How do you become a yacht chef?

The galley is the one department where nobody expects you to learn on the boat. You arrive able to cook or you do not arrive at all. That is good news if you have already run a section ashore, because those years are the entry ticket everyone else has to buy.

What does a yacht chef actually do all day?

Three crew meals a day, every day, for people who eat at odd hours because the deck team is washing down and the interior is turning cabins. Then, on charter, guest meals to restaurant standard on top of that. You are cooking twice. Once for eight to twelve hungry crew who have been outside since 07:00, and once for guests who want the tasting menu they had in Positano.

Around the cooking sits the part nobody photographs. Provisioning in a port you have never seen, in a language you do not speak, with a delivery window that closes before the boat sails. Storage discipline in fridges smaller than your last walk in. Stock rotation you can prove. Allergy sheets that change when a guest brings a friend.

Hours follow the boat, not the kitchen. Expect about 9 a day off charter and up to 14 on charter. The rest floor under MLC is 10 hours of rest in any 24 and 77 in any 7 days, and the galley is where that floor gets tested first, because you start before the crew eats and finish after the guests do.

From the bridge

When I read a chef CV I look for the season length, not the restaurant name. Anyone can cook well for two weeks. I am buying five months of consistency in a moving kitchen.

What certificates do you need to work in a yacht galley?

Fewer than you think, and the expensive part is not paperwork. Book the medical first, because it is the one that can stop the whole plan.

• ENG1 medical. UK GBP 115, Cape Town about R2,800, Antibes EUR 100 to 150. Valid 2 years.
• STCW Basic Safety Training. About 5 days. Cape Town R6,500 to R15,000, Fort Lauderdale USD 1,095 to 1,375, Antibes or Palma EUR 1,295, UK GBP 850 to 1,050.
• Level 2 Food Safety certificate. Legally required for anyone handling food. Valid 3 years.
• Ship's Cook Certificate, once the boat needs it.
• B1/B2 visa if you want to work a single day in US waters.

Definition

The Ship's Cook Certificate is an MLC certificate required when a vessel goes beyond 60 nautical miles with 10 or more people aboard. It has no expiry date, so you pay for it once.

That is the whole legal stack for the galley. Compare it to deck, where the tickets keep coming, and you can see the trade. Your qualification is the food. The certificates only make you legal to serve it. The full department by department list sits on the certificates page.

What does a yacht chef earn in 2026?

More than any other entry level yacht job, because the boat is buying a trained trade, not a pair of hands. As of August 2026, gross monthly pay looks like this.

On charter boats, tips run 500 to 2,000 USD per crew member per charter week, and exceptional weeks reach toward 5,000. They are not guaranteed and private boats work differently. Leave is 2.5 days per month, which is the number people forget when they compare the salary to a head chef job ashore.

The pay carries a condition that gets skipped in every recruiting advert. On most boats there is no backup if you are sick. You cook with a temperature. You cook with a cut hand. That single fact is why sole chef money looks the way it does. The trade is set out in more detail in the perks and the price.

Who actually gets hired for these jobs?

Trained chefs. Formal training carries more weight in the galley than in any other department, and a career changer with home cooking and enthusiasm does not clear the bar here. Restaurant sections, hotel kitchens, private household cooking, catering at volume: all of that reads well. A three month cookery course on its own usually does not.

What breaks people is rarely the cooking standard. It is cooking twice, with no sous chef, while a guest decides on Tuesday that the family is now dairy free. Add the isolation. The galley is one person in one room while the rest of the crew works in pairs.

If you are still choosing a department, read pick your department before you spend anything. The galley pays best at entry and asks for the most before you arrive.

How do you get the first yacht job?

The same way everyone else does, with one difference: you will be asked to cook.

• Be in a yachting port in season. Antibes, Palma, Fort Lauderdale.
• Register on the crew platforms. Yotspot showed more than 180,000 registered professionals when checked in August 2026. DayWork123 covers 387 or more ports.
• Walk the docks with a printed CV. Dock daywork in 2026 pays EUR 120 to 160 a day in Antibes, EUR 100 to 150 in Palma, USD 150 to 200 in Fort Lauderdale.
• Say yes to a trial day and cook a crew lunch and a guest style plate on the boat's own equipment.
• Never pay an agency a placement fee. Under MLC 2006 Standard A1.4 paragraph 5, crew agencies may not charge you to place you, directly or indirectly.

From the bridge

A trial tells me three things in four hours. Whether you can hold a plan, whether you clean as you go, and whether you ask before you open the last of the guest stock. Two of those are not about food.

What does a chef's CV need to show?

Yours is different from every other CV on the dock. Deck and interior candidates are selling attitude. You are selling output, so the page has to carry evidence: covers per service, cuisine styles you genuinely hold, dietary work you have delivered, budgets you have run, whether you provisioned yourself or had a supplier do it for you. Put the boat facing detail first, then the shore kitchens with dates and section, then the certificates in a single line rather than a block.

Two pages, no more. A photo, because crew CVs carry one. No menu photos glued into the document, because they never print and they never survive email. Keep the actual dishes for the trial.

Build it on SeaPapers. There is a galley template that already asks for the things I look for, so you are filling in a structure instead of inventing one at 23:00 the night before a dock walk. If you want the ground under all of this first, start with the free guide.