How to get a job on a superyacht with no experience.

Almost everyone in yachting started exactly where you are now: no experience, no references, and no real idea how it works. I was the same. In 2018 I turned up in Antibes knowing nobody, walked the docks every morning, and slowly built it into eight years at sea and an officer's role by 2023. None of it required connections or money. It required being in the right place, with the right paperwork, and the right attitude.

Here is the whole thing, in the order it actually happens.

Step one: get your two certificates first

Before you book a flight anywhere, sort the two pieces of paper that everyone will ask for:

1. STCW Basic Safety Training. A four-day safety course covering survival, firefighting, first aid and personal safety at sea. Valid for five years. No commercial yacht will take you without it.
2. ENG1 seafarer medical. A fitness-for-sea medical from an MCA-approved doctor. Valid for two years. Quick to do, and every captain and agency wants to see it.

That is the entry ticket. You can read the detail in our guide to getting your STCW, and you can compare course dates and prices in the YachtSync training directory. If you are deck crew planning to drive tenders, a Powerboat Level 2 is the next most useful thing to add.

Step two: be in the right place at the right time

This is the part most people get wrong. You cannot break into yachting from your sofa. You have to physically be where the yachts are, during the window when they are crewing up.

Antibes, France

Port Vauban in Antibes is the heart of the Mediterranean fleet and the classic place to start. The crew houses, the agencies and the daywork are all here. This is where I started, and it is still where I would tell anyone to go first for the Med season.

Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Palma is the other major Mediterranean hub, with a huge number of yachts wintering and refitting there. It comes alive around the Palma Superyacht Show in late April and early May. Plenty of crew base themselves here instead of, or alongside, Antibes.

Fort Lauderdale, USA

Fort Lauderdale is the gateway to the Caribbean and US season. If you are chasing winter work rather than the Mediterranean summer, this is where to be. Bear in mind the visa situation for the US is stricter, so check what you are allowed to do before you book anything.

Season timing

Timing beats almost everything else. For the Mediterranean, aim to arrive between March and May, before the summer season kicks off, so you are around while boats are still building their crew. For Fort Lauderdale, the busy crewing window is roughly October to November as yachts head south. Arrive with the season, not after it has already sailed.

Step three: dockwalking and daywork

Dockwalking means walking the marina, boat by boat, introducing yourself to crew and captains and asking whether they need a hand. It feels awkward the first morning. By the third you stop noticing. It remains one of the most reliable ways green crew get a start, because it puts a face to your CV.

A few things that worked for me and still hold true:

• Go early. Crews start work early. Be on the dock by 8am, not lunchtime.
• Look the part. Smart, plain, clean. Polo shirt and shorts in season. You are showing them you would be presentable on their boat.
• Ask for daywork, not a job. A single day helping with a wash down or a provisioning run is far easier for a busy boat to say yes to than a permanent hire.
• Carry printed CVs and have your certs on your phone. If a mate likes you, they may want to see your STCW and ENG1 right there.
• Be reliable and be normal. Turn up when you say you will, work hard, do not be weird. That is genuinely most of it.

Daywork is the bridge. Most green crew do not get hired straight off the dock. They get a day here and a day there, and one of those days turns into "can you come back tomorrow", which turns into a few weeks, which turns into a season. Read our dedicated guide to dockwalking in Antibes and Palma for how to actually do it well.

Step four: register with crew agencies

Alongside dockwalking, register with the crew agencies. They place crew with captains and management companies, and registering is free. While you are knocking on boats in the morning, the agencies are working in the background and may call you about a position you would never have found on the dock.

Walk into their offices in person where you can rather than just emailing. Be polite, be organised, and have a clean CV and your certificates ready. We cover exactly how to do this in our guide to registering with yacht crew agencies.

Step five: build a CV with no sea time

The classic green crew worry is "I have no experience, so what goes on the CV?" Plenty, actually. A yacht CV with no sea time leans on everything else you have done that proves you can graft and live alongside people:

• Any hands-on or physical work such as hospitality, bar and restaurant, construction, landscaping or watersports.
• Customer-facing roles that show you can deal with people and stay calm under pressure.
• Your certificates, listed clearly with issue and expiry dates.
• Any daywork the moment you start picking it up, even a single day, with the boat name and what you did.

Keep it to one page, with a professional photo and a clean layout. Our guide to writing a yacht CV walks through the exact structure captains and agents expect.

What captains actually want from green crew

Here is the thing nobody tells you clearly enough. When a captain takes on green crew, they are not buying experience, because you do not have any. They are buying character. Every captain I worked under wanted the same handful of things:

• Show up early and never need chasing.
• Listen, do the job, then ask for the next one.
• Stay calm. A boat is a small, intense space. Drama is the fastest way off it.
• Be easy to live with. You are sharing a cabin and every meal with these people for months.
• Keep your paperwork tidy. Crew who lose certs or let them expire create problems, and captains remember it.

You can learn to coil a line or polish stainless in a day. You cannot fake being reliable and easy to work with. That is what gets the green crew member kept on when the daywork ends.

Where this leads

Your first season is about getting a reference, learning the reality of life on board, and building a network. After that the path opens up properly. Deck, interior, galley, engineering and ETO all have their own ladders with their own certificates and sea-time steps. You can see the whole picture in our yacht crew career pathways, which maps every role from green crew upward.

I went from dockwalking in 2018 to officer by 2023. None of it was luck. It was turning up, doing the work, and keeping my paperwork in order so I was always ready when an opportunity appeared. You can do the same.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides: How to write a yacht CV → · How to register with yacht crew agencies → · Dockwalking in Antibes and Palma → · How to get your STCW →