The first time we saw Patrik Dahlgren, he was walking beside an 11-year-old boy doing laps on the deck of the Navigator of the Seas. The boy could have been his son, because they appeared to be the right number of years apart, but he wasn't. He was a boy who had volunteered to help raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and the man beside him was simply leading the way.
It turns out that Patrik Dahlgren is accustomed to leading the way. We were told he was 
the Navigator's captain. He is the youngest cruise-ship captain in the world.
"I started when I was 12," he says with a chuckle.
If Patrik Dahlgren had a grey hair for every time he's been told he looks too young to be the captain of a cruise ship, he'd look 90. At least. He gets a lot of photo-ops, and a lot of questions, like this one:
"Shouldn't you be driving?"
For the record, Captain Dahlgren is 35. Not only that, he has been the youngest captain in the world for almost four years.
He didn't start working on ships when he was 12, he started when he was 15, scrubbing decks on a cargo ship and between then and joining Royal Caribbean in 1999, he also worked in the pump room on a tanker and a yacht in the south of France.
Actually, it was his sister who got him the job in France, where she worked for Larry Ellison, one of the six richest men in the world…although it's hard to imagine with his energy and personality why anybody WOULDN'T hire Dahlgren.
"It helped me to get my MBA," he says.
He didn't go from working on a yacht to captaining a cruise ship, of course. His first position with Royal Caribbean was as a chief officer, on Grandeur of the Seas. That was 11 years and six ships ago. He is the only Royal Caribbean captain under the age of 50, and it's natural to have eyes for the flagships, the Oasis and the Allure.
"I would love it," says Dahlgren. "The Oasis is a whole country. But I'm happy no matter what ship I'm on."
Originally from Sweden, he lives now in London. Many of the customers he encounters on the Navigator and other Royal Caribbean ships would be disappointed to know this party of his story: He's engaged.
Even if he barely looks old enough!