Your questions, answered honestly
The questions I get asked every single day — on the dock, in my DMs and inside the course. Straight answers from 14 years at sea, no sugarcoating.
First, the good news: this is the beauty of yachting — it can give almost anyone a chance to prove themselves. I've worked alongside brilliant yacht chefs who never set foot in culinary school. But let's be real about what "no experience" means and how you bridge the gap.
Nobody is handing the galley of a superyacht to someone who has never cooked professionally. What they will do is give a hard-working, likeable person a start in a junior role — and from there, the galley is closer than you think.
Route 1: Cook anywhere, first. Stage or volunteer in restaurants. Take a job in a busy café or bistro. Even six to twelve months of real kitchen time changes what you can honestly put on a CV. I started my career at 15 washing dishes and worked up through a 4-year apprenticeship — you don't need my exact path, but you do need time behind a stove.
Route 2: Start on smaller or unconventional boats. My own start wasn't a superyacht — it was a dive boat on the Great Barrier Reef, cooking for over 100 guests a day between scuba dives. Dive boats, crew boats, charter catamarans, expedition vessels — they're less glamorous, they pay less, and they will teach you more about cooking at sea than any course ever could.
Route 3: Come in as crew, move to the galley. Plenty of chefs started as a stew or deckhand, helped in the galley on crossings, and fell into the position. Once you're on board and people see your work ethic, doors open fast.
Route 4: Crew chef / sous chef on a bigger boat. Larger yachts carry a second chef who cooks crew food and supports the head chef. It's the best apprenticeship in yachting — you learn directly from someone doing the job at the top level.
Your STCW Basic Safety Training, an ENG1 medical, a food safety certificate, and a genuinely good attitude. Versatility, flexibility, composure, organisation and humility — those are the qualities that make a great yacht chef, and none of them require a diploma.
Get out there and take chances. Say yes to the weird jobs. Every skill you pick up — diving, driving tenders, photography, whatever — makes you more employable to a captain looking at a stack of identical CVs. That's exactly how I got my first yacht job, and it's still true today.
Let me clear this up properly, because there's a lot of confusion (and a lot of people trying to sell you courses you don't need).
There are two things you cannot work on a yacht without:
STCW Basic Safety Training. This is the international safety standard for anyone working at sea — firefighting, sea survival, first aid, personal safety. It's about a week long, hands-on, and honestly good fun. Every crew member on board has it, from the captain to the greenest deckhand.
ENG1 Medical Certificate. A seafarer's medical exam done by an approved doctor. It confirms you're fit to work at sea. Quick and painless for most people.
On top of those, a food safety / hygiene certificate is expected for anyone running a galley, and depending on the flag of the vessel and its size, a Ship's Cook Certificate can be required on larger commercially-registered yachts. That last one is worth looking into once you're aiming at bigger boats.
Here's my honest take: a formal apprenticeship or culinary school is ideal, but it is not the only way in. There are typically three types of people who become yacht chefs — the fully qualified restaurant chef, the passionate home cook, and the stew or deckhand who has fallen into the galley. I've seen all three succeed.
I did a 4-year apprenticeship starting at 15 in Noosa, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't give me a serious foundation. But in the end, the only judgement that really matters in this industry is what ends up on the table. If the crew and guests are happy, you've done your job.
Paper gets you looked at. These get you hired:
Real cooking ability across breakfast, lunch, dinner and crew food, day after day. References that say you're clean, organised and easy to live with. A portfolio of your food that looks the part. And versatility — extra tickets like a divemaster qualification or deck experience made all the difference for my first yacht job. The boat didn't just hire a chef, they hired a chef who could jump on deck and lead dives.
I've watched people spend thousands on every course under the sun before ever stepping on a dock. Get the essentials — STCW, ENG1, food safety — then put your energy into cooking, building references and getting yourself to a yachting hub. Experience beats laminated paper every time.
Straight answer: it depends entirely on where you're starting from. Here are the honest timelines I've seen play out over 14 years in this industry.
You're closer than you think. STCW Basic Training takes about a week, the ENG1 medical takes a morning, and a food safety cert if you don't have one. Add a yachting-format CV and travel to a crew hub at the right time of season, and experienced chefs can realistically be working on boats within 1–3 months. The cooking skills transfer; what you'll learn on the job is provisioning, guest preference sheets and cooking in a moving box.
Plan for 6–18 months. You need real kitchen hours first — restaurant work, catering, a season somewhere busy — because the galley of a charter yacht is not the place to discover you can't handle volume. Then the same path: tickets, hub, daywork, first boat. Smaller boats and crew-chef roles are your entry point.
A proper apprenticeship takes 3–4 years and is honestly the best foundation this role can have — it's what I did, starting at 15 in Noosa. But it's not the only road. Some people spend a year cooking anywhere they can, get on as a stew or deckhand, help in the galley and grow into the position. Slower on paper, but you're at sea earning while you learn.
You can complete the certificates in a few weeks — that part is true. But a certificate doesn't make you a chef, and captains aren't hiring certificates. They're hiring someone who can feed twelve demanding guests and ten crew, alone, for weeks. If a course promises the galley of a superyacht in 21 days with no cooking background, keep your money.
What a good course can legitimately compress is everything else: knowing which tickets to get and in what order, where to be and when, how to build the CV, which agencies matter and how the hiring actually works. That's months of trial and error you can skip. The cooking hours, though — nobody can gift you those.
