Kesi Irvin's summer side hustle has taken her across the world. 

The New Jersey native is paid to sample gelato in Italy, jet ski in the Mediterranean and walk through open-air markets in Croatia. 

Between June and August, Irvin, 34, works as a private chef on yachts sailing in Europe. This summer, she's been hired on five charters, each spanning one week. 

"It's been such a fun way to see the world," says Irvin, a full-time travel blogger and digital nomad.

Irvin is on track to earn more than $10,000 once the season ends — last year, she made about $15,000, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Quitting a career on Wall Street to be a digital nomad

Irvin planned to spend her career on Wall Street — not traveling the world. 

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012, she moved to New York to work as a financial analyst. 

But "there was not much work-life balance at all" working on Wall Street. "I started to really crave the life aspect," Irvin says.

In 2015, she quit her job intending to take a one-year career break to travel the world. 

That one year turned into two, then three, and now Irvin continues to live and work in different countries, taking breaks in between her travels to stay with her parents in Bluffton, South Carolina. 

She started working on yachts in 2015 to fund her adventures abroad. 

Her travel blog, "Kesi To and Fro," has 17,000 followers on Instagram and now serves as Irvin's main source of income — but for the first few years she traveled, Irvin relied on her savings and earnings from her culinary side hustle. 

Landing a yacht job with no experience

Irvin applied for her first seasonal job at Yacht Week, a company that hosts week-long sailing trips in the Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas, in 2015, a few months after being a guest on one of their charters. 

"I had zero professional cooking experience, but I said in my application that I was a great home chef and a quick learner," she says.

As luck would have it, Yacht Week had a crew member pull out of a charter one week before departure — and called Irvin to fill in. 

She worked as a charter host, planning and cooking meals, cleaning the kitchen and entertaining the 10 guests aboard. On most charters, Irvin says she's working in a two-person crew: It's her and a skipper, who captains and operates the boat.

That first job quickly led to other opportunities: Irvin says guests recommended her to their yacht-owning friends, and the other crew members at Yacht Week introduced her to Facebook groups and online job boards for seasonal boat jobs.

'It's nothing like 'Below Deck'

Irvin continues to work as a yacht chef with Yacht Week, The BucketLust and other private yacht charter companies during the summer months. 

She follows the same routine for most charters, waking up at 7 a.m. and working from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. every day. 

Preparing meals for a large group in a tight boat kitchen requires a lot of "creativity, patience, and thinking on your feet," says Irvin. 

For some trips, they're docking in a new city every day, so she can find a local bakery, grocery store or farmer's market and buy fresh fruit, meat and fish. But on other charters, she has to purchase all the ingredients and supplies she needs for the week on the first morning. 

In those instances, Irvin says she will freeze meats to give them a longer shelf life and use more non-perishable foods like pasta and rice as boats have limited fridge and pantry space.

Some of the most popular meals she's made for guests, she says, include tuna poke bowls and brunch spreads of pancakes, eggs and bacon paired with a bloody mary bar.

In the afternoons and evenings, Irvin says she will explore whatever city they're docked in, whether it's by renting a moped or grabbing coffee at a local café.

Irvin is often asked if her job is similar to that of the crew on "Below Deck," a Bravo reality series that chronicles the lives of the crew members who work on a superyacht. 

"It's nothing like 'Below Deck,'" she says. "We're not working 24-7 or siloed from the guests, it's more relaxed, we're encouraged to fraternize with them and make sure they have a positive experience."

The finances of being a digital nomad

Irvin says working on yachts has been a "nice complement" to her full-time job.

As a travel blogger, Irvin has multiple streams of income including group trips she organizes and hosts; paid travel writing; affiliate marketing, brand collaborations and ad revenue from her website. Those different income streams can earn Irvin anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 a year, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

But earning a decent, reliable income as a content creator can be a slog, she adds. "It's nice to have a consistent, secure job to fall back on," Irvin says of her culinary side hustle. "And I have zero expenses when I'm working on the yacht, so I'm saving money while I'm earning."

If you want to get paid while traveling the world and are half-decent in the kitchen, the gig "couldn't be an easier sell," says Irvin. "You get to live on a boat, catch a nice tan, make friends from different countries … it might be tiring, but it's not a hard job once you get the hang of it."

Disclosure: Bravo is owned by NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.

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