CV · UPDATED AUGUST 2026
What does a captain actually look for in a yacht CV?
Your CV gets about thirty seconds. Not because I am rude, because there is a stack of them and one open bunk. I started green with a worse CV than yours, and the reason I know what kills them is that mine got binned for most of these.
What does a captain read in the first thirty seconds?
Always the same order. Photo. Name and the position you are asking for. Nationality and visas. Certificates with dates. Then experience.
Five things. If one of the first five is missing, I stop and pick up the next CV. Not as a punishment. It is because a missing field means I have to email you to find out something the page should have told me, and I have four other CVs that already told me.
That order is also the argument for two pages. Two pages maximum, one page if you are green and honest about it. Three pages tells me you cannot judge what matters, and judging what matters is the job I am hiring for.
From the bridge
I have never turned down a green candidate for being green. I have turned down plenty for making me hunt for their ENG1 date.
What does the photo settle before you say a word?
Whether you look like crew.
Head and shoulders. Plain background, or the sea behind you. Crew shirt or a plain polo. Tidy hair. Looking at the camera. Smiling like a person, not like a passport photo. That is the whole brief.
What I am reading in it is grooming and self-awareness, because those two things carry most of guest-facing work. The bad ones are always the same: a cropped wedding photo, sunglasses, a night out, a bathroom mirror, a car seat.
Design does the same job as the photo. One accent colour. Nothing competing with your face. No skill-bar graphics rating your teamwork out of five, because you cannot rate that and neither can I. No generic objective statement. Two lines of profile instead, in your own words.
Which fields decide whether I keep reading?
Each field settles one question in my head. When it is missing, the question stays open, and open questions cost you the slot.
| Field | What it settles for me | What loses you the read |
|---|---|---|
| Photo | Whether you present like crew | Sunglasses, nights out, cropped group shots |
| Position sought, at the top | Which vacancy you are for | Left off, or three positions at once |
| Nationality and languages | Where you can work, who you can serve | Missing entirely |
| Visas held, with expiry | Whether you can join in Fort Lauderdale next month | Listed with no expiry date |
| STCW and ENG1, with issue and expiry | Whether you can legally sail this season | Undated, or an ENG1 already expired |
| Other certificates, with dates | What I do not have to pay for | A wall of acronyms, no dates |
| Vessels: length, type, private or charter | What kind of operation you have seen | Boat names only, no context |
| File name | Nothing, until it is wrong | cv_final_2.pdf on my desktop |
Name the file "Firstname Lastname - Deckhand CV.pdf". I keep candidate files in one folder for the season. Yours needs to be findable in it three weeks after you sent it.
On certificates, order matters as much as presence. STCW Basic Safety Training and the ENG1 medical go first, both with dates. Everything else after. If you are not sure which extras your department actually needs, the certificates by role page lists them, and the get certified chapter explains why the ENG1 is the one to book first.
What do I do with a CV that has no sea time?
I read the section under experience, and I read it properly.
Hospitality, trades, water sports and service work all transfer. Restaurant service, bar work, a plumbing or carpentry apprenticeship, dive instructing, sailing instruction, hotel housekeeping. Say what you did, how many covers, how big the team, what you were trusted with. That is real information about how you work.
Then daywork. Daywork is the strongest thing a green CV can carry, and most green CVs bury it or leave it off.
Definition
Daywork is paid casual work by the day on a yacht, arranged on the dock or by phone, with no contract and no promise of tomorrow. It is how almost everyone gets their first line of yacht experience.
List every day of it with the boat name, the length, and the dates. Three named boats over ten days tells me you can be handed a rag and a schedule and be useful. When an advert says under six months experience, daywork is the experience it means.
Get references while you are standing there. At the end of a daywork day, ask the bosun, the chief stew or the chef two things: will they write you a line, and can you list their number. Both asks take ten seconds and neither is awkward at the time. A month later it is awkward. Landing on the dock covers how the daywork days get found in the first place, and your CV is your dockwalk covers what happens to the paper version once you hand it over.
What gets a CV binned in ten seconds?
Six things, and they are all self-inflicted:
- An unprofessional photo
- More than two pages
- Generic motivational text, "team player", "hard worker", "passionate about the sea"
- Certificates with no dates
- An ENG1 that expired before the season starts
- A badly named file
Smoking, tattoos and date of birth sit in their own category. Expectations vary by flag and by boat, and crew commonly state all three on the CV. State them if they apply to you. A visible forearm sleeve passes on most boats and is a hard no on a few, and I would rather know at CV stage than at the passerelle. Surprises read worse than facts.
Build it somewhere that already knows this shape. SeaPapers (seapapers.com) has department templates for deck, engineering, interior, galley, officers and junior crew, holds you to two pages, and keeps your certificates and their expiry dates in one folio so the dates on the page are the dates on the documents.
Do this now
- Rewrite the top of your CV so photo, position sought, nationality, visas and certificates with dates all sit above the fold on page one.
- Cut it to two pages. One if you are green.
- Rename the file "Firstname Lastname - Deckhand CV.pdf", with your real department.
- Read the free guide end to end before you send it, then work through the interview questions so the call does not catch you cold.
Straight answers
How long does a captain spend on a yacht CV?
About thirty seconds on the first pass. That pass covers the photo, your name and position, nationality and visas, certificates with dates, and a glance at experience. CVs that survive get read properly later, usually with two or three others.
Should a yacht CV have a photo?
Yes. Head and shoulders, plain background or the sea behind you, crew shirt or plain polo, tidy hair, looking at the camera, smiling like a person. It is the first thing on the page and the first thing I look at.
How many pages should a yacht CV be?
Two maximum. One page if you are green and honest about it. Three pages tells me you cannot judge what matters, which is the exact skill I am hiring for on deck and in the interior.
Does daywork count as experience on a yacht CV?
Yes. List it with the boat name, length, and the dates you worked. When an advert says under six months experience, daywork counts. Ten dayworked days on three named boats beat an empty page every time.
What gets a yacht CV binned fastest?
An unprofessional photo, more than two pages, generic motivational lines like team player, certificates with no dates, an expired ENG1, and a file named cv_final_2.pdf. Any one of those takes ten seconds.
Do I need to put my date of birth, tattoos or smoking on a yacht CV?
Expectations vary by flag and by boat, and crew commonly state all three. State them plainly if they apply. A surprise at the gangway reads far worse than a line on the page.