By Marianna Long
You’re never too old, age is just a number! Having spent over 20 years working in hotels and hospitality, with my final role being General manager, I left the UK aged 40 and joined my partner in Tenerife to work for a sailing school.
At the age of 42 my partner, Mark and I came to Palma in October looking to gain employment on a superyacht, him on deck and me on the interior. We knew nothing about how the industry worked and so we dock walked every day including Sundays! One Sunday morning we met someone who didn’t know of any deck jobs but knew of a chefs position coming available. What luck! Mark, is a professionally trained chef and so his journey within the industry began at the age of 44.
I wasn’t so lucky initially and went to run a ski-hotel on behalf of TUI in Cervinia, Italy. I returned to Palma and landed my first position as a sole stewardess on a 30m Swan. And so my yachting career began, and, after having worked my way up from sole stew to chief stew on both motor and sail, my yachting career ended in 2019 at the age of 52 Mark and I now run a private villa in Son Vida , which is like running a 60m Motor Yacht with two crew. We decided to go land-based in order to have a more stable lifestyle and to get more involved with activites in the surrounding area. Since 2019 I have been playing netball with a local group of girls comprising of locals, ex-yachties and yachties. In the last couple of season I have been more involved in helping promote the netball club and even took my Level 1 Coaching Qualification. On a chance holiday meeting poolside at a hotel in Dubai, I met a lovely lady called Tina, who is involved in running, Walis Netball Team Caernarfon, Wales. From this chance meeting and talk of netball at the Commonwealth Games, a plan was hatched for Tina’s club to come and play us here in Mallorca . To be honest this was a bit daunting as on some occasions we struggle to get 10 players - you need 7 minimum for a team. Last June we even welcomed male players in order to have an acceptable number to play - well they have mixed teams in Australia & New Zealand so why not Mallorca?! And boy did they add another dimension to the speed of the game !! Myself & Lisa Cull have really being promoting the club over the past few months and we regularly have 14 players attending, still a mixture of local, yachties (who are based here for the winter) and ex-yachties like myself who are looking to make new friends and keep fit. We play from September to June and are always looking to welcome new players Amazingly we had 2 teams to play the Welsh team with the match taking place at Palau d’esports, Melanie Costa, Calvia on Sunday October 30th, 2022 followed by a lunch at Bar Nou, Es Capdella. It was such a thrill to have another team to play and learn from.
A mini tournament should have taken place in May 2020 but was cancelled due to the C-word, but we are hoping to do something similar in the future with teams from the UK. We are totally self funded so please contact us if you’d like to get involved.After all you’re never too old …
The score? Well, that’s just a number too! We train every Tuesday 19.30-21.00 at Palau d’esports, Melanie Costa, Calvia Calvia Netball Club FB group