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A vessel does not have to be dead in the water for its crew to have been abandoned. Across global shipping, seafarers are continuing to work aboard operational ships while wages disappear, contracts expire, repatriation is delayed and the basic conditions of life at sea begin to break down. For Mohamed Arrachedi, who deals with these cases across the Arab World and Iran for the International Transport Workers’ Federation, the problem is no longer identifying what abandonment looks like. The regulations already exist. The far harder question is why they are still not being enforced. International Transport Workers’ Federation There is a persistent image attached to the word abandonment in maritime, one of a silent vessel sitting at anchor with an owner who has vanished, a crew left onboard without money or any obvious route home, but the reality Mohamed Arrachedi encounters through his work with the International Transport Workers’ Federation is often far less dramatic at the beginning and, perhaps because of that, far easier for the industry to overlook. The ship may still be sailing, cargo may still be moving and the crew may still be working, yet wages have stopped arriving, somebody's contract ended weeks ago, repatriation has been pushed to another port because it will be cheaper from there, or provisions, fuel and basic services have started to deteriorate while the people onboard continue being told that everything will be resolved soon. Arrachedi, the ITF FOC Network Coordinator for the Arab World and Iran, works across an area stretching from North Africa through the Middle East and Iran, dealing directly with Maritime Labour Convention complaints, unpaid wages, repatriation problems and abandonment. His perspective comes not from examining the problem at a distance, but from the cases arriving on his desk and phone from seafarers who may already have spent months waiting for somebody to honour obligations that should never have been negotiable in the first place. Seafarer Abandonment Can Begin While the Vessel Is Still Operating Under the Maritime Labour Convention, the threshold for abandonment is much clearer than many seafarers may realise. Arrachedi explains that a seafarer can be considered abandoned when wages have remained unpaid for two months, when an owner fails or refuses to arrange repatriation once the contractual obligation to do so has arisen, or when essential needs such as food, water and fuel are no longer being provided. Importantly, those conditions do not all need to exist at the same time. One can be enough. The International Labour Organization maintains the Maritime Labour Convention as the central international framework setting minimum working and living standards for seafarers. Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 That matters because abandonment can exist long before a vessel visually resembles a ship in crisis. A crew member can still be standing watch, maintaining machinery or handling cargo while already meeting the international definition of an abandoned seafarer, which helps explain why some cases deteriorate for months before outside assistance is requested. The delay can be costly in every sense, because the longer wages remain unpaid and contracts remain unresolved, the more likely it becomes that an apparently straightforward employment dispute begins accumulating additional problems involving immigration status, documentation, insurance, vessel movements and the practical ability to get somebody home. When two months without wages becomes twelve One of the cases Arrachedi describes involves two Ethiopian seafarers who had gone 12 months without receiving their wages. The vessel was associated with a maritime registry that had ratified the Maritime Labour Convention, meaning the requirement to pay seafarers monthly was neither obscure nor uncertain. Arrachedi's assessment is particularly uncomfortable because he rejects the idea that such a prolonged failure can simply be dismissed as somebody forgetting to pay. The employer knew the obligation existed, knew the crew should have been paid and nevertheless allowed the situation to continue. Even the sums involved expose something deeply troubling about the economics behind some of these cases. Arrachedi says the two men were earning around US$200 a month, while other cases he has encountered have involved wages as low as US$75 a month, figures that place abandonment within the much broader question of systemic exploitation and the value assigned to maritime labour depending upon where the worker comes from. By the time the Ethiopian seafarers finally sought assistance, their contracts had already expired, immigration complications were emerging and repatriation itself had become a separate problem that now needed to be negotiated alongside the recovery of twelve months of outstanding wages. The delay had transformed what should have been a simple monthly obligation into a structural problem involving several jurisdictions and several different sets of responsibilities. Their vessel was also in the Hormuz region, where the wider conflict was making the process of resolving their case and arranging repatriation more difficult. When abandonment meets a conflict zone Iran and the Strait of Hormuz are not the cause of the global abandonment crisis, nor should they become a convenient headline through which every abandonment case is viewed, but Arrachedi's experience in the region demonstrates how much more vulnerable a seafarer becomes when an existing labour failure collides with geopolitical instability. In another case received from a vessel in Iran, seafarers reported sleeping on deck in extreme heat because there was no fuel and therefore no air conditioning. The vessel was experiencing a blackout, refrigeration was failing and provisions were beginning to deteriorate, while the absence of lighting was creating an additional safety problem because the ship itself was becoming difficult to see. These are precisely the circumstances in which the distinction between an employment problem and a humanitarian one begins to disappear, because the seafarer who has not been paid is also the person who cannot simply leave the workplace, go home, buy food somewhere else or arrange their own transport out of the situation. The wider environment around Hormuz makes that vulnerability particularly acute today. The International Maritime Organization continues to report heightened risk and uncertainty for seafarers in and around the Strait, with shipping affected by the ongoing Middle East conflict and thousands of seafarers exposed to disruption in the region. IMO information on the Strait of Hormuz and Middle East maritime situation For a seafarer who is already over contract, unpaid or waiting for repatriation, those conditions introduce another level of uncertainty that has nothing to do with the employment agreement they originally signed. Vessel movements become more difficult, insurance and sanctions may complicate the route forward, ports may be harder to access and the simple act of getting somebody home becomes entangled with a crisis far larger than the individual crew member. The labour failure has not been caused by the conflict, but the conflict can make escaping its consequences considerably harder. Record numbers are becoming dangerously familiar The individual stories are disturbing enough, but they sit within a wider trend that should make the entire maritime sector uncomfortable. The ITF Seafarers' Bulletin 2026 records 409 vessels and 4,595 seafarers abandoned during 2025, compared with 312 vessels and 3,133 seafarers the previous year. Indian seafarers were again the nationality most affected, with 1,125 crew recorded, while the Arab World and Iran accounted for 152 abandonments, the largest regional figure in the ITF's published breakdown. ITF Seafarers’ Bulletin 2026 The financial scale is equally significant, with the ITF recording more than US$25.8 million in owed wages and more than US$16.5 million recovered at the time its figures were compiled. Arrachedi recalled approximately 412 abandonment cases while speaking from memory during the conversation, while the ITF's published 2025 figure records 409 vessels. The precise final count matters for accuracy, but neither number changes the underlying reality that abandonment reached another record level and that thousands of people were caught inside it. What the statistics cannot show nearly as effectively is how far the consequences extend beyond those 4,595 seafarers. An unpaid seafarer rarely suffers alone For Arrachedi, the human cost is central to understanding why abandonment cannot simply be categorised as a commercial disagreement over unpaid invoices. Many of the seafarers he deals with come from the Global South and from communities where one salary earned at sea may support several people at home. Months without wages therefore do not remain confined to a vessel thousands of miles away, because mortgages or rent, food, education costs, medical bills and the everyday needs of a family continue regardless of whether the employer has honoured the contract. A seafarer who has gone six or twelve months without pay may be dealing simultaneously with the stress of being trapped onboard and the knowledge that the people who depend upon that income are struggling ashore, which turns the official number of abandoned seafarers into only a partial measure of the real number of people affected. Behind a single entry in an abandonment database there may be a spouse trying to keep a household functioning, children waiting for a parent to come home and an extended family that has lost the income upon which it relied, making the eventual financial recovery only one part of repairing what may have been months of uncertainty and distress. The warning signs appear before the legal threshold One of Arrachedi's most important messages to seafarers is that they should not wait for a situation to become catastrophic before seeking assistance, because the warning signs often appear well before the formal two-month threshold for abandonment has been reached. He uses provisions as a simple example. If a vessel normally receives food for a month and the month ends without new provisions arriving, the crew should begin asking why, because a company that cannot fund basic food supplies should not automatically be trusted when it promises that several months of wages will suddenly be paid the following week. The same questions should be asked when repatriation is repeatedly postponed, when medical treatment is delayed because of cost, when maintenance starts deteriorating or when an employer is unable to meet relatively small immediate obligations while simultaneously promising that much larger financial problems are about to be resolved. The ITF's own guidance reinforces that message, reminding seafarers that the Maritime Labour Convention requires wages to be paid at least monthly and stating that going more than a month without receiving full pay is already a breach, even before the two-month abandonment threshold has been reached. Its advice to anyone who believes a situation is deteriorating is explicit: act quickly rather than waiting until recovery becomes more difficult. Seafarers can also check current and historical cases through the ITF's abandonment list and the joint ILO/IMO abandonment database, both of which can provide useful information before joining a vessel or when concerns begin to emerge. ITF Seafarer Abandonment List ILO/IMO Joint Database on Abandonment of Seafarers At sea, working conditions are living conditions Arrachedi also makes an important distinction that can easily be missed by people whose understanding of employment is shaped by shore-based work, because a seafarer cannot separate the workplace from the place in which they live. When a shore employee finishes work, they generally leave the office, factory or site and return to a separate home environment. A seafarer remains onboard, often for many months, which means that failures involving food, water, sanitation, internet access, medical treatment, accommodation or power do not end when the working day finishes. For the seafarer, they become the conditions of life itself. That is why Arrachedi argues that maritime cannot separate working conditions from living conditions, particularly when an injured or unwell crew member is told to wait until another port for medical attention or when an owner delays repatriation because moving the seafarer later will be cheaper. The question in those moments is no longer simply whether a contract has been administered correctly, but whether the basic obligations owed to the person living and working onboard are being respected at all. Fear and intimidation allow problems to grow If early reporting is so important, the obvious question