Lots of skippers—in fact probably most—do not want to sail solo and I am the last person to try to encourage them to change their mind. It is not a badge of honor to be a solo sailor, nor does it ‘prove’ anything, and those are terrible reasons to try it. If you sail solo, it should be simply because you enjoy it!!
That said, there may be times when you want, or need, to make a passage and find none of your regular crew are available. What do you do about it? Frankly, if it is short notice, you should scratch the trip. Finding crew is hard enough when you have time, doing it at the last minute is a recipe for some serious unpleasantness. If you buy me a few beers in the pub I might tell you how I know. Some of the issues I will talk about apply equally to regular crew, but because you know them well, it is much less likely that you will get problems.
How to get GOOD crew, that is the question. There is, in fact, a simple answer. You are looking for crew because you have a job that needs doing, i.e., moving your boat. So, treat it the way you would if you were hiring staff for work. Ask for a resume and references, conduct an interview, and have a probationary period. Okay, I can hear the comments box filling up with people saying “That’s fine if you own a superyacht and have paid crew. But I only have a 40-ft. family cruiser and a limited budget.” It is a perfectly valid response. But it might be worth it in the long run to use one of the crewing agencies that specialize in deliveries and let them do the hard work. That does not mean that you should not go through a recruitment process. I have done it without, and would not do it again. So how should you go about this?
ADVERTISE WELL IN ADVANCE
You can put notices on sailing club boards, contact your local sailing schools, or use one of the internet forums to get the word out. Make sure it is clear what the passage is, what you expect from crew, what you are giving them by way of compensation and expenses, and how to apply. Make it clear that you will want a resume with qualifications and references. Also, say that you want to meet them before you take them on. As soon as you do this, you will probably filter out most of the people who are basically hitchhikers.
GET A RESUME
The important thing you want to see is that they have done a similar voyage in a similar boat and generally have enough experience. In addition, you want to see details and preferably evidence. This should include boat and skipper names, dates, ports visited and their role i.e., deck hand, cook, mate, etc.. Ask if you can contact previous skippers for references. If someone says they have been sailing their own boat for a couple of years, ask to see some pictures; better still, ask them to bring their log book when you meet.
I took on a crew member who said they had been sailing their own boat for a couple of years. It didn’t occur to me at that time to ask what boat, I just assumed it was a small cruiser. Turned out it was a Hoby Cat…
Did they include some training in their resume? If so, have you seen their certificates? Even better, if it was fairly recent. Will the school or instructor give them a reference? This is actually a very good motivation for potential crew. If someone is doing training and wants to build mileage on other boats as part of that, you may have found an ideal candidate. It’s not uncommon for people who want to get into the charter business. The other one to look out for is whether they have worked with professional sailors. That could mean helping with a delivery trip, or volunteering with a charity. The important point is that they should have a reference from a pro sailor, and that is going to be the most reliable one you can get.
ASK FOR QUALIFICATIONS
Are you going to ask for qualifications? If so what should you look for? I spend a lot of time teaching (nursing not sailing) but have been a sailing instructor so am used to assessing students and understand what training qualifications really mean. To gain a certificate in anything means you have demonstrated your competence under controlled test conditions to someone who was, presumably, competent in the subject. So, the first issue is who was that someone? I got my skipper’s ticket (RYA Yacht Master Commercial) from a large UK-based sailing school. The examiners were appointed by the RYA and independent of the school. In order to get the ticket, I had to present a logbook of my experience, including signatures of skippers I had sailed with and evidence of prior training. That is a robust qualification. Not all qualifications are equal. At the opposite end of the scale someone may have a basic crew certificate that consisted of no more than a sailing holiday with a few bits of instruction thrown in, more a certificate of attendance than a qualification.
When looking at qualifications do some research on who issued it. Is it a recognized training authority, is it approved by a national authority such as the Coast Guard, did it include an on-water assessment by someone other than the instructor? Also, what does it really mean to be qualified?
There are plenty of people who started sailing with their families as children and went on to sail regularly for the rest of their lives. They may have never taken a course but that does not mean they are not expert sailors. All a certificate tells you is that they had, at that time, reached a minimum standard set for that course. So, is it worth asking for qualifications? My answer is yes for two reasons. The first is that it shows they are keen enough to go on a course to learn to sail or improve their skills. That probably also means they have read some books on sailing and think about what they are doing and how to do it better. People who show enthusiasm to learn are often more skilled. I have always found that people have two types of experience. Some people repeat the same experience over and over, they never really think about it or learn from it so they have a long experience of doing it wrong. Even if they do it right, they are still no better than when they first started. The second person may have fewer miles under their belt but they think about what they are doing, watch how others do it and are constantly eager to learn and improve. That is definitely the crew member you want. The second reason for looking for qualifications is that you probably will not have time to really get to know what someone is capable of before you set off. A qualification is at least something that tells you someone else thinks they have some useful skills.
COMPENSATION
Next, what are you giving them? At the high-end, professional delivery skippers often recruit scratch crew and generally pay all expenses to get to and from the boat plus all onboard expenses. They will also usually be asking for at least an offshore skipper’s ticket and evidence of several years sailing experience. At the opposite end, you’ll see ads for people who want crew to “share all expenses” or even pay the owner something for the experience. I don’t recommend going down that route. In many countries, if you charge someone for a passage you are immediately classed as a commercial charter vessel expected to have all the relevant certifications and inspection. Asking someone to share expenses may be reasonable if you are offering them a holiday. For example, if you have a boat in the Caribbean and want some company for an island-hopping trip mid-season. An upwind slog from your last cruising destination back to your home port at the end of the season is not a holiday!
