been and it’ not an easy question, so many factors coming into the equation. I have judged this on where I would like to live, the scenery, the people who live there, the climate and lost importantly what the Guinness is like there!!

10th place

Wakeboarding in Bonaire
Little island off the coast of Venezuela, quiet, laid back and chilled. Love spending the days carving in and out of the water on the board before a nice sundowner in the beach bar


9th

The natural beauty of the Galapagos Islands

Spend a couple of weeks here and you’ll understand what getting back to nature is all about. No smog, no crowds, no rush, perfect. Like walking onto the set of Jurassic park at times with the amount of wildlife

8th

Dancing in the clubs of south beach Miami

The place to be for cutting edge music, fashion and beautiful people. There is a wonderful buzz about the place that is infectious and will having you believe you are as cool as the locals!
7th

Surfing on the north Shore of Hawaii

Learnt to surf here and am hooked, the moment I stood up on that board and caught the first wave that was it!! Biggest waves in the world here but plenty of smaller ones for learners!

6th

New Years in st Barts

Every big boat in the world, every celeb, the biggest parties, the wildest nights, if you can’t let your hair down here give up!
5th

Snorkeling/diving in Tahiti


The most unimaginably beautiful place I have ever been. If the competition was judged on beauty alone this would have won easily

4th

Mojhitos and salsa in Cuba

The locals have been repressed for over 50 years but still are friendlier and enjoy themselves more than any other nation on earth. Get here soon before Fidel goes and it changes forever!

3rd

Having a drink in St Tropez
Summer in the tiny village in south of France is awesome, its half French fishing port half Hollywood stopover for the month of august and makes a wonderful blend of charm and glitz rolled into one


2nd

Summer in Melbourne

Often voted the most live able city in the world and for good reason. They have everything you could want here, beautiful beaches, lots of sport, wonderful restaurants, nice bars, great vineyards, wonderful locals and lots of exciting events!!


1st

Having a pint of the black stuff in Dublin

Its not just that my friends live here or that I’m Irish. There is something about the place. It’s always been a town that has had it tough until recently and those tough times are shown through it’s people today, resilient, hilarious, witty and charming. I’ve been all over the world and seen some of the most wonderful places but nothing would come close to sitting in a good pub with the boys drinking Guinness and looking out at the rain!Perfect!

Shopping for a 160 ft super yacht

Raised so far $19.23

All good things must come to an end and my 4 weeks in Miami living it up are over and it’s time to do some work, we’re heading off to the Caribbean. First stop are the Bahamas but before we go anywhere I have the unenviable task of filing the boat up with enough food for 10 crew and 8 guests for the next six months. We’ll be picking fresh fish, meat and vegetables up along the way but enough dry goods, drinks, condiments etc to last for 6 months have to be bought here and crammed into the boat!

Over the 2 days I spend well over $30,000 on all sorts of things from toothpicks to birthday candles to bin bags. Basically I can’t afford to forget anything. Get to a remote island and the guests ask for horseradish sauce and we don’t have it, I’m gone!! Captain doesn’t have his special coffee for night cruising, I can forget that bonus next year! Owners want a green olive in that martini…..you get the picture!

The 10 crew members are busy running around the boat making last minute preparations. The deckhands are scrubbing the boat making it look like new for the arriving guests, engineers are checking the engines making sure nothing could possibly go wrong and the stewardesses are cleaning the toilets with cotton buds and ironing the sheets!



I cram the stuff into the tightest of spaces all over the boat and pray that I have remembered everything! The deckhands let the ropes go, it’s 12.01 in the morning(unlucky to leave port on a Friday so we wait to the first minute of Saturday) and we are off down the river heading for the Bahamas.
I’m on the front of the boat looking at the sky wondering what the weather will be like, will we get smashed?

I am just about to drift asleep in my cabin by the waves when I snap awake! I’ve forgotten to pick up the croissants for the guests breakfast! Instead of getting up at 6 an hour before the guests I reset my alarm for 4.45, I’ll have to get up and make the bloody things!! See its not all sitting on beaches drinking cocktails I do occasionally work!

Having said that after this weeks charter we have 10 days with no guests in the British Virgin islands, that’ll be tough!

