Warning the industry for my seatbelt alarm!
Now I for one am not a fan of red tape and regulations, what I do like, however, is structure. I dare to say that structure is the one thing our industry is lacking. It starts with education and the legal requirements. Compared to industries such as aviation, the level of required training is extremely low. Anybody who claims to have sailed 2500nm can enrol in a yachtmaster course and two weeks later is entitled to captain a yacht up to 200 Tons. TWO HUNDRED TONS!!! That’s a big boat! Of course common sense applied by owners, management companies and insurers makes it a little harder for a fresh YM to take command of such a titan, but still, the thought… These qualifications are definitely valuable and necessary but by far not enough to prep someone to master a yacht as a professional. Then there’s the competition between the different schools, mostly franchises of the same company. But how is it even possible that they have different prices? How is it allowed that there are two franchises of the same company in the same street? Even McDonalds doesn’t allow that, and if they did, they would provide the exact same prices […]