Actually, the story started in 2011 when a Royal Navy engineer flew out to Thai-land and had a vision to start a school for superyacht crew. He could see Asia growing fast as a maritime destination for charter superyachts as well as for cruise and merchant shipping. The crew, he thought, could be mostly young Asians with a taste for adventure, and he would provide the training they would need.

So, he set up Galileo Yachting and got started with mainly Thai students. The school had no accreditation at that stage and taught basic steward-ess interior and deckhand skills. Phuket turned out to be a great location to attract not only local crew but quickly became known in Europe and America. Phuket is the centre of the superyacht industry in the Asia Pacific region, and superyachts were discovering the great abundance of pristine cruising grounds in the remote and beautiful areas of the Andaman Is-lands, Phuket and Phang Nga Bay, the newly opened Mergui archipelago off Myanmar, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam, etc. The opportunity was there to grow Galileo into a fine business but the key to success would be financing facilities, a full range of internationally approved courses, and a successful outcome for the Galileo graduates in getting placed on suitable yachts and cruise lines.

At this time, I was buying and developing rubber plantations, having recently taken early retirement from the public corporations that I had been managing for some 30+ years, and was living in Phuket just across the road from Galileo Yachting school. As a lifetime ocean sailor and navigator, I was fascinated by the potential for this fledgling school and soon realized that this could be my final career challenge to build a world class fully international maritime academy. The location looked obvious, right in the heart of the Asia Pacific cruising grounds, and the marine industry generally was set to grow faster here than anywhere in the world. So, I pur-chased a 50% stake in the company and a few months later purchased the remaining 50% also.

I then tried hard to interest the UK Mar-itime & Coastguard Agency (MCA) to audit my school and give us their approval and accreditation, but they first thought us to be too far away and in a region known for inadequate training standards – how would they be confident of maintaining their reputation for excellence and world leading training standards? After a year of proving to MCA that my 57own track record as CEO and President of UK, USA, Australian and Asian public listed companies over a 30-year career, together with my vision for the future of Galileo as a truly trustworthy and standards driven academy in Asia, the policy makers at MCA agreed to put us to the test with desk audits in Southamp-ton, then, if we passed that rigorous stage, a full field audit with examiners out here in Thailand. That was a very demanding and expensive process over an 18-month period and required much investment in instructor training and recruitment, training facilities that met all MCA, IMO, MNTB and ISPS requirements and criteria, and business control sys-tems proven to meet the highest security, safety and integrity standards. Eventually we passed all the au-dits and our examiners told us we were “well on our way to becoming the world’s top maritime training facility”. Asked why, the response was that we were doing things other academies were not doing so well, particularly, focusing on an interactive, engaging and practical experience that was stimulating, fun and given with dedication and enthusiasm by young expert instructors.

We were all so fired up with enthusiasm and plans for the future growth of our facilities, for expanding into a full range of courses for pro-fessional seafarers across cruise and merchant shipping, offshore oil & gas as well as superyachts. So, after three years we entered another process of re-auditing our existing 10 MCA courses and adding 10 new advanced STCW courses for MCA approvals. By mid-2017, we achieved full MCA approvals to deliver 20 STCW courses and provide Certificates of Competence to profes-sional seafarers on behalf of MCA.

In the last four years we have come a long way. We have now attracted three investors to help us finance the huge cost of equipment, facilities, school buildings, training vessels and life-boats of all types. We now have a School of Marine Engineering, an Advanced Fire Fighting School, Deep Water Survival Pool, Survival Craft and Fast Rescue Boats facility, a Medical Centre, Culinary Arts Kitchen and a Crew Residence for 30 students at a time.

Really, we can now claim to be the MCA flag-ship training facility in Asia Pacific and prob-ably the best value-for-money maritime training experience in the world. And there is so much more to come!