Enrico Di Gennaro – Captain (Rotational)
Enrico was born in Florence, Italy. He began free diving and fishing from a very young age and windsurfing shortly after. The sea has always been the place where he feels more at ease and it has been the central point of his life choices. At 28 he went on a vacation to Costa Rica and fell in love with the country, her wild nature and the powerful Pacific Ocean waves so much that when it came time to leave, he never boarded that plane.
He became a Dive Master and shortly after started working at a local dive shop where he eventually met Christian, the owner of a classic ketch sailboat coming from Chile. This sounded like the perfect combination, sailing and diving, and together they started exploring central America and the Caribbean offering dive expeditions at remote destinations to support their voyages.
In 2003 Enrico decided to return to Costa Rica, now as a dive instructor, to open his own dive shop. Herradura Divers was born and for the following years he settled to a land life.
But the need to travel and explore was too strong and in 2010 he sold the dive shop and returned to yachting, this time with a captain license in his pocket but most important with Angela by his side.
They started working on charter catamarans, then moved to larger catamarans and in 2016 to a classic 1985 Burger motor yacht of 95 feet, the Adventurer, where they remained for the following 5 years.
But a motor yacht has no sails … well that is not a problem, he always travels with a kite surf and as soon as the wind is blowing you might see him playing with the wind and the waves, the same he has been doing since he was a kid on the shores of the Mediterranean
Sea.
His other interests include cooking, especially if it is some fish he has been able to catch, playing beach volleyball and motorbike traveling.
Magnus Laurin – Captain (Rotational)
Magnus grew up south of Sweden in Limhamn, a small fishing village just outside of Malmö. His father built his own boats and he’s been sailing since before he could walk and has been passionate about the ocean and boats for as long as he can remember.
He has always been interested in construction, engineering, and technology and was always late for school, stopping to ask questions on his way, whenever there was an opportunity to learn something.
Magnus has been self-employed most of his professional life. He started studying for his captains’ license 15 years ago, and in 2012 sold his construction company and started working as a Captain at Tradewinds on New Beginnings, a Catamaran, Fountaine Pajot 75. Since then he’s been working in the yacht industry.
He was captain on Yemaya II, a liveaboard power/dive boat 115ft located in Panama, and was captain on Lasca, at 66ft sail yacht, located in Turkey. After that he worked as a delivery captain for a while, mostly in Europe but he also sailed a sailing yacht from Bermuda to Sweden.
In 2014 he became a Padi Dive Instructor in Thailand and worked there for two seasons. He met his fiancé Ida in 2011, sailing the west coast of Sweden when they were both were on vacation. He proposed to her underwater in Thailand, her last dive on her open water course with Magnus as an instructor.
In 2015 Ida joined him on MY Nikita, a privately owned Fleming75, where they stayed working together until the owner decided to sell his boat at the end of 2019. They became very close to the family and their friends during all the long cruising and now have an extended American family. They started in the Mediterranean, Scandinavia (3,5 months in Norway), Russia down to Cape Verde, Atlantic crossing, Caribbean, East Coast of US up to Maine down to Cuba and then back to Turkey. With all this experience he is an overall captain!
His certificates include:
500gt unlimited, Deck officer VIII, Engineer
officer VIII, Fast craft, Medical First aid, Advanced Fire
fighting.
Angela Carnevali – Stewardess (Rotational)
Angela will welcome you aboard Vivierae with a huge smile on her face and plenty of Mediterranean enthusiasm. Before her debut in the yachting industry this Italian from the Mugello region was a professional volleyball player, having played in a variety of first division teams in Italy.
Her greatest passion besides volleyball are animals of any kind, so in 2006 she decided to visit Costa Rica and their many National Parks. Arrived at Herradura Divers she decided to give diving a try and instantly fell in love with the ocean. What was just a vacation at the beginning soon became her vocation and within but a few months she became a Dive Master, this gave her life a drastic change and started something new in this small Central American country.
Living now by the ocean she quickly transitioned into beach volleyball and ended up playing in the National championship for 2 seasons while also starting a program with the local school to teach this sport to kids of different ages.
In 2010 she decided to move into yachting with Enrico and started working on charter catamarans all over the Caribbean.
The catamaran experience was a fun start, but always aiming higher and missing the team play dynamics they soon realized a larger crew was needed. So, from small they moved to bigger yachts and now with years of sailing experience, Angela is a qualified and experienced stewardess, who will make sure your stay onboard will be an unforgettable experience.
Ida Hansson – Stewardess (Rotational)
Ida grew up in Helsingborg, a coastal town in the south of Sweden. Her mother is from the fishing village Grundsund in the archipelago of the west coast, where she spent all her youth summers and she’s been around boats all her life.
She started her career as an assisting nurse and has always loved to take care of people. After 5 years as a nurse assistant, she changed carriers and followed in her father’s footsteps and started working at one of his restaurants.
Ida is very passionate about food and genuine service! She quickly became the food and beverage manager and then worked her way up and then became restaurant manager after studying leadership and business administration. She was running Mello Yello for 10 years with 25 employees and it’s still one of the most popular and profitable restaurants in Malmö. She
developed her interest for food at an early age being around her father’s restaurants and she has also learned how to cook when working with the disabled and elderly.