I am sure you get the point here, what you offer should reflect what you are asking for. Paying someone’s expenses is normally fine and if someone contributes to reasonable running costs such as buying a tank of fuel, that is not normally seen as paying for a passage, but make it clear this is a voluntary contribution.
At the opposite end, if you decide you want to pay crew, make sure you attract someone with the right skills or you will again brush up against the commercial vessel category. Not only will you have to make sure the boat meets commercial inspection standards, you may also have to ensure they have a valid work permit. Paid crew boarding in the USA does, I think, have to have a social security number or green card. It’s wise to check such regulations.
PROBATION AND SETTING EXPECTATIONS
It is not always possible, but the ideal approach is to invite the prospective crew for a weekend onboard. With a couple of days sailing together, you will probably get a good feel for whether or not they know what they are doing and, equally important, if you get along with each other. On one passage I discovered out at sea that my crew was a born-again Christian who read the bible before coming on watch. I am an Atheist. It was an interesting mix!
Obviously, what you do about this depends on the passage you are planning. If it is a couple of days of coastal sailing, an online meeting may be fine. But if it is a week or more at sea, then the try-out weekend becomes a lot more important.
What do you expect of crew? This does make a difference. Do you just want someone who can steer in settled weather and help tie the boat up at the marina? Or do you want someone who can take over and get the boat to port if you are incapacitated? If it is the former, all you are asking for is some basic skills and the ability to follow directions. At this level they are not going to be on deck on their own, but a short overnight passage can be fine. They can steer while you go to the washroom, help keep the boat tidy and make tea. In this case the most important thing is that they are willing and good company.
At the other extreme, you might be looking for someone who can take a watch while you are asleep in your bunk. This person will be functioning as a first mate, and you definitely want an experienced skipper who knows your type of boat. On one long passage I took on someone who was indeed a very experienced skipper but most of his experience was on cats or fast lightweight flyers. I had a heavy long keeler. When the going got rough I could not make him understand that in this boat you had to slow down. Long keelers will surf if you put enough power behind them but it is usually followed by a nasty broach, and in this case a steering failure and a tow into port! Think this through, and make it clear in your crew-wanted notice. Then look through their resume to see if there is evidence of the skills and experience required. Finally, make sure you allow them to demonstrate some of those skills in the trial sail. The wrong crew can do significant damage to your boat. You will have to bribe me to find out how I know this, but suffice it to say it is from personal experience.
“There is nothing more dangerous than someone who knows enough to think they are an expert, but not enough to know they are not” Neil DeGrass Tyson
THE DELICATE MATTER OF SECURITY
Here are some things to think about if you have taken someone aboard you don’t know every well. Competent sailor. Pleasant to get along with. But how well do you know them?
The first point relates to crossing borders. If you are planning a voyage that will land in another country, the authorities will hold you responsible for repatriating crew in the event of problems. Could be that the boat breaks down, or simply bad weather means you can’t complete the voyage in the time you expect. It is unreasonable to expect people to simply sign on ‘for as long as it takes’. It hasn’t happened to me, but I have read accounts of people getting into significant problems over this.
Everything from customs finding they have drugs in their bag, visas not valid or passports getting lost, to crew being arrested ashore or someone saying they will pay for their flight home, then not having the money. In all of these cases you, as skipper, will be on the hook for any costs in sorting it out. Authorities don’t necessarily make a distinction between commercial ship crews and pleasure yacht crews.
I think there are two aspects to security. They are very different, but equally important. Your boat is an expensive piece of kit and you probably have some strong emotional attachments to it. How would you feel if your new crew crash-jibed her at night and split the main? The best of us do get it wrong sometimes and accidents happen, so you are never going to be able to guarantee nothing will go wrong. But if it does, your insurer is going to be asking questions about why you allowed that crew member to take a watch. Showing them the crew’s resume and describing the professional way you went about recruiting them should go a long way to getting the claim settled. Telling them you picked up a dock head hitchhiker the day before sailing and it may not be so easy.
A trap that catches some people is to think you can ‘train’ crew on passage. You can’t!! Even if you are an instructor, this is a passage not a training course. Training courses don’t include passages until you are taking a skipper’s exam and anyway, training someone is going to significantly add to your workload rather than help you make the passage.
You must, however, plan to give crew a chance to get to know the boat and should expect to spend time doing a detailed safety brief. This should obviously include things like where the fire extinguishers live, but should also cover all the important systems like your man-overboard planning. Ideally make time to practice some drills with them in sheltered waters. An ideal way to do this is to include a man-overboard drill if you can arrange a trial weekend, it’s a great way to assess someone’s skills and it could be you who needs fishing out of the ocean!
A MATTER OF TRUST
No, I have no experience of feeling unsafe on a boat, or of finding crew threatening…obnoxious yes, but not threatening! However, there clearly are bad people in this world. Am I just lucky? Or careful enough not to have met them? How do you know the new crew member is not going to murder you in your sleep, toss you overboard and steal your boat? As far as I can see you can’t. Particularly with a small crew, you are dependent on each other and have to be able to trust each other. If that trust turns out to be misplaced you are going to have to do your best to live with it until the next port. Even if you could overpower the problem crew member there is nowhere on a boat you can lock someone up. All the more reason for a careful selection process.
Finally, be flexible and expect to make some adjustments for your new crew. In my book a key quality in a skipper is good team management. I clearly remember being scratch crew on a channel crossing for a skipper whose regular crew had a medical emergency and left him stuck. On the first watch change he ticked me off for giving me the course sailed as 30deg not 030deg magnetic, and then spent 10 minutes lecturing me on why it was important. I was glad it was only a 2-day passage!
