Awesome Humans Podcast 15 Greg Przybylski
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Are you thinking too small with your qualification?
Sometimes you just never know where your qualification might take you in life and it may not be where you expect. For Awesome Human Greg Przybylski it was to the pinnacle of the motorboat industry and all over the world – as crew member on luxurious and powerful super yachts. Greg apprenticed as an air-conditioning refrigeration mechanic in Australia. Yes, super yachts have refrigeration and air-conditioning, so was that the link? Not quite.
Whilst Greg was travelling and working in Europe, the rite of passage for any young Australian, he got asked to repair equipment on a small motor boat about to sail from Gibraltar to Puerto Rico. The owner was impressed and convinced Greg to quit his traditional job and come across the Atlantic with three other men. That’s how Greg got his first floating job.
Now an experienced marine engineer for many types of crafts up to 84 metres and thousands of horsepower! His air-conditioning refrigeration mechanic skills gave him diversity for a workplace that takes a limited size team. Literally, every hand counts on deck.
“It was the best trade I could have possibly done. When you are working on those systems and mainly to do with the physics, you have to be an extremely good welder and solder. You have to know electrical work and circuitry. So many things that this trade set me up later on in life.”
“I could fix diesels, pumps, anything that rotated, or didn’t rotate that should – I could fix most things. I was good with my hands. I could weld the steel on boats.”
“When I first started there were no qualifications to be an engineer on a super yacht because they weren’t classified by the International Marine Organisation. As long as an insurance company would accept my qualifications I could get the job. When I wanted to climb the ladder, the Marine Merchant wanted to keep me at a class 3 but I did one boat with 12,000 horse power, 60 meters long, that could do 35 knots - that’s a lot of power. I couldn’t get yacht qualifications so I was getting commercial qualifications. I did more courses when I started doing big re-fits: marine engineering and electronics.”
Today and decades after his first yacht job, Greg is an experienced crew member for many types of craft up to 84 metres! Life is never dull when you work on the largest leisure watercraft in the world. To build one super yacht costs the same as a skyscraper like the Q1 so Greg Przybylski crewed the equivalent of a 25-story skyscraper!
Greg, after many years working as Chief & Project Engineer on the super yachts now through Australasian Yacht Services Pty Ltd provides a world-wide private consultancy and engineering project management service for owners wishing to build & maintain super yachts.
What a life! When it comes to your qualification, do you need to think bigger?
