Living on a "megayacht"

Interesting question. I know there are some who spend a lot of time on them, but I don't know anyone who has forsaken their land home for a megayacht. I know a lot of trawler owners and up to 60' boat owners who have.

If you own a megayacht you can buy a really nice home for what it takes to run the yacht for a year. For them the marginal cost of having a home as well as a yacht is relatively small. If you are someone like Richard Branson who has several homes and spends time bouncing between all of them, which one do you consider your 'home'? The concept becomes fuzzy. Paul Allen spends a lot of time on his yachts apparently, but how much would be enough to qualify as a home (along with his several homes on land)?

One issue the Paul Allen's would have to is that often the boat is positioned somewhere for cruising but that really isn't where they need to be for business. So, Paul Allen may be in Portland or Seattle and boat might be in the Med.

Capella C lived at the Monaco Yacht Club for many years. The Aussie Owner lived onboard. Jolly nice chap, but he used to enjoy taking the p*ss out of my old Italian cars and bikes when they failed to start, after I had stored one or two behind his boat.

Charles Simonyi spends a massive amount of time on his (SKAT).

One of the complexities of this question is how do you define living on one's yacht. Often a liveaboard is defined as one who owns no house on land. Well, when you're talking people who are going to own multiple homes whether land or water then that definition no longer works. So is it primary residence? Then how do you define that? The place they get their mail? Consider home? Spend most of their time?

I suppose the definition would be if you spend 183 or more days a year on the boat...

There are a few who have or do... might as well considering the costs and the level of service. However, the crew might need a relief crew depending on the level of service expected.

Usually rather eccentrics do this the one I remember from about 30 years ago was one of those guys that purchased a Prince title and lived on MY GRAIL III the Amels yacht designed by
Jon Bannenberg. It was a strange set up he only employed Korean staff and it was always white glove service. The interior design was for the time over the top. He was single and the yacht was his home. Very particular man.

Once again you have posted a misleading and totally false statement.

Get your Pastis hooked up intravenously and save the rest of us from reading the rubbish you post.

Well, Bannenberg was right...

K1W1 and AMG moderator my memory on things from 30 years ago may be very murky. Actually I had hoped someone would point out better details, or perhaps simply correct my memory. Simply, that was my memory from long ago and often on such things that are minor in life the human brain does not retain much unless it rises to some importance; which in this case it did not, to me at least. The only reason it rose to being remembered at all is that I found it unusual or unique at the time.

Furthermore, I quite often post on issues I do not have full knowledge on in attempt to inspire the forum to interest and perhaps find more information through the discussion in the community. Sometimes this is purposeful and sometimes I may be totally misinformed or confused. Some members are often quite helpful in this including K1W1 and HTM09 to name two particularly knowledgeable in not common areas of knowledge due to their special life experience. Usually, the interaction on the forum expands my and the general forum knowledge.

Generally, I find K1W1 a very good forum user and helpful on many particularly technical subjects. I have considered him a forum friend and asset. I did find AMG post funny as the factious is often a gentle way of pointing out errors.

However, rather than correct any mistake there is this tendency on this forum to simply be hostile. Perhaps that is the trouble with forums. I have noticed this problem elsewhere. I have chalked it up to that now-a-days there are many more pressures on people in general, along with the cultural tendency to being impolite. Perhaps people have a bad day that is human nature. I have no problem with being corrected but no such correction was made or attempted. Simply the inference at many posts of my posts are misleading and totally false. Furthermore, the tone of the post from K1W1 appeared hostile and condescending without attempt at providing information in correction or refute. I usually do not take the bait, and let it simply pass and die.

Importantly, this is a reoccurring general problem on the forum not solely limited to a particular forumer (made up word referring to a participating user of the forum). This goes beyond this one isolated incidence and it the reason I make some issue of it now. In this I do not intend to particularly call K1W1 to question but the forum as a whole. K1W1 is a big boy and can take the heat here, and unlikely to draw rebuke from the forum anyway... and this is an absolutely trivial example. That is why I chose this example... to make the larger case.

The savaging of members and particularly new members is often outright hostile... ! This is not a friendly place when that happens to the victim. I remember the man not long ago that had developed a new engine that proudly posted about it. Something that he had put his lives blood into. Perhaps he was looking to get interest in it; perhaps he was trying to get feedback on what he had done; perhaps he was trying to get suggestions for improvement; perhaps he was trying to find people interesting in helping it come to fruition beyond a tested prototype, or; perhaps he just wanted to find people to talk to about it. I don't know. It devolved into what appeared to me outright hostility and attempt to shutoff productive debate. Rather than let it pass some of the forum appeared to me to gradually build up steam to savage it to shut down the discussion. This often happens here. I often think when I read those post maybe I should just forget about that forum... and don't post much for a time.

