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When a yacht becomes somewhere an owner can live, work and spend extended time with family, the expectations placed on the vessel change. Connectivity becomes part of the working day. Privacy influences how spaces are used. Longer stays place greater emphasis on comfort, reliability and the crew’s ability to sustain a consistent experience. These expectations reach beyond accommodation and equipment into the organisation supporting the yacht. Designers, project managers, captains, crew and specialist businesses each contribute to making the vessel function as intended. Across the superyacht industry, changes in ownership and technology are therefore closely connected to the experience of the people responsible for putting them into practice. Where engineering meets experience Black Pearl provides a striking example of the relationship between a yacht’s capabilities and its everyday operation. Her sailing systems can deploy approximately 2,800 square metres of sail in six and a half minutes through a preprogrammed process. On a passage from Montenegro to Amsterdam, 95% of the journey was completed under sail. That level of use brings together engineering, operational confidence and a crew committed to sailing the vessel. Competition between rotational captains to achieve the most sailing adds a human incentive to the technology. The result illustrates an important consideration for yacht projects: practical usability influences how consistently a capability becomes part of life aboard. Equipment enters a working environment in which people must understand its behaviour, maintain it and make decisions about its use under changing conditions. The time required to operate a system, the demands it places on the team and the confidence it inspires all affect its value in service. Operational experience consequently belongs within the wider conversation about design and delivery. Decisions made during construction or refit become part of someone else’s daily responsibilities, making the knowledge of those who operate yachts relevant well before a vessel leaves the yard. How Experience Shapes the Superyacht Industry That knowledge travels as people change vessels, take on greater responsibility or move ashore. Commercial shipping provides one route into superyachting, allowing officers to accumulate sea time and qualifications before transferring into an environment where maritime responsibilities sit alongside the expectations of private owners and guests. Experience then develops through different vessels, projects and operating circumstances. A build introduces its own demands, while command brings responsibility for coordinating the people, systems and decisions on which the yacht depends. Further along a career, that understanding can support a business serving other vessels. During its first three years, OCCAM Marine grew from two former captains working in a barn to a company with 12 full-time employees and additional consultants. Established professional relationships helped generate recommendations and build trust with clients. Growth introduced further responsibilities. A larger project portfolio required sufficient staff, a continuing flow of suitable work and attention to profitability. The founders’ experience became the basis for an organisation that also needed the capacity to deliver through other people. The progression reflects a wider connection between life aboard and the businesses ashore. Practical understanding can help identify a service the industry needs, while lasting commercial success requires that understanding to be supported by people, processes and consistent delivery. Consolidation across management, brokerage and media adds another dimension. Changes in ownership reshape the organisations through which clients obtain services, advice and information, bringing questions of independence, continuity and professional trust into commercial decisions. The working conditions behind the experience A successful trip depends on coordination across the yacht. Navigation, engineering, maintenance, hospitality and administration contribute to an experience whose complexity may remain largely invisible to owners and guests. For captains, completing an ocean passage or handling a demanding docking manoeuvre can provide considerable professional satisfaction. Receiving thanks for a successful trip also carries a responsibility to recognise the team whose work produced it. Passing that appreciation through the vessel acknowledges the contribution of people across departments. It also reflects an understanding of command as a role involving both accountability and representation. Sustaining performance requires similar attention to the demands placed on crew. Stress, sleep and recovery vary between individuals, including those working within the same operation. Physiological measurements can provide additional information about those differences, contributing to a more personalised understanding of wellbeing alongside conversations about workloads and life aboard. Recruitment establishes another part of the operational picture. Certificate verification and relevant background checks provide evidence on which employers can base decisions about the people joining a team. Services such as CrewPass have developed around integrating additional checks into existing recruitment processes. Their development also demonstrates the importance of understanding how a proposed service will fit the working practices of the people expected to use it. From recruitment through to daily leadership, the usefulness of information depends on its relevance to the decision being made. Giving knowledge a wider purpose Crew accumulate experience that has value beyond their immediate duties. Returning repeatedly to familiar waters can reveal changes in marine life, biodiversity and pollution. That regular presence offers conservation organisations access to observations gathered over time. The International SeaKeepers Society connects yachts and crew with opportunities to support marine research and conservation. Those relationships can extend between vessels as people change jobs, taking their interest and understanding into a new team. Safety knowledge can travel through the industry in a similar way. An incident experienced by one crew may contain a lesson relevant to people working elsewhere, particularly where familiar routines or assumptions contributed to the circumstances. Confidential reporting through CHIRP gives those experiences a route beyond the immediate vessel. A professional’s willingness to share what happened creates an opportunity for others to examine their own practices. Both activities depend on a connection between the person holding useful knowledge and someone able to act on it. Maintaining that connection gives individual experience a wider purpose. The infrastructure behind the yacht Navigation services, software, recruitment systems, project management and specialist advice form part of the infrastructure supporting superyachting. Much of this work takes place ashore, with its consequences felt aboard. The Queen’s Awards received by dsnm, including recognition for its Compass software, brought that supporting work into a wider business setting and led to visits to Buckingham Palace. Such recognition gives visibility to achievements in a part of the industry whose work often sits behind the finished vessel and the guest experience. Superyachting continues to develop through these connections. Crew knowledge informs projects, professional relationships support businesses, and experience gathered at sea contributes to safety and environmental work. As vessels become more capable and owners’ expectations develop, the demands on that supporting infrastructure develop with them. Progress depends on how effectively the industry carries knowledge between the people designing a yacht, the businesses supporting it and the crew responsible for making it work. Technology, professional experience and crew wellbeing shape how modern yachts operate, while specialist businesses and shared knowledge connect life at sea with the industry ashore. Together, they form the working infrastructure behind an evolving superyacht industry.

For all the procedures, policies and reporting channels that now exist across global shipping, one uncomfortable problem remains: an industry can only respond to what it knows about, and much of what happens to people at sea may never be formally reported at all. That gap between what takes place onboard and what eventually reaches management, regulators or investigators sits at the heart of Unspoken, an initiative developed through the All Aboard Alliance to better understand abuse and misconduct at sea, particularly sexual misconduct, by listening directly to the people who experience it. Susanne Justesen, Director of Human Sustainability at the Global Maritime Forum, describes the initiative as part of a much broader effort to improve safety, health, inclusion and wellbeing across maritime. The All Aboard Alliance, established in 2022, now brings together dozens of maritime companies around shared industry challenges that no single organisation can realistically solve alone, from diversity and inclusion to psychological safety and the long-term attractiveness of a career at sea. Unspoken is one part of that work, but it tackles an area where silence itself has become part of the problem. The experiences traditional systems may never capture Most responsible shipping companies already have grievance procedures, whistleblowing mechanisms and investigation processes, and those systems remain essential, but the existence of formal reporting channels does not necessarily mean they are capturing the full reality of what people experience onboard. Jeremy Sutton, Chief Executive of Swire Shipping and newly announced co-chair of the All Aboard Alliance, describes that gap plainly. Misconduct and abuse are difficult enough to report in a shore-based workplace and can become considerably more complicated onboard a ship, where the workplace is also home, hierarchies are pronounced and the same people may continue living and working together for months. Unspoken therefore asks a different question: what could the industry learn if seafarers were able to share experiences anonymously and confidentially without believing they were entering a formal company reporting process? The initiative invites seafarers across ranks and trades to describe experiences of abuse and misconduct, with a particular focus on sexual misconduct, so those lived experiences can be used to build a clearer global framework around what the behaviour looks like, how it can be prevented, how organisations should respond when it occurs and what effective accountability should ultimately look like. The All Aboard Alliance describes the project as using anonymised insights from seafarers to identify systemic gaps and develop practical standards for preventing and responding to unwanted sexual behaviour at sea. That distinction matters because Unspoken is not an alternative route for reporting an incident that requires immediate company action, nor is it intended to undermine existing procedures. Its purpose is to expose the patterns, behaviours and experiences that those procedures may never capture in the first place, creating a body of knowledge from which the wider industry can begin to understand not only what is happening, but why people may choose not to report it through conventional channels. Psychological safety is more than having a hotline It is easy to assume that creating a mechanism for reporting automatically creates a culture in which people will use it, but psychological safety is far more complicated than the existence of an email address, phone number or policy. Justesen points to the calculation people often make before deciding whether to disclose an experience: what will I gain by telling somebody, and what might it cost me personally? If somebody fears retaliation, damaged career prospects, disbelief, social isolation onboard or an investigation process they do not trust, the perceived cost of speaking can easily outweigh the potential benefit, making silence an understandable response rather than evidence that nothing is wrong. This is why trust in the process matters as much as trust in colleagues or management. An organisation can state that reporting is encouraged, but unless people believe the process will protect them, support them and lead somewhere meaningful, there can remain a substantial distance between what a policy promises and what an individual actually experiences. For maritime, that distinction matters because every experience that remains unreported represents more than a missing statistic; it is also a lost opportunity to understand where systems, leadership or onboard culture are failing, and without that understanding it becomes considerably harder to design meaningful prevention. Sexual misconduct is not solely a women's issue Much of the industry discussion around harassment and sexual violence has understandably focused on women, particularly as maritime attempts to attract and retain more female seafarers, but the issue is broader than gender alone. Sutton argues that some behaviours now receiving greater scrutiny may have existed for years within overwhelmingly male shipboard environments, meaning the lessons emerging from Unspoken could ultimately prove relevant to everybody working at sea rather than only to women entering traditionally male crews. At the same time, gender balance remains an important part of the wider cultural conversation, and Swire Shipping provides a useful example of how collaboration can force companies to reconsider approaches they previously believed were sensible. Its earlier strategy had been to place women across a larger number of vessels, spreading representation throughout the fleet, but work undertaken through the All Aboard Alliance prompted a different approach, with higher concentrations of women placed aboard fewer vessels in order to create a stronger onboard community rather than leaving individual female seafarers isolated within heavily male crews. Sutton says that experience changed the company's thinking, while Swire Shipping has also set a target for women to represent 20% of its seafarers by 2030, compared with approximately 15% currently. The significance is not simply the percentage itself, but the willingness to examine an established approach, acknowledge that another model may work better and make a measurable change as a result. Culture is also a business issue For years, conversations around diversity, inclusion and welfare have often been framed primarily as matters of corporate responsibility, but that framing becomes increasingly inadequate when the same issues directly affect whether maritime can attract, retain and develop the workforce it needs. Sutton is clear that these challenges have a real business impact, because companies that cannot create environments in which people feel safe, respected and able to build sustainable careers will inevitably struggle to compete for talent. That commercial reality may prove one of the strongest forces for change, because human sustainability stops being something separate from operational performance when recruitment, retention, leadership, safety and reputation are all affected by it. Justesen's longer-term ambition pushes that accountability further. Under its 2030 strategy, the All Aboard Alliance is working towards greater transparency, global standards defining what good, better and best practice look like, and financial incentives that encourage adoption across the maritime value chain. Its four overarching goals encompass safe working conditions, physical and mental health, inclusion and diversity, and flexible and attractive careers. The potentially transformative element is that responsibility does not necessarily stop with the shipowner. Justesen envisages a future in which cargo owners, charterers, major consumer brands and other parts of the supply chain increasingly consider the conditions experienced by the people aboard the vessels carrying their goods, creating commercial incentives for companies that invest seriously in crew welfare while making poor practice progressively harder to hide behind minimum compliance. That would represent a significant shift in how maritime understands responsibility, because the treatment of people at sea would no longer be viewed solely as an internal employment matter between a shipping company and its workforce, but as something the entire supply chain has a legitimate interest in understanding and influencing. What Unspoken at Sea Is Asking the Industry to Confront There will be no single initiative, regulation or corporate policy capable of eliminating abuse and misconduct at sea, and neither Justesen nor Sutton presents Unspoken as an instant solution. Its importance lies instead in creating a structured way of listening before the industry claims to understand the problem, because effective standards cannot be built solely from assumptions about what happens onboard when the experiences of the people living those realities remain largely unseen. That is particularly important in an industry accustomed to solving highly technical problems, because human behaviour does not always respond neatly to procedures, checklists or minimum standards. Changing culture requires evidence, trust, leadership and a willingness to listen to experiences that may be deeply uncomfortable for organisations to hear, while meaningful accountability requires those lessons to result in something more substantial than another policy document. Unspoken begins with an acknowledgement that maritime does not yet know enough about what people experience, what prevents them from speaking and what makes them believe that reporting will or will not lead to meaningful action. Rather than representing a weakness, recognising that gap may be one of the most important steps the industry can take, because maritime cannot prevent what it does not understand, cannot correct what it cannot see and cannot credibly promise safer careers at sea while some of the experiences shaping those careers remain unspoken. ──────────────────────────── SUPPORTED BY CHIRP Maritime & The Seafarers’ Charity ──────────────────────────── CHIRP Maritime is an independent confidential reporting programme that helps improve safety across the maritime industry by sharing lessons from real incidents, near misses and concerns raised by those working at sea. www.chirp.co.uk The Seafarers’ Charity supports seafarers and their families around the world through grant funding, practical assistance and partnerships focused on welfare, safety, health and long-term wellbeing. www.theseafarerscharity.org Susanne Justesen of the Global Maritime Forum and Jeremy Sutton of Swire Shipping join Sea Views to examine Unspoken, psychological safety, reporting culture and the difficult realities surrounding sexual misconduct at sea.