Dancing with Paris

$8.31 Raised so far

My friends are used to me coming home with exciting stories and are pretty bored of hearing them at this stage! The story about my travels that excites people the most and causes me to answer the most questions is the night I ended up on a table in a night club dancing alongside Paris Hilton……..


I’d been working on a boat all summer and the crew were getting tired and grumpy, 16 hour days taking their toll. We had one more charter and they ended up being young rich playboys in their 20s. We had a great week with them and got on very well with them all. Towards the end of the week they were more like friends and kept hassling us to go out for a drink with them. It was the second week in August and we were in St Tropez along with just about every celebrity in the world who descends on the little French fishing village for the month of August!

Earlier on the day in question I was in the tender and had seen Paris from a distance and was happy with my little glimpse. We came back to port and we cooked a massive buffet for the guest’s last night. You are never meant to drink with the guests but after they bent the captain’s arm myself and my then girlfriend were invited along for a drink after work.

We were headed to La Cave possibly the most exclusive club in the world. After being whisked past the long line of star spotters and paparazzi we were straight in. Our guests were big regulars and we were ushered to one of the best tables in the club where 3 Magnums of Dom Perignon were waiting for us at the table. It was the finest champagne you could drink but incredibly our guests were mixing it with red bull the latest trend, so not wanting to offend them I did the same.

The place is full now, beautiful models everywhere and before I know it bono is sitting in the far corner drinking wine, Roger Federer brushes past. Then In a blur I look over and here comes Paris. She is flanked by a huge entourage and has boyfriend in tow, also with her is Tara Reid who is making a T.V programme with her. They also have a table only yards from ours. Now not having had a drink for some time due to the busy season and being shattered the red bull and vodka went straight to my head and before I know it I am up on a podium dancing like there is no tomorrow!

Then is happens…Paris is up on a podium beside me, she is also strutting her stuff. I begin to throw out some of my best moves (not pretty) and she looks over at my mad flailing. We look each other in the eye and for a moment I can see it in her eyes, she likes the moves!! She thinks I’m some billionaire’s son or rich entrepreneur, little does she know that while she was at the beach sipping cocktails this afternoon I was running around sweating cooking for 25 people.



It was a great night, the bill for 8 people was 12,000 euros and luckily we weren’t paying. By the end of it I think Paris left gracefully and we all fell off the podiums we were dancing on and made our way back to the boat and a few hours sleep before waking up and making croissants for the guests with my first ever Dom Perignon and Red bull hangover.

Contact: niallharbison@lycos.com

Making Money!!

$5.80 Raised so far

Ok we been doing this for a week now and we have raised the grand total of $5.80. This is where i expected to be after a week. Thanks to you guys clicking on and the ads we are starting to make a difference. Its a small one but the blog has taken 1000 hits in the first week so cant be bad! This is going to be a long and hard process but one which i am determined to stick out to the end. The key is passing it on to as many people as possible and get the volume up!



In the past week i have also come up with another couple of ways to increase traffic! One of the major Irish newspapers have agreed to do a feature on myself and the blog so we will be reaching big numbers there. I have also agreed to become a consultant to a large established crew website with 10,000 active members as their expert on all food matters, with a series of e books, recipies and pictures being available. That should also be up and running within a week so will keep you posted.

Due to the interest in the story i have deceided to hire a compnay to design a professional website! It will also be ready in a week and will take the place of the blog. It will still have the stories of the rich and famous but will also have lots more advertising and generally be a lot more professional. It will also have a large virtual money pot on the homepage showing how much has been raised so far. The idea will be that you can go to the website and see how much money we have raised, what parts of the project are happening and what direction we are moving in. There will also be a place for donations, and a special page for sponsors to advertise.

If anybody has an ideas on how we can make this faster, more interesting to read or just make more hard cash please please let us all know by leaving a comment!!


So even though $5.80 might not seem like a lot the fact is we have started, the cash for the very first brick is in and we are on our way! With newspaper reviews, word of mouth, lots of clicks on the site and ads, and future sponsorships we will be there sooner than you think! Thanks for everything so far and keep it up, remember when this thing is huge, you are the guys who made it possible and were in at the start!

Contact: niallharbison@lycos.com

The Dream:Saving African Lives

$4.98 Raised so far
Anybody writing a blog can have a thousand different reasons for doing it, i have two. Firstly i wanted to create a story of my life that I(nobody else will be interested in 40 years time)could look back over. Secondly and more importantly i wanted to get paid for doing it. Now before you start thinking im a money grabbing fecker wait til you hear my motives.