Don't rush the foundation. My path went dish pit → apprenticeship → Europe → outback pub → dive boat → 30m yacht — and every unglamorous step made the next one possible.
I've literally been hired every single way possible — through an agent, word of mouth, a fellow yachtie, LinkedIn and even Instagram. So take it from someone who's tested every channel: here's where first jobs actually come from.
You cannot break into yachting from your bedroom. The industry runs out of hubs — Antibes and Palma for the Med season, Fort Lauderdale for the Caribbean and US, and Australia/New Zealand for the South Pacific. Get yourself to one at the start of the season (spring for the Med, autumn for the Caribbean), stay in a crew house, and be visible. Crew houses alone are worth their weight in gold — half the jobs I've heard about came through someone I met over a beer.
Crew agencies place most of the professional jobs. Register with all the big ones, keep your profile complete and your photo professional. Then here's the bit most people skip: check in. A polite call or visit every week keeps you at the top of the pile. Agents place people they remember.
Dayworking — short paid stints helping a boat — is how green crew prove themselves. You might be polishing stainless or helping in the galley for a delivery. Do it well and you're suddenly "someone the crew knows" when the chef position opens. A huge number of first contracts start exactly this way.
Your CV needs to be yachting-format (photo, tickets, one page of relevance), and your food needs to be visible. A simple Instagram portfolio of your actual cooking does more than any paragraph about your passion. I was one of the first to document behind-the-scenes of a yacht chef's life, and it has brought me real work — this industry looks you up.
My first boat job wasn't a superyacht — it was a dive boat in Cairns feeding 135 guests and 20 crew. That "unglamorous" job gave me sea legs, references and 1,000+ dives, which landed me my first yacht position: a chef/deck role on a 30m cruising New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji and New Zealand. Persistence paid off, and it will for you too.
The season is short and boats hire fast. Be there, be prepared, be easy to hire.
The classic catch-22: boats want references, but you need a boat to get references. Here's how to break the loop — because everyone in this industry, including me, started with zero yacht references.
A written reference from a head chef or restaurant owner saying you're fast, clean, reliable and easy to work with is genuinely valuable to a captain. They can't check your beurre blanc from a CV, but they can call someone who watched you work for a year. Ask every kitchen you leave for a short written reference with a phone number attached — and warn your referees they might actually get a call from a boat.
Every daywork stint, delivery or temp gig should end with two things: payment and a reference. Even one line — "Dean dayworked with us for a week, hardworking, tidy, great attitude" — signed by a captain or chief stew, changes how your CV reads. Stack three or four of those in a season and you're no longer green on paper.
Villa work, private cheffing, catering gigs and charter catamarans all produce references and portfolio photos. A chef who spent a summer cooking for villa guests has proven most of what a small yacht needs — it's the same job with a better view.
My first sea references came from dive boats on the Great Barrier Reef — not glamorous, but they told my first yacht everything they needed: he can cook volume, at sea, without losing his head. Ferries, expedition boats, crew vessels — any floating kitchen puts "cooked at sea" on your CV, and that's the sentence that matters.
Yachting hires the person as much as the chef. A reference from a dive instructor, sports coach or previous employer about your reliability and how you handle close-quarters living carries real weight for a first hire — captains are mostly trying to answer "can we live with this person?"
This industry runs on trust and it's smaller than it looks. One captain calling another carries more weight than any document — so leave every job, even the bad ones, on good terms. Your references compound over a career; the first ones are just the hardest.
Hundreds of chefs apply for the good boats. Here's what actually separates the hired from the hopeful — from someone who's been on both sides of it.
My first yacht job wasn't won on cooking alone. The boat had a unique chef/deck position, and my PADI Divemaster ticket and years on dive boats gave me the upper hand over every straight-kitchen chef who applied. One extra skill made me the obvious hire.
Get out there and take chances — collect abilities that make you more useful on a boat. Diving tickets, tender driving, deck experience, photography, massage, barista skills, water sports instruction. On a small crew, the chef who can also lead a dive or cover a watch is worth two hires.
Yacht CVs are their own thing: professional photo top corner, one to two pages, tickets and certificates listed clearly (STCW, ENG1, food safety), sea miles and boat experience up top if you have any, land experience condensed to what's relevant. Include your visa situation (a B1/B2 matters for the Caribbean season) and whether you smoke — boats ask. Spelling mistakes end applications; this industry judges attention to detail because the job is attention to detail.
Captains and agents will look at your food before they call you. Build a simple, clean gallery — Instagram works perfectly — of dishes that look like what charter guests actually eat: beautiful breakfasts, fresh lunches, plated dinners, canapés, bread and pastry. Phone photos are fine if the light is good and the plates are sharp. My whole career changed because I documented my work — this industry will look you up, so give them something worth finding.
Yachting hires on trust. Every daywork stint, every delivery, every short gig — leave with a written reference and a phone number a captain can call. Green candidates: references from restaurant head chefs absolutely count, especially when they mention cleanliness, composure and work ethic.
They already believe you can cook — you got the call. The interview asks: can we live with this person for six months in a floating corridor? Be easy-going, humble, honest about what you don't know. Composure, organisation and humility come through in ten minutes.
Do the extras others won't, and you become impossible to overlook.
