Yachts need the right staff, made of the right stuff, to ensure a happy ship. The wrong superyacht crew will transform your precious days at sea from the grandest holiday money can buy into the world’s most expensive purgatory. You’re trapped. And you’re paying for it. So while it might be more tempting to ponder the marble top for your sundeck bar, it’s also worth learning a little about how to find the right crew – and how to remedy the situation if you end up with the wrong ones. Or you might spend more time than you’d intended at that bar.
Finding the perfect yacht is one thing. Finding the perfect crew is the next step.
A bad boat with a good crew is a fun time. A great boat with a bad crew is misery.
For a small vessel, about 50 to 80 feet with room for eight guests, an owner would need two to four crew members. Mega yachts, like a 236-foot Serenity, may have up to 30 crew members. The biggest yachts may have a staff of 60 to 80 people.
The biggest yachts will have a deck crew, which includes the captain, officers, deckhands and other positions; the interior crew (butlers, stewardesses and other service-oriented staff); engineers; and a chef and galley crew. There is often also a land-based team, which helps with finances and logistics of running the yacht.
The most important hire is the captain, according to the experts. He or she will lead the team and set the tone for the boat.
A close second may be the chef; the culinary experience must be top notch on numerous levels to keep the peace at sea.
When the weather is bad, the only thing to do is pray there’s a good chef on board. In that case, the interior crew may put on a swanky party on the yacht, but it’s only as good as the amuse-bouche coming from the galley.
The chef also needs to be creative and capable of cooking different type of cuisine, including gluten free, vegan, kosher and others.
It’s also important for the chef and captain to get along reasonably well. In fact, it’s vital to the success of the yacht that all the crew get along.
Living on a yacht in close community is not an easy thing to do. Crew members have to get on with their ‘new family’ and live in close quarters with long hours and very little privacy.
Employers should look for people with a can-do attitude and a smile. It’s also important that they be flexible, friendly and discreet.
Since the clients will spend a lot of time with the crew on board, some of them will expect the crew to be outgoing, and some clients would prefer to deal with a barely noticeable crew. [The crew] must be sensitive to this and flexible, understanding the boundaries to be crossed and not. Friendly but discreet.
Finding Staff
There are three ways to crew a yacht. One is by referral. Other yacht owners may have a captain or chef to recommend, it’s sometimes the easiest; it’s not always the most reliable.
The key is to understand what kind of experience the potential crew member has. There’s an enormous difference between crewing a sport-fishing boat and a 130- to 140-foot yacht.
There are also resume-hosting services for yacht staff. Potential employees post resumes; an employer searches the database for the positions he or she is looking to fill. The DIY process is time intensive, but less expensive than using a recruitment service.
These services vet all potential crew members, checking references and acting as a matchmaker of sorts between yacht owners and the crew.
Personality is huge in choosing crews that will work well together.
Training is also a big part of hiring a crew. That includes safety training for everyone, regardless of position, which is required in international waters. Recruitment services make sure their members are up to date with these requirements.
The cost of the crew is about 35% to 40% of operating costs of the entire yacht. That includes salaries, training, transportation and basic essentials, as well as any special uniforms or accessories that may be required by the yacht owner.
And lest anyone be tempted to only crew the yacht when it’s being used, experts said it can’t be done. It’s possible to do without the interior staff if there are no guests aboard, but if the yacht is in the water, the deck and engineering crew must stay with it. They need constant maintenance not only to protect bespoke wood finishes and marble in-lays, but also to make sure the boat itself doesn’t rot in the corrosive salt water.
The worst thing to do is fire the crew, the boat will be gone.
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