is why some seafarers wait months before asking for help, and Arrachedi's answer acknowledges a reality that cannot be solved merely by publishing another set of regulations. Some seafarers are frightened. They may face intimidation or threats onboard, worry that complaining will destroy future employment opportunities, or believe that challenging an owner will leave them stranded somewhere without wages and without a job. Those fears can be particularly powerful when there is a significant imbalance between the seafarer and the people controlling their employment, documentation and route home. This is where the network surrounding maritime workers becomes essential. The ITF, affiliated unions, Stella Maris, seafarers' centres, charities and welfare organisations regularly pass cases between countries and regions, ensuring that somebody asking for help in one part of the world can be connected with people capable of intervening when the vessel reaches another. Arrachedi's message is not that every seafarer must somehow solve their own abandonment case, but rather that the organisations capable of helping need enough time to work, because contacting owners, insurers, flag states and port authorities, tracking vessel movements and navigating different jurisdictions becomes considerably harder after months have already passed. For seafarers who believe they may already be facing abandonment, the ITF provides confidential assistance at abandonment@itf.org.uk. The regulations exist, yet abandonment continues to rise This is where Arrachedi's argument moves beyond individual cases and towards a much larger question for the maritime industry, because abandonment is not growing in the absence of international standards. The Maritime Labour Convention exists. Requirements relating to wages exist. Repatriation rights exist. Financial security requirements exist. Responsibilities have been assigned to owners, flags, insurers and administrations. The difficulty, in Arrachedi's view, is implementation. When enforcement is rigorous, operators understand that breaches are likely to have consequences, but when authorities are passive or systems are slow, unscrupulous owners can make a commercial assessment about where they are more likely to operate without serious intervention. Arrachedi describes that difference openly, arguing that some operators avoid jurisdictions where they know port-state control will be proactive and instead gravitate towards areas where enforcement is perceived to be weaker. That failure has consequences not only for seafarers but also for owners who are trying to operate responsibly. A company that pays appropriate wages, maintains its vessel, provides adequate provisions, invests in safety and funds repatriation carries costs that another operator may attempt to avoid, meaning weak enforcement can effectively allow a bad operator to gain a commercial advantage over a company meeting the minimum standards required of it. Arrachedi therefore frames proper implementation of the Maritime Labour Convention not only as protection for crew but as protection for legitimate shipping businesses that should not have to compete with operators whose lower costs are being achieved at the expense of seafarers. Zero tolerance must become an operating principle Arrachedi ultimately describes abandonment as something maritime should approach with zero tolerance, arguing that responsibility for ending it cannot continue to fall primarily on unions, charities and welfare organisations once the damage has already been done. Those organisations will continue rescuing seafarers, recovering wages, providing supplies and helping people get home because somebody has to be there when the system fails, but they cannot be expected to compensate indefinitely for failures by parties that possess considerably greater regulatory, financial and institutional power. For Arrachedi, many abandonment cases are avoidable, which makes impunity one of the most important parts of the problem. If an operator repeatedly discovers that withholding wages, delaying repatriation or neglecting basic crew needs produces few meaningful consequences, the system has created very little incentive for that behaviour to change. That is what makes the continuing rise in abandonment so difficult to accept. Maritime does not need another decade to discover what happens when wages stop arriving, contracts are ignored and owners fail to provide the basics required by the people living aboard their vessels, because the evidence already exists in thousands of cases and in the experiences of people such as Mohamed Arrachedi who deal with the consequences every day. The regulations are already written, the warning signs are already understood and the organisations attempting to help seafarers already know what happens when intervention comes too late. What remains unresolved is whether the wider industry is prepared to treat abandonment as something genuinely unacceptable rather than something regrettable that happens to a certain number of seafarers every year. For the men and women who go to sea expecting to work, be paid and eventually return home, that distinction matters enormously, because none of them signed a contract agreeing to surrender those rights simply because enforcing them became inconvenient. ──────────────────────────── SUPPORTED BY CHIRP Maritime & The Seafarers’ Charity ──────────────────────────── CHIRP Maritime and The Seafarers’ Charity support Sea Views and its commitment to meaningful maritime conversations that place safety, seafarer wellbeing, and industry responsibility at the centre of the discussion. CHIRP Maritime: www.chirp.co.uk The Seafarers’ Charity: www.theseafarerscharity.org A ship can still be sailing, cargo can still be moving and a crew can still be working while the seafarers onboard have already been abandoned. Mohamed Arrachedi examines the human reality behind unpaid wages, failed repatriation and an international system in which the regulations exist, yet enforcement continues to fall short.

Discrimination in yachting rarely needs a written rule to alter the course of a career. In an Antibes recruitment office, Ghada “Lili” Soliman recalls being advised not to imagine a senior future because she was Egyptian, English was not her first language, and the interviewer had never seen an Arab in such a position. She had gone there to build on the experience she had already gained aboard yachts. She left wondering whether the industry had room for the person she might become. Discrimination in Yachting Begins Before a Promotion Is Discussed Soliman did not enter maritime work through the usual crew route. Having studied architecture and engineering, she first worked on AutoCAD drawings for a fishing vessel being converted into a private yacht. The project brought her into contact with the captain and engineers and introduced her to an industry she had barely known. She later joined an operational luxury yacht, worked in Egypt, and travelled to Europe to widen her prospects. The interview in Antibes made her ambition feel like a liability. She remembers a British applicant being received differently, while her own nationality and developing English became grounds for questioning how far she could go. The message she took away was blunt: there were no Arabs in senior positions, so she should not expect to be the first. The absence of visible leaders had been turned into a reason to discourage the next one. She carried that judgment into her work. Soliman says she remained a stewardess for seven years, working hard while believing a senior role was beyond her reach. She is now a Chief Stewardess aboard a 74-metre yacht and the founder of The Inner Harbour. Her promotion demonstrates what that interviewer failed to see; it cannot restore the years in which she doubted her own prospects. When a Reference Becomes a Threat The agency interview was not the only early experience that taught Soliman to keep her ambitions small. In another position, she says a captain linked help with visa paperwork and a discharge-book signature to her coming to his cabin. She recalls him warning that refusal or speaking about it would bring a bad reference and end her chances of finding another job in yachting. Soliman refused. Frightened and unsure how to leave without creating more trouble, she went to the chief engineer, who helped her write a resignation letter and accompanied her as a witness. She left the yacht believing the captain might still be able to ruin her career. The details matter because a reference, a signature and practical help with paperwork can carry enormous weight for someone at the beginning of a career. In Soliman’s account, the chief engineer’s quiet intervention gave her a way to leave a situation in which she felt trapped. Her ability to say no should never have depended on finding that one person. The Silence That Can Look Like Safety Other forms of exclusion were less dramatic and harder to name. Soliman recalls assumptions that people from what colleagues called a “third world country” were less capable or less willing to work. When her English was less fluent, impatience from other crew made conversation difficult. She withdrew, and that withdrawal was then treated as evidence that she did not fit in. She also describes mean remarks dressed up as jokes. When she objected, the response was that she had misunderstood because of her English. After enough of these exchanges, even deciding whether a comment was harmless became exhausting. She chose, in her words, to “stay small” and concentrate on the work. Discrimination in yachting can persist through that sequence: an assumption, a reaction to the assumption, and a judgment about the reaction. The crew member who speaks less because she is repeatedly dismissed becomes the person others describe as distant. The label appears to confirm the very treatment that produced it. Soliman eventually began to express her ideas and concerns calmly. She says colleagues started to ask what she thought, and her first Chief Stewardess role followed. She encourages crew to develop their communication skills and speak up when something is wrong. Her experience also places a responsibility on the people listening. A junior colleague cannot create psychological safety alone, especially when a senior person controls the reference she may need for her next job. What Belonging Looks Like on a Working Yacht Today, Soliman leads an interior team that includes British, South African, Turkish and Filipino crew. She holds a morning meeting and checks in with people individually during the day, asking how they feel and whether they need help. She invites ideas as readily as she gives instructions. Others have called her approach too soft. For a crew member accustomed to being overlooked, the invitation to contribute can be the difference between merely completing a task and developing into a leader. She is candid about the habits she had to unlearn. When she first became Chief Stewardess, she believed a strong leader had to be certain and resist suggestions. Her team grew distant despite her concern for them. She took a break from yachting, studied leadership, and returned more willing to ask a simple question: “What do you think?” One small exercise captures the shift. Rather than dictate a single method for making a bed, she asked her stews to show one another their techniques and compare what worked best. The task was ordinary; the change in who was allowed to teach was not. Experience could travel across the team instead of only down the hierarchy. When Soliman considers who might be ready to lead, she looks for curiosity, openness to feedback and a willingness to grow. She asks captains and department heads to notice quieter crew as well as confident ones. Confidence is often built by being given opportunities. Waiting for it to appear before offering those opportunities can leave capable people unseen. Soliman believes yachting has become more attentive to crew wellbeing during her 16 years in the industry, and that assumptions about Arab and Filipino crew in senior positions have begun to change. Her own career is evidence of possibility, but it also shows how much depends on the decisions made long before a promotion. An agency can assess ability without treating a passport as a forecast. A captain can ensure a refusal does not threaten a crew member’s future. A department head can ask the quieter person for an idea and take the answer seriously. That is how belonging becomes something a crew member can experience, rather than a promise the industry makes about itself. At an agency interview in Antibes, Ghada “Lili” Soliman was told she should not expect to reach a senior position in yachting. Her journey to Chief Stewardess reveals the lasting cost of that judgment and the kind of leadership that gives other crew a fairer chance.

