Elizabeth Evans has rubbed elbows with some celebrities.

These days she can usually be found at the East Boothbay General Store, at least during the summer.

She owns the store, and lives in East Boothbay too.

But she wasn't always such a homebody. Until around 10 years ago, she wouldn't have been so easy to pin down.

You've heard of army brats. Evans was what some might call a boat brat. Except it wasn't her parents dragging her from port to port. It was the owners of big yachts, mostly rich, some famous. And they weren't exactly dragging her. She went willingly.

Take Jimmy Buffett. She was the private chef for him and his wife on his 98-footer for a year and a half.

Evans has lots of boat stories, thanks to the 10 years or so she worked on yachts, from Florida and the Caribbean to the Mediterranean.

During her childhood, Evans' family moved around a lot. She lived in New York, Atlanta, Georgia, Connecticut and London, England. But she said East Boothbay was their “home base.”

Coming from what she called a food-centric family, she said they cooked a lot of “foodie stuff” and when they went out to eat they’d try to recreate things.

In her teens, Evans worked in several local venues, including Cabbage Island Clambakes, and her own catering business.

And she said she had a “real” job in Boston for a while, for a chain picture-framing company. She left that job when she was 27 and came back to East Boothbay. Then she made a big decision.

She said she had always wanted to work on boats, and had worked as a deck hand on the Islander in Boothbay Harbor for David Walker during summers.

“So I took all my money from my 401K and packed up my old Volvo station wagon with a couple pillows and a blanket and summer clothes, and headed to Florida.”

She quickly learned that the boat owners weren't looking for 27-year-old, “somewhat chunky” deckhands. “They were looking for blonde, Adonis-like men,” she said.

So she found odd jobs working on docks in Fort Lauderdale, and met a captain who saw her potential. “He said, 'Lizzie, we've gotta find a job for you. You're a great worker.'” The owner of the boat the captain worked on had just bought a 120-foot boat. He needed a chef. He asked her if she could cook.

“I said, ‘yeah, I can cook,’” she said. He told her to put a sample menu together with several days’ worth of fancy food with wine pairings. The owner, a woman in her 70s with a 35-year-old boyfriend, loved the menu.

“I kind of lied my way into my first job. Talk about fake it till you make it.”

Evans said that job turned into a major full-time job, and she thrived at it. “There was no budget. I could buy any food I wanted to buy. I'd buy something I'd never cooked before, and I'd buy double. I'd test one on the crew and if they liked it I'd cook it for the owner and guests.”

She stayed with that boat for a couple years, then took on few short-term jobs as a relief chef. After around five years of working on boats, Evans decided it was time for a break, so she came back to East Boothbay again and started looking for a ‘real’ job. On land.

One day the phone rang. “A friend said, 'Lizzie, I just did a relief stint on Jimmy Buffett's boat, and he's looking for a permanent chef.’” Her friend told her she had given Buffett her name and she should be getting a call.

A few days later, a man named Spider Andreson called. He was the manager of all Buffett's boats — a few sailboats, and a sport fishing boat. She flew to a boatyard near Fort Lauderdale, where the boat, a 98-foot Choi Lee called Useless Drifter, was in the midst of repairs. She and Andreson hit it off and she was offered the job. Come to find out Andreson had a friend in Boothbay Harbor, Barry Gibson, who gave her a big thumbs up, in a roundabout way. Evans said she didn't know Gibson at the time, but he knew Sally Bullard, and Bullard knew Evans.

She packed up again and headed back to the life she knew and loved.

Evans said the boat was used mainly for day trips with the Buffetts and friends.

“I'd get a call in the morning from Mrs. B's assistant saying, 'You'll be having eight people for lunch and they'll be there in a half-hour.’” She also stepped in for their house chef in Sag Harbor when he took vacations. “I did a double duty for the Buffetts,” she said.

Evans said Jimmy Buffett was very nice. As for his music? “To this day I have never seen him in concert,” she said. And she never drank margaritas on the boat. “We did keep tequila on the boat though.”

Buffett wasn't a partier. “One day I said to him, 'Mr. B, you're not nearly as wild as I thought you'd be. He said, 'Lizzie, if I kept living like I did in the ’70s I'd be dead by now.'”

Evans said she never knew who might show up during her year and a half stint on Buffett's boat. One day it was Jon Bon Jovi and his wife and kids.

Another time, a friend of Buffett's wife came for a visit. The friend brought her husband along. His name was Richard Gere. Yes, that Richard Gere.

“He was absolutely lovely,” she said. 

“We sailed to a cove and had lunch, and he was tired from traveling. He took cushions up to the fore deck in a shady spot and laid down for a nap.” Evans said she looked through one of the portholes and there was Richard Gere curled up, sound asleep. “His white linen shirt was being kind of fluffed up by the wind, and he just looked so, well, normal,” she said. She didn't take a picture.

She said after lunch, Gere came into the galley to tell her how much he liked the lunch she had prepared. “I was trying to be blasé and act like it was normal for Richard Gere to be standing there thanking me.”

A while later he went swimming off the boat. Evans said a deckhand asked her to take a towel to him. She was more than happy to do it.

Evans has become an official landlubber now, with her East Boothbay General Store going strong for 10 years. She has two young daughters, and probably won’t be taking another job on a yacht sailing around the Caribbean or the Mediterranean anytime soon, but you never know what opportunity might present itself when she least expects it.

Once that boating life gets in your blood, it’s pretty hard to shake it.