Brendan Roney of BR Marine Group brings 25 years aboard yachts to a brokerage approach shaped by operational knowledge, personal service and relationships that continue long after a sale. By the time a yacht reaches a sales listing, it carries a history of maintenance decisions, cruising programmes, shipyard periods and the people who have cared for it. Understanding that history, and how it relates to a prospective owner’s plans, is an important part of choosing a vessel. For Brendan Roney, Founder and Managing Partner of BR Marine Group, those questions draw on experience gained aboard sailing and motor yachts over 25 years. His perspective encompasses the practical demands of running a vessel and the attention to detail required to deliver the experience its owner expects. That combination shapes an approach to brokerage in which the owner’s ambitions, the yacht’s condition and the realities of life on board are considered together. Buying a Yacht Begins With Understanding the Owner A successful search starts with understanding what an individual wants from ownership. Where they intend to cruise, how they expect to use the vessel and the kind of service they value all help determine which yachts deserve closer consideration. Roney describes a process tailored to those requirements, with research extending to vessels listed publicly and opportunities available through industry contacts. The objective is to give buyers a considered selection supported by knowledge of the boats themselves. “We tailor everything to the individual,” he explains, drawing a direct connection between the care involved in brokerage and the personal service expected aboard a professionally run yacht. For owners moving into larger vessels, that attention becomes particularly important. Additional systems, crew requirements and the organisation needed to operate the yacht introduce questions that previous experience with smaller boats may not have required them to consider. From Newport to the Captain’s Seat Roney’s introduction to yachting began in Newport, Rhode Island, where he sold day charters after university. A visit to the Newport Boat Show with his résumé led to a marketing and advertising position with a yacht company, before an interest in working aboard took him to sea. His subsequent career included a transatlantic crossing, the accumulation of sea time and progression towards becoming a licensed captain. That experience gave him an understanding of yachts as working environments, where machinery, maintenance, crew and service must come together consistently. Today, Roney works alongside business partner Ken Bracewell and a brokerage team whose backgrounds include practical experience aboard yachts. What a Yacht’s History Can Reveal A vessel’s previous shipyard periods, the work completed, the captains who have operated it and the waters in which it has cruised can all inform a buyer’s understanding of a prospective purchase. Roney places those details within a broader assessment of how a yacht has been used and maintained, including consideration of available warranties and the operational arrangements an owner may need after purchase. The same practical perspective extends to conversations about budgets, crew and cruising areas. Familiarity with those subjects allows the relationship between the yacht and its intended use to be explored before ownership begins. For a buyer, the value lies in having someone who can connect the vessel’s history with the questions that will matter in everyday use. RENA and the Continuity of Relationships The sale of RENA brought Roney’s career at sea and his work in brokerage together in a particularly personal way. He had previously spent five years as a mate aboard the yacht, working alongside Captain Ken Bracewell. Their professional relationship later developed into a business partnership, and the vessel eventually returned to their working lives through its sale. Roney represented the sellers, while Bracewell and colleague Rebecca Gormley represented the buyers. The transaction connected people who knew the yacht from their time aboard with the owners involved in its next chapter. That continuity reflects an industry in which professional relationships can span decades. Knowledge of a vessel and familiarity with the people around it can remain relevant as ownership changes and careers evolve. Preparation Before the Show, Support After the Sale At a major boat show, preparation helps turn a busy schedule into a useful search. Roney describes previewing vessels, arranging appointments and planning routes before clients arrive, allowing their time to be organised around yachts that fit their requirements. The relationship can also continue beyond a transaction, with assistance around crew, cruising plans and access to people who can help address particular operational needs. For a team with experience delivering service aboard yachts, that continuing attention follows naturally from its work at sea. Buying a yacht begins a relationship with a vessel, its crew and the wider network supporting it. Roney’s approach brings those connections into the decision from the outset, helping owners consider how their ambitions will translate into life on the water. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SUPPORTED BY Moore & Co. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Moore & Co. is a respected law firm serving clients across maritime, aviation, yachting, business and international matters. Led by Michael Moore, the firm is known for discretion, trusted relationships and calm authority in complex legal and commercial environments. www.moore-and-co.com A yacht’s history and the people who understand it can shape the ownership experience long after the sale. Brendan Roney of BR Marine Group examines the practical knowledge, preparation and lasting relationships behind buying a yacht.

Yacht safety management depends on the people expected to turn procedures into sound decisions, making actual sleep, practical seamanship and operational judgement central to any assessment of readiness. A yacht can have an up-to-date drill matrix, completed inspection reports and carefully recorded hours of rest while important questions about its operational readiness remain unanswered. Those documents provide evidence of activity, but the people responsible for the vessel still need to understand what that activity has achieved, where weaknesses remain and whether the crew can respond when circumstances change. Yacht safety management depends on that connection between the documented system and the working vessel. For captain, author and former Designated Person Ashore Antoine Capstick, the distinction deserves closer attention, particularly when administrative completion becomes the main measure of a well-run boat. Speaking with Captain James Battey for The Crew Car, Capstick challenges the confidence that can accompany a complete set of records. His argument centres on the people expected to recognise danger, make decisions and act under pressure, including whether they have actually slept before being asked to do so. What a completed safety system should demonstrate Capstick draws a sharp distinction between satisfying compliance requirements and reducing operational risk. He describes the protection that documentation can offer when decisions are examined after an incident, while questioning how much reassurance it provides about the crew's ability to prevent that incident in the first place. There is an important distinction between that criticism and the purpose of the International Safety Management Code itself. The International Maritime Organization describes the Code as a standard for safe ship management and pollution prevention, with objectives that include assessing identified risks and establishing appropriate safeguards. Risk management is therefore part of its intended function. The practical issue is how those objectives are implemented. A recorded drill confirms that an exercise took place; a useful assessment also considers what the crew understood, what failed and what needs to change. An inspection report has greater operational value when the problems it identifies lead to action. Capstick's criticism raises a question about the evidence being collected: does it demonstrate improving readiness, or does it mainly demonstrate that the reporting cycle has been completed? Recorded rest and actual sleep One of the clearest examples concerns fatigue. Capstick asks the industry to look beyond hours of rest and consider hours of sleep, bringing the discussion back to the condition of the people carrying responsibility on board. “Everything changes when people are tired,” he says. The IMO's Guidelines on Fatigue recognise the importance of sleep quantity, quality and continuity, and explain that adequate opportunity to sleep does not always result in adequate sleep. Operational interruptions and the difficulty of sleeping at certain times can affect the recovery a seafarer obtains. That distinction matters when a vessel's records are being used to judge readiness. A schedule can identify a period away from duty without establishing how well someone slept during it. The document and the person's condition answer related questions, but they do not provide identical information. For yacht safety management, the implication is that fatigue deserves attention within everyday operational discussions. A crew member's account of interrupted sleep provides information that a completed record cannot communicate on its own, and management needs to be willing to hear it. Drills and decisions in changing conditions Capstick also questions the assumption that an emergency will resemble a rehearsed scenario closely enough for completing the prescribed exercises to settle the question of preparedness. His concern is the judgement required when circumstances do not follow the expected sequence. Training gives people an opportunity to practise procedures and understand their responsibilities, but the learning continues when the exercise is discussed afterwards. Confusion about a role, difficulty using equipment or a communication failure offers information about the vessel's readiness that deserves attention beyond the attendance record. In the interview, Capstick places particular emphasis on the moment when everyone has been accounted for at a muster station. He frames that headcount as a point at which protecting the lives already secured should remain central to subsequent decisions. His wider argument concerns the responsibility carried by the person in command. Decisions must respond to the developing situation, the crew's capabilities and the risks involved, with procedures supporting an informed assessment of what is happening. Recruitment and the ability to recognise danger For Capstick, prevention begins well before an emergency, including with the people selected to work on the vessel. Asked what he would prioritise in recruitment, he returns to seamanship and the ability to notice something developing before it becomes a serious problem. His own route into yachting began in commercial fishing with his father, followed by sailing instruction and command of a sailing yacht. He later moved into motor yachts, fuel supply and management work, and wrote practical guides addressing subjects including jet-boat handling and anchoring. That background informs his emphasis on observation and understanding how a vessel behaves. Battey recognises the value of systems developed by people with direct operational experience, who understand the small practical details that can disrupt an otherwise orderly process. The recruitment question extends beyond whether someone presents well at interview. It concerns how their experience, training and judgement relate to the role they will perform. Once aboard, familiarisation and continued development help connect that background to the particular vessel, its equipment and its working arrangements. Making yacht safety management useful on board The relationship between the vessel and shore management runs through Capstick's criticism. Where attention concentrates on completed reports, the information behind those reports can receive less scrutiny than it deserves. A working safety system needs to accommodate uncomfortable information. A recurring defect, an exercise that exposed confusion or a crew member reporting fatigue may complicate an otherwise reassuring account of operations, but each offers an opportunity to understand the vessel more accurately. The IMO's explanation of the ISM Code places commitment from senior management at the centre of effective implementation and recognises the importance of competence, attitudes and motivation at every level. The connection between leadership ashore and conditions aboard is integral to the framework. For owners and managers, that makes the response to information as significant as its collection. Records should help identify where support, resources or changes are needed, with the captain able to raise concerns and obtain a useful response. Capstick's challenge ultimately concerns the confidence the industry draws from its paperwork. The strongest evidence of effective yacht safety management is found in what the system enables people to understand and improve, from the quality of a drill debrief to the attention given to fatigue. Its value becomes clearer when a completed document leads to a better-informed decision on board. Yacht safety management is tested by the decisions people make on board. Antoine Capstick explores how fatigue, practical experience and the response to operational concerns shape readiness beyond completed records.