Master mariner Ann Pletschke has built a career across offshore operations, command, vessel inspection and autonomous shipping. That breadth of experience now informs a mission grounded in safety, professional equality and the voices of seafarers themselves. At four years old, Ann Pletschke had already decided that she would one day command a ship. By sixteen, she was at sea, beginning a career that would cross deep-sea cargo, North Sea offshore operations, passenger ferries, polar waters, vessel inspection, marine consultancy and autonomous shipping. More than twenty-five years later, women’s safety at sea sits at the centre of a mission shaped not by slogans, but by command, difficult ships, honest failure and what she has witnessed when people are isolated from the systems intended to protect them. Ann’s authority does not rest upon one title. She is a master mariner, Master SDPO, OVID and eCMID AVI inspector, Chartered Master Mariner and Chartered Marine Technologist, with an MEng and MSc behind her. Yet the thread connecting those qualifications is less about collecting letters than refusing to believe that experience ever makes further learning unnecessary. The Captain She Had Always Intended to Become The sea ran through Ann’s family, although its history had been written almost entirely by men. Her father had gone to sea, as had his father and the generations before him. As an only child, Ann inherited that maritime instinct without inheriting an obvious female path to follow. At fourteen, she was told that her eyesight might prevent her from pursuing the only career she had ever wanted. She considered oceanography, ship agency and other work connected to the water, but none of it answered the same need. When the medical position changed and the route reopened, she left school at sixteen and began her cadetship with the determination of someone who had already experienced how quickly a future could be taken away. Her qualifications came in stages, but learning soon became both an ambition and an insurance policy. Conscious that changing medical standards might one day bring her seagoing career to an end, she completed an early distance-learning diploma in port management and continued building knowledge alongside sea time. During the pandemic, uncertainty about autonomous shipping prompted an unusually practical response: she took a job in the field because she wanted to understand whether the technology was safe, how it worked and what it would mean for mariners. That decision eventually led to a Master of Engineering in Autonomous Maritime Operations. The pattern is characteristic of Ann’s career. When confronted by something unfamiliar, she moves closer to it. She began on traditional deep-sea vessels, carrying general cargo out and palletised bananas back, convinced that offshore work in the North Sea held little appeal. When she eventually entered the offshore sector, the physicality, deck operations and demanding ship handling suited her far better than expected. Passenger ferries brought another form of intensity, navigating the Dover Strait repeatedly through dense traffic, while time among the ice off Greenland gave her one of the defining experiences of her cadetship. Those contrasts taught her that a master mariner’s licence may be broad, but maritime careers can narrow quickly. Dynamic positioning, tanker endorsements, polar certification and vessel-specific experience can open one sector while quietly closing another. For women who may plan to leave the sea temporarily, raise children and later return, the consequences of early specialisation can be particularly significant. That understanding informs Ann’s work as a trustee of the Maritime London Officer Cadet Scholarship, helping young people access training, meaningful sea time and an understanding of the wider maritime profession. She wants cadets to see possibilities early, before one decision restricts the shape of an entire career. A Wider View from Every Gangway Since establishing her own business in 2013, Ann has conducted offshore vetting inspections, navigation assessments, sailing audits and marine consultancy across very different vessels and working environments. Inspection offers a rare view of the industry because it reveals exceptional practice and serious weakness with equal clarity. It also places her aboard ships she might never otherwise encounter, speaking directly with the people who live and work within them. On some vessels in Kuwait, crew members may remain onboard for two years or longer with little or no shore leave. Ann can be the only woman they see during an entire year, arriving to inspect a working environment almost entirely separated from the professional networks, conferences and online conversations through which the industry often imagines change is being communicated. That experience has widened her understanding of inequality. Gender has shaped her career and exposed her to serious harm, but it is not the only source of vulnerability at sea. Nationality, rank, race, culture, contractual conditions, connectivity and access to information can all determine whose voice is heard and whose welfare remains invisible. For Ann, improving women’s safety at sea therefore belongs within a larger obligation to make life better for seafarers. Progress cannot be designed solely for the people already connected to professional bodies, social media and shore-based support. It must reach the crew member working six hours on and six hours off, prioritising a short conversation with family and a few hours of sleep over searching the internet for industry guidance. Women’s Safety at Sea Depends on Culture, Not Numbers Ann speaks about sexual assault, harassment and gender discrimination without collapsing them into a single experience. Physical or sexual violence may occur privately and leave the person targeted profoundly isolated, while persistent misogyny and lower-level harassment can spread through a vessel, weakening authority, crew cohesion and the atmosphere in which everyone is expected to work safely. When a crew member refuses to respect a senior officer or master because she is a woman, the consequences do not remain confined to that relationship. The behaviour reaches into decision-making, communication and trust. It can affect the operational culture of the entire ship. That is why Ann challenges the widely repeated idea that women will automatically be safer when more women are placed onboard. Through her volunteering with Safer Waves, she has seen people seek support from sectors where women already serve in significant numbers. Cruise ships and yachts may carry mixed-gender crews, yet cases of sexual violence, harassment and discrimination still occur. Representation matters, particularly in an industry where women were invisible for generations, but representation cannot serve as a substitute for evidence, accountability or leadership. A vessel can improve its demographic balance and still fail to create a safe working environment. Numbers may show who was recruited; they do not reveal who feels able to report misconduct, challenge a senior colleague or ask for help without fearing professional consequences. “Safety. Always comes back to safety for me.” Ann is equally clear that men cannot be treated as peripheral to this work. Most of her colleagues, mentors and strongest professional allies have been men because most of the people with whom she has sailed have been men. Change becomes harder when the language surrounding equality alienates those capable of challenging poor behaviour and setting better standards onboard. The ISWAN Safe at Sea campaign reflects that practical approach by placing allyship within the creation of safer and more inclusive working cultures. The message is not that men must speak for women, but that every crew member has a role when inappropriate behaviour is normalised, dismissed or allowed to escalate. The greater challenge is ensuring that useful guidance reaches the people who need it. Maritime welfare information is dispersed across charities, flag states, companies, professional bodies and industry campaigns. Much of it is thoughtful and potentially transformative, but even excellent guidance has little value if it remains within the same familiar professional circles. Connectivity has improved the possibilities. Messaging platforms, eSIMs and peer-support groups allow seafarers to communicate in ways that were impossible when contact with home depended upon an expensive calling card and a cold telephone on the quay. Yet connectivity remains uneven, and seafarers on demanding rotations are understandably more interested in family, rest and escaping work than reading another industry document. Ann’s mission is therefore as concerned with delivery as it is with policy. Safer Waves provides confidential emotional support and signposting for seafarers and former seafarers affected by sexual violence, harassment or gender discrimination. ISWAN operates SeafarerHelp and YachtCrewHelp, while Sailors’ Society provides peer networks and trauma therapy grants designed to reduce the barriers between seafarers and professional support. Her work as Project Manager for The Nautical Institute’s STEER Project, delivered in collaboration with Lloyd’s Register Foundation, carries the same insistence that the people using new systems must remain central to decisions about technology. Innovation cannot be assessed only by what a system is capable of doing. Its effect on human performance, workload, safety and wellbeing must be understood through the experiences of seafarers themselves. Authority Without Pretence Ann remembers the first time she heard someone refer to her as “the captain.” The words were not spoken to her. They came from elsewhere in the ship, an ordinary reference to where the captain could be found, but they marked the arrival of something she had wanted since childhood. Command, however, did not bring an end to uncertainty. One of the most revealing episodes of her career occurred while taking a vessel out of Grimsby. Tired and dealing with the effects of interaction from a nearby tug, she felt the ship being drawn towards the quay and describes the manoeuvre as though she had bounced through the lock. There was no damage, but the lack of elegance shook her confidence badly enough that she considered finishing the trip and abandoning command. Instead, she booked an azimuth propulsion ship-handling course, learned from the experience and returned better equipped. The value of the story lies not in turning failure into a polished motivational anecdote, but in Ann’s refusal to conceal how devastating professional doubt can feel when responsibility ultimately rests with you. That honesty is also central to her understanding of leadership. The traditional image of the captain as an unchallengeable source of knowledge may project authority, but it can create the conditions in which warning signs are missed. Maritime casualty investigations repeatedly demonstrate what can happen when someone on the bridge or in the engine room notices that something is wrong but does not feel safe enough to say it. “None of us have a monopoly on knowledge.” A captain may have decades of experience and still be entering a port for the first time. A newly delivered vessel may be unfamiliar to every person onboard. Junior crew may understand a new piece of technology better than the senior officer responsible for the operation. Effective command depends upon recognising those realities and creating sufficient psychological safety for the team to question, correct and contribute. Authenticity carries risk. Ann acknowledges that openness can be exploited by difficult people and that vulnerability does not always receive a generous response. Even so, she believes the wider result is worth the personal cost if it creates a culture in which somebody will speak before a mistake becomes an accident. A Professional Before a Category Women in maritime have fought for visibility because, for much of the industry’s history, they were expected to adapt quietly to systems, equipment and cultures designed around men. Female-cut personal protective equipment remains inconsistent, and even basic facilities such as sanitary bins are still absent from many vessels. Visibility has been necessary because invisibility allowed practical failures to remain unchallenged. Ann also recognises the paradox created when gender becomes the first and most persistent fact noticed about a professional. Many women do not walk up a gangway thinking of themselves as women entering maritime. They arrive as masters, engineers, cadets, cooks and seafarers reporting for work. Equality does not mean pretending gender never affects life onboard. It means understanding the specific risks a person may face without allowing those risks to eclipse their competence, rank or professional identity. Ann wants a woman joining a ship to be seen first for the job she has come to do, while remaining confident that the systems around her will respond properly if she needs protection or support. Women’s safety at sea and professional equality are inseparable. A person cannot be equal within a workplace where reporting harm risks isolation, retaliation or the loss of a career. Nor can safety be established through policy alone if everyday conduct continues to undermine the authority and belonging of the people those policies claim to protect. Ann still describes maritime as a remarkable career. The difficult voyages, destructive personalities and moments of profound doubt have not erased the satisfaction of completing a challenging manoeuvre, bringing a vessel safely alongside or watching a cadet encounter opportunities once beyond her own imagination. Her argument is not that the industry is irredeemably hostile, but that its value makes the work of improving it worth continuing. The four-year-old who wanted to drive ships eventually heard herself called captain. The mission that followed is larger than the achievement of command. It is to ensure that the next generation does not enter a lion’s den disguised as an opportunity, and that every seafarer can be recognised for their professionalism, heard when they speak and supported when something goes wrong. That is not special treatment. It is the minimum standard of a safe and credible maritime industry. SUPPORT FOR SEAFARERS This article includes discussion of sexual violence, harassment and discrimination at sea. Confidential support and information are available through: Safer Waves ISWAN SeafarerHelp ISWAN YachtCrewHelp Sailors’ Society Trauma Therapy Grants Master Mariner and marine consultant Ann Pletschke examines women’s safety at sea, command culture and the practical changes needed to build safer, more accountable maritime workplaces.

