Shoes orff

How many crewmen and women toil on the superyachts? There is serious work to be done keeping such palaces spick and span, especially in the hyper-saline Mediterranean. Some of the websites devoted to such monstrosities brag how big the ships' complements are. But there is an easier way to check this out. The ships, by and large, boast immaculate teak decking, washed down with scarce and expensive fresh water and holystoned every day. For this reason, the crew (but not the owners or their stiletto heeled floozies) remove their shoes before boarding, leaving a pile of abandoned footwear as if at the cloakroom of a mosque. I haven't counted the number of shoes here, or divided them by two (assuming that the sailors are bipeds, and not Long John Silvers), but it gives an idea of just how many people are on the payroll of a fairly medium sized yacht.