Yachting is a word-of-mouth industry wearing a professional costume. Jobs are posted, sure — but the best ones are filled by "I know someone" before the listing exists. I've been hired through an agent, word of mouth, a fellow yachtie, LinkedIn and Instagram. Here's how the web actually works.
Stay in a crew house in Antibes, Palma or Fort Lauderdale at the start of a season, and you're living inside the grapevine. The deckhand across the hall knows a boat that just lost its chef; someone's chief stew mate mentions an opening over dinner. Be the person others want to recommend — because a recommendation out here is someone spending their own reputation on you.
Walking the docks asking for daywork feels old-school because it is — and it still works, especially for green crew. Every daywork stint is a networking event where you're paid to demonstrate your work ethic. Do a delivery well, and three crews now know your name. This industry is small; it remembers.
Register with the agencies, then actually build rapport. Check in politely, update them after every stint, thank them when something works out. Agents place people they remember and trust — the chef who's pleasant and reliable gets the call before the stranger with the better CV.
I was one of the first documenting the behind-the-scenes life of a yacht chef, and it has genuinely brought me work — captains, crew and even guests look you up. You don't need followers; you need a clean, professional gallery of your food and your attitude. When someone asks "anyone know a chef?", make it effortless to vouch for you with a link.
Your reputation travels faster than you do. The crew you're kind to this season are chief stews and captains in five years. Leave every boat — even the bad ones — professionally, with a reference and relationships intact. Persistence and grafting got me from a dive boat to superyachts; the network I built along the way did the rest.
This is the question underneath all the others — so let's answer it properly. Not with a personality quiz, but with the honest questions I'd ask you over a coffee before you spent a cent on courses or flights.
Can you live in close confinement? Not "do you like people" — can you share a cabin the size of a wardrobe, a bathroom, and every meal with the same crew for months, including the ones who annoy you? This is the single biggest reason people don't last. Everything else can be learned; this one is temperament.
Can you miss things? Weddings, Christmases, birthdays, your mate's big moments. Some boats are flexible, many aren't. If being present for every family event is non-negotiable for you, that's not a flaw — but it is an answer.
How do you handle pressure with no backup? The chef is a department of one. Sixteen-to-eighteen-hour days on charter, three deadlines a day, guests who remember the food above everything else. If pressure sharpens you, the galley will feel like home. If it unravels you, be honest now rather than mid-Atlantic.
Do you actually love cooking — or the idea of it? You'll cook breakfast, lunch, dinner and crew food, every day, for weeks straight. The Instagram sunsets are real, but they're the view from a fourteen-hour workday. The cooking itself has to be the reward.
Are you adaptable by nature? Different cuisines daily, plans that change hourly, provisioning in languages you don't speak, cooking through weather. Versatility, flexibility, composure, organisation and humility — the five qualities this job runs on.
The world, on salary. Savings you cannot build on land, because rent, food and flights are covered. Cooking without a food-cost ceiling. And moments — whale sharks, remote islands, royalty wandering into your galley — that only the top one percent of the world ever get to experience. I was a kid from Noosa who hated school and loved cooking; this career gave me all of it.
You don't have to bet everything to test the water. Watch honest content about the job (the hard parts especially). Talk to working crew. And read through the rest of this Q&A — the more you know before you commit, the better the decision.
If you read the hard parts above and felt excited rather than warned off — that's your answer.
This is the question I get asked more than any other, so let's get straight into it — no fluff, just what I've seen across 14 years working on yachts from 15 to 88 metres.
A sole chef starting out on a smaller yacht typically earns somewhere between €3,500–5,500 per month. Head chefs on larger yachts (50m+) are usually in the €6,000–10,000+ range, and the top end on the really big boats goes beyond that. These figures move around with the market, your experience and the programme of the boat — but that's the honest ballpark.
Now here's the part most people miss.
On land, a chef's wage disappears into rent, bills, food and everything else. On a yacht, almost everything is covered: your accommodation, your food, your medical, your flights to and from the vessel — often even your toothpaste. During a busy season there simply isn't time to spend what you're earning.
I won't sugarcoat the hours — you'll work for every cent. But the savings potential is unlike anything you'll find in a land-based kitchen.
If you're on a charter yacht, tips can genuinely change your year. A standard charter tip is often 10–15% of the weekly charter fee, split between the crew. On a busy boat in a good season, that can add tens of thousands on top of your salary. It's one of the reasons I've come to love charter — we really are appreciated for what we do for these guests, and the tips reflect it.
Private boats usually don't tip the same way, but they often come with more stability, a family feel and sometimes a better rotation.
A few things move the needle: the size of the yacht, private versus charter, whether you're the sole chef or have a crew chef under you, your qualifications and references, and whether the position is rotational. Rotation (time on, time off, full salary) is the golden ticket most of us work towards.
Don't get into yachting purely for the money — the ones who do rarely last. Get in because you want the life: the travel, the cooking without a food-cost ceiling, the places only the top one percent of the world ever get to see. The money then becomes the bonus that lets you build a real future while you're at it.
Fair question — so let me answer it the way I'd answer a mate over a beer, including when you shouldn't pay for training.
Some costs are unavoidable: STCW Basic Training, your ENG1 medical, a food safety certificate, flights to a crew hub, and crew house accommodation while you job hunt. Budget a few thousand for the lot. This isn't "training cost" — it's the entry fee to the industry, and every crew member pays it.