In an industry where celebration, pressure and social life are often tied to alcohol, choosing not to drink can still attract more questions than drinking itself. There is something revealing about a culture in which declining a drink requires an explanation, while accepting one does not. The growing conversation around yacht crew sobriety is not being driven by a belief that alcohol is inherently wrong, but by crew beginning to question why it has become so deeply connected to belonging, celebration and life at sea. Laura Kilbey entered yachting at 20 and progressed to Chief Stewardess, building a successful career while privately trying to manage an increasingly difficult relationship with alcohol. She took breaks, cut back, moderated and created rules around what she would drink and when. Eventually, the effort required to control alcohol became almost as exhausting as the consequences of drinking it. Her decision to stop was not born from one dramatic collapse. It came from the quieter recognition that alcohol was no longer adding enough to justify what it was taking away. That decision led her to establish Sober Crew Social Club, connecting sober and sober-curious crew who still wanted friendship, laughter and a social life without alcohol at its centre. “It was taking away more than it was giving me.” Why Yacht Crew Sobriety Still Requires an Explanation Alcohol occupies an unusually visible place in yachting. A successful charter may end with champagne, a broker may arrive carrying bottles, and guest drop-off can flow almost automatically into a crew celebration. In port, the bar is often the easiest gathering place, while long hours, confined living and time away from home can make drinking feel like both reward and release. None of those moments is necessarily a problem. Many people drink comfortably, enjoy the occasion and move on. The difficulty arises when participation is treated as part of being a good crewmate, while the person ordering sparkling water is assumed to be struggling, antisocial or making a judgment about everybody else. Captain James Battey, Founder of the Yacht Workers Council, has been sober for almost four years. Stopping did not mean believing nobody should drink. It meant recognising that alcohol was taking energy away from his family, work and sense of purpose. Sobriety, in this context, is not a moral achievement. It is a personal decision. When Moderation Becomes a Full-Time Job For Laura, the clearest warning was not how often she drank, but how much mental space was occupied by trying to manage it. The rules were familiar: alternate alcohol with water, stop after three drinks, avoid spirits, drink only wine with dinner or promise that the next evening would be different. Sometimes those rules worked, creating a misleading sense of control even when another occasion ended in anxiety, regret or damaged confidence. Something terrible did not happen every time Laura drank, but many of the experiences she regretted most had alcohol behind them. When drinking requires constant negotiation, calculation and recovery, the issue is no longer confined to the hours spent with a glass in hand. It occupies the days around them as well. Stopping gave Laura back the energy previously spent bargaining with herself. It also allowed her to discover that sobriety did not make her life smaller. It made more of her life available. Change Does Not Require Catastrophe Society often tells stories about alcohol through the language of rock bottom, making change appear legitimate only after somebody has lost a relationship, a career or their health. For yacht crew, that narrative can be dangerous because professional competence may hide a considerable private struggle. Laura had continued working and had not lost everything, which made stopping feel almost premature. She even questioned whether the situation needed to become serious enough for rehabilitation before she could justify walking away completely. The more useful question was why she should wait for greater damage. Nobody needs a label or a suitably dramatic history before deciding that something is no longer working. That distinction matters for sober-curious crew who may not identify with alcoholism or recovery language. They may simply recognise that alcohol worsens their anxiety, undermines their confidence or consumes more energy than they are willing to give it. When the Escape Changes Shape Removing alcohol does not automatically resolve the reason somebody was using it. Within the isolated environment of a yacht, gambling, food, shopping, drugs, sex or compulsive exercise may provide a different route towards the same temporary escape. Laura is careful not to claim expertise beyond her own experience, but the wider point is important. Support cannot end with telling somebody to stop. Crew need confidential access to professional services, practical resources and communities that understand the pressures of working at sea. Visibility matters. Knowing that sober crew socialise and remain fully part of yachting life challenges the belief that alcohol is the only route to connection. Belonging Without the Bottle The fear beneath many decisions about sobriety is not the loss of alcohol, but the possible loss of belonging. Crew live, work and socialise with the same small group, often far from established support networks. Stepping away from the activity around which life is organised can feel like stepping away from the team. Yet sobriety does not require social disappearance. Laura and James still go out, laugh and spend time with people who drink. They have learned when it is time to leave and where their boundaries sit. Neither expects everybody else to make the same decision. There are signs that younger crew may already be drinking less, although a healthier culture should not replace one form of pressure with another. Wellness can become performative when every meal, workout and social choice is treated as a test of discipline. Crew should be free to live imperfectly, have fun and make their own decisions without being measured against somebody else's version of health. Yachting's relationship with alcohol will not change because every crew member chooses sobriety. It will change when drinking and not drinking are treated as equally ordinary adult decisions, and when nobody is expected to defend the choice that is right for them. Sobriety does not need to become an identity, a judgment or evidence of crisis. Sometimes it is simply the recognition that life feels better without alcohol in it. That choice should not require a rock bottom, and it should not require anybody else's permission. Choosing not to drink at sea can still attract more scrutiny than drinking itself. As yacht crew reconsider alcohol, identity and belonging, sobriety is becoming less about labels and more about the freedom to decide what no longer works.

As a new generation reshapes how yachts are designed, used and managed, the Isle of Man is making a compelling case for something luxury cannot manufacture overnight: trusted people, responsive institutions and an ecosystem built to solve problems. Luxury at sea is easy to see. It is expressed through architecture, craftsmanship, technology and the extraordinary freedom to move through the world on one’s own terms. Yet experienced owners understand that the quality of yacht ownership is often decided far from the sundeck. It is decided in the ownership structure. In the choice of flag. In the clarity of the advice received before a contract is signed. It is decided when a captain needs a definitive answer, when regulations change, when a crewing matter becomes urgent or when an owner’s plans no longer fit neatly within conventional boundaries. This is the largely invisible infrastructure behind a significant yacht, and it is where trusted maritime jurisdictions distinguish themselves. Capt. Lee Clarke of Isle of Man Maritime has viewed this world from both sides. His career began at sea, progressing through commercial vessels, cruise ships, training roles and cadet development before bringing him back to the island connected to generations of his own family’s maritime history. Today, his focus extends beyond any single vessel or maritime sector. It is about building a professional environment capable of supporting owners, captains, seafarers and advisers as yachting becomes more complex. A Flag Is a Relationship, Not a Badge The flag carried by a yacht may occupy only a small space on the stern, but the jurisdiction behind it can influence almost every stage of ownership. Registration, regulatory oversight, safety standards, crew documentation and operational compliance all sit within that relationship. Around them is a wider network of legal, corporate, financial, insurance and management expertise. When these elements work together, ownership feels controlled and considered. When they do not, even a relatively simple issue can become expensive and disruptive. There is no single jurisdiction that is right for every yacht or every owner. The vessel’s intended use, cruising programme, financing, ownership profile and commercial ambitions must all be considered. Reputation alone is not enough. What matters is how that reputation performs when an owner, captain or adviser requires help. “If I were an owner, I would want a flag I could call and ask, ‘What can we do to fix this?’” For Clarke, accessibility is one of the Isle of Man’s most valuable qualities. A respected jurisdiction should not feel remote when the stakes are high. Its professionals must be able to listen, understand the commercial and operational reality, and work towards a solution without compromising standards. Trust, in this context, is not a marketing claim. It is the accumulated result of sound regulation, professional judgement and consistent human response. The Connected Ecosystem Behind Yacht Ownership Yacht owners rarely experience a jurisdiction as an organisational chart. They experience whether the people involved communicate with one another. A registry may be highly regarded, but ownership also depends on corporate service providers, accountants, banks, lawyers, payroll specialists, surveyors, managers and crew professionals. If those services exist in isolation, the owner or family office is left to connect them. If they operate as an ecosystem, decisions can be made with greater speed, context and confidence. Isle of Man Maritime has sought to strengthen those connections through four areas: superyachts, business, skills and seafarers, and digital innovation and artificial intelligence. The intention is not simply to assemble a list of maritime companies. It is to encourage expertise from different disciplines to work as a more coherent whole. That distinction matters. An ownership structure should make sense alongside the yacht’s registration. Crew arrangements should support the intended operation. Legal, financial and technical advice should not contradict one another. When circumstances change, the relevant specialists should be able to reach the same table quickly. The Isle of Man Ship Registry’s Yachts Engaged in Trade framework is one example of a jurisdiction responding to changing patterns of yacht use. Subject to defined conditions and compliance requirements, it allows eligible Isle of Man registered pleasure yachts over 24 metres to undertake limited commercial activity without permanently abandoning their underlying pleasure registration. It is not a universal solution, nor a substitute for tailored legal and tax advice. Its significance lies in what it recognises: modern ownership does not always fit into a single, static category. New Owners, New Yachts, New Expectations The profile of yacht ownership is evolving. Many owners are entering the market at a younger age, bringing different expectations of how a yacht should function and what it should make possible. The traditional image of a yacht designed primarily for Mediterranean entertaining is no longer the only aspiration. Expedition vessels and highly capable explorer yachts continue to attract owners who want to travel further, remain aboard for longer and access places beyond established cruising routes. These yachts are increasingly expected to support several dimensions of life at once. They may serve as a private residence, a remote office, a platform for family exploration or a base for scientific and philanthropic work. Interiors are becoming more personal, reflecting the interests of an owner rather than a predetermined idea of what a superyacht should look like. Luxury is moving away from conformity. A yacht may incorporate specialist diving equipment, research facilities, advanced communications, extensive wellness spaces or immersive entertainment environments. Support vessels have evolved into sophisticated operations in their own right, carrying equipment, tenders and personnel that allow the principal yacht to deliver a far wider programme. This new freedom also creates new demands. More ambitious itineraries require different technical capabilities, experienced crew and stronger shoreside support. Working from the yacht raises questions of connectivity, security and confidentiality. Scientific activity, specialist equipment and remote cruising introduce further operational considerations. The yacht may be unique, but its success still depends on a disciplined structure behind it. Crew Welfare Is an Ownership Issue For all the attention given to design and technology, a yacht remains entirely dependent on its people. Clarke’s own career at sea informs his conviction that seafarers cannot be treated as a secondary part of the maritime discussion. A yacht cannot move safely without its captain and engineers. It cannot deliver exceptional hospitality without its chefs, interior teams and deck crew. Nor can it maintain the standards expected of a high-value asset without people who are properly trained, supported and respected. “Whatever we do within this space, it all relies on our incredible seafarers.” Crew welfare is sometimes discussed as though it were separate from the owner’s experience. In reality, the two are closely connected. Fatigue, poor leadership, weak communication and inadequate support affect retention, safety and service. A stable, motivated team protects the atmosphere on board as well as the yacht itself. The industry has made progress, but expectations continue to rise. Mental health, fair working conditions, professional development and responsible leadership are becoming central to the way quality operations are assessed. Owners and family offices are also paying closer attention to the culture created on board and to the reputational consequences of getting it wrong. The same principle applies to inclusion. A maritime sector seeking the best possible talent must be able to welcome people from different backgrounds, including more women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. An industry cannot credibly call itself world-class while placing unnecessary barriers in front of capable people. The finest yachts may be built from steel, aluminium and carbon fibre, but their true character is created by the people who operate them. Innovation Must Earn Its Place Artificial intelligence is entering the maritime world, but its value will not be measured by novelty. It will be measured by the problems it solves. Clarke points to AI-supported man-overboard detection as an example of technology with an immediate human purpose. Camera systems capable of identifying and tracking someone in the water could provide critical assistance in darkness or difficult conditions, when human vision alone may not be enough. Applied intelligently, similar systems could support navigation, safety, maintenance and administrative efficiency. Yet technology must complement professional judgement rather than attempt to replace it. The strongest maritime ecosystems will be those able to connect digital expertise with the practical knowledge of captains, engineers, regulators and seafarers. Sustainability carries the same requirement for substance. Owners are looking beyond superficial claims and considering how a yacht is designed, powered, provisioned and operated. Expedition programmes and scientific partnerships are also allowing private vessels to contribute to research in areas that would otherwise be difficult or costly to access. Environmental responsibility has particular resonance for the Isle of Man. Designated in 2016, its UNESCO Biosphere encompasses the entire island and its territorial waters. It reflects the principle that environmental protection, community and economic activity must be considered together. For yachting, that balance is essential. Progress will not be achieved through a single propulsion system or headline technology. It will come from hundreds of informed decisions made throughout the yacht’s design, ownership and operational life. The People Behind the Reputation Yacht ownership is becoming more adventurous, more individual and more technologically sophisticated. It is also becoming more demanding. Owners want flexibility without uncertainty. They want innovation without avoidable risk. They expect discretion, but they also need access to people capable of giving clear answers. These expectations are placing greater importance on the professional ecosystem surrounding the yacht. The Isle of Man’s advantage is not simply that it offers a recognised flag or a concentration of maritime services. Its deeper proposition is connection: between public and private expertise, between regulation and commercial reality, and between the ambitions of an owner and the people responsible for making them achievable. “We cannot operate without our incredible people.” An owner can commission exceptional design, advanced engineering and almost limitless personalisation. Trust is different. It must be earned through competence, judgement and response, often long before it is ever tested. That is the quiet luxury behind successful yacht ownership. Not only the freedom to go anywhere, but the confidence that the right people are standing behind every decision when you do. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 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. iyr.net Yacht ownership is changing as a new generation looks beyond the flag to trusted jurisdictions, responsive regulation and connected maritime expertise. Capt. Lee Clarke reveals why the Isle of Man’s quiet advantage lies in the people and infrastructure behind the world’s most significant yachts.