In 2011 she met and fell in love with Magnus on a sailing vacation with family and friends. Since then, he has taken her on adventures around the world when there’s been a possibility for her to come along. She participated as a stewardess on some charters at New Beginnings with Tradewinds and later on Lasca a 66ft sailboat where she was also a chef.
She has sailed across the Atlantic twice and in 2015 she decided to quit her job at “Mello Yello” and run “Nikita B” full time with Magnus. There she was employed as a first mate/chef but had many hats in her role on board and had to be very flexible and organized.
Those who get to know Ida often says: – Everyone needs an Ida!
Duncan Paines – Chef
Duncan is from the United Kingdom, and at the age of 12 he moved to Holland. He started working as a kitchen porter at the age of 14 and this is where his career as a chef started. He fell in love with the idea of being able to create amazing dishes from scratch that would bring joy to anyone’s taste buds.
After a couple years, he went into full time working in many Rosette restaurants in the United Kingdom, Australia and the Scilly Isles, slowly working his way up into head chef positions.
One of the many places he worked included Harvey Nicoles in Bristol where he worked for 3 years as Senior Chef de Partie, covering all sections from larder to pastry.
He then went onto working in different restaurants around Bristol as sous chef and eventually head chef.
After a couple of years doing this, he then decided to open up his own pop up restaurant called Verano kitchen, creating his own brand and bringing his vision for food alive. The idea behind Verano kitchen was based around modern British tapas using
seasonal local ingredients.
It was after this he decided to make his move into the yachting industry as he wanted to provide the highest level of quality dishes and be able to travel and broaden his knowledge of ingredients.
Duncan enjoys every aspect of his job and always strives for perfection in his dishes, but also enjoys getting into the nitty gritty aspects of yachting, and is always willing to help out the boys on deck, or even helping the girls serve a drink or two.
Duncan met Chanice onboard his first yacht and now into their fourth yacht together, they have also worked two ski seasons as sole chef and hostess.
Duncan also enjoys many activities and sports from snowboarding to his recently found love for diving, and of course, being from England, football!
Chanice Phillips – Stewardess
Chanice is a highly enthusiastic and energetic i n dividual, who always strives for perfection in everything she does. Chanice was born in Johannesburg South Africa and at a very young age developed a passion for Dancing. In 2010 she went to Orlando Florida to compete in the International American dance awards and she received her International colours in Acrobatic, modern and contemporary dance.
It was after her travels to America that she became intrigued by the idea of traveling the world and this is what would eventually led her into the yachting industry. As she was not old enough to do this yet she decided to finish her schooling first.
At the age of 16 Chanice started working as a waitress at a pizzeria, and she continued to work as a waitress in a couple of different restaurants until she was 18. During this time, she also worked as an aupair looking after two young children. This is what led Chanice into studying for her Bachelors of Education, at the University of Withwaterstrand where she specialized in Foundation phase development and majoring in Biology, Chemistry and Physics, and sub-majoring in Mathematics.
Although Chanice loved children and the idea of teaching, her passion and calling for traveling still remained so then after graduating from college she decided to make her move into the yachting industry in order to experience what she had always dreamed of.
Chanice studied her courses for yachting through Sail Due South in Langebaan in 2018, and through this company she found out about yacht week in Croatia, and so upon completion of her courses she made the move to Croatia to start off her yachting
career. It was in Croatia on Chanice’s first yacht that she met Duncan.
In the 3 years since the move she has worked on yachts at a Stewardess, a Deck/Stew and even as a sole hostess in ski chalets in the French Alps alongside Duncan. It was through her travels she has since found a passion for interior design, event
coordination and the idea of a career in Nautical Engineering Graphic design.
Chanice still loves what she does and will always strive to give one hundred percent of herself to excellent service and this is why she agrees with the quote “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life” ~M ark Anthony.
Greg Thompson – First Mate
Greg Thompson is from Durban South Africa; he was lucky enough to grow up a stone’s throw away from the lively Indian Ocean. Greg’s life was simple, he surfed religiously was a local lifeguard at the beach and enjoyed hobbies cat sailing with his mates.
Real life began for him when he graduated from trade school and joined his father in the family construction business. Life seemed to be on track for Greg, he held a good job and was exceeding at work but something never felt right. He now spent days even months away from his one true love “the ocean” for a dry arid construction site.
Greg would constantly daydream about sailing to remote desolate islands to surf, he voiced his dreams which were shunned saying the idea wasn’t sustainable or logical “there’s no future for a sailor Greg” everybody said, “stop dreaming about the ocean and get back to work“.
Unfortunately for them Greg doesn’t need the support of anybody to go after something, when he wants something, he gets it, he now knew what had to be done.
Pierre Vermaak – Deckhand
Pierre grew up in a small town in Namibia and in 2009 moved to the capital, Windhoek. During high school he played hockey for the 1st team which traveled to various sporting events all over South Africa.
After high school he attended flight school in order to make a career out of it. With the flight training getting too expensive by the day, he was forced to drop. He found work as a store man of a bread bakery where he had to manage all the inventory going in and out.
In January 2021 he finally decided to spread his wings and pursued his yachting career. Even if just at the beginning, he already has a few licenses under his belt which include Powerboat Level 2, Jet ski license, Deckhand course and SRC radio and is currently working on his Yacht Rating to continue toward his Yachtmaster.
He is always keen in learning new skills, always accepts the advice given from the more experienced and wants to deliver quality guest experience and contribute as a crew member with like-minded individuals.