Employment Practices Liability Insurance for Yacht Owners

We recently had a strange situation with a "unstable" contract stew. Probably shouldn't go into all the details, but let's just say a lot of wild accusations. She went as far to ask the other Stew to back her story up and she'd split the cash. Found out later, this person had pulled the same stunt on other boats.

Obviously, this got me thinking that running a yacht is much like running a business. Thou, one is for profit. The other is to burn cash at an alarming rate.

With so many people being attracted to yachting due to "Below Deck", there are bond to be some crazy people that slip through the cracks of the employment agencies. I began the search for EPL insurance for yacht owners but haven't had much luck.

Has anyone else looked into ways to protect themselves from this type of liability?

I'm sorry, but I think legally you can't really do that. For example, you fire someone for stealing. Then then their next employer calls and asks for a reference. You can't (shouldn't) say anything other than I wouldn't hire them again. I don't agree with this, but it's the law. Otherwise, you can get sued. It's a crazy world not of my making.

P.S. The agency was informed of the situation, for what that's worth.

Absolutely! Not to get all political. But the trend today is a mind field. That's why we have HR, Corporate Policies, and alike to navigate the quagmire. Hopefully, my recent experiences are not sign that "land-based entitlements" are not moving into pleasure craft.

You mentioned "big" boats, my guess is their programs are more formalized and corporate in nature. Just like on land, when you get over 50 employees, the rules are much stiffer and complex requiring more overhead to deal with.

Some crew tend to "hop" to another agency when things go south. We had a Chef that had some troubling issues, up to including threats against other crew members. Obviously, we let him go after only a few days. Informed the Agency of the conduct and they black balled him. Sometime later we saw him on boat. Our guess, he just switched to another firm, thus cleaning his record.

Our best intel often comes from other Captains when checking references. But sometimes it's a matter of timing. The stew for example, was very capable, and did a great job for some boats. Unfortunately, we found out later other boats had similar experiences.

The obvious answer is when you find great crew. Do all you can to keep them happy. But change is constant. Crew decide to leave the industry, take some time off, or gain enough experience to move to the next level. Other good crew just want to do contract work, for short periods of time. None of which is a bad thing, just a variable to consider.

It just seems of this year in particular, the pool of good crew is pretty shallow. I guess the low unemployment, combine with good crew staying put, "below deck" want-a-bees, and throw in a mix in a few crazy folks for good measure. We have the added pleasure of running a "small boat", with only 5 crew. It seems that crew fit for the big boys, are not always a fit for smaller boats.

Back the subject at hand. The only thing I found was Pure Insurance "might" have something. Importunely, it requires ALL crew members to be full-time employees. Which is our preference as well. But that's easier sad that done for various reasons. The irony is I'm not concerned about our core staff, they're all awesome. It's the occasional filling in the gaps that creates the risk.