>> Well my name is Captain Iris Clark.
I operate the Selina II.
She's a sailing vessel in St. Michaels Harbor.
We offer sail boat rides for guests from out of town that have come
to spend some vacation time here on the quaint eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay.
On an everyday basis we answer the phone to take bookings reservations, we set up the boat
in the morning to get ready for guests to come out for a sail,
we take the boat off the dock at the beginning of the outing.
We do a little harbor tour, we talk about what we see along the waterfront
as we're sailing here in St. Michaels, and then once we leave the harbor we go
out into the river, we put up sails and we follow the wind.
And then we come back into the dock and by the end of the day we have
to break things down and clean up the boat.
The work consists of multiplicity.
Like any business you have the marketing end
because if you don't have customers you don't have a business.
You have to have product, so keeping the boat spiffy
and stocked and clean is really important.
And keeping your bookings up and managing your website, dealing with invoicing.
Dealing with your vendors to make sure you're getting the supplies you need
from your adult beverages through to things like uniforms
and making sure your seats don't fall apart when people sit down in them.
So the infrastructure piece of it keeps me pretty business on top of running the boat.
On a day to day basis, in season -- I have a seasonal business so we are up
and running taking people for sales from the end of April to the end of October.
So it's a six month season.
Because it's a short season I have to make a years' worth of revenue in six months.
I work seven days a week straight.
The only time I get off during that period are either
when we don't have any bookings or when it rains.
That means that I can't schedule anything
because I never know when the phones going to ring.
It could be 9 o'clock in the morning, 9:30, the phone rings we're sailing
at 10 o'clock when I wasn't scheduled earlier.
So it leaves you no personal life for six months at all.
It is six months of 13-hour days.
It is four and a half months of eight to 10 hour days and then I get six weeks of respite.