Basically i have ads on my blog, if people click on an add i get a tiny tiny tiny amount of revenue per click. My crazy idea is to take this revenue and use it for something good. This might all seem a little bit far fetched but if i can get tens of thousands of people reading this drivel every day it can stat making money. I think i have an interesting story to tell and if other people agree we could help people in Africa.

Part 1 I was sitting on the boat(93m, 200 million dollar boat Tatoosh)watching a programme on poverty in Africa. I was trying to get my head around why some poeple are so rich and others die because they cant afford a 50 cent vacination? Needless to say i couldnt come up with a conclusive answer. so i thought to myself what can i do. Well this is it. My idea is to set a target of 20,000 euros from revenue from this. I will post on the site every week the total raised and between us hopefully we can get some momentum and get somewhere towards the total. Im not kidding myself, it is stupidly hard to raise that amount of money when you get about 0.01 cents per click on an ad but if we can whip up enough interest who knows!!!!

Part 2 of the plan is to approach rich people i know, large companies and general public for assistance. I will ask them to donate 1 cent each for every 10 raised on my website. As the number of people reading the website grows i will place prominent ads for these big companies helping out! With their help i hope to be able to take the total to 50,000 euros!

When we reach 50,000 euros i am going to take the money direct to Africa and set up an enterprise centre for Kids who haven't had an education and have no hope in life. Instead of giving aid to people to provide a quick fix to the problem i want to set something up that can...

a)Give young African kids a chance to learn a trade and provide a future service to the community

b)Sustain itself independtly in the long run

c)Save lives

I Plan to see this out all the way if it takes 6 months or 20 years. It costs me nothing, all i have to do is write. I truly believe in this and believe it is achievable. I think it is an idea that can mushroom and i believe through the media, large corporation involvment and the general public reading this we can save lives and create a better future for some people.

All you have to do is to make sure to read the Blog every couple of days, have a look through some ads on the page and TELL AS MANY PEOPLE as possible. Add it to your favourites and read it regularily and you are helping to save lives in the future.


If you have any ideas about ways to increase revenue or want to offer your services in any way, or just agree with what we are doing add a comment!!

Contact: niallharbison@lycos.com

South Beach Miami

$3.30 Raised so far
Ok its been a couple of weeks since the last post but give me a break ive been in Miami and you can usually find better things to do here than stare at a computer screen! Have started working on a new yacht for new owners(Dont ask me who!!All will be revealed). Luckily the boat is in the shipyard getting fixed up for 6 weeks so we have nothing to do but check out South Beach here in miami and look at all the beautiful people!

Meeting the locals

Its an incredible place with a huge gay population making it trendy and hip!! Luckily there are also loads of beautiful women and plenty of trendy bars and clubs. Walking down south beach with your lil white Irish body kinda brings you down to earth!!

Another highlight of the last week was going to the shooting range. I always knew America had guns and a pretty liberal attitude to them but never realised what that entailed. We finished one evening and drove to the local range. Now let me emphasise that the biggest thing ive ever fired was a pea shooter. After a 3 minute exchange that involved me giving a PADI scuba diving card to the server and quickly signing a disclaimer i was walking unattended to the range with the same pistol the special forces use in Iraq. I deceided not to go out into the street and cause a bloodbath but proceeded to the range. After shooting the crap out of some targets we moved up a level and got some AK47 s and a couple of Bin Laden targets!!Defientily the best fun ive had in a long time!


Seeing as it was one of the lads birthdays we had to go out and what better place to go after a bit of shooting than hooters! For those of you not familiar its chicks with very tight clothes!And Thankfully they root the bad looking ones out in the recruitment process!! A very entertaining night and everything that america is supposed to be!

Shooting Osama's head off with an AK47

There really is minimal work being done at the moment but on the 10th of November we are heading to the bahamas to do a charter to some rich guests! Cruising around there for a couple of weeks should be nice and there is talk of a parachute jump so watch this space!!

In the meantime we are renting a large house with pool in Key West this weekend for Fall Break, the cousin of Spring break!!Ill Tell you all about it after the weekend!!
Contact: niallharbison@lycos.com
Weather 90 Not a cloud in the sky
Work Minimal
Enjoyment 10/10