Yacht staffing sits at the intersection of two worlds — maritime crew and private household — and almost no agency does both well. Owners end up either with a maritime-trained team that doesn't know how to set a Sunday lunch table, or a hospitality-polished crew that's never held a STCW certificate. The candidates who can do both — and who'll stay for more than one season — are a much smaller pool than buyers expect.
We've placed staff onto yachts from 30 metres up to 100m+, both private-use and charter. Below is the version of "what do I need" we walk owners through before any search opens.
The 30-second answer
If you're skimming, work down by yacht length and stop at the row that fits:
- 30–40 metres, private use, family of four → Chief stew + 1 stew + chef. 3 interior crew. Budget ~€220k–€300k/yr salaries.
- 40–60 metres, light charter → Chief stew + 2nd stew + 2–3 junior stews + chef + sous chef. 6–7 interior crew. ~€450k–€650k/yr.
- 60–80 metres, charter regularly → Head of interior + chief stew + 4 stews + head chef + sous chef + dedicated laundry stew. 9–10 interior crew. ~€800k–€1.1m/yr.
- 80m+ superyacht, full charter season → 12–18 interior crew including spa, nanny/tutor, dedicated chase-boat host. €1.2m–£2m+/yr.
- Owner-only, no charter, 35m → You can run leaner — 2 stews + chef. But quality of life for crew on a small permanent team matters; under-staffing burns people out by August.
The rest of this piece is the long version of why each band lands where it does, plus the regulatory and contractual things you can't afford to get wrong.
Interior crew by yacht size
| Yacht length | Use pattern | Interior team size | Key roles |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30–40m | Private | 2–3 | Chief stew, 1–2 stews, chef |
| 40–60m | Private + light charter | 5–7 | Chief stew, 2nd stew, 2–3 junior stews, chef, sous chef |
| 60–80m | Active charter | 8–10 | Head of interior, chief stew, 3–4 stews, head + sous chef, dedicated laundry |
| 80–100m | Full charter season | 12–15 | Above + spa therapist, nanny/tutor, dedicated chase-boat / shore host |
| 100m+ | Superyacht, year-round | 15–25+ | Above + multiple sous chefs, pastry chef, second laundry stew, spa team |
Numbers exclude deck, engineering, and bridge — those are maritime-specific and the captain owns them. The interior team is what your principals actually live with.
The roles that matter most
Chief stewardess / head of interior
Effectively a house manager at sea. Owns interior operations end-to-end: housekeeping, service, laundry, guest provisioning, floral arrangements, table setting, and the interior crew. On a large yacht the chief stew might oversee 8–12 people directly.
The best chief stews come into yachting from luxury hotels or large private households, then add the maritime certifications. They understand formal service, discretion, and how to read a principal before being asked. The ones who came up purely through yachting can be excellent on operations and weak on the household-feeling side, which matters more to owners than any agency tends to admit.
Salary: €4,500–€8,000/month on a 40–60m yacht. €8,000–€12,000+/month on larger vessels. Plus tips on charter (10–15% of charter fee, distributed across crew).
Yacht chef
Their own breed. They need to produce restaurant-quality food in a galley smaller than a London kitchen, adapt to changing guest numbers and dietary requirements at hours' notice, source provisions in foreign ports, and not drop the soufflé in heavy seas. The best ones have Michelin or luxury hotel backgrounds.
The gap between a good yacht chef and an average one is enormous and owners notice on day one. The tightest constraint at the top of this market is supply, not budget — there are maybe 200 truly elite yacht chefs in the world.
Salary: €4,000–€7,000/month on mid-range yachts. €8,000–€15,000+/month on superyachts. Elite chefs command €18,000–€22,000/month.
Stewardesses
Interior crew who handle housekeeping, laundry, guest service, beauty/spa support. On larger yachts they specialise — one focused on laundry, another on flowers, another on guest cabins. Junior stews often arrive straight from hospitality school or land-based households.
Salary: €2,500–€3,500/month junior; €3,500–€5,000/month senior.
Yacht-based nanny or tutor
Families cruising with children often need childcare on board. Combines standard nanny work with water safety awareness, the ability to entertain in confined spaces, and flexibility around unpredictable schedules. For longer voyages, a combined nanny-tutor avoids needing two people for one cabin.