The UK PSSR training update means seafarers who completed Personal Safety and Social Responsibilities training earlier in their careers may still need to take action. Although PSSR has traditionally been a qualification completed once, rather than a course requiring regular renewal, the UK’s revised requirements mean affected seafarers must check whether their existing training covers the prevention of and response to violence and harassment. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s MGN 718 sets a completion deadline of 31 March 2027. Its scope includes holders of UK Certificates of Competency and Certificates of Proficiency, UK-certified officers and ratings, and holders of UK PSSR certificates issued before 1 January 2026, subject to the stated exemptions. Captain Chris O’Flaherty, Senior Technical Adviser and Head of IMO Delegation at The Nautical Institute, describes the UK’s action as a significant step towards bringing existing seafarers into the updated training framework. In his discussion with Karine Rayson, Director of The Crew Coach, he explains that the practical implications extend from individual certification to the responsibilities of those managing vessels and their crews. MCA-approved PSSR certificates dated on or after 1 January 2026 already include the additional learning outcome, so those holders do not need the supplementary module. Relevant certificates from an IMO White List flag state are also accepted where they reference IMO Resolution MSC.560(108) and are dated before 18 August 2026. For those who need the update, the OneOcean module, “Prevention and Response to Violence & Harassment” (0900), takes approximately one hour and is free for UK seafarers and UK-MCA certified seafarers. Completion produces a digital Verification of Training, which should be retained and available when required. The subject reaches directly into the way vessels operate. O’Flaherty explains that a seafarer dealing with bullying, harassment or persistent workplace stress is carrying a mental burden alongside their professional duties. Attention spent processing those experiences is attention unavailable for the work of keeping the vessel safe. Rayson illustrates that connection through an account of a captain who had struggled to sleep for two days because of workplace pressures. O’Flaherty describes the operational consequence: when a captain is called to the bridge to assess a complex traffic situation, they must absorb information quickly and make sound decisions. Inadequate rest and competing mental demands can undermine that process. “It’s not just the technical regulations, it’s also about looking after the people,” he says. For captains and yacht management, the immediate task is to establish who needs the training and maintain completion records. The MCA warns that failure to complete it may affect certificate revalidation, demonstration of compliance during inspections or eligibility to work at sea. The wider responsibility continues after the module is finished. Recognising harmful behaviour, understanding how to report it and knowing how to respond all depend on leadership that puts the training into practice. The deadline addresses a documented training requirement; the conditions in which crew live and work determine how much that training achieves. Read MGN 718 on GOV.UK for the full requirements, exemptions and step-by-step instructions for accessing the training. The UK PSSR training update brings a new deadline and a wider responsibility for crew safety. Captain Chris O’Flaherty explains who needs to act before 31 March 2027 and why preventing harassment matters to the safe operation of a vessel.

As FLIBS 2026 approaches, three more nominees from the 2025 Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Awards demonstrate that meaningful progress in boating can come from very different places, from artificial intelligence and trailer guidance to cleaner maintenance products and alternatives to traditional antifouling. When the marine industry talks about innovation, attention naturally gravitates towards the technologies that are easiest to see: new vessels, electric propulsion, alternative fuels, autonomous systems and increasingly ambitious engineering. Yet some of the changes capable of making boating safer, easier and more sustainable are far less dramatic in appearance, even when their impact on the everyday experience of being on the water could be significant. That is what makes this second group of companies revisited from the 2025 Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Awards particularly interesting. As the industry prepares for the 2026 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show and the fourth annual awards, the work of SEA.AI, ZF Marine and Eco Safeway offers a much broader view of what marine innovation can actually mean in practice. SEA.AI is teaching technology to watch the water when a human being cannot, ZF Marine is applying software to one of the least glamorous but most stressful parts of recreational boating, and Eco Safeway is questioning whether the products used to clean and protect vessels need to introduce unnecessary chemicals into the environment in the first place. There may be no single technology connecting them, but there is a common instinct behind all three: identify a recurring problem within boating, understand why it continues to exist, and find a better way of dealing with it. Marine Innovation at FLIBS: When the Human Eye Is Not Enough Marine navigation has always depended heavily on awareness, and the more crowded or challenging the environment becomes, the more important it is for a skipper to understand what is happening around the vessel. That becomes considerably harder when visibility deteriorates, when objects are small or partially submerged, or simply when the person at the helm is concentrating on another task and cannot continuously monitor every screen onboard. SEA.AI approaches that problem through machine vision, combining thermal imaging, colour sensors and artificial intelligence to detect, classify and alert operators to objects on the surface of the water, including vessels, debris, containers and other hazards that may be difficult to identify visually, particularly at night or in poor conditions. The important distinction is not simply that there is another camera onboard, because a conventional camera is still dependent on somebody looking at it at the right moment. As Diogo Arreda explains during the 2025 conversation, SEA.AI uses artificial intelligence to monitor what the sensors are seeing continuously and alert the operator when something requires attention, turning the technology from a passive viewing device into an active layer of situational awareness. That difference becomes particularly important in a marine environment where the consequences of missing something can extend well beyond damage to a vessel. SEA.AI says its systems can detect not only boats and floating hazards, but also whales and dolphins, bringing safety and environmental protection into the same conversation rather than treating them as unrelated objectives. Preventing a collision can mean avoiding injury and costly vessel damage, but it can also mean preventing fuel or oil spills, reducing the risk of harm to marine life and avoiding the wider environmental consequences that can follow an incident on the water. In that sense, the technology illustrates how marine safety and sustainability often overlap far more than industry categories might suggest. The company’s Watchkeeper system also reflects another increasingly important characteristic of modern marine equipment: the ability to continue improving after installation. SEA.AI has been collecting data for years, and continued software and algorithm updates mean the system can evolve as that data grows, allowing the intelligence behind the hardware to improve without requiring the entire physical product to be replaced. ZF Marine Looks Beyond the Engine Room ZF Marine is much more readily associated with transmissions, controls, propulsion systems and the mechanical components that move vessels through the water, which makes the development of RampAssist particularly revealing because the idea did not begin with another gearbox or propulsion product. Instead, a small internal technology team asked what frustrations ordinary boaters were experiencing and whether ZF’s engineering and software capability could be applied somewhere completely different. The answer was the boat ramp. It may not be the most glamorous part of boating, but anyone who trailers a vessel understands how quickly a day on the water can become frustrating when a ramp is closed, unsuitable, overcrowded or unfamiliar. RampAssist was developed around that reality, bringing together information on more than 24,000 ramps so users can locate facilities based on geography while also accessing information about amenities, ratings and the times at which a ramp is likely to be busiest. At first glance, that may sound more like convenience than sustainability, yet the wider consequences are easy to understand. Driving from one unusable or overcrowded ramp to another wastes fuel, time and energy, while repeated negative experiences can eventually discourage people from using their boats regularly at all. By reducing some of that friction, ZF is addressing both the practical experience of boating and the unnecessary waste created when that experience goes wrong before the vessel even reaches the water. The app also incorporates weather and tide information, bringing safety considerations into the same platform, while its patented trailer guidance system uses the camera on a mobile device together with object recognition, visual guidance and audible warnings to help direct a boat safely onto its trailer. For somebody new to boating, that matters because loading a vessel onto a trailer is a learned skill, and it can become one of the more intimidating parts of the experience when wind, current, visibility, unfamiliar equipment and the pressure of other people waiting at the ramp all become part of the situation at once. By adding both guidance and recording capability, RampAssist can function not only as an immediate aid but also as a training tool, helping boaters review what happened and become more competent over time. There is a useful lesson in that approach because innovation does not always require creating an entirely new category of marine technology. Sometimes it begins by looking at a familiar frustration that the industry has simply accepted for years and deciding that it should no longer be quite so difficult. Cleaner Chemistry Is Still Marine Technology Eco Safeway approaches sustainability from yet another direction, focusing on an area of boating that rarely receives the same attention as propulsion or navigation but has a direct relationship with the marine environment: routine vessel maintenance. There is nothing particularly futuristic about cleaning a boat, yet the products used across marinas, boatyards and privately owned vessels do not disappear once the job is finished. What goes down a drain, over the side or through a marine system eventually has to go somewhere, which makes the chemistry behind those products part of the wider sustainability conversation whether it is marketed that way or not. Eco Safeway develops clean marina compliant products around that reality, including phosphate-free cleaners designed for applications ranging from AC flushing and raw-water systems to black-water descaling. The underlying idea is straightforward but important: a cleaning product still has to perform properly, but effectiveness should not automatically require unnecessary environmental harm. Tristan Contas describes the company’s approach as combining safety, sustainability and practical performance within the same product range, rather than treating those goals as competing priorities, and that philosophy becomes even more interesting when the conversation turns to Finsulate. Traditional antifouling has long involved a difficult environmental compromise because marine growth has to be controlled if a vessel is to remain efficient, yet many conventional coatings achieve that result through biocides designed specifically to discourage organisms from attaching to the hull. Finsulate approaches the problem differently, using a fibre wrap applied to the hull to prevent barnacles and other marine growth from establishing themselves rather than relying on a traditional chemical antifouling coating. According to the company, the material is biocide-free, chemical-free and made from recyclable nylon, while also reducing the need to repeatedly haul the vessel for bottom painting. The significance of that extends beyond the coating itself because hull condition directly influences vessel efficiency. Hard fouling increases resistance as a boat moves through the water, which can raise fuel consumption and reduce performance, meaning that keeping the hull clean is not merely cosmetic maintenance but part of the vessel’s overall energy equation. That is where the environmental argument becomes much more complete. Sustainability in boating is rarely determined by one decision taken in isolation; the chemicals used during maintenance, the frequency with which a vessel must be hauled, the materials consumed during that process and the additional energy required when the hull becomes heavily fouled all contribute to the overall footprint. Changing one part of that system can therefore influence several others at the same time. The Less Obvious Side of the Blue Economy SEA.AI, ZF Marine and Eco Safeway could hardly be more different as businesses, with one working in artificial intelligence and machine vision, another operating within one of the marine sector’s most established propulsion and driveline companies, and the third focused on cleaning products, hull maintenance and alternatives to conventional antifouling. Yet their differences are precisely what make them useful examples of why the idea of a sustainable Blue Economy has to extend far beyond the technologies most likely to dominate headlines. A safer vessel can also be a more sustainable vessel when technology helps prevent collisions, spills and damage to marine life, while a better boating experience can contribute to the same goal when software reduces wasted journeys, improves safety and helps people become more competent users of their equipment. In the same way, a cleaning product becomes part of the marine innovation conversation when it is designed around what happens after that product leaves the bottle and enters the surrounding environment, just as an antifouling system deserves scrutiny when it seeks to reduce chemical reliance without sacrificing the efficiency required to keep a vessel moving properly through the water. None of these advances is likely to dominate a boat-show skyline, but that does not make them insignificant. In many ways, this kind of incremental improvement is exactly how industries change, through hundreds of decisions about whether a familiar process can become safer, cleaner, easier or more efficient without compromising the practical reason it existed in the first place. Looking Back While the Next Group Moves Forward These conversations were recorded during FLIBS 2025, when SEA.AI, ZF Marine and Eco Safeway were among the companies being recognised through the Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Awards, and revisiting them a year later provides more than a reminder of who was nominated. It creates a record of the problems companies were trying to solve, the technologies they were bringing to market and the way sustainability was already becoming embedded within decisions that might once have been considered purely operational. The 2026 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show runs from October 28 to November 1, bringing the marine industry back to South Florida while the Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Awards return for their fourth year. The awards are intended to recognise companies, organisations and individuals connecting innovation with sustainability across the marine industry, not only through high-profile technologies but through practical solutions capable of improving how vessels are operated, maintained and experienced. That broader definition matters because, if the industry is serious about reducing its environmental impact while continuing to grow, innovation will have to happen everywhere. It will happen in propulsion systems and vessel design, certainly, but it will also happen in navigation, software, maintenance, materials, marinas, supply chains and the countless everyday processes that collectively shape life on the water. SEA.AI, ZF Marine and Eco Safeway are three very different examples of what that can look like, and while their technologies may not share a category, the question behind each is remarkably similar: can we take something the marine industry already does and find a way to do it better? That is often where meaningful innovation begins. The Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Awards have been supported by Allini Water Filters, DeAngelo Marine Exhaust, Total Marine Solutions, Informa Markets and the Marine Industries Association of South Florida, helping provide a platform through which emerging ideas and established companies alike can receive recognition for work advancing the marine industry and the wider Blue Economy. ──────────────────────── PRESENTED BY MARINE RESEARCH HUB ──────────────────────── The Marine Research Hub of South Florida connects the region’s marine industry, research institutions and wider Blue Economy, supporting collaboration, innovation and the development of solutions addressing the challenges and opportunities facing our oceans and marine industries. Ahead of FLIBS 2026, The Blue Economy revisits SEA.AI, ZF Marine and Eco Safeway, three 2025 Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Award nominees whose work shows how artificial intelligence, safer boating technology and cleaner marine maintenance can move the industry forward.