No course can make you a chef. If you can't cook under pressure, no certificate fixes that — only kitchen hours do. Any programme promising a superyacht galley in a few weeks with zero cooking background is selling a fantasy. I'll say that plainly.
Time and mistakes. When I started, there was no roadmap — I stumbled from an outback pub to a dive boat to my first yacht by luck and persistence over several years. The knowledge I paid for in wrong turns is exactly what a good course hands you in a weekend: which tickets to get in what order, when and where the hiring seasons run, how a yachting CV needs to look, how agencies and daywork really work, what a preference sheet is, how provisioning works, what captains actually screen for.
Do the maths on it. If proper guidance gets you hired even one month sooner, that's a month of yacht chef salary with no rent — it pays for itself many times over. If it saves you flying to the wrong hub in the wrong season, same again.
Taught by someone who has actually done the job at the level you're aiming for — recently, not decades ago. Honest about the hard parts, not just sunsets. Specific and practical rather than motivational fluff. And it should let you try before you buy.
Pay for the essentials. Never pay anyone who promises you a job. And treat good guidance as what it is — the cheapest shortcut in an expensive industry.
People picture a yacht chef plating one beautiful dinner a day. Let me walk you through what a charter day actually looks like.
Up before the guests. Fresh pastries or bread on, fruit platters, juices, and whatever cooked breakfast has been requested — plus a full crew breakfast, because ten hungry crew are up before the guests too. Being prepared is everything; I learned that cooking breakfast for a hundred dive-boat guests straight out of a 6am dive on the Great Barrier Reef.
Guest lunch might be a long Mediterranean spread on the aft deck, sushi and sashimi, or a beach picnic run ashore by tender. At the same time you're feeding the crew — and honest truth, crew food matters as much as guest food. A well-fed crew is a happy boat, and when morale dips, mealtimes are the one thing everyone looks forward to.
Bread for tomorrow, ice creams and sorbets churning, dinner proteins prepped, stocks on, canapés for sunset. If we're near a port, this is when provisioning happens — sometimes a proper market run, sometimes juggling deliveries in a language you don't speak. And guest requests come whenever they come: fresh cookies at 3pm is a classic.
Canapés with drinks, then dinner. This is where the pressure lives — guests will remember the food above almost everything else on a charter. Some nights it's a relaxed family dinner, others a seven-course tasting menu because the primary guest wants to impress. Whatever was promised at the preference sheet stage, tonight it has to appear, perfectly, regardless of what the sea is doing.
Everything. Modern Australian is my base — amazing ingredients, my spin, a lot of Asian influence, without too much fuss. But the job is cooking what the guest dreams of: their grandmother's pasta, a dish they once ate at a five-star hotel (I once needed four attempts and a photo to nail a corned beef hash a guest remembered), keto, kosher, vegan, and a kids' menu — all in the same service.
Sixteen-to-eighteen-hour days during charter are normal. It's probably the hardest job on the boat — most captains will agree. It's also, for the right person, the best one.
Every land chef who steps into a galley has the same moment: where's the rest of the kitchen? Here's what cooking at sea actually demands — and the tricks that make it work.
A galley on a 30m yacht can be smaller than a food truck, and you're producing tasting menus out of it. Every centimetre is planned, everything has a home, and everything gets secured before you leave the dock — the sea will find anything you forgot to strap down. The upside: I've also had galleys I'm genuinely spoilt in. On 60m Arience I had a huge dry store and cool room. The range is enormous; adaptability is the job.
Cooking through weather is a skill no course fully prepares you for. Wet tea towels under chopping boards, pots half-filled and clamped, deep trays instead of flat, nothing hot carried without warning the crew. On rough days you simplify the menu and nobody complains — braises over brunoise. I've cooked through a six-day storm between Australia and New Zealand with the stabilisers gone; you learn quickly that being prepared beforehand beats heroics mid-swell.
There is no corner shop at anchor. You order for weeks ahead, plan menus around what a region can actually supply, and build backups of your backups. The South Pacific was the hardest place I've ever provisioned — and the best training ground imaginable. A vacuum pack machine becomes your best friend for prep and backup food; portioned, sealed and frozen properly, it's your insurance policy when guests extend a trip or weather cancels a delivery.
If I could only keep three things: a Thermomix (a blender on steroids), a Rational combi oven (just makes life easier) and a decent vacuum pack machine (couldn't live without one now). Small galley, big output — the right equipment is the difference.
You'll cook the same twelve guests' breakfast, lunch and dinner for weeks, alone, with no walk-in to hide in. Organisation and composure carry you further than technique out here. But there's honestly nothing like plating dessert while anchored somewhere the top one percent of the world will never even see.
You're cooking for people who eat at the best restaurants on earth as a matter of routine. Here's what they actually expect — and what they remember.
Before guests step aboard, you receive their preference sheet: likes, dislikes, allergies, diets, favourite cuisines, how they take their coffee. Read it like a contract. The fastest way to lose trust is serving coriander to the guest whose sheet said no coriander. The fastest way to win it is remembering on day one that Madame mentioned she loved a particular wine bar dish in Paris — and quietly serving it on day three.
This is the real skill of the job. Guests don't just want good food — they want that dish, from that place, exactly as they remember it. I once had a client ask for a corned beef hash they regularly had at a five-star hotel. Three attempts from verbal descriptions, couldn't nail it. They showed me a photo on the fourth try and I got it straight away. That's the expectation you're working to: give them a taste from a moment in their life, identical.