Most people see the polished side of running a superyacht business: awards, technology, loyal clients and a capable team. What they do not see is the phone that has not been switched off in 18 years, the legal meetings taking place at one o’clock in the morning, or the business owner lying awake worrying not only about her own mortgage, but those of 25 employees. Alicia Store, Chief Operating Officer of dsnm Ltd, and David Store, its Chief Executive Officer, have built the company together while also building a marriage and raising a family. On paper, their responsibilities divide neatly. Alicia oversees the daily operation of the business, while David manages yachts and drives the development of Compass software. In practice, the company occupies almost every corner of their lives. Running a superyacht business at this level is not simply a job with longer hours. The work may leave the office, but the responsibility follows them home. The Job Titles Only Tell Half the Story Alicia’s remit stretches across nearly every department, from cash flow, budgeting and client retention to staff management, training, marketing and brand. Her purpose is to make sure everyone at dsnm Ltd can do their job to the best of their ability. David remains a yacht manager with his own fleet while leading the development of Compass. He jokes that he does not appear to do as much as Alicia, a line she is only too happy to agree with. They are not trying to perform the same role. David creates movement, ideas and, by his own admission, a certain amount of chaos. Alicia creates the structure that makes it workable. He credits her with the company’s scale; she credits his belief in her when her own confidence has faltered. Their differences are part of the reason it works. Running a Superyacht Business Means Carrying Other People’s Risk Both describe their team as the best part of the company. They hire selectively, looking for people who understand what they are building and care about delivering the same standard of service. That culture brings enormous satisfaction, but it also creates a weight rarely visible from outside a business. “There have been times when I have come home, got into bed and, rather than worrying about my mortgage and feeding my child, I have worried about 25 other people’s mortgages, their children and their bills.” It is easy to speak about employment in numbers: headcount, payroll and growth. Alicia speaks about it in homes, children and security. In those terms, a commercial decision is no longer confined to a spreadsheet. It reaches into the lives of everyone who depends on the company remaining stable. Caring less might make the burden easier, but it would also remove something fundamental. The people who make the work enjoyable are the same people whose futures Alicia feels responsible for protecting. The Phone Has Not Been Off in 18 Years The most revealing measure of Alicia’s commitment is not a revenue figure or an award. It is the fact that she has not switched off her phone in 18 years. She does not offer that detail as a complaint. She loves the work and believes in what the company is building, but she is honest about the obsession involved. It reaches from hiring the right person and examining figures late at night to making sure a logo is exactly right before it goes out. “To run a company successfully, you sometimes have to be obsessed with what you are doing on an unhealthy level.” David once imagined that running a company would be similar to having a job. Experience taught him otherwise. The last time he turned off his phone and stopped checking email was on their honeymoon, 14 years ago. Alicia kept hers on. Business stories are often polished after the fact. The finished company appears inevitable, while the exhaustion and constant availability disappear from view. Crisis Arrives Without an Instruction Manual The pressure intensified when events beyond the company’s control arrived one after another. COVID brought unprecedented disruption, while the conflict in Ukraine created legal and commercial questions about who the business could work with and under what conditions. Momentum built over years was interrupted overnight. Meetings with lawyers ran into the early hours, paperwork covered the family table and decisions had to be made without a tested roadmap. “We were having meetings with lawyers at one o’clock in the morning, working out who we could work with and who we couldn’t. I wasn’t trained to do that.” David focused on the foundation beneath the company. No leader can predict the next global crisis, but a business can be built to react without losing its footing. In an industry that crosses borders, stability is not the absence of change. It is the capacity to absorb it. The Sacrifice Success Cannot Give Back The most difficult cost arrived during the COVID lockdown, when Alicia had a baby while the company was in a precarious position. She worked on the day she gave birth and was back online the next day. There was no maternity leave, baby shower or ordinary time away with her child. “I worked that day, gave birth and the next day I was back online. I took no maternity leave whatsoever.” She does not regret the decision itself. Given the number of people relying on the company, she understood why it had to be made. She regrets the experience she lost and can never repeat. That distinction cuts through the mythology surrounding entrepreneurship. Success accumulates through clients, teams, technology and recognition. Sacrifice works differently. Time disappears once, and no later achievement can buy it back. The choice helped keep the company moving, but necessity does not erase its personal cost. Alicia can be proud of what the decision protected and still grieve what it took away. Why Marriage Became an Advantage Running a company can be isolating, even when the office is full. The most serious decisions often remain with the people at the top long after everyone else has gone home. Working together means Alicia and David do not carry that isolation alone. They share the celebrations and the pressure, often working through problems at the dinner table with someone who understands their full weight. Their partnership is not frictionless. Alicia occasionally wants to throw a stapler across the office, while David has learned that accepting she is right can be the simplest route to peace. The humour works because it sits beside genuine respect. “There is no way dsnm Ltd would be as big as it is now if it wasn’t for Alicia.” Alicia calls David the most supportive person imaginable. He pushes her when her confidence falters; she gives order to his ideas and energy. Their marriage does not remove the strain of leadership, but it gives them somewhere to share it honestly. The Courage to Build Before Everything Is Ready If David could change one professional decision, he would have created Compass sooner. The idea existed for years before the company had the money to build it. Ambition still has to meet commercial reality. Seeing the first clients use Compass remains one of David’s proudest moments. It proved that an internal idea could become a working tool for the people it was designed to support. dsnm Ltd has received two Queen’s Awards, one connected to the company and another to Compass. The first took Alicia and David to Buckingham Palace, where being in the same room as the Queen felt almost unreal. The recognition made visible years of deciding that standing still was not an option. David’s view is uncomplicated: if a company is not moving forward, it is falling behind. Innovation adds pressure, but failing to build for the future creates a greater risk. The Luxury of Being Unreachable When asked to choose any yacht and any destination, Alicia chose Antarctica aboard Octopus. David chose Indonesia on a sailing yacht, anchored somewhere with no other boats and nobody else around. There is something revealing in both answers. After years of being permanently available, their imagined luxury is not a busier harbour or another room full of recognition. It is distance, stillness and a place beyond the reach of ordinary demands. Running a superyacht business has given Alicia and David a team they love, technology they are proud of and recognition that once placed them inside Buckingham Palace. It has also taken nights, holidays, maternity leave and the ability to stop thinking about what happens next. Their success does not prove that sacrifice is painless. It proves that the polished result carries a private cost. The work can be divided, the problems can be shared and the occasional stapler can remain safely on the desk, but the responsibility never fully disappears. Perhaps that is why, after 18 years of being available, the rarest luxury they can imagine is finally being unreachable. For Alicia and David Store, building dsnm Ltd has meant balancing marriage, family and the weight of 25 livelihoods in one of yachting’s most demanding sectors.

