How to write a yacht CV.

Your CV is usually the first thing a captain or crew agent sees of you, often before they ever meet you on the dock. A yacht CV does not look like a normal employment CV. It is shorter, it has a photo, and it puts your certificates where everyone can see them. Get the shape right and you give yourself the best possible chance of a callback. Get it wrong and you get binned in seconds, no matter how good you are in person.

The golden rule: one page

A yacht CV is one page. That is not a guideline, it is the norm across the industry. Captains and agents skim through stacks of these, so everything that matters has to fit on a single, clean page. If yours runs to two, it usually means you have not learned to cut, and that is exactly the wrong first impression. Tight and clear beats long and thorough.

The recruiters say the same. Bluewater's advice to green crew is to aim for one page, and Wilsonhalligan notes that some of the best CVs from captains with 20 years of experience are still one page and not overcrowded. If a captain can fit two decades on a page, you can fit one season of ambition on it.

The layout, drawn out

Most green crew CVs fail on layout before anyone reads a word, because they follow the land format: no photo, a long personal statement, land jobs at the top and qualifications buried at the bottom. A yacht CV flips nearly all of that. Here is the shape of the page a captain expects to see:

Everything a skim reader needs sits in the top half: face, name, role, details, certs. The bottom half earns the callback.

The structure captains expect

Top to bottom, a yacht CV follows a fairly fixed order. Here is what goes where:

1. Photo, top corner. A professional, smart, friendly headshot. This is a yachting norm. A UK land CV leaves the photo off; a yacht CV never does.
2. Name and position sought, for example "Deckhand" or "Junior Stewardess". Name the role you are actually chasing, not a list of maybes.
3. Objective line: one or two honest sentences directly under your name on who you are and what you are after. Something like "Green deckhand with STCW and ENG1 complete, looking for daywork or a first season in the Med" does the whole job. No waffle.
4. Personal details: nationality, date of birth, current location, phone, email, visas held (a B1/B2 for example, if you hold one), smoker or non-smoker, tattoo declaration if relevant. List what you hold and keep it current.
5. Certificates: STCW Basic Safety Training and ENG1 first, then Powerboat Level 2, VHF/SRC and any others, each with issue and expiry dates. These sit high on the page because they are the first thing a captain or agent checks.
6. Experience: yacht work and daywork first if you have any, then transferable land work, each in reverse date order.
7. Skills, interests and languages: anything genuinely relevant such as watersports, diving, cooking, mechanics or languages spoken.
8. References: one or two named referees with role and contact details, with their permission.

A yacht CV template you can copy

Here is the layout written out plainly. Drop your own details into each block and you have a CV in the format the industry expects.

Order it like a yachtie, not a land CV

The biggest layout tell of a green CV is land ordering: the pub job at the top, education taking a third of the page, and the word yacht appearing nowhere until the interests line. A captain skims for yachting signal first, so give it the top slot in your experience section even when it is thin. Bluewater's green crew guide makes the same split: yachting experience as its own section, above general work experience, both newest first.

Daywork counts, so write it properly

Every day of daywork is yacht experience, and it goes above your land jobs from the day you get your first one. One entry per boat is enough:

• Boat, size, role, dates on one line, then the tasks: washdowns, teak, tender detailing, fendering, provisioning runs.
• Newest first, every entry one or two scannable lines, never a paragraph.
• Never pad it. Three honest days of daywork reads better than a vague claim that falls apart in an interview.

Land experience still matters, lower down

Hospitality, bar and restaurant work, trades, lifeguarding and anything customer-facing or physical all belong on the page. They show you can graft and deal with people. They just do not lead. Compress each one to a line or two under your yacht section and cut anything that adds nothing to your case.

Hobbies that earn their line

Interests are not filler on a yacht CV. Guests want to be taken wakeboarding, and crew who surf, dive, kite or sail get picked for it. List watersports and anything practical first: diving qualifications, powerboat handling, sailing, fitness. Cut the generic ones. "Socialising and travel" tells a captain nothing.

Describe the boat, not just the job

"Deckhand, 40m motor yacht" tells a captain almost nothing. The detail is what proves you were actually there and understood the operation you were part of. For every yacht entry, give its shape:

• Name and length in metres, and keep the unit the same the whole way down the page.
• Private, charter, or both. Charter weeks run at a different pace and a captain reads for it.
• Crew and guest numbers. Twelve crew looking after twelve guests is a very different job from three crew looking after eight.
• Cruising grounds and season type. Med summer, Caribbean winter, dual season, back-to-back charters, yard period, live aboard.
• The owner's nationality if you worked closely with them, and whether there were children on board. Write "the owner" and "children". Never "the boss" or "the kids".

Two lines of that beat a paragraph of adjectives. It also hands an interviewer something concrete to ask you about, which is the whole point of the page.

What your department needs to show

A CV that reads generic gets skimmed past. Each department has detail a head of department looks for specifically, and leaving it out reads as inexperience whether or not that is true. The crew agency Recrewt sets out what it expects to see department by department.

Deck

• Every hour on the water counts, including RYA courses, dinghy sailing, surf lifesaving and commercial fishing.
• Tender work: the size and type of tender, and whether you launched and recovered it yourself.
• Bridge watches kept, watersports and toys operated, and the teak and paintwork you actually did rather than watched.
• Powerboat Level 2 is the working minimum for a deck role. List it with the dates.