Lunch for eight becomes lunch for sixteen when another boat rafts up. Dinner moves from 8pm to 10pm because the sunset ran long. A guest went fishing and would like their catch prepared five ways. The answer is always yes, and the standard never drops. Composure is the product.
Fresh bread and pastries daily. Beautiful fruit at every turn. The kids' chicken nuggets made from scratch and somehow better than any restaurant's. Owners in particular notice consistency — the hundredth breakfast matters as much as the first, because for them this isn't a holiday, it's their home.
Every owner and captain knows a well-fed crew is a happy boat. Guests notice crew morale even when they can't name why the trip felt so good. Your crew food is part of the guest experience; treat it that way.
Private boats want you to feel like family and cook like it. Charter guests want a week that beats every restaurant they know — and when you deliver it, the tips reflect exactly how appreciated you are.
On land, your produce arrives at the back door at 7am. At sea, keeping a five-star kitchen supplied anywhere on earth is half the job — and honestly, one of my favourite parts of it.
Before a trip I'm studying the route like a navigator. Where can we get deliveries? Which anchorages have nothing at all? How many days between real ports? Your menus get built around those answers. Guests extend trips, weather cancels deliveries, and the boat can't exactly pull over — so you buy for the plan, then buy backups for the plan going wrong.
Provisioners — professional yacht suppliers in the major hubs who can source almost anything and deliver to the dock. Costly but reliable, and on charter, reliability wins. Local markets — my favourite. When the local produce surrounds you, it's hard not to use it; whatever I find usually ends up in my dishes at some point. It's also the best way to actually know a place. The big shop — sometimes provisioning is just you, a taxi and a supermarket in a language you don't speak, doing three trolleys' worth of maths on the fly.
The South Pacific is the hardest place I've ever provisioned — and where I started my career, which I'm grateful for now. Out there you learn the real skills: buying whatever the island has and building menus from it, freezing and vacuum-packing like it's a religion, and treating your dry store as a life-support system. A vacuum pack machine is genuinely a chef's best insurance at sea — proper prep, sealed and frozen, has saved more dinner services than talent has.
Guests expect day-one freshness on day fourteen at anchor. That's the craft: herbs kept alive in cups of water, fish bought whole and broken down as needed, ripening managed like a spreadsheet — bananas quarantined from everything else, obviously. Fresh bread baked daily because flour keeps when bakeries don't.
Provisioning made me a better chef than any kitchen did. It forces creativity, kills fussiness and connects your food to wherever you actually are — which, funnily enough, is exactly what guests remember best.
Here's something that surprises people: cooking is the entry ticket, not the job. The chefs who last out here all share five qualities — versatility, flexibility, composure, organisation and humility — and most of them have nothing to do with food.
You're a one-person department managing menus, provisioning for weeks ahead, inventory across freezers and dry stores, budgets, and food safety records. There's no manager to catch what you drop. The best yacht chefs I know are frighteningly organised people who happen to cook — being prepared is what saves you when the sea, the schedule or the guests change the plan. And they will.
The guest moved dinner twice, the generator tripped mid-bake, and the boat is rolling. The crew watches how you respond, and honestly, so does your career. Calm is a professional skill you can practise like knife work. The galley's mood becomes the boat's mood — chef sets the weather.
You'll share a floating corridor with the same faces for months. Being tidy, easy-going and not needing to win every argument in the crew mess matters more to your next reference than your beef wellington does. Humility is the most underrated ticket in yachting.
Preference sheets, chief stew coordination for service, telling an owner honestly what's achievable at a remote anchorage, understanding requests through language barriers. You're a diplomat with a knife roll. The chef-and-interior relationship in particular can make or break a season — invest in it.
No one schedules your prep or tells you to sleep. Long seasons reward the chefs who eat properly, keep a hobby, and manage their own energy like a resource. Mine are diving and photography — a hobby that travels keeps you sane on the long stints.
Every extra skill makes you more valuable on a small crew. My divemaster ticket got me my first yacht job. I've since built photography and videography into my career too — get out there and collect abilities; you never know which one opens the next door.
Anyone can learn to cook. This list is what they actually can't teach in culinary school.
First, let's define the target properly — because "gourmet" on yachts isn't what most people think.
When I started my first boat I tried doing all the crazy molecular stuff. It just wasn't me — and honestly, it's rarely what guests want. What they want is amazing ingredients, treated with respect, plated beautifully, without too much fuss. My style settled into exactly that: incredible produce, my own spin, a lot of Asian influence. The future belongs to ingredient-led cooking, not foams for the sake of foams.
So your goal isn't to become a molecular wizard. It's to cook beautiful, confident, consistent food across many cuisines. That's learnable.
If you can, spend time in a quality restaurant, even one season. My apprenticeship split between a refined fine-dining kitchen and a high-volume quality kitchen, and that combination — finesse plus output — is exactly the yacht chef skillset. If a formal role isn't possible, stage: many good kitchens will take a hard worker for free nights, and you'll absorb plating, seasoning discipline and standards fast.
