The Super Yacht industry has a great deal to offer the individual looking for an exciting gap year. Excellent earning potential, exciting adventures, global travel and a whole lot more. In fact, many find it impossible to leave and a gap year often turns into a lucrative career.

There are a range of different positions available, from the level entry to the highly skilled and experienced. At the entry level, most people enter the industry as stewards or stewardesses and deck hands, but you’ll also find positions for engineers and chefs. As you move up the skills ladder you’ll find chief stewards/stewardesses, bo’suns, third, second and first officers and then Captains.

Being female doesn’t necessarily dictate that you are a stewardess just like being male wont automatically make you a deck hand! Focus on what you enjoy when you make the decision as to the skills or qualifications you want to obtain. There are plenty of male stewards working on the interior of the boat, and more than a few females working as deck hands!

As a Deckhand you may spend countless hours polishing already clean windows, buffing already sparkling chrome work. Stewards and stewardesses will work long hours on those late night parties with little or no sleep, then spend much of the following day getting the yacht back to sparkling condition whilst serving endless hangover cures to guests. Engineers will miraculously fix the leaking fridge, mend the grumbling air con, and take care of the boats general mechanical condition. And of course, as a chef you’ll be serving three course gourmet meals for crew at the same time as preparing canapés for twelve guests, and all while mixing a round of milkshakes for the owners children!

The professional yachting industry is on the brink of many far reaching changes, many more yachts, new regulations with new educational standards are being introduced. Lots of new and bigger yachts, needing lots of crew, crew who can meet this new challenge. Could this be you?

The world really is your oyster when it comes to working on a Super Yacht. In a single year you could for example visit the Caribbean, The Bahamas, followed by the East Coast of America, do two Atlantic crossings, visit the Norwegian Fjords, Sweden, the north of Germany, as well as the entire Mediterranean from Gibraltar to the hidden niches in Croatia. Now doesn’t that sound like traveling!?

You will find the Mediterranean (France, Italy, Greece, Turkey etc) season starting around late March at the earliest and lasting sometimes until as late as November though it usually starts to wind down from the end of September through October. Once the Med season has come to an end you can drift over to the Caribbean for the winter season since it begins in October and lasts until April/May. Much will depend on the weather reports, political situations etc as to when the yachts actually leave their respective regions at the end of each season.  

It is possible to join a yacht for one season to begin with (summer or winter) and then stay on for the next season and the season after that and so on. It’s certainly something that’s hard to give up! Whether you stay on the same boat from one season to the next is up to you and to your captain. Some crew will have been in the business for up to fifteen years and the longest that they have ever stayed on the same yacht may have been as little as eighteen months. Whilst on the other hand, there are crew that have stayed on the same vessel or with the same owner ever since they started in the industry.