In Dubai, a yacht is no longer simply a charter. For private clients, corporate hosts and luxury brands, it can become a private stage for hospitality, service, storytelling and spectacle. Dubai has built its reputation on exceptional hotels, rooftop restaurants, private villas, landmark venues and a level of service that expects the impossible to be delivered without visible strain. Yet within that crowded luxury landscape, the yacht has begun to occupy a very different space. It is not only a place to entertain. It is a controlled, private, mobile environment where hospitality, brand identity, catering, service, entertainment and atmosphere can be shaped into something far more memorable than a traditional venue. That is the world Alicia Mckay has stepped into with Odyssia, a Dubai-based yacht event and luxury experience agency focused on turning charters into fully curated moments. Her work sits at the intersection of yachting, hospitality and event production, where the vessel is only the beginning and the real value lies in everything that happens around it. Alicia’s path into the industry began through luxury hospitality and fine dining, eventually moving into external catering and yacht-based events for private clients and major brands. That progression revealed a gap in the market. Clients could book a yacht, but the wider experience was often left exposed: where guests would sit, whether the galley could support the menu, how the service would be delivered, what the captain would permit, how the branding would appear and whether the event could actually be executed to the standard expected. For Odyssia, the answer is not to treat the yacht as a standalone charter. It is to treat it as the foundation for a complete experience. Dubai Yacht Events And The Rise Of Turnkey Luxury Experiences What makes Dubai particularly interesting is the accessibility of yacht experiences compared with more traditional charter markets. In many parts of the world, a yacht charter may require a longer commitment, larger budgets and a very different planning structure. In Dubai, shorter-format yacht events can sit alongside corporate hospitality, private dinners, client entertainment, product launches and brand activations, making the water a realistic alternative to the ballroom, restaurant or rooftop. That distinction matters. A corporate client may not need another dinner in a venue their guests have already visited. A private host may want something that feels more personal, more controlled and more memorable. A luxury brand may need an environment that can be transformed without losing elegance or privacy. A yacht can deliver all of that, but only when the planning goes beyond the vessel itself. Alicia describes Odyssia as a turnkey agency, managing the details that turn a yacht from a booking into an experience. That includes sourcing the right vessel, reviewing interiors and available space, coordinating catering, entertainment, production, branding, guest flow, staffing and the service layer that defines how the event actually feels once guests arrive. It is the difference between hiring a yacht and creating a world around it. The Details Guests Never See Behind the polished arrival, the champagne service and the perfect tablescape is what Alicia describes as “precision arranged chaos.” Time is often one of the greatest constraints. Yachts may not be available hours in advance for setup, and even larger vessels can have tight access windows, operational limits and strict requirements from owners, captains or operators. The galley is another reality many clients never consider. A restaurant kitchen, hotel ballroom or private villa can offer space, equipment and access that a yacht simply does not have. On board, the culinary team may be working within a compact galley, limited appliances and strict safety rules, while still being expected to deliver a menu that feels seamless to the guest. That is why site visits, operator relationships and crew coordination matter. It is not enough to imagine what could happen on board. The team has to know what the yacht can support, where people can sit, how service will move, what equipment is available, how the galley functions and what must be prepared before anyone steps onto the passerelle. Guests may never see that pressure. In fact, if the event is done well, they should not see it at all. Why Service Becomes The Real Luxury The yacht may create the setting, but the service determines whether the event feels truly elevated. Odyssia brings its own specialist staff on board, including trained service teams, mixologists, sommeliers, hosts and bartenders, adding another layer of hospitality beyond the yacht crew’s operational role. That is not a criticism of crew. Yacht crew are already responsible for the vessel, safety, preparation and the guest environment. For event-led charters, however, there is an additional hospitality layer that can transform the experience. Silver service, curated drinks, polished guest handling, branded details and consistent presentation all help build the sense that the event has been designed rather than simply arranged. For luxury clients, that distinction is critical. The expectation is not just that the yacht is beautiful. It is that every touchpoint feels considered. Brand Takeovers, Private Dinners And The Power Of The Yacht One of the strongest areas of opportunity for yacht events is brand activation. On board, a brand can control the environment in a way that feels immersive and private, from styling and product placement to food, music, entertainment, scent, staff presentation and even small branded elements built into the guest experience. Alicia gives examples of how far this can go, from luxury fashion and hospitality-led charters to concepts as ambitious as placing a car on board a superyacht. Not every idea comes to life, and the technical realities can be significant, from weight limits and insurance to lifting logistics, berthing rules and vessel availability. But the ambition reflects what luxury brands are looking for: moments that feel distinctive, photographable, exclusive and difficult to replicate elsewhere. In a market such as Dubai, where guests are exposed to luxury constantly, that matters. Impressing people is harder when they have seen so much already. The yacht offers something different because it combines privacy, movement, skyline, service and spectacle in one setting. Formula 1 Yacht Hospitality In Abu Dhabi The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix adds another layer to the conversation. At Yas Marina, yacht hospitality becomes part of a global sporting and luxury stage, where the marina itself is visible, active and internationally watched. For corporate clients and brands, the appeal is not only the event itself, but the ability to host across multiple days, creating different experiences for different guest groups. A Formula 1 yacht experience can become a private hospitality suite, a brand environment, a client entertainment platform and a social moment all at once. Guests can see the race, feel the atmosphere and experience the marina from the water, while brands can build activations around one of the most high-profile weekends in the region. Yet again, the visible glamour is only part of the story. The planning begins long before the race weekend. Vessels may need to be moved from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, berths confirmed, guest access understood, site visits completed, visuals approved and service plans rehearsed. By the time guests arrive, the experience may feel effortless, but the work behind it is anything but casual. Dubai, Abu Dhabi And The Future Of Luxury Yacht Experiences Odyssia’s work reflects a wider shift in how yachts are being used in the Middle East. The yacht is no longer limited to leisure cruising, private ownership or traditional charter. It is becoming part of the luxury events landscape, sitting beside hospitality, brand strategy, corporate entertainment, destination marketing and private client experience. That makes Dubai and Abu Dhabi particularly important markets. Both cities understand spectacle, service and ambition, but they also demand precision. For yacht event companies, the challenge is not simply to offer access to vessels, but to prove that the experience can be delivered at the same standard as the most established luxury venues in the region. For Alicia Mckay and Odyssia, the message is clear: the future is not just about charters. It is about what happens when a yacht becomes the setting for something far more intentional. ──────────────────────── PRESENTED BY INTERNATIONAL YACHT REGISTER ──────────────────────── International Yacht Register provides luxury yacht charter, ownership and advisory services for clients seeking trusted guidance, exceptional yachts, discreet support, market knowledge and access to the global yachting lifestyle. https://iyr.net/ Alicia Mckay, Founder of Odyssia, explores how Dubai yacht events are moving beyond traditional charter into luxury hospitality, private client experiences, corporate entertainment, brand takeovers and Formula 1 yacht hospitality in Abu Dhabi.

