When you first step on board as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed greenie or even as a seasoned yachtie, it’s an exhilarating time, regardless of where you are in your career. You’re stood at the paserelle thinking, ‘Am I going to love this boat and am I going to get on with everyone?’. 

Career progression matters, of course. But let’s be real, your biggest hope is that you’ll be living with a decent bunch of humans. Because unlike a normal job, your crew are your roommates, social circle, therapists and sometimes drinking buddies. You don’t clock out and go home. You are home. With them. All the time.

Which brings us to hiring.

Let’s take a look at what goes into the hiring process (depending on captain). You need to hire, let’s say, a deckhand. The options out there are massive with such a saturated industry, all of whom claim to be “hardworking, drama-free with high attention to detail”. You take to social media, phone your favourite recruiter and get on the Whatsapp chats. Skim over a couple of CVs you’ve received, potentially phone a friend who may have worked with them at some stage and then do an interview. If they present well on interview, and you already like their CV, then you send them the papers they need to get on board. 

Next thing you know they’re at the end of the passerelle with a duffel in hand, an illegal-sized vape and a questionable tattoo of a Pokémon that you definitely didn’t see in the crew photos.

And at first? It’s fine. Then they argue with the bosun during line handling, but who doesn’t? Tensions are part of boat life, right?

Then the whispers start.

They tried to kiss the chief stew after a couple of rosés. They pinned a deckie against the wall after a Monopoly dispute turned ugly. They’re telling jokes at the crew mess that would make Jimmy Carr cringe.

Sound familiar? That’s because every yacht has had a Dodgy Dave (with apologies to all the non-dodgy Daves.) Dave lingers a little too long. Dave thinks he works harder than everyone else. Dave once said he “misses the old days”, you know, before HR was a thing and everyone ‘knew their place’.  

Now imagine that Dave had:
• Lied about his previous experience (five months became 15)
• Faked a certificate (he just didn’t want to be discriminated against for being colour blind – totally fair, right?)
• Been dismissed from their last yacht for odd behaviour

Amelia Hilton Pierce, Operational Coordinator, CrewPass

Wouldn’t you want to know that before inviting them to live, work, sleep and share a laundry basket with your crew?

Yachting attracts all kinds of people, many of them young, ambitious and, at times, carrying baggage from life ashore. Some are running from something, others simply grew up too fast. They’ve worked hard to make it to sea, only to find themselves in international waters where the rules are murky and the protections are thin. Add in long hours, tight quarters, a dash of hierarchy, a pinch of isolation and the inevitable presence of alcohol, and you’ve got the makings of a very volatile cocktail.

I’ve been there. Here's what I’ve seen:
• Aggressive crew members screaming and throwing equipment
• A female stew barricading her door with furniture for safety
• An intoxicated crew member trying to enter someone else’s cabin, uninvited, multiple times
• Cocaine found under an officer’s bed during a routine cabin clean
• A chef with a serious alcohol problem, growing increasingly violent, in Antarctica, where no one could disembark for months
• A deckhand arrested for sexual assault while in port, jailed for four nights, then let back on board like nothing happened

This isn't fearmongering. It’s reality.

And the stats back it up. Our most recent survey concludes that:
• 82 per cent of crew have felt unsafe due to another crew member
• 71 per cent stayed silent, afraid of the professional fall-out
• 60 per cent felt genuinely in danger because of someone on board
• 73 per cent have worked with someone who misrepresented qualifications
• 67.1 per cent have experienced or witnessed sexual misconduct on board
• 86.3 per cent of crew believe the industry isn’t doing enough vetting

So why isn’t this a priority?
In a world where we have drone deliveries, AI scheduling and electric cars that drive themselves, why are we still relying on gut instinct, Facebook referrals and dodgy WhatsApp messages to hire someone who’ll be living within four feet of your toes?

We ask captains to keep up with ISM, MLC, MARPOL and so many other acronyms. We require them to risk-assess everything from a leaking tender to going up the mast. Yet, when it comes to the people we allow into our floating homes, we still hope for the best?

This isn’t about saying someone with a past mistake can’t work in yachting. People change, people grow, but context matters.

Would you want a crew member with a history of violence escorting a billionaire’s kids to the playground in Portofino? Would you be OK with someone who falsified STCW docs doing night watch in rough seas?

You can’t make good decisions without good information.

At CrewPass, we believe that vetting shouldn't be a checkbox. It should be a standard. We run thorough criminal history checks, ID checks, verify certificates, screen financial and social media histories, and we catch the Daves before they make it to the passerelle.

Because safety at sea isn’t just about lifebuoys and fire drills. It’s about who you trust to have your back when the radios go down and the seas get wild. It’s also about making sure no one ever has to wedge a chair under their cabin door handle just to feel safe.

Any views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are those of the author and are not intended to malign any particular individual or organisation and may not reflect the views, opinions, policies or positions of The Superyacht Group. 

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