Yacht cooking is breadth: beautiful breakfasts, fresh salads and ceviches, handmade pasta, precise fish and meat cookery, bread and pastry basics, canapés, desserts, and at least a working fluency in Japanese, Thai, Italian, Middle Eastern and Mexican flavours. Cook through cuisines systematically at home — guests order from their memories of the world, and your job is to meet them there.
Plating is a language you learn by immersion. Study the restaurants you admire, eat out as education whenever you travel, photograph your own plates and critique them honestly next to the pros. I document everything I cook — the camera makes you honest and shows you your progress.
Seasoning, sauces, temperature control, bread. Guests won't notice your tuile; they will absolutely notice underseasoned fish and bought bread. Boring excellence beats exciting inconsistency in a galley, every single time.
Skip the molecular kit. Buy better fish. That's the whole secret, cheaper than culinary school.
Instagram shows you the sunsets. Let me show you the whole picture — because I love this life, but you should choose it with your eyes open.
You'll share a cabin roughly the size of a walk-in wardrobe with a crewmate, on a bunk, with a bathroom between you. Your worldly possessions fit in a locker. You live centimetres from the same faces for months — brilliant people, difficult people, messy people, all of it. Close confinement is genuinely the thing that breaks most crew who don't last. If you can stay calm and kind in a small space, you're already ahead.
On charter or with owners aboard: flat out. 16–18 hour days, weeks without a day off, up at 5am and in bed after midnight. Then the guests leave and the boat exhales — quieter weeks, crew dinners ashore, diving off the back deck, exploring whatever corner of the world you've woken up in. Yachting doesn't do nine-to-five; it does extremes of both.
Missing weddings, Christmases and birthdays is real. Some boats are flexible, but you should be mentally prepared before you sign on. The isolation on long crossings tests you too. I've been through a storm between Australia and New Zealand for six days with the stabilisers gone, genuinely thinking we might capsize — and I've been "stuck" in paradise so long I was losing my mind. Both are part of the same job.
I've been face to face with whale sharks in Papua New Guinea. Swum with wild dolphins in New Zealand. Handed out presents to kids in Vanuatu. Had Prince Albert visit my galley for a chat. Anchored in Raja Ampat, the most remote and alive place I've ever seen. These aren't holiday memories — this was my commute, and I was being paid well, with no rent, while it happened.
The adaptable. The tidy. The ones who don't need to win every argument in the crew mess. Versatility, flexibility, composure, organisation and humility — the same qualities that make a great yacht chef make a great crew member.
The lifestyle costs you normality and pays you in experiences almost nobody on earth gets. Fourteen years in, I'd make the same trade again.
I want to be as real with you as possible, because yachting is not for everyone, and it's better to know what's coming before you sign on. Most captains and crew will tell you the chef has the hardest job on the boat. Here's why.
Guests remember the food above almost everything else on a charter. When crew morale is low, mealtimes become the one thing everyone looks forward to. That's a beautiful responsibility — and enormous pressure, three times a day, with no nights off from it.
On most boats there's no sous chef, no pastry section, no one to cover you when you're seasick or exhausted. Sixteen-to-eighteen-hour days through a busy charter, up at 5am, in bed after midnight — and tomorrow you do it again, smiling.
The hardest technical part isn't the cooking — it's recreating someone's memory. A guest describes a dish they ate once at a five-star hotel and you have to produce exactly that, from words. I once made four attempts at a corned beef hash before they finally showed me a photo and I nailed it immediately. Your job is delivering a taste from a moment in someone's life, identically, on demand.
Cooking a plated seven-course meal while the galley rolls is a skill no land kitchen teaches. I've been through six days of storm between Australia and New Zealand with the stabilisers lost — you still have to feed the crew. Pans get wedged, pots get half-filled, everything gets strapped down, and you carry on.
Close confinement, months from family, missing every wedding and Christmas. The isolation on long crossings and remote anchorages is real — I've had stints where I was honestly losing my mind. What gets you through: a routine off the clock, a hobby that travels (mine are diving and photography), real conversations with crewmates instead of cabin-hiding, and remembering the off-season is coming.
Because the same job that demands all of this hands you the world — the travel, the freedom to cook without a budget, the moments you'll never be able to put into words. Fourteen years in, I still think the trade is worth it. But go in with your eyes open.
Let's have the conversation the brochures skip. The mental side of this job is real, it catches good people off guard, and talking about it honestly is the best preparation there is.
Months living centimetres from the same faces. Missing weddings, Christmases and birthdays. Long crossings with no land and patchy wifi. And as the chef, you're a department of one — when the boat is stressed, everyone else debriefs with their team; you talk to your dry store. Even in my early dive boat days I remember getting "stuck" out on the reef for ten days and losing my mind. It's funny to look back on — I live on yachts all year round now — but the adjustment was real.
A hobby that travels. Mine are diving and photography — they've kept me sane for 14 years and both became career assets. Whatever yours is, it gives your brain somewhere to go that isn't the galley.
Routine in the chaos. A swim off the back deck before prep, a proper coffee, twenty minutes of sun between services. Small anchors, deliberately kept, hold surprisingly well.
Stay in the crew mess. The temptation after an 18-hour day is to vanish into your bunk, and sometimes you should. But cabin-hiding becomes isolation fast. Some of my closest friendships were built over late-night crew meals — the same close quarters that grind you down are also the cure.
Protect your off-season. Rotation and freelance work changed everything for me — real weeks off to travel, eat, see family and remember who you are off the boat. Build toward it; the work/life balance is worth more than any pay rise.