Malta’s reputation as an international maritime jurisdiction has not been created by scale alone, but through decades of legal development, regulatory experience and unusually close cooperation between the public and private sectors. For Minister for Sustainable Mobility Dr Chris Bonett, preserving that reputation means continuing to make Malta efficient, accessible and commercially responsive without compromising the scrutiny, legal certainty and institutional integrity that have given the Malta flag its standing internationally. Hon. Dr Chris Bonett MP, Malta’s Minister for Sustainable Mobility, brings to the country’s maritime portfolio the perspective of a lawyer whose professional career developed outside the sector before ministerial responsibility placed him at the centre of one of Malta’s most internationally significant industries. Rather than treating maritime simply as another area within government, Bonett immersed himself in the people and institutions behind it, from the Malta Ship Registry and the country’s maritime legal community to the private businesses and professional organisations whose work connects Malta with shipowners, yacht owners and operators around the world. What emerges from that experience is a clear conviction that Malta’s maritime strength cannot be separated from the legal and regulatory architecture behind the flag, because a register can grow quickly, but its long-term value depends upon the confidence attached to the jurisdiction responsible for it. “There is no strong flag if you don’t have a good legal framework backing it up,” Bonett says, placing legal certainty at the heart of Malta’s maritime proposition and describing a framework that has evolved alongside the industry rather than remaining detached from it. Malta’s development has been shaped by the experience of the Registry, government and a highly specialised private sector, particularly its maritime lawyers, whose understanding of international clients and changing commercial requirements has helped identify areas in which legislation has needed to adapt. That interaction has allowed Malta to respond to developments in shipping and yachting while maintaining a regulatory structure capable of giving owners and investors something that is increasingly valuable in an international industry: clarity about where they stand. Malta’s Maritime Framework: Built Through Cooperation Malta’s size is frequently discussed as a limitation, yet within its maritime sector it can also create an unusual degree of accessibility between those making policy and those working within the industry. Bonett sees that proximity as one of the jurisdiction’s strengths because government, lawyers, professional associations, the Registry and maritime businesses are able to communicate directly when new issues arise, allowing practical experience from the international market to reach policymakers without passing through layers of institutional distance. His message to industry is deliberately straightforward: those working directly with owners and operators understand the trends, requirements and difficulties emerging in the market, and government needs that knowledge if legislation is to remain relevant. “You are the industry. You know what the trends are out there. You know what clients want. You know what clients need. Come to us, tell us where we should go next,” he explains, while also making clear that listening to industry does not mean surrendering the regulatory responsibilities of the state. That distinction is fundamental to the Maltese model. Commercial reality can inform the direction of legislation, but it does not determine the standards attached to the flag, and the ability to maintain both responsiveness and independence is one of the reasons Bonett believes Malta has been able to develop legal solutions that meet the practical requirements of owners without sacrificing confidence in the jurisdiction itself. For those investing in yachts and ships, that confidence begins with certainty. Bonett repeatedly returns to the importance of a legal environment in which an owner understands what is expected, how the jurisdiction operates and what protections accompany the registration of an asset that may represent a very substantial financial commitment. “Clarity is everything when it comes to investment,” he says, a principle that carries particular weight in maritime business, where ownership, finance, operation and regulation routinely extend across several jurisdictions. Efficiency Without Sacrificing Standards The international maritime community expects administrations to move quickly, and Malta has recognised that expectation by continuing to modernise the way owners and professionals interact with the Registry, including through the development of electronic certification and increasingly digital processes. For Bonett, however, administrative efficiency should never be confused with a willingness to reduce scrutiny, because the value attached to a respected flag depends partly upon the standards an owner must satisfy in order to obtain it. Malta is therefore prepared to examine prospective registrations carefully and, where necessary, to decline business that does not meet the jurisdiction’s requirements. In a market where registers compete internationally for tonnage and clients often expect transactions to be completed with increasing speed, that may appear commercially counterintuitive, yet Bonett views the ability to say no as an essential part of protecting what the Malta flag represents. “If you want that red flag on your vessel,” he explains, others should be able to recognise that the vessel is operating beneath a flag whose standards have meaning, and that reputation cannot be preserved if commercial pressure is allowed to become more important than the integrity of the register. It is this balance that produces perhaps the clearest expression of Bonett’s philosophy: “Being very quick and very cheap attracts clients. Being serious is what keeps them.” The distinction goes to the heart of Malta’s approach because efficiency may make a jurisdiction attractive at the beginning of a relationship, but the confidence that retains owners over time is built through consistency, regulatory credibility and the knowledge that the administration behind the flag will continue to function when circumstances become more complicated than the original registration process. Regulation as Part of the Protection of an Asset The significance of that approach becomes particularly clear within the superyacht sector, where extraordinary asset values sit alongside complex ownership structures, international operations and substantial regulatory responsibilities. Wealth does not diminish the importance of protecting an investment, and Bonett argues that owners have every reason to expect the jurisdiction behind their vessel to apply the level of scrutiny necessary to support the long-term credibility of both the asset and the flag beneath which it operates. Inspections, documentation and continuing compliance obligations may sometimes be experienced as administrative burdens, but within Malta’s framework they are intended to perform a broader function by protecting the standards of the register while giving owners confidence that the system surrounding their vessel remains credible. Registration is not treated as a single transaction that ends once documentation is issued; it begins an ongoing relationship between a vessel and its flag state, which means that the quality of the jurisdiction becomes particularly important when an owner later requires regulatory assistance, encounters an operational problem or needs the legal and administrative structure behind the vessel to work effectively. Bonett acknowledges that there have been circumstances in which owners have left the Malta flag because its controls were considered too demanding, only to return after experiencing another jurisdiction. His point is not that more regulation is automatically better, but that the value of serious oversight can become much clearer once an owner discovers what is lost when that structure is absent. For Malta, regulation therefore has to remain proportionate and practical, but it also has to mean something, because the same standards that protect the reputation of the jurisdiction also contribute to the protection of those whose assets operate within it. More Than a Fiscal Jurisdiction Malta’s maritime success is sometimes explained primarily through taxation or financial structuring, an interpretation Bonett strongly resists because it reduces a much broader maritime ecosystem to only one element of its international offering. Fiscal considerations inevitably form part of decisions surrounding yacht and ship ownership, but they do not explain why owners remain with a jurisdiction, why professionals continue to recommend it or why a register develops a reputation for reliability over decades. Bonett instead points to the combination of efficiency, accessibility, professional expertise and regulatory seriousness that surrounds the Malta flag. Owners and operators need more than a commercially attractive structure; they need lawyers who understand the realities of international maritime business, a Registry capable of responding when decisions are required, and an administration that can be reached when an issue arises thousands of miles from Malta and outside conventional office hours. The country’s maritime legal profession plays a particularly important role within that environment because practitioners sit close to the client while also understanding the domestic legal and regulatory system, allowing them to identify emerging requirements and communicate those realities to government and industry bodies. That relationship creates a valuable flow of information between those dealing with the market and those responsible for maintaining the framework, enabling Malta to remain commercially aware without allowing commercial considerations to override the responsibilities attached to a national flag. A National Flag and a Public Responsibility The Maltese Merchant Shipping Act places significant responsibilities within the ministerial portfolio, yet Bonett is careful not to confuse political authority with technical expertise, speaking instead with considerable respect for the specialists within the Malta Ship Registry and the professional knowledge required to administer an international register properly. His approach is that ministers should provide direction and protect the framework, while technical decisions remain with those whose expertise allows them to understand their consequences. That distinction also reflects the way Malta chose to structure its registry. While some jurisdictions operate through private flag administrations, Malta retained its registry as a public responsibility, ensuring that commercial considerations can be heard and understood without becoming the sole determinant of decisions taken in the name of the state. Bonett describes his position through an analogy drawn from his sporting background, seeing the minister almost as an umpire between the public and private sectors whose responsibility is to ensure that Malta remains responsive to the needs of industry while continuing to protect the standards and integrity of the jurisdiction. It is an analogy that captures the balance particularly well because neither government nor industry can build a successful maritime centre in isolation; the private sector understands owners, markets and commercial pressures, while government and the Registry carry responsibility for ensuring that the legislation and regulatory practices developed in response remain consistent with the interests of the flag and the country it represents. The Maltese Cross itself carries particular significance in that context. When it appears on a vessel in another part of the world, it is not simply an administrative mark identifying where the vessel is registered, but a national symbol whose reputation has been built through the collective performance of the jurisdiction behind it. Protecting that reputation therefore requires decisions that extend beyond the interests of an individual registration, because every vessel accepted onto a national register contributes in some measure to the way that flag is regarded internationally. Digitalisation, Decarbonisation and the Next Stage of Malta’s Maritime Development Malta’s legal and regulatory framework cannot remain static if it is to continue serving an international industry undergoing significant technological and environmental change, and Bonett sees digitalisation as one of the most immediate areas in which further progress can improve the relationship between the Registry and its international users. Electronic certification and other digital services are already changing administrative processes, but the wider objective is to create a system in which legitimate business can be conducted more efficiently without weakening the checks and responsibilities that underpin confidence in the flag. The transition towards decarbonisation will present a more complex challenge because it reaches far beyond administrative efficiency and into the technologies, investments and operating models that will shape the next generation of shipping. Owners and operators will be required to make difficult decisions while international rules continue to evolve, creating a need for legal frameworks that are sufficiently clear to provide certainty without becoming so rigid that they impede the transition they are intended to support. For Bonett, this is where effective regulation can become enabling rather than simply restrictive. A jurisdiction capable of translating international obligations into clear domestic rules gives owners a more stable environment in which to plan investments, adopt new technologies and understand how changing requirements will affect their operations, and Malta’s challenge will be to maintain that clarity while the pace of change across global shipping accelerates. A Maritime Country Shaped by Geography Malta’s position at the centre of the Mediterranean has influenced its maritime identity for generations, placing the country between Europe, North Africa and the Middle East and exposing its businesses and professionals to a range of commercial cultures, legal traditions and international markets. Bonett believes that this geographic position has contributed to an adaptability that remains visible in Malta’s maritime community today, where working across borders and dealing with clients from very different backgrounds is part of everyday business rather than an exception. That adaptability also helps explain what Malta means when it describes itself as open to business. It is not a promise that standards will be lowered in order to secure a registration, but a commitment to accessibility, communication and a willingness to understand the problem an owner is trying to solve before determining how it can be addressed within the legal framework. The distinction matters because a jurisdiction can be commercially responsive without becoming permissive, and Malta’s ability to combine those qualities has become an important part of its international identity. Owners know that they can engage directly with professionals and institutions capable of understanding complex situations, while also knowing that the answer they receive will have to remain consistent with the standards attached to the flag. Preserving What Gives the Malta Flag Its Value As Malta looks toward the next stage of its maritime development, the objective is not simply to become larger or faster, but to ensure that digitalisation, regulatory innovation and the transition taking place across international shipping strengthen rather than dilute the qualities that have allowed the jurisdiction to build confidence over decades. The relationship between government and the private sector will continue to be essential because each contributes something different to that process. Industry brings direct knowledge of international clients, changing commercial models and emerging operational requirements, while the Registry and government provide the institutional framework within which those developments can be accommodated responsibly. Malta’s legal and technical professionals connect those worlds, translating the needs of owners into practical questions that can inform policy while helping clients understand the obligations and protections created by the law. For Bonett, the strength of that relationship is one of Malta’s most important maritime assets, and the challenge ahead is therefore not to reinvent a model that has already established significant international credibility, but to continue developing it with sufficient care that greater efficiency and innovation reinforce the legal certainty and regulatory integrity on which the reputation of the flag ultimately depends. International maritime business offers owners many choices, and the easiest jurisdiction is not automatically the one capable of providing the greatest confidence over the lifetime of an asset. Malta’s proposition rests on a different measure of value: that a flag should remain responsive when circumstances change, credible when its standards are tested and dependable long after the registration itself has been completed. It is a reputation that has taken decades to establish, and preserving that confidence while the industry moves into its next period of transformation will remain central to Malta’s ambition as an international maritime jurisdiction. FILMED ON LOCATION AT D-Marin Marina di Valletta https://marinadivalletta.com Set within Malta’s historic harbour environment, D-Marin Marina di Valletta provided the setting for this feature, placing a discussion of the country’s maritime framework against a waterfront that reflects Malta’s longstanding relationship with the sea and its continuing importance as an international maritime centre. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SUPPORTED BY Malta Ship Registry ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The Malta Ship Registry sits at the centre of Malta’s international maritime framework, combining a well-established legal and regulatory environment with the specialist knowledge, administrative capability and international outlook required to serve shipowners, yacht owners and maritime professionals operating across global markets. As the Registry continues to modernise its services and respond to the changing demands of international shipping, its focus remains on maintaining the quality, credibility and long-term integrity associated with the Malta flag while supporting a maritime community whose reach extends far beyond the islands themselves. https://maltashipregistry.gov.mt Hon. Dr Chris Bonett MP, Malta’s Minister for Sustainable Mobility, examines the legal certainty, regulatory integrity and public-private cooperation behind the Malta flag, and the principles shaping the country’s maritime future.