In yachting, the people who understand how a vessel must function are not always present when the decisions shaping that function are made. Designers design. Shipyards build. Contractors install. Crew arrive later and learn to operate what has already been decided. Meeli Lepik believes that sequence needs to change. The founder of Holistic Yacht Interiors has built her business around bringing operational experience into yacht design from the beginning, before inefficiencies, compromises and frustrations become part of the finished vessel. For Meeli, operational experience in yacht design is not an optional final check. It is the knowledge that allows beautiful spaces to function properly once owners, guests and crew begin using them. Her position is grounded in years of senior onboard experience, major new-build projects and the network she developed inside shipyards. It is also connected to Monaco, where an early piece of advice first made her consider creating something of her own. Her reflections were recorded at the Monaco Yacht Show in 2025 and carry particular weight as she prepares to return in 2026. She is going back to the place where the idea first began to take shape, but with considerably more behind her this time. The Advice That Planted a Seed The possibility of building an independent business entered Meeli’s mind around eight years ago. She was already working alongside experienced businesspeople, but one moment at a Lürssen party during the Monaco Yacht Show stayed with her. Several people had approached her to thank her for the work she had done. A financial adviser connected to one of the yacht owners noticed what was happening and told her not to dismiss it. “Meli, pay attention. The people come to say hello and thank you. Don’t let that slide. Create something on your own.” It was powerful advice, but recognition does not automatically make the timing right. Meeli understood that being encouraged to start a business and being ready to build one were not the same thing. Rather than rushing towards the title of entrepreneur, she chose to deepen her experience. Two more major new builds followed, expanding her understanding of how decisions travel between stakeholders and how much operational reality can be lost between a drawing and a vessel in use. The seed had been planted in Monaco, but it still needed time. Knowing When Experience Is Enough Yachting celebrates movement. The next project, destination, launch and show are always approaching. That relentless forward focus can make it difficult to recognise what has already been achieved. Meeli admits that this tendency is part of her own personality. During a build, attention naturally falls on what remains unfinished. The same mindset can follow someone throughout a career, creating the impression that readiness is always one more project away. At some point, however, looking forward must be balanced by looking back. “You sometimes have to look behind as well to see what’s already been achieved.” That is not ego. It is an acknowledgement that competence deserves to be recognised, including by the person who earned it. For Meeli, Monaco itself became a measure of that change. Ten years earlier, the scale of the show felt overwhelming and intimidating. Over time, it became familiar. The people around her were no longer a distant industry establishment. They were colleagues, collaborators and friends. The Missing Route From Yacht Crew to Shoreside Expert The route from onboard operations into an independent shoreside career is far less defined than the industry often admits. Experienced interior professionals may move into recruitment, yacht management, agencies or supply businesses. Yet a top operational professional may understand workflow, service, maintenance, storage and human behaviour at an exceptional level while finding no obvious route into the decisions that determine those realities. The industry frequently discusses glass ceilings and the need for greater inclusion. Meeli identifies another barrier: the glass walls separating operational expertise from the shoreside disciplines that would benefit from it. “If you are only working on board and you are a top, top professional operationally, there is no path for you to become an independent yachting professional on the shoreside.” The word “only” is revealing. Working onboard is sometimes treated as a narrow form of experience when it is anything but. Crew understand the finished yacht as a living environment. They know where elegant concepts support real use and where they create daily obstacles. They see how guests move, how service unfolds, where equipment must be accessed and what happens when spaces designed in isolation collide with operational demands. As wider YIR reporting has explored, even excellent crew cannot compensate indefinitely for a badly functioning yacht. That knowledge affects efficiency, maintenance, guest experience and the long-term success of the yacht. Without a recognised bridge into shoreside work, much of it remains locked onboard. Why the Shipyard Became the Bridge For younger crew, a new build in Northern Europe may not resemble the yachting lifestyle they imagined. Shipyards can mean cold weather, industrial surroundings and long days far removed from palm trees and glamorous destinations. They can also provide one of the most valuable educations available in the industry. Meeli’s time in shipyards connected her with project managers, designers, suppliers, contractors and builders. It allowed her to see not only how individual departments work, but how the wider construction ecosystem fits together. Those relationships eventually became the framework supporting her move ashore. New-build experience gives operational professionals a working vocabulary beyond the vessel. It shows them how decisions are made and where their knowledge can prevent problems before they reach the water. A Genuine Network Is More Than a Contact List Networking is one of the industry’s most repeated pieces of advice, but the word has been diluted by transactions. Collecting names, scanning badges and exchanging digital details is not the same as building a professional community. Meeli is clear that the network that matters is genuine. It grows through competence, visibility, consistency and a real interest in the work. “It is key, and a genuine network... figuring out what you want to do, and then just be passionate. Be seen, be passionate.” That distinction matters for anyone planning a shoreside transition. Opportunities develop when people ashore understand the value someone brings because they have seen it demonstrated over time. Meeli’s network did more than open doors. It helped her understand the industry as a whole and gave her the confidence to position herself within it. What began as relationships formed through shipyard work became a community capable of supporting an independent business. Holistic Is Not a Trend. It Is the Point The name Holistic Yacht Interiors initially prompted some hesitation from others. Would “holistic” sound too esoteric? Would people assume the business was concerned with chakra alignment and deep breathing rather than yacht projects? Meeli’s response carries the humour of someone comfortable with her own positioning. She could organise those things if required, she joked, but they were not the core business. The intended meaning is practical. Holistic means whole. Spatial design, construction, operations and the people responsible for each cannot function as separate worlds. Meeli’s approach takes a 360-degree view of the yacht and connects stakeholders before decisions harden into expensive realities. If the business arrived slightly ahead of the industry’s appetite for that thinking, the gap is closing quickly. Across yacht design and construction, there is growing recognition that technical achievement and visual beauty are not sufficient on their own. A yacht must also work for the people living, serving and operating within it. Operational Experience in Yacht Design: The Missing Link The disconnect between build and operation is not a new problem. As Meeli observes, it may be closer to a white elephant: widely recognised, rarely confronted directly and expensive to ignore. Her goal is not to displace designers, project managers or builders. It is to connect their expertise with the operational knowledge too often absent from the room. The most valuable contribution may be precisely that missing link, someone able to translate what happens onboard into useful input before a space is built or refitted. “The ambition is that in the near future, nothing gets built or refitted without operational know-how and input. That’s the mission.” That mission reaches beyond interiors. It proposes a more intelligent model for yacht development, one in which lived experience is treated as design intelligence rather than feedback collected after delivery. As Meeli returns to the Monaco Yacht Show in 2026, she does so with more than the idea first planted there years ago. She returns with the experience she insisted on gaining, the network she built authentically and a business created to solve a problem the industry can no longer afford to overlook. Monaco may be where the vision began. Full circle does not mean returning to the same place unchanged. It means coming back ready to move the industry forward. Operational knowledge is too often invited into a yacht project after the most important decisions have already been made. Meeli Lepik explains why experience gained onboard belongs at the heart of yacht design, construction and refit from the very beginning.

Wealth is easy to display and harder to define. A large house, bright sports car or five-star itinerary can prove that someone has money, but none reveals whether that person controls their own time. For real estate investor and private money lender Jon Schoeller, that distinction changes the meaning of financial freedom. In his twenties, Schoeller believed success meant earning more, buying more and proving his doubters wrong. By his early thirties, he and his wife, Rhianna, had built businesses, invested in real estate and become financially free. Adopting their daughter then brought the purpose behind all that work into sharper focus. Money remained important, but no longer as a scorecard. Its value lay in the time, choice and security it could create. “Financial freedom is not actually the ability to say yes to everything. It is the ability to say no to the things you don’t want to do.” Financial Freedom Begins With Knowing What Is Enough Freedom cannot be built around a target that never stops moving. A person reaches one income goal, expands their lifestyle and soon needs a larger income to maintain it. What looked like progress becomes a more expensive version of the same dependency. Schoeller is not arguing against beautiful homes, travel or expensive possessions. The important question is whether a purchase supports a life someone genuinely values or simply advertises success to other people. Enjoyment and performance can look identical from the outside while producing entirely different lives. That question carries particular weight in yachting. Crew can earn strong incomes while working inside one of the world’s most visible expressions of wealth. Constant exposure to larger yachts, luxury destinations and apparently limitless spending can distort what a normal life should cost. Unless crew define enough for themselves, years of valuable earnings can disappear into a lifestyle that becomes increasingly difficult to leave. “You don’t want money to have everything. You want money to have options.” The Hedonic Treadmill Makes More Feel Normal Lifestyle inflation rarely arrives through one reckless decision. It grows through upgrades that each appear reasonable. A higher income justifies a better car, which changes expectations around the house and holidays. What once felt exceptional becomes normal, and normal eventually feels insufficient. Schoeller explains the pattern through an ordinary television. After using a 45-inch model for roughly 15 years, he could afford almost any replacement and initially wanted the largest screen his living room could hold. Instead, he chose a 65-inch television. The decision was not really about screen size. Moving immediately to the maximum would have created one dramatic improvement before establishing a new baseline. This is the hedonic treadmill: people adapt quickly to better circumstances, then begin searching for the next upgrade. Buying the most someone can afford today can quietly reduce the choices available tomorrow. The BMW That Changed the Meaning of Success Schoeller learned that lesson much earlier through a more expensive purchase. At 21, his first business was doing well and he traded a 1992 Honda Civic hatchback for a white BMW 335i with a red interior. After spending nearly an entire day securing the financing, he drove away with tears in his eyes. The car appeared to confirm that the young man from a trailer park, whom others had underestimated, had become successful. The emotion faded quickly. Schoeller owned a moving company and spent most days working from a box truck. During the five or six months he owned the BMW, he drove it only about 3,000 miles. The car and insurance cost more than $1,000 each month, while much of his limited time around it was spent cleaning it or worrying about damage. The BMW looked like freedom but behaved like another obligation. Schoeller realised that every month or two he was spending the equivalent of an international trip on something that mostly sat outside losing value and creating stress. He sold it and lost roughly $8,000, yet still considers it one of his best investments because the loss clarified what he wanted. He and Rhianna redirected the money towards their first trip abroad, beginning a pattern of travel that later became central to their family life. The lesson was not that cars are bad or travel is inherently better. The BMW communicated success to strangers. The journeys created memories for the people who mattered. Raising a Child Who Understands Value Financial security creates a different challenge when raising a child. Parents who struggled often want to remove every difficulty from their children’s lives. Schoeller and Rhianna do not believe their daughter should struggle simply because they did, but they also know that money can remove consequences she needs in order to grow. When their daughter wanted to buy something but had lost her wallet, Schoeller could easily have paid for it. He chose not to. If losing money never changed the outcome, responsibility would remain an abstract idea rather than a lived lesson. Confidence and self-discipline develop through manageable problems, not by having every frustration cleared away. “I am not raising a daughter. I am raising a woman.” Their daughter can enjoy opportunities her parents never had while still learning that choices carry consequences. Comfort without personal capability is not freedom. It is dependency with better surroundings. Private Money Lending Requires More Than Capital Schoeller supports this philosophy with a practical investment strategy. Through hundreds of property transactions, he has operated as both a real estate borrower and private money lender. Lending can provide exposure to real estate without requiring him to manage tenants, repairs, utilities or contractors. In a typical transaction, a private lender provides capital for an operator to purchase and renovate a property. The borrower repays the principal with interest when the property is sold or refinanced. The arrangement may sound passive, but passive should never be confused with automatic or risk-free. Schoeller begins by assessing the borrower. He looks for experience, a credible track record, resources beyond the individual project and evidence that previous lenders were repaid. He wants to know how someone behaves when a deal goes badly, not only how they present the deals that succeeded. Only then does he examine the property, including its purchase price, renovation budget, comparable sales and likely value after the work. He also describes using a closing attorney, promissory note, deed of trust, clear title, insurance and first-lien positioning where appropriate. Precise requirements vary by transaction and jurisdiction, making independent professional advice essential. Collateral can reduce risk, but it cannot eliminate it. Values can fall, costs can rise and borrowers can default. The possibility of an attractive return should therefore be the end of the analysis, not the beginning. Sustainable Wealth Is Built in the Middle Schoeller helped create the More Than Money community after years of completing his own real estate deals. The name reflects a deliberate rejection of the luxury cars and rapid results often used to sell financial education. That marketing resembles a fitness advertisement showing only the before-and-after photographs. The hidden middle contains the research, patience, mistakes and repeated work that produced the result. It is also where judgement develops and sustainable wealth is built. A first deal does not need to be spectacular. It needs to be understood. A repeatable skill that can be used for decades is more valuable than one exceptional result that encourages carelessness. Entrepreneurship Is Not Automatically Freedom Schoeller also rejects the idea that owning a business is always better than having a job. If someone earns enough, enjoys their work, has manageable stress and still has time for family, leaving simply to pursue the image of entrepreneurship may reduce their freedom. Rhianna continues working as a nurse anaesthetist because she spent years qualifying and genuinely enjoys the profession. When her shift ends, she is not responsible for operating the hospital. A business owner may control their calendar in theory while remaining responsible for staff, bills, customers and problems at every hour. Schoeller has walked away from profitable projects when they began competing with his family. He left a successful real estate YouTube channel because he could not sustain it alongside the family channel he and Rhianna were building. He has also stepped away from Instagram when social media began controlling too much of his attention. Those decisions do not reflect diminished ambition. They show that the ambition achieved its purpose. Financial freedom gave Schoeller the power to protect his time rather than monetise every available opportunity. The real measure of wealth is not whether someone can buy the house, car or yacht. It is whether they can decline work that no longer fits, leave when their family needs them and enjoy what they have built without becoming trapped by the cost of maintaining it. The strongest financial position is not being able to afford everything. It is no longer being owned by anything. This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal or tax advice. Real estate investor and private money lender Jon Schoeller explains why financial freedom is measured not by what you can buy, but by the time, choice and security your money creates.