The hostility simply turns me off. I do not care someone has an interest and enthusiasm that is perhaps a dreaming interest, as some new members often come across at first. Or, that someone is uninformed. Often they are turned away by rebuke. This is not membership and creating a community of all interest it is creating a private forum. If the members want this perhaps they should form an exclusive membership club excluding any who do not fit into their narrow minded 'click'. I understood this forum was not intended such a resource as a private club. Perhaps there should be a card carrying exclusive area or areas in the forum.

It's actually friendlier here than I remember it being, but I'll agree that was a rather savage rebuke. I think that Carl has talked about it, and made some changes in the past year to make the forum friendlier. But this is all off topic for the thread, so perhaps the discussion could be moved elsewhere.

It has been my impression that the crew is pretty much full-time, at least for the core members, ie, captain, first mate, chief engineer, or chef. The other members like deck hands or stewards may get rotated out. Someone who has experience in running a mega-yacht may have a better answer to the crew issue.

As mentioned earlier about the residence issue, it may be where the owner is at a given time due to multiple residences.

I think every situation is unique, but key members of the crew are full time. If the boat is used a lot, then often rotation is used. The best of the owners have maintained crew for years. The worst turn over crews every season. I heard someone lamenting in a quite ugly and condescending manner that you couldn't find decent crew today, called them names and said none of them stayed more than 6 months and most just went on one trip. I said, "It doesn't sound like a crew problem to me, but an owner problem, as I have no problem retaining crew." Needless to say he wasn't happy with my comment and would never consider the fact he was a problem and pretty much blackballed among crews in the know.

We spend 2/3 of our time on a boat, but I wouldn't define us as living on one. We have a land home and that's where we "live." Boats to us are "vacation homes" or "second residences" much like houses spread around the world are to many. Ultimately your primary home or "where you live" is self defined. It's where you consider home. Also may be tied to what your legal residence is.

And note we do not have a megayacht or any desire for one.

Capt J,

How does the rotating crew system impact salaries, if at all? For example, if a typical first officer salary is $100K per year and the owner decides to rotate this position, are both people paid as a part-timer ($50K)?

For me, the term living on a megayacht is pretty easy defined. If you are living on your yacht most of the year (183 days or more) and this includes in and out of season, you are a liveaboard. This has nothing to do with your residence. Here in Europe (EU) it only defines, where you have to pay your personal income taxes.

But for me living in Palma (Mallorca) or Port Hercules (Monaco) or most if not any other harbour is not very comfortable. Normally, as soon as my humble person and / or members of my family and guests are on board, we leave the harbour and rather stay off shore or travel. A yacht is not a houseboat for me.

The problem with most countries in Europe is, they are short of money!! Means, every year they invent new tax rules or fees in order to collect additional and more money from foreign boaters. And Spain, Italy and Greece are very, very innovative in this subject. My land based yacht management office is meanwhile employing an sollicitor permanently, spezializing in European tax laws and flag state rules. And this, just to make sure, not getting caught by one of those new traps. And my and all family boats are VAT paid and only used privately, no charter. Commercially used boats are a nightmare, especially if non EU flagged and if VAT is not paid. Europe (the EU), 28 Countries divided by a common market . The Captain almost needs to be a lawyer himself.

As far as crews are concerned, me and my family and most large yacht owners I know personally, have 3 different approaches on this subject here in the Med.

1. If the yacht has an home port, where it stays during the season and returns to after a journey, crews have land based appartements or houses in the area of this "home port". During times where the owner and / or his guests are not present, they work on day shift and only come and stay when needed. Only the watch of the day will stay over night, as required by rules and insurances. On mine and the family boats, we are using the German commercial shipping rules, as far as working hours, leave and payment is concerned (only as a guide line, as my yacht crews are better paid than my merchant shipping crews). During the anual refit or during relocation (across the pond for example) of the boats by ship transport, all crews are on leave. The only exclusion are races. Then everybody is on duty.

