Is yachting worth it? An honest answer from someone still doing it

I am still doing this, which is the only credential that matters here. I am not selling you a course, and I will not tell you it was the best decision I ever made. Here is the ledger with both columns filled in.

What you earn, and what you keep

Start with the number, because everybody does.

As of 2026, a junior deckhand on a yacht up to about 60m earns roughly EUR 3,000 to 3,200 a month gross, and nearer EUR 2,800 to 3,000 on bigger rotational boats. A junior stew or steward sits around EUR 2,500 to 3,800. A crew chef who is not the sole chef runs USD 3,500 to 5,000. A junior or unlicensed engineer runs USD 3,000 to 6,500 and climbs fastest of the four once the tickets are in. The role by role table, with what moves each figure, is in what yacht crew earn in 2026.

Now the part that makes those numbers behave differently from a shore job paying the same. The boat feeds you, houses you, launders your uniform, issues your toiletries and covers your medical insurance, and a properly written contract pays your flights. Your fixed cost of living drops to roughly zero. A deckhand on EUR 3,000 with no rent is not the same animal as a barman on EUR 3,000 with rent, and that gap is the whole financial case for this industry.

Tips are real and they are not guaranteed. On a charter boat a typical pool works out at USD 500 to 2,000 per crew member per charter week, split evenly regardless of rank, and an exceptional week can run toward USD 5,000 a head. I have had both ends of that. A private boat may pay nothing on top of your wage all season, or the owner may hand out a bonus at Christmas. Do your sums on the base wage and treat anything above it as the money that pays for flights and the next certificate.

What crew actually bank turns out to be temperament rather than salary. The ones who save move it somewhere they cannot spend it from on pay day, before the first evening ashore. The rest spend it in the same three ports, every season.

What it costs you

Now the invoice.

You share a cabin. The MLC default is one seafarer per sleeping room, and yachts run an approved equivalent instead. As of 2026 the MCA yacht code allows twin cabins in the 3,000 to 5,000 GT band, and sets a floor of at least 7 square metres per person where two share on a smaller boat. Two to a cabin is normal. Four still happens on older builds. That cabin is your bedroom, your wardrobe, your office and the only door you can close, and you share it with somebody whose alarm goes off at a different hour to yours.

Your hours follow the programme, not the calendar. In port and off charter, expect about nine hours with a proper lunch break. On charter, plan for fourteen hour days and mean it. The legal floor is MLC 2006: at least 10 hours of rest in any 24 hour period and 77 hours in any 7 day period, split into no more than two blocks with one of at least six hours, and never more than 14 hours between rest periods. A well run boat plans to those numbers. A weak boat argues about them at 23:00.

Paid leave is 2.5 calendar days per month as a minimum, accruing from the first day of your Seafarer Employment Agreement, and it cannot be bought out except when you leave. Read that as about a month a year, taken when the boat can spare you.

Rotation, where you work a block and somebody covers your position while you are off, is real and mostly not for you yet. It goes to bigger boats and senior crew. Junior rotation, where it exists, looks like five months on and one off.

Then the line no salary guide prints. You will miss birthdays. On a busy seven month programme you will miss your mother's birthday, at least one wedding, and eventually a funeral. You will watch it on a phone with poor signal from a crew mess, in a time zone that turns calling home into a scheduling problem. Nobody here gets used to that. It is the real price, and it is not paid in euros.

From the bridge

I have never had a crew member tell me they regretted the money. The ones with regrets name a person they were not there for, and they name them years later.

Who it suits, and who it breaks

The green crew who last come from three places. Hospitality and events, because they already know what service under pressure feels like and they do not take a guest's mood personally. Trades, because a plumber or an electrician can take a problem apart in a bilge. Sport and open water, because somebody who has been coached hard for years can be corrected in public without hearing an insult.

The ones who leave inside six weeks are just as predictable. Anyone who needs a weekend, because there are none, and your days off land where the schedule puts them, which can be a Tuesday in October. Anyone who cannot be told, because you will be corrected in front of others, usually about something small, often by somebody your own age. Anyone who came for the parties, because that is the first contract I do not renew. Anyone who cannot swim properly, which is a fit problem, and fit problems are cheaper to solve on land.

Chapter 02 of the guide, is this for you, turns that into three questions you answer in writing. Do it before you spend money on a course.

Worth it if, not worth it if

I have taken a yacht to Antarctica. Nothing else in my working life would have put me there, and no salary would have bought me that particular morning. That is the trade: this work takes you places you cannot otherwise reach, on somebody else's schedule, never on yours.

So, worth it? For me, still yes, and I have stayed long enough for that answer to have cost something. For a good third of the green crew I hire, no, and they find out in six weeks. If your answer is yes, the next move is a marina at half past seven: how to dockwalk.