Few yachts become icons. Fewer still change the conversation around what a yacht can be. Sailing Yacht Black Pearl was not built to follow convention, but to test the limits of design, engineering, sustainability and owner vision, with Derek Munro standing close to the centre of one of the most ambitious build projects the superyacht industry has ever seen. Derek Munro And The Weight Of A Once-In-A-Generation Build Derek Munro’s relationship with Sailing Yacht Black Pearl began before the yacht became the instantly recognisable 105-metre silhouette known across the world today. At the time, Munro was not working under Divergent Yachting in the way many now know him. He was subcontracting through SE Marine, a company he had already spent years building boats with, and was involved in the final stages of Excellence 5 at Abeking & Rasmussen when the contract for Black Pearl was signed. What made him an obvious fit was not only his build experience, but his sailing background. In a world where many large yacht projects revolve around motor yachts, Black Pearl demanded a different kind of understanding. She was not simply a large yacht with sails attached. She was a sailing yacht intended to challenge accepted thinking around scale, efficiency, systems, power and possibility. The original project was not the yacht the world now knows. Black Pearl began as a 95-metre concept with a white hull, white DynaRigs and satellite domes on the superstructure. Over time, that concept evolved into something larger, darker, cleaner and far more distinctive. The final result was 105 metres of yacht design, engineering ambition and owner-led detail, shaped by a project that had to remain intensely private for years. Munro’s own family did not know what he was building until the yacht finally emerged from the shed. That detail says a great deal about the nature of the project. Black Pearl was not only technically complex. She was confidential, demanding and relentless, a yacht being developed under pressure by people who were working far ahead of what much of the industry had already normalised. Sailing Yacht Black Pearl And The Power Of Owner Vision The story of Sailing Yacht Black Pearl cannot be separated from the vision of her owner. He was not a passive client waiting for a finished product. He was involved, curious, exacting and deeply technical. An engineer by nature, he approached the project with a mind that questioned everything, challenged assumptions and pushed the people around him to make things possible, even when the first answer was no. That mindset shaped the yacht at every level. It influenced the major systems, including power generation, battery storage, regeneration and sustainability. It influenced the exterior lines, including the bow profile and stainless details. It influenced the interiors, where millimetres mattered and ceiling lines could become the subject of prolonged scrutiny. It even reached into details most people would never notice, because for this owner, every element of the yacht formed part of the whole. That kind of vision can be difficult to manage, but it can also be transformative when matched with the right team. Oceanco, the designers, engineers, consultants and build team were not simply delivering a yacht from a static brief. They were constantly working around questions, adjustments, research, refinements and ideas that could take the project in new directions. Black Pearl was late in delivery, and Munro is candid about the reality of that. Projects of this scale are not frictionless. They involve disagreement, negotiation, spreadsheets, pressure, shifting expectations, difficult conversations and constant communication. Yet the result is a yacht that remains part of Oceanco’s legacy and part of the industry’s wider reference point for what ambition can produce when budget, vision and technical courage meet. The DynaRig, Electric Systems And A Different Kind Of Sailing Yacht Black Pearl’s DynaRig is one of her most visible and recognisable features, but its significance goes beyond appearance. The comparison to Maltese Falcon is inevitable, as both yachts use DynaRig technology. Yet Black Pearl moved the concept forward. Where earlier systems relied on hydraulics, Black Pearl shifted to electrical power systems and increased the speed of mast rotation, allowing the yacht to tack and sail more efficiently. That decision was not cosmetic. It was part of a broader technical philosophy that ran throughout the project: make the yacht more capable, more efficient and more responsive, while using the scale of the build to test systems that could influence future thinking. The owner and build team also explored solar integration on the sails, investing heavily in research around how solar could be bonded to Dacron, protected, connected and deployed as part of the yacht’s energy ecosystem. Ultimately, solar was not fitted to the sails, but the yacht was prepared for future solar possibilities, with every yard wired ready to receive it. The reason solar became less urgent was not a lack of ambition. It was because Black Pearl’s regeneration system outperformed expectations. During sea trials, the yacht generated far more power under sail than initially calculated. Sailing with no generators running, while the boat remained fully operational, created a different kind of experience. Galley, laundry and systems could continue, while the yacht moved quietly, powered in part by the motion of sailing itself. That image remains one of the most powerful parts of Black Pearl’s technical story: a 100-metre-plus sailing yacht moving silently, drawing energy from the sea and wind, proving that luxury and efficiency do not have to sit at opposite ends of the conversation. Sustainability Built Into The Structure The word sustainability is often used loosely in yachting, but Black Pearl’s approach went beyond language. Her regeneration system and reduced fuel use sit at the centre of the discussion, but the wider build was shaped by a series of decisions that collectively reduced demand, improved efficiency and embedded environmental thinking into the yacht’s operation. Technical water is treated and reused for deck washing. Heat recovery supports hot water systems, the jacuzzi and the pool. Insulation was doubled during the build to reduce reliance on HVAC. Double-glazed side windows were used to control heat load. Research into glass layers, UV, IR and thermal performance became part of a wider strategy to make the yacht more efficient from the inside out. This was not sustainability as decoration. It was sustainability as engineering, systems integration and culture. That culture extended to the crew. Black Pearl’s crew became invested in the owner’s vision, adopting practices onboard that reflected the yacht’s wider purpose, from avoiding plastic water bottles to using more environmentally conscious products. The yacht itself encouraged a different mindset, because when a vessel is built around technical ambition and reduced reliance, the people operating her become part of that story. A Yacht That Quietly Influenced The Industry For a long time, much of Black Pearl’s technical story remained private. That meant the yacht’s influence was not always visible in the way it might have been had the project been openly shared from the beginning. Even so, the effect is there. Regeneration, battery storage, sailing yacht energy systems and reduced fossil fuel reliance have all become part of a broader industry conversation. Many sailing yachts now incorporate some form of regeneration and battery storage, and projects such as Project Zero show how far the thinking has continued to move. Black Pearl was not the final word. She was one of the major catalysts. Some of the work done during her build, including research into lithium-ion battery integration, safety requirements and hazard studies, helped shape understanding around systems that are now far more common across the sector. In that sense, Black Pearl’s influence is not limited to the yacht herself. It sits in the knowledge, testing, caution and confidence that filtered outward into future projects. That is what makes her important. She is not simply a beautiful yacht. She is a research platform, a technical milestone and a bridge between one era of large yacht design and the next. Detail, Obsession And The Human Side Of A Technical Dream For all the talk of systems, sails and sustainability, Black Pearl’s story is also deeply human. The owner’s attention to detail could be extraordinary. He would stand in the saloon studying a ceiling line by millimetres. He worked through the shape of the bow with putty until the angle felt right. He redesigned, questioned and refined, often deep into the night, driven by a need to create something that matched the vision in his mind. That level of involvement could be exhausting, and Munro does not pretend otherwise. Managing a project of that scale meant constant communication, extensive documentation and the emotional pressure of trying to hold together the owner’s expectations, the shipyard’s realities, the designers’ work, the engineers’ requirements and the budget. For a long period, he was carrying much of that alone. Seven-day weeks, early mornings at the laptop, long hours and the inability to fully explain the pressure at home all became part of the cost of the project. Yet there are also stories that reveal the owner’s humanity. One of the most memorable is not about technology or design, but about recognition. When jackets were ordered for those involved in the project, the owner insisted the first one go to the man who cleaned the toilets and pantry, because without him, he said, no one would come to work. That moment says something important about the project. Black Pearl may have been driven by ambition, money and engineering, but the owner understood that a yacht of this scale is not created by one person, one designer or one yard alone. It is created by everyone, from those shaping the bow to those making sure the working environment functions every day. Black Pearl’s Legacy Sailing Yacht Black Pearl remains one of the most recognisable yachts in the world, but recognition alone is not what gives her lasting significance. Her legacy sits in the complexity of the build, the systems she tested, the questions she forced the industry to ask, and the vision that refused to accept the ordinary answer. She represents a rare meeting point between artistic obsession, engineering discipline, sailing tradition and future-facing technology. For Derek Munro, the project was demanding, consuming and deeply personal. It required technical understanding, patience, diplomacy, stamina and the ability to translate vision into buildable reality, even when that vision changed, expanded or arrived at two in the morning. Black Pearl was never just another yacht. She was a project that asked what could happen if a client, a project manager, a shipyard and a technical team were willing to push beyond the comfortable answer. The result is a yacht that continues to move through the world with the presence of an icon and the influence of a prototype. In an industry often defined by beauty, Black Pearl’s true power lies in something deeper. She changed what people believed a sailing yacht could be. Sailing Yacht Black Pearl remains one of the most ambitious and influential sailing yacht projects ever built. Derek Munro, Director of Divergent Yachting and Project Manager and Owner’s Representative for Black Pearl, reflects on the vision, engineering, sustainability, owner involvement and project pressure behind a yacht that helped redefine what a superyacht could be.