2. If a boat is on long distance travelling like a circumnavigation, we swap crews. Any crew member, including the skipper and engineer is only going segments of the circumnavigation. By this, they see their families a lot more and often and they like to stay with us. Some yacht crew and many of my commercial crews are with us for many, many years. And if wanted, they can stay with us until retirement. I have no problems with an 60 years old megayacht skipper or engineer or a chef of that age. Stews and some deckhands are a different story. They like to change boats and areas/routes and ownership for the benefit of their carreer. We try to swap them between boats but most of them are young and independent and like the change. Even bribing them with great payment and bonuses will not make them stay. This is especially the fact with young crews from England, South Africa and Australia / New Zeeland. Some of them are students, which take a year of in order to make some money and go places. I have one young lady from South Africa working as a Stew. She comes for work on my yacht during every semester break. After graduation, she will stay with us as a purser.

3. Some Megayachts have double crew. This is the most expensive but optimum setup for a larger yacht. One crew is on duty for lets say 4 weeks, the other crew is at home or has land based duties. I have done that in the past. The whole crew worked like this with one exception. The Skipper didn't want to share his boat with another captain . He stayed full time.

Just my 2 (Euro) cents

Btw. We had a bad crew accident on the Abeking Yacht Kibo here in Palma lately. During cleaning the yacht, a deckhand fell off the boat and got heavily injured. Will report, as soon as I have the details.

I applaud you for your progressive approach. We were outsiders to the "yachting" world and so made some early observations as regarding crew and those choosing it as a career. Family life was what we saw as most difficult. It's hard enough to day in industry but in the yachting world having a personal life away from work seemed nearly impossible. We do provide our crew far more time at home (home being where we live, Fort Lauderdale). Some of our more senior crew members were only available because they wanted to work less and have lives of their own. We were able to provide that. We follow work schedules probably not all that different from yours. We aim for 8-10 hour work days. We limit work weeks to 40-45 hours. The rules of 10 hours off per day, 77 per week, never become even issues for us, even on overnight trips (It does help that we're Masters and take our shifts as well). We actually have four ways we characterize time, 1-work away from home port, 2-off duty away from home port (which in our mind is still "work time", 3-work in home port (daytime only), 4-off in home port. We make sure they're all at home, either doing day work or off, at least 150 days a year and for most it's 180.

Not being from yachting, I looked at things from the business world. A standard work year in most jobs in the US starts at 260 work days (yes, I know many are far more), less typically 8 days or so holidays and 10 days minimum vacation plus another 5 or so personal. So the number we used was 235 and for more senior employees 225-230. So in our perfect world, that's the maximum that categories 1, 2, and 3 above should total and category 4 should always be at least 130-140. So 140 days of 4-off in home port, plus 20-40 of category 3-day work in home port, that gets them home for half the year.

We don't have the commercial boats or the yachts to juggle you do, plus the nature of our boating makes things easier as we typically are only away from home 6 weeks maximum before flying home for 3 weeks or so. If a boat is left away from home we switch people out and only require two people to be with the boat. We have four boats currently but obviously we can only use one at a time. The most crew any carries is 7. The others require 4 or fewer. We have 9 1/2 total crew (the 1/2 is a college student).

Commercial boats use the 28 on/28 off double crew set up commonly. We don't use that type rotation but rotate within the boats and crew we have. If we found ourselves having to work crew beyond our goals, then the solution is simple, add crew. I'm a bit amazed when I see someone with an annual budget of $5-10 million for their "yacht", but adding one or two crew members to make life better for their crew is too expensive for them.

As to crew ages, we go from 18-58 and we hope to build opportunity as the senior crew gradually passes more responsibility to the younger ones. That allows us to accommodate reduced work loads as the more experienced look to cut back and more responsibility and promotions for the others.

All our crews are US as all boats are flagged US. We do have a couple of complications you don't in Europe and that is the housing we provide at the home ports is taxable income so we gross it up and pay the taxes on it too. Yes, there are possible loopholes and methods but we don't choose to use them.

We also make different arrangements as to annual work days and locations with different employees at hiring. Our Chief Stew wanted to cut back. Our second engineer has a wife and young kids here and his agreement provides more time in home port than the others.

The point is that the idea of a crew member being on a boat traveling the world 365 days a year has a romantic sound at first, but eventually it burns out, plus leaving that crew member without a place to call home or friends in that place.

Like your approach, HTM, paying more money isn't the answer to us, but it's providing better working and living situations and conditions.

Back to the issue of living on a boat, we spend an average of 270 nights a year on one boat or another in many different places. Still to us they're second homes and we "live" in our land home. It's our legal residence but it also feels like "home" to us. The boats feel like "vacation homes". The great thing about boats as vacation homes is that they can move around.