Interior

• Service standard: silver service, wine service, cover numbers, and whether that was lunch, dinner or both.
• Hotel and restaurant work with the star rating or any Michelin standing. That is the industry shorthand for the level you have worked at.
• Laundry and cabin routines, flowers, table setting, and any barista or cocktail training.
• Beauty, massage, hairdressing or nursing qualifications go on even when you are chasing a stewardess role. They come up constantly. Name the treatments and the product lines you know.

Engineering

• Engine makes and models, generators, and running hours where you know them.
• Systems you have actually worked on: air conditioning, watermakers, hydraulics, AV and IT, sewage treatment.
• Trade background transfers. Electrical, mechanical, plumbing and refrigeration all count and should be written up properly.
• AEC, MEOL or Y tickets with dates.

Galley

• Have a seven day sample menu ready. The usual ask is breakfast à la carte, a three course lunch and a four course dinner, plus a separate crew menu with two or three choices and a non-meat option.
• Canapés hot and cold, afternoon tea, and any dietary work you have handled.
• Provisioning, budgets, and the size of galley you have worked in.
• Take food photographs to the interview rather than putting them on the CV. They eat the page.

Applying as a couple

Couples get hired as a unit, so the two CVs should look like a matched pair. Same font, same layout, same date format, the same unit for vessel length. Two pages that look nothing like each other suggest you have not sat down together, which is the opposite of the impression you want.

The photo: get it right

Yes, you put a photo on a yacht CV, and it carries more weight than people expect. Crew live cheek by jowl on a boat, so a captain wants to picture you fitting in before they invite you aboard. The photo should be:

• Professional and recent, head and shoulders, plain or simple background.
• Smart but approachable, a collared shirt or polo, with a genuine smile.
• Clearly you, well lit, looking at the camera.

What it should never be is a cropped holiday photo, a night-out shot, sunglasses, or anything with another person half cut out of frame. That tells a captain you did not take it seriously, and they will wonder what else you do not take seriously. The crew agency YPI Crew gives the same brief: shoulders and up, clean background, natural light, a tidy polo, and no sunglasses, hats, filters or selfies.

What to leave out

Just as important as what goes on is what stays off. Leave out:

• Long paragraphs. Nobody reads them. Use short lines and bullet points.
• Irrelevant jobs from years ago that add nothing to your case.
• Personal details that do not belong, such as your home address or marital status.
• Expired certificates. Listing a lapsed STCW does more harm than leaving it off.
• Anything you cannot back up if asked about it in an interview.

References

References matter in yachting because the industry runs on word of mouth and small networks. List two named referees with their name, role and a current way to reach them, and resist the space-saving habit of writing "references available on request". Bluewater's advice to green crew is blunt on that point: name them. If you have boat experience, a captain or head of department reference is gold. If you are green crew, a manager from a previous responsible job works perfectly well. Always ask the person first, and double check their contact details are right, because a referee who cannot be reached is worse than none at all.

Write each one out in full: name, the yacht or company, the position they held, a phone number with the country code, and an email address. Lead with the email. Crew change numbers constantly and an old mobile is a dead end, whereas an address usually still works a season later. If a referee sits in a very different time zone, say so, so nobody assumes they are ignoring the call.

File name, file type, email address

Your CV gets judged before it is even opened. Three quick checks before you send anything:

• Name the file properly. Surname_FirstName_CV_2026.pdf, not "cv final 2 (1).pdf". Agents save hundreds of these; make yours findable.
• Write it in Word, send it as a PDF. Keep an editable master in Word or Pages so you can update it the same day a boat asks. Export a PDF to send. A Word file opens with shifted photos and broken fonts on someone else's machine, and a PDF looks identical everywhere. Some agencies do ask for the Word file so they can add their own branding before passing it to a captain, so keep the master to hand and send it if they ask for it.
• Name your certificates the same way. Surname_FirstName_STCW.pdf, one file per certificate, scanned rather than photographed. Agencies file them individually, so a single PDF with everything bundled into it usually comes back.
• Use a sensible email address. Your name at a normal provider works. The joke address you made as a teenager does not go in front of a captain.

Common mistakes that bin a CV

Most rejected CVs fail on the basics, not the content. The repeat offenders:

• Running over one page. The instant tell of a land CV.
• No photo at all, or an unprofessional one.
• Land jobs first, with the yachting signal buried at the bottom of the page.
• Paragraph blocks instead of short scannable lines. Nobody reads them.
• A silly email address, or a careless file name such as "cv final 2 (1).pdf".
• Spelling and grammar errors. Read it twice, then have someone else read it.
• Gaps in the timeline. Unexplained months read as something being hidden. Travelling, studying or a season out is completely normal, so give it a line and move on.
• Mixed units and date formats. Pick metres or feet, pick "June 2026" or "06/26", then stay consistent down the whole page.
• Hiding the certificates and contact details where a busy captain cannot find them in five seconds.
• Listing expired certs or being vague about dates.

Once your CV is ready

A finished CV is your tool for the next two steps: getting in front of agencies and getting in front of captains on the dock. Build yours from the yacht CV template if you have not already, then register it with the crew agencies, covered in our guide to registering with yacht crew agencies, and carry printed copies when you go dockwalking in Antibes and Palma. If you are still working out where you fit, our career pathways break down each department and the certificates that go with it.

The layout conventions in this guide are cross-checked against the published CV guidance of the crew recruitment agencies YPI Crew, Bluewater and Wilsonhalligan, and against the CVs I read on deck.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides: Yacht CV template → · How to get a superyacht job with no experience → · How to register with yacht crew agencies → · Dockwalking in Antibes and Palma → · How to get your STCW →