For South African yacht crew, working overseas can create an extraordinary opportunity to build wealth, but offshore earnings, changing tax residency, property ownership and years spent outside the country eventually have to form one coherent financial story. There comes a point in many yacht careers when earning the money is no longer the complicated part. The salary is arriving, living costs aboard are largely covered and the years at sea have started turning into something more permanent: savings, investments, property or perhaps a life that is now genuinely based outside South Africa. For Jamie Hadley-Grave CA(SA), founder of Hadley-Grave Accounting & Tax, that is when yacht crew need to move beyond the familiar question of whether an exemption applies and start looking at the much bigger issue of where they are tax resident, what they can prove and how the financial decisions they make overseas will eventually be viewed back home. South African Yacht Crew Tax Is Bigger Than a Day Count Yacht crew naturally focus on days because the various foreign employment and seafarer provisions place considerable importance on time spent outside South Africa, but Hadley-Grave believes residency itself is too often reduced to that one measurement. Working abroad does not automatically mean somebody has stopped being a South African tax resident, particularly in an industry where crew can spend most of the year aboard foreign vessels without ever establishing a permanent home somewhere else. For SARS, the wider picture can matter. Where does somebody return between contracts? Where is their family? Where is their permanent home? Where have they established the ordinary social and financial ties that suggest one country, rather than another, is genuinely the centre of their life? That can become complicated very quickly for yacht crew whose workplace may move between the Mediterranean, Caribbean and United States while South Africa remains the place they continue to regard as home. Our earlier Yachting News editorial, South African Yacht Crew Tax: What Crew Must Prove to SARS, looked more closely at the exemptions themselves and the evidence required to support them. Hadley-Grave’s broader argument is that those exemptions still sit inside the taxpayer’s overall residency position, which becomes increasingly important as a career overseas turns into a long-term life. Offshore Income Does Not Become Invisible Offshore banking is entirely normal in yachting. Crew may be employed through one jurisdiction, work aboard a yacht registered in another, receive their salary in dollars or euros and hold those earnings in an account outside South Africa. What Hadley-Grave pushes back against is the assumption that the location of the bank account somehow settles the tax question. If somebody remains a South African tax resident, putting foreign employment income into an offshore account does not by itself remove the need to understand whether that income must be declared and whether a legitimate exemption applies. The distinction matters even more in an era where international financial information is increasingly shared and compared across jurisdictions. Building a long-term financial plan around the belief that an offshore account will simply remain unseen is very different from understanding the rules that apply and being able to demonstrate why the income has been treated correctly. That is where documentation becomes important. Passport and travel records, employment contracts, payslips, boarding passes, seaman’s books and other supporting evidence can become invaluable when somebody has to establish where they were, what they were doing and why a particular exemption was claimed. Hadley-Grave’s approach is practical: keep the records while they are easy to obtain, because reconstructing six or seven years of international employment after the fact is considerably more difficult. Ceasing Tax Residency Can Solve One Problem and Create Another For some yacht crew, South Africa eventually stops being home in any meaningful sense. They establish permanent lives elsewhere, form relationships, build businesses or investments and reach the point where ceasing South African tax residency becomes a genuine consideration. Hadley-Grave distinguishes that clearly from simply spending long periods overseas. A mobile working life is not necessarily the same thing as having permanently relocated, and SARS may look at the wider circumstances surrounding somebody’s life rather than accepting a foreign address as the entire story. There can also be a financial consequence to leaving. When South African tax residency ceases, certain assets may be treated as though they have been disposed of at market value, potentially creating a capital gains tax liability even though the asset itself has not been sold and the gain has not been realised in cash. That can be particularly significant for yacht crew who have done exactly what the industry encourages them to do and used their high-earning years to build investment portfolios. Someone entering yachting at 19 with few assets faces a very different decision from somebody considering the same residency change ten years later after accumulating investments and other wealth, which is why Hadley-Grave believes these conversations are better had before the financial structure becomes complicated rather than afterwards. The Tax Problem You Ignore Eventually Meets the Life You Are Building Hadley-Grave also works with crew who left South Africa, began earning internationally and simply never dealt with their tax position at all. Sometimes that begins with a misunderstanding. Sometimes one missed year becomes three, then six, and eventually the problem feels large enough that doing nothing seems easier than confronting it. His message to crew in that position is not that the situation is beyond repair. Records can be reconstructed, historic obligations can be addressed and a route back towards compliance can usually be explored, but unresolved tax history has a habit of resurfacing when somebody is trying to do something else. Buying property is a good example. A yachtie may have spent years earning strong money and built a substantial deposit, yet suddenly discover that obtaining financing or demonstrating a coherent financial history becomes considerably more complicated when years of tax administration were never dealt with. At that point, the issue is no longer an abstract argument about SARS. It is interfering with the very reason many people joined yachting in the first place: to create options, assets and financial security. Leaving South Africa Does Not Mean Leaving Your Investments Behind Becoming a non-resident does not require somebody to remove every financial connection with South Africa, and property is an area where Hadley-Grave believes this distinction matters. A non-resident can still own South African property and earn rental income, although South African-source income may remain taxable in South Africa even when the owner is no longer resident there for tax purposes. For yacht crew building property portfolios, the calculation can also look different from simple cash flow. A monthly bond payment may exceed the rent received, giving the impression that a property is making a loss, while the tax calculation may treat the interest component differently from the repayment of capital. Maintenance, levies, agency fees and other qualifying expenses may also affect the eventual taxable result. The wider point is that turning yacht income into property or investments creates a different set of financial questions from simply earning the salary in the first place. The Opportunity Is Too Good to Waste Hadley-Grave remains remarkably positive about the financial position yacht crew can create. Strong foreign earnings combined with accommodation, food and many ordinary living costs being covered aboard can give disciplined crew a financial advantage that would be difficult to reproduce in most land-based careers. What he challenges is the idea that working at sea somehow places those earnings outside the normal financial system. Using legitimate exemptions is not the same thing as hiding income, and structuring a tax position efficiently is not the same thing as ignoring it. The real advantage comes from understanding the rules early enough to use them properly, keeping the evidence required to support that position and making decisions about residency, investment and property before those decisions become significantly more expensive to unwind. For an industry already built around certification, documentation and proving that procedures have been followed, that principle should feel familiar. The yacht may move, the income may be earned halfway around the world and the bank account may sit offshore, but sooner or later the financial story still has to make sense on paper. Jamie Hadley-Grave CA(SA) is founder of Hadley-Grave Accounting & Tax and works with South Africans earning internationally, including yacht crew navigating foreign employment income, tax compliance and residency issues. This editorial reflects the views and professional experience shared by Jamie Hadley-Grave and is provided for general information only. It does not constitute tax, accounting, financial, investment or legal advice. Individual circumstances and applicable tax rules vary, and professional advice should be obtained before making decisions regarding tax residency, exemptions or filing obligations. Jamie Hadley-Grave CA(SA), founder of Hadley-Grave Accounting & Tax, argues that for South African yacht crew, the real tax conversation begins when offshore earnings start becoming property, investments and a permanent financial life beyond the yacht.

Yachting has always occupied an unusual place within maritime regulation, because although yachts are vessels first and foremost, they are also highly complex hospitality environments where safety, service, privacy, employment law, owner expectations and operational reality have to exist alongside one another, often under extraordinary pressure. It is precisely within that space that Kirsty Porritt has built much of her career, working across crew employment, yacht management, training, MLC and regulatory compliance while navigating the interests of owners, management companies, captains and crew. Porritt offers a perspective that is neither purely operational nor purely regulatory. Her experience sits somewhere in between, where the wording of a contract eventually has to meet the reality of a working yacht, and where the strength of a management structure is tested not when everything is running smoothly, but when somebody has to make a difficult decision. The distinction matters because yachting can be exceptionally good at demonstrating compliance while still struggling with the question of whether an operation is genuinely well managed. Why Yacht Crew Standards Cannot Be One Size Fits All The Maritime Labour Convention remains one of the most important frameworks governing seafarer employment and welfare, yet the superyacht sector does not fit neatly into a single operational model. A privately operated 24-metre yacht and a commercially run 100-metre vessel may both exist within the same wider regulatory environment, but the demands placed upon their crew, management and support structures can be dramatically different. Porritt does not argue that standards should be weakened to accommodate those differences. Her position is more considered. Strong frameworks are necessary, but they need to allow enough flexibility for professionals to build solutions around the vessel, the owner and the programme rather than assuming that one model can be applied universally. That distinction becomes particularly important in yachting because the crew are not simply navigating and maintaining a vessel. They are often expected to provide a level of hospitality comparable with the best hotels in the world while simultaneously managing safety, maintenance, guest logistics, water sports, tenders, overnight passages and a continuously changing programme. A regulation can establish the baseline, but it cannot understand the personality of every yacht. Crew Welfare and Owner Interests Are Not Opposing Ideas One of the most valuable aspects of Porritt’s approach is her rejection of the idea that protecting crew automatically places an owner at a disadvantage. In practice, the two interests are often far more closely aligned than the industry sometimes allows itself to admit. A well-advised owner wants capable people, consistency, fewer disputes, fewer claims, regulatory compliance and a vessel that is maintained properly. Those outcomes become significantly more difficult to achieve when crew feel insecure, undervalued or unsupported, and Porritt’s experience has repeatedly shown her that strong employment structures benefit the wider operation rather than simply one side of it. Good crew retention protects knowledge onboard, reduces recruitment disruption and creates a more settled service environment, while proper employment protection gives people confidence that the systems around them will continue to function when circumstances become difficult. None of that should be considered separate from the owner experience, because the quality of the operation ultimately depends upon the people delivering it. This is where employment practice stops being an administrative subject and becomes an operational one. Professional Advice Sometimes Requires an Uncomfortable Conversation Porritt is equally clear about the responsibility carried by professional service providers. Owners and clients employ experienced advisors because they are expected to bring knowledge, judgement and perspective to the relationship, not simply to facilitate every request placed in front of them. That occasionally means having a conversation that is uncomfortable. Her view is that a difficult discussion lasting five minutes at the beginning of a problem can be far more valuable than allowing an issue to develop into something considerably larger later, particularly where employment conditions, regulatory exposure or crew pay are concerned. There may be perfectly reasonable explanations for a short administrative delay in salary, for example, but weeks or months without payment move the matter into an entirely different category. At that stage, a professional advisor should be capable of explaining the implications clearly, understanding the legal and regulatory position and helping the client find a solution that protects both the operation and the people working within it. The ability to say that something is not acceptable, or cannot continue in its current form, is not a failure of service. In many cases, it is exactly what good service looks like. Minimum Safe Manning Does Not Describe the Entire Operation Few examples illustrate the difference between compliance and operational reality as clearly as minimum safe manning. A Minimum Safe Manning Document establishes the personnel required for the safe navigation and operation of a vessel, but that number does not automatically reflect the full crew complement needed to deliver the programme expected onboard a modern superyacht. Service personnel may not be represented within that minimum, while the demands of guest service, housekeeping, water sports, tenders, meal service, charter turnaround, maintenance and overnight passages continue regardless. Porritt notes that a safe manning document therefore cannot always be treated as a realistic description of what the vessel needs operationally. This is where professional judgement becomes essential. The relevant question is not simply how many people are legally required to operate the yacht, but how many are realistically required to operate it safely, efficiently and to the standard expected by the owner and guests. A vessel can meet the minimum and still be under-resourced. Good Practice May Be More Useful Than an “Industry Standard” Perhaps the most interesting part of Porritt’s argument comes when she challenges one of yachting’s most frequently used phrases: “industry standard”. The term suggests something fixed and universally understood, yet the industry itself is defined by variation. Vessel size, ownership structure, programme, guest expectations, itinerary and crew composition can change completely from one yacht to another, which makes the idea of a single standard difficult to apply with any real precision. Porritt is therefore less interested in chasing an abstract definition of industry standard and more interested in good practice. That may appear to be a subtle difference in wording, but it carries a much larger implication. Minimum requirements tell an operator where the legal floor sits. Good practice asks whether the structure above that floor is sensible, sustainable and appropriate for the operation in front of them. The best management companies, employment providers and professional advisors are not valuable because they know only what the minimum requirement is. They are valuable because they know when the minimum is not enough. The Real Standard Is Found in the Operation Ultimately, Porritt’s perspective returns to something remarkably practical. Good yacht management begins with understanding what the vessel is actually expected to do. The itinerary, guest programme, crew structure, service expectations, operating pattern and regulatory requirements all need to be considered together, because separating them creates the illusion that one part of the operation can be managed without affecting the others. That is rarely how a yacht works. Employment agreements affect retention. Rest affects performance. Crew numbers affect service. Management decisions affect morale, and morale ultimately affects the experience of the owner and guests. The strongest operations recognise those relationships before they become problems rather than waiting until the yacht is already under pressure. Compliance remains essential, but it should be viewed as the foundation rather than the finished product. For Porritt, the more meaningful question is what happens above that minimum, because that is where judgement, experience and good practice begin to distinguish a yacht that merely satisfies the rules from one that is genuinely well run. Kirsty Porritt examines the space between regulatory compliance and operational reality in yachting, where minimum safe manning, employment protections and established frameworks do not always reflect what is genuinely required to run a yacht well. Drawing on experience across crew employment, management, MLC and compliance, she makes the case for professional judgement, stronger expectations and good practice that goes beyond simply meeting the minimum.