Say something early. To a crewmate, the captain, family at home, or a professional. Yachting has become far better about mental health, and there are crew-specific support services now. The old "harden up" culture is dying — let it.
Some people genuinely don't suit this life, and there's no shame in that — better to know before you sign a season contract. But for those it fits, the lows are the price of highs most people never get to feel.
This is a sensitive topic — if you're personally struggling out there, please reach out to someone you trust or a professional support service. You're never as alone on that boat as it feels at 2am.
This is the question with the happiest answer. Yes — your job is literally travelling the world. Let me tell you what that actually looks like, because it's better and stranger than the brochure.
At a minimum, yachting runs on seasons: summers in the Mediterranean — the French and Italian Rivieras, the Balearics, Greece, Croatia — then across the Atlantic for winters in the Caribbean and Bahamas. That's the baseline. A "normal" year in this job outdoes most people's lifetime travel list.
The boats that go further are where the magic lives. My career has taken me through New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji and New Zealand on my very first yacht, cruising past the island where Castaway was filmed. Papua New Guinea, face to face with whale sharks. Raja Ampat in Indonesia — the most remote, alive place I've ever anchored; that one was special. You will experience places and moments that only the top one percent of the world ever get to see, and you'll be getting paid to be there.
Honest answer: it depends on the calendar. With guests on, you'll see the inside of your galley and a beautiful view through a porthole. But between trips, on repositioning legs and in the off-season, the boat is yours to explore from. Provisioning is secret sightseeing too — my job sends me to local markets in every port, which is my favourite way to know a place. As a chef, when amazing local produce surrounds you, it's hard not to dive in — it all ends up in my dishes at some point.
Freelance and rotational work changes the game again. On rotation you fly home — or anywhere — for weeks at a time, salary continuing. I've spent my leave eating my way through Mexico, Brasil, America and Australia. Follow the high seasons around the world and you have geographical independence plus financial freedom, all year round.
Fourteen years in: whale sharks, royalty in my galley, six-day storms, remote islands with no names on the chart. I fell in love with the ocean growing up in Noosa — this career let me make it my address.
I spent 8 years in land kitchens before 14 at sea, so I've lived both sides of this properly. They share knives and heat — beyond that, they're different careers.
A restaurant chef refines the same dishes night after night until they're perfect. A yacht chef might do a Japanese omakase on Monday, a Lebanese feast on Tuesday, a kids' birthday cake Wednesday morning and a beach BBQ that afternoon — plus three crew meals every single day. One week you're looking after Russian guests, the next a Swedish family, then Americans. The variety is exactly what keeps the job interesting, and exactly what breaks people who can only cook one style.
In a restaurant you have a brigade — someone on pastry, someone on the pass, someone to cover your section. On most yachts, you are the entire kitchen: executive chef, sous, pastry chef, kitchen hand and dishwasher in one body. There's nobody to hide behind, and no walk-in full of backup either. Composure and organisation matter more than flair.
This is the one that shocks land chefs. On a well-run yacht there's no food cost percentage to hit — you're there to give guests the best experience possible, and that can mean flying in white Alba truffles or sourcing live lobster from Canada. After years of counting every gram of protein on land, that freedom is almost unheard of. (I'll admit I still have a small-boat mentality and spend carefully — old habits.)
Nobody warns you about cooking a plated dinner for twelve while crossing a rolling sea. Pans slide, ovens are on gimbals or half the size you're used to, and provisioning happens wherever in the world the boat is. It teaches you to be prepared like nothing else.
Restaurant cooking gives you routine, your own bed, and a food scene around you. Yachting gives you the world — literally. Your commute is the Mediterranean in summer and the Caribbean in winter, your salary isn't eaten by rent, and mealtimes are the highlight of everyone's day, which is pressure and privilege in equal measure.
I've never chased Michelin stars — I want to chase life experiences. If that sentence resonates, you already know which kitchen is for you.
Two of the most common ways into yachting, two very different daily lives. Having spent 14 years in the galley alongside some brilliant interior teams, here's the honest comparison.
Stew is the more accessible entry: STCW, ENG1, a strong service attitude and ideally a silver-service or wine course, and you can realistically land a junior interior role your first season. Chef demands proven cooking ability — you're hired to run a department alone from day one, so the bar to entry is higher and the search can take longer.
A stew's day is service, housekeeping, laundry and guest care — often as part of a team, with a chief stew running the department. The chef's day is every meal for guests and crew, solo, 5am to midnight on charter. Interior has teammates to share the load and the laughs; the galley has autonomy and creative control, but nobody to cover you. Ask yourself honestly: do you want colleagues or a kingdom?
Different flavours of it. Interior pressure is constant presence — being switched on, polished and invisible-yet-everywhere for sixteen hours. Galley pressure is concentrated — three deadlines a day where the guests' single biggest memory of the trip is on your pass. Guests remember the food above almost everything else; that cuts both ways.
Chefs generally out-earn stews at equivalent boat sizes because it's a specialist head-of-department role. But a chief stew on a big boat earns seriously well, and charter tips are split across the whole crew regardless of department. Nobody in yachting goes hungry, financially speaking.