Superyacht recruitment is supposed to connect the right people with the right vessel. Too often, speed, price and secrecy take priority over fit, safety and accountability. The superyacht industry knows how to scrutinise crew. Certificates, sea time, references, appearance, online conduct, visas and medicals can all be examined before somebody steps aboard. Turn that same scrutiny towards the yacht itself and the picture becomes far less rigorous. Does it pay its crew on time? Is the leadership competent? Is harassment tolerated? Why does the vessel have a revolving door of employees? Too often, those answers circulate through whispers and private messages rather than any reliable system, leaving crew and recruiters to make career-changing decisions in the dark. Laura-Kate Brown, Manager at Seven Seas Recruitment, understands both sides of that equation. She entered yachting straight from sixth form 14 years ago, arrived in Antibes with almost no idea what the work involved and landed her first position aboard what is now motor yacht Loon. She went on to work aboard exceptional yachts, progress through the interior department and experience what she describes as the good, the bad and the ugly of life onboard. There were brilliantly run yachts and extraordinary crews. There were also toxic teams, toxic owners and vessels she would never recommend to somebody else. That experience now informs how Brown recruits. She is not simply filling vacancies. She is deciding where people may live, work and spend almost every waking hour for months at a time. That makes recruitment more than a transaction. It makes it a duty of care. A CV Cannot Tell You Where Someone Will Thrive The recruitment market moves at extraordinary speed. When a crew member leaves unexpectedly, a yacht may need a replacement before the next owner or charter trip begins. Recruiters are expected to find somebody qualified, available and ready to travel almost immediately. At the same time, competition for entry-level positions has intensified. Brown recently received close to 500 applications within days of advertising a single deckhand role. Strong candidates with genuine longevity and good references are treated like gold dust, while the same CV may be submitted to a yacht by several agencies racing to claim the placement. Speed matters, but it cannot replace judgement. An energetic stewardess who loves events, themed dinners and elaborate table settings may be exceptional on a busy charter yacht. Place that same person aboard a quiet private vessel where the owners want discretion and routine, and the role may become frustrating for everyone involved. The candidate has not suddenly become incompetent. The placement was wrong. “I want to be placing crew on a boat who are happy.” That requires knowing more than what appears on a CV. It means understanding the yacht, the programme, the leadership, the personalities already onboard and the kind of life the candidate is actually trying to build. Recruiters Must Be Willing to Say No Much of yacht recruitment is focused on protecting the employer from a bad hire. Far less attention is given to protecting the crew member from a bad employer. Brown says Seven Seas Recruitment has refused to work with vessels when there have been credible concerns about unpaid wages, harassment or toxic behaviour. A recruiter may be told one story by a captain or chief stewardess while hearing something very different from former crew. Ignoring those warnings may secure a placement fee, but it can also send somebody directly into an unsafe or damaging environment. “I have actually refused to work with a few vessels because I refuse to place someone in that environment.” That should not be considered radical. It should be the minimum expected of any company responsible for placing people at sea. Confidentiality is essential in yachting, particularly where owners and guests are concerned. It cannot become a blanket excuse for hiding illegal conduct, non-payment, harassment or abuse. An NDA protects legitimate privacy. It does not erase an employer’s duty to provide a safe and lawful workplace. Good crew cannot repair a yacht that is poisonous from the top down. They can only endure it, leave it or be damaged by it. The Reality Television Version of Yachting Has Consequences For many people now entering the industry, reality television and social media provide their first impression of life aboard a superyacht. The result is an uncomfortable collision between entertainment and reality. Television sells conflict, parties, tips and crew drama because that is what keeps viewers watching. Professional yachting depends on discretion, discipline, privacy and work taking place quietly in the background. Brown remembers 20-hour days and months without a day off. The job was not about drinking with guests or treating the yacht like a floating playground. It was about delivering an exceptional experience for people paying for the highest level of private service. The entertainment version can attract candidates expecting quick money, glamorous travel and instant access to a luxury lifestyle. The real version demands humility, stamina and an acceptance that the yacht is somebody else’s private property, not a backdrop for building a personal brand. Social media has complicated that boundary further. Some yachts now actively employ content creators, videographers and drone operators, but authorised marketing is very different from crew publishing private spaces, unsafe practices or identifiable details without permission. A day-in-the-life post may appear harmless. On the wrong vessel, it can expose the yacht, the owner and the crew member responsible. Yacht Recruitment Cannot Become a Race to the Bottom Yachting has seen a proliferation of recruitment platforms, apps and small agencies promising faster placements and lower fees. Some are capable businesses. Others are launched by people who assume that having worked aboard a yacht is enough to qualify them to recruit for one. It is not. Professional recruitment depends on relationships built over years, knowledge of individual vessels, background checks, reference verification and the ability to recognise when a technically qualified candidate is wrong for a particular crew. That work is largely invisible. A cheaper agency may appear to offer the same result because both ultimately send a CV. The difference becomes apparent when a placement fails, the candidate leaves within weeks and the yacht begins the entire process again. Brown is candid about the pressure to discount fees when a competing agency offers to do the work for less. She is equally clear that expertise loses its value if experienced recruiters allow the market to treat it as interchangeable with automated CV forwarding. The true cost of recruitment is not the invoice. It is the disruption, lost time, damaged morale and repeated turnover created by getting the decision wrong. More Certificates Do Not Automatically Create Better Crew New crew are often told that another course will make them more employable. Brown regularly sees candidates arrive with collections of qualifications they did not need and may never use. Required certification matters. So does technical training for somebody progressing towards a specialist or senior role. But courses cannot manufacture character, self-awareness or the ability to live constructively with other people. Life aboard is unusually intimate. Crew work together, eat together, socialise together and often share cabins. There is no commute home after a difficult day and little opportunity to escape a personality clash. That makes humility, adaptability and communication operational skills rather than pleasant extras. Crew must be able to listen, read the room and accept that the method used on a previous yacht may not suit the vessel they have just joined. Experience should bring useful knowledge, not a running commentary about how everything was done on the last boat. A candidate who arrives ready to learn may ultimately offer far more value than somebody carrying additional certificates and an ego that prevents them from fitting into the team. Seven-Star Expectations Cannot Rest on Frozen Salaries Yachting expects crew to deliver what is frequently described as seven-star service. Yet Brown says some entry-level salaries remain close to what she saw when she joined the industry 14 years ago. Captain James Battey, founder of the Yacht Workers Council, recognises figures from when he entered yachting more than two decades ago. The expectations have not remained frozen. Crew are increasingly asked to bring broader technical abilities, content skills, additional certifications and greater flexibility while maintaining the traditional demands of service, privacy and availability. Recruiters can challenge an unrealistic salary, but the final package remains in the employer’s hands. Advertising an outdated wage is uncomfortable for the agency, particularly when the yacht is seeking an exceptional candidate in an increasingly expensive world. An oversupply of applicants may allow employers to resist change for a while. But filling a vacancy is not the same as retaining good crew. If yachts want professionalism, loyalty and long-term commitment, the employment package must acknowledge what those qualities are worth. Crew Morale Is Part of the Owner Experience The industry often treats crew wellbeing as something separate from yacht operations. It is not. Exhaustion, poor communication and unresolved tension do not remain below deck. They affect service, decision-making, safety and the atmosphere felt by everyone aboard. Brown speaks openly about periods when her own mental health suffered at sea and how much difference honest communication might have made. A crew member arriving in the mess looking withdrawn may be angry with nobody. They may have slept badly, received difficult news from home or simply reached the limit of what they can process that day. Without communication, colleagues fill the silence with assumptions. Battey uses regular check-ins so the team understands where everybody is mentally before the day begins. He also argues that yachts should explore rotating complete teams rather than continually changing individuals, allowing established crews to leave, return, train and work together as a functioning unit. “Crew make the experience. End of.” A remarkable yacht filled with unhappy people will struggle to deliver remarkable service. A strong crew can make even a difficult programme feel controlled, warm and effortless. Morale is not a soft benefit. It is part of the product the owner is buying. Accountability Must Run in Both Directions Crew should be expected to prove their experience, maintain valid certification and answer for their professional conduct. But accountability cannot stop at the gangway. The same principle must apply to yachts, recruiters, management companies, training providers and the wider network of businesses serving the industry. The Yacht Workers Council Professional Registry is intended to bring verified career records, sea time and greater transparency into a system that has long relied on scattered documents and personal networks. Battey also sees a role for structured reviews, with both crew and yachts able to provide feedback and businesses retaining a right of reply. This is not an invitation for gossip or defamation. It is a way to recognise good employers, identify repeated problems and give organisations the information needed to improve. Bad crew should not be allowed to move endlessly between vessels without scrutiny. Bad yachts should not be able to replace departing crew without questions being asked. Good recruiters, employers and service providers should benefit from the reputations they have earned. “You can’t fix something you don’t know.” Recruitment cannot repair a toxic owner, compensate for weak leadership or make an outdated salary competitive. What it can do is stop feeding broken systems. It can ask harder questions, protect candidates, defend the value of genuine expertise and refuse placements that should never be made. The superyacht industry is right to demand exceptional crew. It must now become equally serious about creating yachts worthy of employing them. Laura-Kate Brown of Seven Seas Recruitment examines why yacht recruitment must look beyond CVs to crew welfare, vessel culture and accountability.