As the marine industry prepares for FLIBS 2026, three nominees from the 2025 Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Awards offer a timely reminder that meaningful progress rarely comes from one dramatic breakthrough, but from companies willing to question how boats are controlled, powered, built and moved through the water. Awards are easiest to understand on the day they are presented, when there is a shortlist, a stage, a winner and a moment of recognition, but their real value can often be seen more clearly with the benefit of time, once the excitement of the event has passed and the ideas themselves have had space to develop. As the marine industry prepares to return to Fort Lauderdale for FLIBS 2026, revisiting three nominees from the 2025 Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Awards offers something far more useful than nostalgia. It provides a snapshot of the technologies and business ideas that were beginning to challenge conventional thinking only a year ago, while also creating an opportunity to look at what innovation really means when sustainability is treated as part of the engineering problem rather than something added later for marketing purposes. The fourth annual Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Awards return in partnership with the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show this year, recognising companies and organisations working across marine sustainability, environmental conservation, renewable energy, eco-conscious products, social impact and other areas contributing to the development of the Blue Economy. That makes this an interesting moment to look back at three of the companies recognised among the 2025 nominees, because iHoy Captain, Remigo and Vessev approached the idea of marine innovation from completely different directions. One concentrated on simplifying vessel control and navigation, another reconsidered what an electric outboard could look and feel like, while the third focused on one of boating’s most fundamental challenges, the amount of energy required simply to move a vessel efficiently through water. Together, they demonstrate why marine innovation cannot be reduced to one technology, one category or even one definition of sustainability. Marine Innovation at FLIBS Can Begin With Simplicity Innovation is often discussed as though it must involve something entirely unprecedented, but in practice some of the most useful advances begin when someone looks at an existing process and asks whether it really needs to remain as complicated as it has always been. That thinking sits at the centre of iHoy Captain, whose approach to marine autopilot technology is built around accessibility rather than technical intimidation. The system discussed at FLIBS 2025 was designed to give boat owners access to steering, autopilot, navigation and route-following functions without the extensive drilling, hydraulic work or complicated installation traditionally associated with many marine control systems. Connected through a smartphone, the unit allows users to steer remotely, select headings, navigate routes and work with stored waypoints through the company’s software ecosystem. The appeal is not simply that another autopilot exists, because autopilot technology itself is not new. What is different is the attempt to reduce the gap between sophisticated marine electronics and the ordinary boat owner who may not want a technician cutting into a vessel, installing hydraulic components or running extensive cabling simply to gain access to those capabilities. That reduction in complexity may appear modest compared with the more dramatic innovations seen elsewhere in the sector, but accessibility is often what determines whether a technology remains interesting in theory or becomes something people are actually willing to adopt. Remigo Rethinks the Electric Outboard Remigo approaches the wider challenge of marine sustainability from a completely different direction, focusing not simply on electrification but on whether electric propulsion itself can be made easier to use. Replacing a combustion engine with an electric motor does not automatically make a propulsion system simple, lightweight or convenient, particularly when the transition introduces separate battery boxes, additional cabling and components that create their own practical frustrations. The RemigoOne discussed during the 2025 awards is a self-contained electric outboard with the battery incorporated into the unit, removing the need for separate external batteries and much of the associated wiring. Its construction is predominantly aluminium, with relatively little plastic, and the product was deliberately designed around a combination of portability, durability and reduced material use. At only 26 pounds, the unit also changes the practical conversation around electric propulsion, because sustainability cannot realistically be judged solely by what comes out of an exhaust or whether a motor uses electricity instead of fuel. The person standing on the dock still has to lift the motor, install it, store it, transport it and use it, which means that weight, material choice, simplicity and the number of external components all become part of the equation. That is where Remigo’s approach becomes particularly interesting, because the environmental argument is strengthened not simply by removing gasoline from the process, but by designing the product around the idea that electric propulsion should also be easier to live with. The wider marine industry is likely to discover repeatedly over the coming years that environmental benefit alone will not drive adoption if the technology itself introduces new inconvenience. Vessev Questions the Energy Needed to Move Through Water If iHoy Captain asks whether marine technology can become easier to access, and Remigo asks whether electric propulsion can become simpler to use, Vessev begins with an even more fundamental question: how much energy should a boat actually need in order to move through the water? Its answer is hydrofoiling, using foils beneath the surface to lift much of the vessel above the water once underway and reduce the drag that normally consumes so much energy. Josh Trout explained during the 2025 conversation that reducing drag allows smaller batteries to deliver greater useful range, while the foiling configuration can also produce a smoother ride and considerably less wake than a conventional hull travelling at similar speeds. Combined with electric propulsion and lightweight carbon-fibre construction, the design is intended to reduce the energy required to move people across the water while maintaining useful payload and performance, giving the sustainability argument a practical engineering foundation rather than relying on electrification alone. Perhaps even more interesting is the way Vessev approaches the lifespan of the vessel itself. Battery technology is developing quickly, and designing a boat entirely around today’s technology creates an obvious risk that parts of the system may become outdated long before the hull reaches the end of its useful life. Vessev has therefore designed its vessels with future upgrades in mind, allowing components such as batteries to be changed as technology improves rather than treating the entire platform as disposable. That introduces a broader definition of sustainability, because environmental impact is not confined to what happens while a vessel is running; the ability to maintain, upgrade and extend the useful life of a vessel can be just as important as the emissions it produces during operation. Innovation Still Has to Answer Difficult Questions Hydrofoiling also raises questions that deserve proper examination, particularly when part of the vessel is travelling beneath the surface in waters shared with marine life. During the 2025 discussion, the potential impact of foils on animals in the water was addressed directly rather than brushed aside, with the conversation acknowledging that there is no perfect answer and that responsible operation still depends heavily on awareness, speed, location and an understanding of the marine environment. That willingness to acknowledge complexity matters because new marine technology should not need to pretend that it eliminates every possible environmental impact in order to demonstrate value. Every vessel, propulsion system and operating method involves compromise, and what matters is whether those compromises are understood, whether designers are actively trying to reduce them and whether operators are given the information required to use the technology responsibly. Meaningful innovation should be able to invite scrutiny rather than depend on avoiding it. Three Different Technologies, One Shared Instinct There is very little that visually connects an autopilot unit, a lightweight electric outboard and an electric hydrofoil vessel, yet the thinking behind all three is surprisingly similar. Each company looked at an accepted part of boating and questioned whether the existing solution was unnecessarily complicated, inefficient or resource-intensive, then developed a product around the possibility that the answer could be better. iHoy Captain challenged the assumption that modern vessel control must involve significant installation and technical intervention before a boat owner can use it. Remigo challenged the idea that moving toward electric propulsion should still require awkward battery arrangements, external wiring and the same basic architecture associated with traditional outboards. Vessev challenged the amount of energy required to overcome the drag created when a conventional hull moves through water, then extended that thinking into vessel longevity by considering how future components could be incorporated without replacing the entire boat. None of those ideas begins with sustainability as a slogan. They begin with engineering, usability and efficiency, and the sustainability benefits emerge because reducing complexity, lowering energy demand, using materials more thoughtfully and extending the useful life of equipment can all influence the environmental footprint of boating over time. That is precisely why programmes such as the Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Awards matter, because recognition gives emerging technologies visibility while companies are still establishing markets, testing assumptions and demonstrating whether an idea can move beyond an exhibition floor and become genuinely useful within the marine industry. Looking Back Before FLIBS 2026 The timing of this retrospective is deliberate. The 67th Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show takes place from October 28 to November 1, 2026, bringing the global marine industry back to Fort Lauderdale and once again creating a meeting point for established companies, emerging technologies, investors, manufacturers, boat builders and the people ultimately deciding which ideas are ready to move forward. Before a new group of companies steps into the spotlight through the 2026 Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Awards, the nominees from 2025 offer a useful benchmark for what those awards are trying to uncover. They also demonstrate that the Blue Economy is unlikely to be built around one revolutionary solution, but through hundreds of smaller decisions about whether technology can use less energy, require fewer materials, become easier to install, remain useful for longer or reduce the impact created by the way vessels move through the water. Those questions may ultimately matter more than the trophies, because the awards provide a platform for companies willing to ask them, develop something in response and place those ideas in front of an industry capable of testing, challenging and ultimately adopting them. In 2025, iHoy Captain, Remigo and Vessev were three of those companies, and as FLIBS 2026 approaches, attention now turns to the businesses and technologies that will follow them. The awards have been supported from the beginning by Allini Water Filters, DeAngelo Marine Exhaust, Total Marine Solutions, Informa Markets and the Marine Industries Association of South Florida, whose continued involvement helps provide a platform where marine innovation and sustainability can receive meaningful industry attention. The retrospective is not finished either, with three more nominees from 2025 set to be revisited as the countdown to FLIBS 2026 and this year’s Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Awards continues. ──────────────────────── PRESENTED BY MARINE RESEARCH HUB ──────────────────────── The Marine Research Hub of South Florida connects the region’s marine industry, research institutions and wider Blue Economy, creating opportunities for collaboration, innovation and the development of solutions addressing the challenges and opportunities facing our oceans and marine industries. As FLIBS 2026 approaches, The Blue Economy revisits three 2025 Marine Research Hub Innovation & Sustainability Award nominees, iHoy Captain, Remigo and Vessev, to examine how practical advances in vessel control, electric propulsion and hydrofoiling are changing the conversation around marine innovation and sustainability.