5 important rules to professionally jump ship!
Yacht crew are adventurous, brave people per definition. Otherwise they would never think of packing their bags to go and work in a foreign country on a ship that sails the high seas, manned by people they don’t know and have various nationalities. Therefore security, certainty, predictability don’t have the highest ranking on their list of needs. At the same time, most crew contracts -even long term- aren’t very different from a freelance contract. Rarely are pension schemes or unemployment benefits offered, and when they are -as I have witnessed- they are rarely of interest for yacht crew. So apart from their month to month pay, there is very little tying them down or stopping them from leaving. With very basic to non-existing severance packages, there is also very little to stop employers and owners from letting crew go. The only leverage that seems to be used in both directions is reputation. Some yachts / owners have managed to build a bad reputation. Many crew have done the same for themselves unfortunately. And as I will repeat further in this article: There are some crew out there who are truly excellent on the job, but really blunder when it comes […]