Plenty of chefs started as stews or deckhands — helping in the galley on crossings, covering crew meals, and falling into the position when a chef left. It's one of the classic third routes in. If you want the galley eventually but can't get hired as a chef yet, joining as interior and proving yourself on board is a legitimate strategy — I've watched it work many times.
If you love people, polish and teamwork — interior. If you'd rather express yourself on a plate and own your department — galley. Either way you get the same ocean.
I get asked this constantly, and I've done years of both — three years private with the same family, then charter on boats up to 88 metres. Here's the honest comparison.
On a private boat you cook for the same owner, learn their tastes to the decimal point, and often genuinely become part of their world. The family on my first private boat took me fishing and diving in some incredible destinations — for three years, in a way, I was family. The rhythm is usually gentler: intense periods when the owner is on, quieter stretches when they're not. You can refine, plan ahead, and build deep trust.
The trade-off: no charter tips, and if your food philosophy doesn't match the owner's palate, you'll be cooking their favourites on repeat for years.
Charter is a different animal. One week you're looking after Russian guests, the next a Swedish family, then Americans — every preference sheet is a new puzzle, and it keeps the work genuinely interesting. You're effectively opening a new restaurant every single week, for the toughest crowd in hospitality.
And yes — it's hard to beat the tips. A good charter season transforms your year financially. We really are appreciated for what we do for these guests, and the tip at the end of a great week says it plainly.
The trade-off: relentless pace during the season, back-to-back trips, and the pressure of impressing strangers every week rather than comfort-cooking for people who already trust you.
Honestly? Whichever hires you first — early on, sea time and references beat strategy. But know yourself: if you thrive on consistency, relationships and craft, private will suit you. If you need variety and want to maximise earnings while you're young and durable, charter is your game.
I started private and relished it, but these days I'd say charter — the variety of challenges keeps me sharp, and the appreciation is real. Plenty of chefs alternate through their career: charter seasons for the earnings, private stints for the sanity. That flexibility is one of the quiet luxuries of this job.
I've worked both — sail and motor, 15 to 88 metres, private and charter — so here's an honest insight into what the choice actually means for the person cooking.
Motor yachts win on space, full stop. Bigger galleys, proper cool rooms and dry stores, serious equipment — on a 60 metre I've been thoroughly spoilt with storage. Sailing yachts give the same length over to rig and hull shape, so the galley shrinks and every centimetre works twice as hard. You become a master of the vacuum packer and the deep, clever locker.
Here's the one nobody warns you about: sailing yachts heel. A motor yacht rolls and pitches, but a sailboat on a passage can sit at a constant lean for hours — you learn to cook at an angle, wedge everything, and time your service to the tacks. It sounds mad and it becomes completely normal. Gimballed stoves help; preparation helps more. Motor yachts are steadier, and modern stabilisers make big ones remarkably civilised — until the day the stabilisers don't work, which is a story every chef eventually owns. Mine lasted six days, between Australia and New Zealand.
This is the real difference. Sailing yachts tend to run smaller crews, closer quarters and a saltier, more informal culture — everyone helps everyone, and the chef might trim a sail between courses. Motor yachts, especially the big charter boats, run more like five-star hotels: bigger teams, clearer departments, higher formality. Neither is better; they suit different personalities.
Sail guests chose the romance of the wind — they're often adventurous eaters happy with beautiful, honest food served when the sea allows. Motor charter guests expect the floating-restaurant standard: multi-course precision at 8pm sharp, whatever the weather. Both are a pleasure; they're just different briefs.
Don't be precious — take the good boat with the good crew, whichever propulsion it has. Every hull teaches you something: sail teaches resourcefulness and seamanship; motor teaches scale and polish. The chef who's done both is more employable than either specialist, and versatility is the whole game out here.
Yes — nearly every yacht chef I know started on land, including me. Eight years in land kitchens before I ever cooked at sea. But the transition has traps, so here's what actually transfers and what you'll need to build.
Speed, organisation, working clean under pressure, menu writing, dietary knowledge, and the thousand small habits of a professional kitchen. If you've run a section on a busy Saturday night, you already have the engine this job needs. Fine-dining chefs bring plating and refinement; pub and bistro cooks bring volume and honest crowd-pleasers — both matter on charter, often in the same day.
The brigade. On a yacht you're likely alone — no pastry chef, no kitchen porter, no one to taste your sauce. The supply chain: no rep delivering at 7am; you provision wherever the boat is, sometimes in a language you don't speak, and what you forgot stays forgotten until the next port. And the room moves. Everything from pan storage to blanching pasta changes when the galley is rolling.
It's a start, not a finish. High-volume speed and systems thinking are genuinely valuable — but yacht guests are paying hundreds of thousands a week and expect refined, beautiful food. Bridge the gap: get into a quality restaurant for a season or two, learn plating and produce, build a repertoire beyond the fryer. Then you're a real candidate.
Get your tickets — STCW, ENG1, food safety. Build a portfolio of plated food, not just prep shots. Then test your sea legs before you bet your career: my route was three years on Great Barrier Reef dive boats before my first yacht, and I'm glad I learned rough-weather cooking there and not on a superyacht charter. Deliveries, daywork, charter cats — anything that proves you can cook on the water. Consider a crew chef role on a big boat as your bridge: land skills welcome, yacht skills taught.
On land, you cook your menu. At sea, you cook their memories — whatever the guest dreamed of, recreated exactly. Trade your ego for curiosity and you'll do just fine out here.
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