Salary: €3,000–€6,000/month depending on qualifications. See our nanny services for more on private childcare more broadly.
MLC compliance, in plain English
The Maritime Labour Convention 2006 — the "Seafarers' Bill of Rights" — sets minimum working-conditions standards at sea. If your yacht is 500 GT or over, or commercially registered (even if used mostly privately), MLC compliance is mandatory.
The hiring-relevant requirements:
- Written employment agreements (SEAs — Seafarer Employment Agreements). More prescriptive than a UK domestic contract; your yacht manager or captain will usually provide a template.
- Hours of work and rest — max 14 hours work in any 24-hour period, max 72 hours over any seven days. Min 10 hours rest in any 24, split into no more than two periods, one of which must be at least six hours. This is the constraint people break first during busy charter weeks. Don't.
- Accommodation and food — minimum cabin sizes and food provided free of charge.
- Medical care and repatriation — owner pays health insurance and flights home if the contract ends abroad.
- Leave — 2.5 days paid annual leave per month of service (30 days/year).
Flag state matters. Your registry — Cayman, Marshall Islands, Malta, Isle of Man are the popular ones — sets the specific implementation. Your yacht manager or captain should own compliance day-to-day, but ultimate responsibility sits with you as owner.
Under 500 GT, private use only? MLC may not technically apply, but follow its standards anyway. Crew networks are small and word travels. A reputation for poor conditions kills your ability to hire the candidates you actually want.
Charter vs private use — the staffing implications
Charter crew need to be charter-ready: higher level of formal service, guest-management skills, and the temperament to handle strangers with very different expectations from your own. They also need to understand that tips are a real chunk of their compensation — industry standard is 10–15% of the charter fee, distributed by a system the captain owns. On a €200k/week charter that's €20k–€30k/week split across the crew.
Private-use-only shifts the emphasis: long-term compatibility with the family, discretion, the ability to maintain standards without the external pressure of charter weeks. Lower turnover is the prize. The right private-use crew often stays for 5+ years; the right charter crew often does 3.
Rotation and leave
Unlike land staff, yacht interior crew work on rotation — particularly through the busy Med summer or Caribbean winter. Common patterns:
- 2 months on, 1 month off — superyacht standard
- 6 weeks on, 3 weeks off — increasingly common because retention's better
- Seasonal contracts — Med-only (May–Oct) or Caribbean-only (Nov–Apr)
When crew rotate off, they leave the vessel entirely. So you need enough staff to cover — either by running slightly over-headcount or by using relief crew from specialist agencies. Plan rotations from day one of the budget; running short is the fastest route to a mid-season resignation.
Mistakes that cost owners a season
We see the same five every year:
- Hiring purely on yachting CV. Yachting-only candidates can be technically excellent and emotionally tone-deaf. Owners notice on charter day three. Look for hospitality or private-household experience as well.
- Under-staffing the interior to "see how we get on". A boat that runs five-deep on a 60m and should be seven kills morale by July. People leave; you re-hire mid-season at a premium.
- Ignoring MLC hours-of-rest during charters. Captains under guest pressure quietly let it slide; flag-state inspectors don't, and one detained vessel ruins a season.
- Skipping the in-person meeting before contract. Yachting is intense and contained. The Zoom interview that felt fine becomes a four-month lock-in problem if you didn't actually meet them.
- Treating tips as a fixed expectation rather than a real variable. Crew base salaries should be liveable on their own. The boats that "make it up in tips" are the ones with constant turnover.
Finding the right crew
Yacht recruitment sits at the intersection of maritime and private household — and not every agency does both. Maritime-only agencies often miss the household-feel matching. Household-only agencies don't always understand MLC, STCW, ENG1, or the dynamics of life at sea.
We work both sides. We expect a yacht stewardess to be as polished as any London butler AND to hold her ENG1 medical and STCW basic safety training. We expect a yacht chef to be capable in a galley during a Biscay crossing AND in a 30-cover formal sit-down on charter day six.
What to do next
Two paths from here:
- Take the 2-minute Staff Finder quiz — eight questions, instant recommendation on the role mix and salary band for your vessel.
- Talk to our yacht & jet crew team — we'll walk you through what your interior team should look like for your specific yacht, route, and use pattern.
Roughly 96% of the people we place are still in post a year later. On yachts, where one bad hire can cost you a charter season, that retention rate is most of why owners come back to us.