Your First 90 Days On Board: The Unwritten Rules Nobody Briefs You On

You can arrive with every certificate and still not last a season. The industry runs on a culture that is rarely explained and always enforced.

The chain of command is real

You report to one person. On deck, that is the bosun, who reports to the mate, who reports to the captain. In interior, that is the second or chief stew. Going over someone''s head — even politely, even with a good idea — is read as a challenge. If your bosun''s answer is wrong, do it their way and raise it later, privately.

The cabin is not yours

You will share a cabin roughly the size of a small bathroom with someone on a different watch.

• Headphones always, from the first day
• Your gear in your locker, never on their bunk
• Quiet when they are sleeping, including drawers and doors
• Shower short; the watermaker is not infinite
• Your smell is a shared problem: kit dries in the crew laundry, not the cabin

Phones and photographs

Assume the strictest interpretation:

• No photos with the yacht, its name, its interior, or its guests visible
• No location tagging in marinas
• Nothing on social media about who is aboard, where you are heading, or what happened
• Phones away in guest areas, always

The mess has rules

The crew mess is the only genuinely shared space. Clean your plate immediately. Do not take the last of anything without saying so. Do not sit in the chief engineer''s seat — yes, that is a real thing on most boats. Do not bring department politics to the table.

"Yes, and then ask"

Green crew ask too many questions before starting and too few before finishing. The reliable pattern is: acknowledge the instruction, begin, and ask your clarifying question within the first two minutes — not fifteen minutes in, and not after you have done it wrong.

Hours are not what you were told

During a charter, 15-hour days are normal. The Maritime Labour Convention sets minimum rest requirements — broadly, at least 10 hours of rest in any 24-hour period and 77 hours in any seven days, with limits on how rest may be split — and those hours must be recorded. Know the rule, keep your own record, and understand that a busy season legitimately looks intense while still being compliant. A yacht that systematically ignores rest hours is a yacht to leave.

The day off is not a day off

Your first "day off" in a marina will often start with a wash-down. Take the rest when it is genuinely offered, do not ask when the next one is, and never be the person visibly counting.

Alcohol

The single most common reason green crew are let go. Most yachts operate a zero-tolerance policy aboard, and many extend it to being ashore before a work day. Being visibly hungover at 07:00 is a decision about your career, not your evening.

Money in the first 90 days

Your first salary may arrive a month late while payroll is set up. Arrive with a buffer, open an account that handles euros and dollars without punitive fees, and do not commit to spending before the second payment lands.

What good looks like at day 90

• You are trusted with a task list without supervision
• You have learned every crew member''s name and department
• You have asked for one piece of specific feedback and acted on it
• You have a written reference request in mind for the end of the season

What we do with this

Every crew member we place gets an onboarding call before the first contract, covering exactly this: the culture, the hours, the money, and the first conversation with your bosun or chief stew.

Source: Maritime Labour Convention 2006, Standard A2.3 (hours of work and hours of rest).