Edition: U.S. / Global

Habitats/Aboard the 115-Foot Symphony, at Chelsea Piers; For a Megayacht's Crew, Life Is Simply Swell

Published: September 7, 2003

SYMPHONY, a gleaming white 115-foot power boat, spends six months each year, from May to October, at Pier 60, smack in the middle of the Chelsea Piers sports complex between the West Side Highway and the Hudson River.

Despite her length, Symphony is dwarfed by the golf range at her bow to the south, and the two-story athletic center behind her to the north. Though a few commercial boats -- like the Star of America, on which you can tour the Hudson, or Highlander, owned by Forbes and used for corporate events, keep her company along the austere concrete docks -- Symphony is the only private yacht with a live-on crew on a seasonal slip here, said Scott Seisler, marina manager at Surfside 3, the pier's private marina.

The boat's owner, the 43-year-old owner of a hedge fund company, pays about $12,000 a month, Mr. Seisler said. The arrangement gives the crew of seven an unusual glimpse of Manhattan, from a unique perch.

On a recent Wednesday morning, Symphony's galley was overflowing with D'Agostino bags, the competing scents of just-baked chocolate chip cookies and just-grilled chicken breasts, and the hysterical barkings of Gus, a 4-month-old Yorkshire terrier. Gus, who belongs to the owner, had been released from a Pack 'n Play crib in the teak-paneled and fawn-colored velvet main saloon. The boat's crew appeared and disappeared seamlessly, like the cast of a Broadway musical well into a successful run.

''Living aboard is definitely a science project,'' said Leslie Allen, 45, an ebullient dive master from California who works as the boat's head stewardess, a kind of house manager, host and waiter rolled into one. A tiny powerhouse, Ms. Allen scooped up the dog, unloaded the shopping bags and folded a dryer's full of laundry, somehow all at the same time.

She and her husband, Andrew Deas, 44, a genial Australian and the boat's engineer, occupy a nine-by-six-foot double cabin, just a pillow's throw from the boat's three other crew cabins below the galley. ''But I don't know how we all survived that first year,'' she said, ''or why we're still together. Just luck, I guess -- luck, tenacity and a lot of experience.''

Two summers ago, Symphony's owner, who gave permission for his crew to be interviewed on condition that he not be identified, was a bachelor, courting his current wife and enjoying his brand new boat. (Today, Symphony's market value is just under $10 million.) ''I learned quickly if he said dinner for 40, to make it 80,'' said Pamela Carter, the boat's chef and a charter veteran who nonetheless said she had learned more that summer than her entire 10 years in the business.

The son of a New York City detective, and himself a graduate of the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, N.Y., the owner is unburdened by ''Upstairs, Downstairs'' issues. The crew adored him, but the lifestyle wore them down.

''We'd pull into the dock and he'd say, 'C'mon back for a beer,' and we'd be up till 4 a.m. drinking,'' said Kevin Smart, 33, the boat's captain. ''And then we're up again at 6 for work. Of course, he was up at 5:30.''

That summer, Symphony played host to dinner cruises four of five nights each week, and spent the weekends up and down the Eastern Seaboard -- in the Hamptons, Newport R.I., and Nantucket, Mass. (It's eight hours from Manhattan to the Hamptons under power; a trip to Nantucket takes 14.) An on-board scrapbook tells the story in pictures, with a title for each spread: ''A Night With the Rockettes''; ''Joan Collins Night''; ''Night of the Hedge Fund Women''; ''Night of the Wet Hedge Fund Women.''

''The guests liked to jump off the boat a lot,'' Mr. Smart explained.

Symphony was at North Cove, by the World Financial Center, on Sept. 11, 2001. Pictures of that morning are a jarring counterpoint to the revelries of the rest of that summer.

Back home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where the crew and boat spend each winter, Mr. Smart trained himself to stay up until 2 a.m. by watching television each night. But the boss was married the next summer and the new family was in bed by 10. Mr. Smart found himself alone on his new schedule. ''This year, we're synchronized,'' he said.

And this year, the most disruptive elements of pier life are the wakes from the high-speed ferries that run from 34th Street down to the tip of Manhattan. ''Before 9/11, during rush hour you'd see four or five ferries,'' said Mr. Seisler, the marina manager. ''But afterward, since the PATH line has been shut down down there, you're seeing 15 or 20.''

The other day, Ms. Carter was preparing for a large dinner party; there was boiling water on the stove, and an enormous tray of ribs on a counter. She felt the kick of the wake and made a calculation: ''Do I want boiling water all over me, or do I want to save the ribs?'' she said. The ribs lost.

''We roll up to 15 degrees, and the waves can reach four feet,'' Mr. Smart said, and pop the thick fenders that buffer the ship from the dock. ''We're going through one or two fenders a month, when normally you'd have them for years, and two sets of lines a season, when one set should last four or five years. They shower us pretty good.''

CAPTAINS like Mr. Smart, who graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a degree in naval architecture and served five years in the Navy, are paid up to $1,000 a foot yearly to run what are known in the business as megayachts, which means any boat over 80 feet. Last year, Mr. Smart made $100,000, plus a bonus, typically 50 percent of his salary.

The rest of the crew enjoys a similar arrangement, and each year their salaries are raised about 10 percent. ''The reason we're still all together is not that I'm such a great guy,'' Mr. Smart said. ''It's that the owner is very generous.''

The crew steels itself for its six months on board -- each one, except the new stewardess/mate, Amy Burdick, lives on shore back in Florida. With a common space -- that galley -- smaller than one guest stateroom, they've developed protective strategies and certain rules of etiquette. If Ms. Carter is working hard on a dinner and Mr. Deas and Mr. Smart are off watch, they'll put headsets on to watch the television set that sits above the banquette in the galley.

If Ms. Carter needs them, they'll tend bar or serve. If it's Sunday and it's 1 p.m., Mr. Smart has carte blanche to watch the Dolphins play. When someone has an hour free, he or she will escape into the sports complex that surrounds them.

If there's a spat, Mr. Smart said, it blows over fast, like a swiftly moving weather system. ''We can't afford not to get along,'' he said.

New York beckons, and the crew will venture out, as a crew. Their schedules don't offer any chinks for new friends. ''If you're free and you ask me to dinner, by the time I'm free, you're not available any more,'' said Ms. Carter, who is hoarding her spare time to work her way through the current canon of chef's cookbooks and their restaurants -- Thomas Keller, Mario Batali, Daniel Boulud. She visited Mr. Batali's Babbo the other night; she'd been waiting for weeks to go.

Mr. Smart has bought a house in Fort Lauderdale, on the New River, and dreams of fishing year round off his own boat, Reel Smart, which is sitting in the yard behind that new house. Symphony's owner, however, has other plans. He's looking for a boat twice the size.

Photos: The Symphony, and part of the crew's living quarters.; The crew of the Symphony (left to right): Gene Loper, Amy Burdick, Capt. Kevin Smart, Peter Shulik, Pamela Carter, Andrew Deas and Leslie Allen. They spend six months a year, from May to October, working and living in close quarters on the 115-foot yacht. (Photographs by Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)