Ocean research has always been shaped by time. Scientists can descend with increasingly sophisticated equipment, deploy remotely operated vehicles and gather extraordinary volumes of data, but the amount of time a person can spend working directly on the seafloor remains tightly constrained. Every conventional dive is governed by depth, gas supply, decompression requirements and the need to return safely to the surface. The DEEP Vanguard underwater habitat changes that equation. Installed 17 metres beneath the surface at Tennessee Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Vanguard provides a dry living environment for four crew members on missions lasting five days or more. It is the first new crewed underwater habitat of its kind to be built in the United States in four decades and a working demonstration of what becomes possible when scientists are given more than a brief window into the ocean. The project brings together two disciplines that are often treated separately. Dr. Dawn Kernagis, DEEP’s Director of Scientific Research, has spent her career exploring underwater environments and studying how humans perform under extreme physiological stress. Norman Smith, DEEP’s Chief Technology Officer, brings more than 35 years of experience developing technology for human spaceflight, deep-water operations and other environments where engineering failure cannot be treated as an acceptable variable. Together, their work places the human back at the centre of ocean research, not as a replacement for technology, but as the point at which observation, judgement and technology meet. The Scientific Value of Staying Underwater For most scientific divers, the working day is defined by the clock. A diver descends, carries out a tightly planned series of tasks and returns to the surface before physiological limits are reached. Even when multiple dives are possible, every descent and ascent consumes valuable time. Vanguard is designed around saturation diving. Once the occupants’ tissues have become saturated with the breathing gases used at depth, they can remain at the same pressure and move between the habitat and surrounding environment without decompressing after every excursion. They complete a single controlled decompression at the end of the mission. That distinction transforms what a scientific team can accomplish. Instead of planning work around short bottom times, researchers and restoration specialists can spend six, seven or eight hours outside the habitat before returning to a dry living space. “You can really amplify that time at the bottom and the capabilities of the scientists or the restoration technicians that are down there.” The value is not simply that one dive becomes longer. It is that the work gains continuity. A scientist can observe a reef through changing conditions, return repeatedly to the same site, adjust an experiment after seeing its first results and respond to unexpected behaviour in real time. Tasks that would normally be divided across several dives, teams or days can become part of one continuous research programme. Kernagis understands that difference personally. In 2016, she served as an aquanaut on NASA’s NEEMO 21 mission, living and working underwater while participating in research designed to support future human spaceflight. Living beneath the surface, she explains, changes a researcher’s relationship with the environment. The ocean is no longer somewhere visited for a few minutes. It becomes a place that can be watched, questioned and understood over time. A Working Habitat, Not an Underwater Spectacle Vanguard is not designed as a luxury underwater room or a novelty experience. It is a working habitat built to support scientific, engineering and operational missions. The system includes a living chamber, a dive centre, a moon pool and a substantial foundation that anchors the habitat to the seafloor. A surface support buoy supplies breathing gases, electrical power and communications through an umbilical cable, keeping the subsea crew connected to the team above. Speaking at the opening of DEEP Station Florida, Smith described the stage Vanguard had reached at the time. “Vanguard is installed. It’s operational. We’re diving on Vanguard day after day, weather permitting.” That moment was significant because it showed that the concept had moved beyond computer renderings and workshop prototypes. The habitat had entered real open-ocean testing, allowing its systems, procedures and human factors to be evaluated in the environment for which it was designed. Vanguard also functions as a proving ground for a much larger ambition. DEEP is developing the technology, operational knowledge and training systems needed for longer missions and larger subsea habitats. Lessons learned from every component, dive and crew rotation can feed directly into the development of future systems. This makes Vanguard both a useful platform in its own right and a bridge between the historic era of underwater habitats and a new generation of permanent ocean infrastructure. Reef Restoration Beyond the Limits of a Dive Its location at Tennessee Reef gives Vanguard immediate scientific relevance. The Florida Keys support one of the world’s most important coral reef ecosystems, but the region faces mounting pressure from rising ocean temperatures, disease, water quality changes and extreme weather. The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary’s science needs include understanding reef condition, evaluating restoration techniques and improving the long-term monitoring of marine habitats. Extended human presence could add a powerful new capability to that work. Coral restoration is often labour-intensive. Teams may need to clean, attach, inspect, photograph and measure individual coral fragments while documenting changes over time. The deeper the work takes place, the more conventional diving limits restrict what can be achieved during each visit. A habitat allows restoration specialists to spend far longer at the site. It could also help research teams investigate deeper reef environments that may play an increasingly important role in the survival and recovery of coral ecosystems. Kernagis sees another opportunity in the relationship between human researchers and robotic systems. Autonomous vehicles, remotely operated vehicles, sensors and machine-learning tools can gather information at a scale no individual diver could match. Humans, however, remain exceptionally good at recognising context, adapting to unexpected situations and making decisions when conditions do not match a pre-programmed plan. “How do you optimise that teaming and really leverage the capabilities of the humans and the capabilities of the robots?” The most effective future is unlikely to involve choosing between people and machines. It will depend on assigning each the work it performs best. Robotic systems can survey broad areas, carry instruments and collect continuous measurements. Scientists living nearby can interpret what those systems find, investigate anomalies and change the research plan without waiting for another expedition to be organised. Engineering Where Failure Cannot Be Casual Building a habitat that keeps people alive underwater demands a particular kind of engineering culture. Smith’s background spans human spaceflight, remotely operated systems and complex offshore technology. Hardware he helped develop has operated aboard the International Space Station for nearly two decades. That experience shapes an approach based on redundancy, maintainability and careful control of every interface between the crew, the habitat and its surrounding environment. The similarities between a subsea habitat and a spacecraft are more than metaphorical. Both must provide breathable air, manage power and communications, control environmental conditions and protect their occupants from an environment in which small failures can escalate quickly. Vanguard has also required contributions from a much wider industrial network. Smith estimates that more than 100 people and contractors across Florida were involved in manufacturing components, integrating systems and carrying out the installation. Companies with expertise in subsea engineering, marine construction, diving operations and classification all played roles in moving the habitat from design to deployment. “The people you don’t see are the people who built it.” That point matters for the wider blue economy. Ocean innovation is rarely the product of a single organisation. It depends on engineers, welders, vessel operators, divers, researchers, fabricators, universities, regulators and specialist contractors working across an interconnected supply chain. Projects such as Vanguard create a visible focal point for that network, but the capability behind the project is distributed across an entire regional economy. Why the Route to Space Passes Through the Ocean The connection between ocean and space exploration runs throughout the Vanguard programme. Underwater habitats have long been used to prepare astronauts for missions beyond Earth. Neutral buoyancy can simulate aspects of weightlessness, while an isolated habitat creates operational conditions in which teams must manage limited resources, communications, fatigue and risk. During NEEMO 21, Kernagis experienced that connection directly. Her mission included a live communication link between aquanauts underwater and astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The environments are very different, but many of the human demands are shared. Crews must live in confined spaces, maintain complex life-support systems, perform technically demanding work and communicate clearly when assistance cannot arrive immediately. Research carried out through Vanguard could therefore generate knowledge that travels in both directions. Studies of physiology, cognitive performance, team dynamics and human-machine collaboration may improve underwater operations while contributing to the preparation of crews for future missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. The ocean is not merely an analogue for space. It is a frontier with its own scientific urgency, economic importance and extraordinary complexity. The tools developed for one extreme environment can nevertheless make exploration of the other safer and more effective. A Florida Project With a Global Horizon Vanguard’s location places it within one of the most concentrated marine research and innovation ecosystems in the United States. South Florida brings together universities, marine technology companies, research institutions, conservation organisations, shipyards, vessel operators and a workforce with extensive experience in subsea environments. That concentration of knowledge is one reason the region is increasingly recognised as a centre for ocean innovation. The development of South Florida’s blue economy will depend on connecting those capabilities rather than allowing research, industry and economic development to advance in isolation. Organisations such as the Marine Research Hub of South Florida are helping strengthen those connections, creating pathways through which scientific knowledge can move into commercial development and practical application. Vanguard offers a tangible example of what that ecosystem can produce. It combines advanced engineering with marine science, creates demand for specialised skills and provides a platform through which universities, conservation groups and technology developers can test ideas in a real underwater environment. The immediate work is happening in the Florida Keys, but the underlying need is global. Coastal communities, governments and marine industries around the world require better information about ocean change. They also need new tools for restoration, monitoring, training and responsible use of marine resources. A proven habitat platform could support work in many of those areas. DEEP Vanguard Is Only the Beginning DEEP describes Vanguard as a launchpad rather than an endpoint. The knowledge gained from the habitat will contribute to Sentinel, DEEP’s planned larger-scale subsea habitat system. While Vanguard supports four people for missions of five or more days, Sentinel is intended to enable longer and more extensive human presence beneath the surface. The ambition extends beyond professional researchers. Kernagis also sees the potential to connect students directly with missions, allowing classrooms to communicate with aquanauts, observe experiments and experience ocean science as something unfolding in real time. That visibility could prove as important as the engineering itself. The next generation of marine scientists, technicians and explorers will need opportunities to see themselves in the work before they can imagine building careers around it. “We’re building this out for the next generation. This is just getting things started.” For much of modern history, the ocean has been treated as somewhere humans enter temporarily, gather what they can and then leave. Vanguard proposes a different relationship. Not ownership of the ocean, and not escape from the surface, but the ability to remain long enough to pay closer attention. The ocean does not become less difficult because humans decide to stay. What changes is our capacity to meet it on its own terms, with the time, infrastructure and discipline required to understand what is happening beneath us before it is too late to respond. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ POWERED BY MARINE RESEARCH HUB ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The Blue Economy is powered by the Marine Research Hub of South Florida, connecting research, industry and economic development to advance innovation, strengthen Florida’s Blue Economy and help move research-based solutions into real-world application. DEEP Vanguard is bringing human presence back to the seafloor, giving scientists the time and infrastructure to study, restore and understand the ocean from within it.

Yacht owners know the cost of fuel, refits, compliance and maintenance because each arrives with an invoice. Crew turnover is harder to see. Its cost is dispersed across recruitment, travel, onboarding, disrupted service and the operational knowledge that walks off the passerelle when an experienced person leaves. Captain Kelly J. Gordon has spent 20 years in yachting and approximately 15 years in command. On the 43-metre yacht she currently leads, members of her wider team have worked with her for four, five or six years. That continuity is not accidental. It reflects authentic leadership, practical support and a willingness to advocate for the resources crew need to perform well. Before entering yachting, Gordon was a chemistry professor. Education remains central to her approach to command. Courses, qualifications, counselling, crew transport and appropriate accommodation all return to the same question: what does this team need to succeed and remain committed? “In order to keep them, we have to invest in them.” The Cost That Never Appears as One Invoice When an experienced crew member leaves, an owner does not simply replace a name on the crew list. The newcomer must learn the vessel, understand the owner’s preferences, build trust with colleagues and absorb the systems that keep the yacht operating seamlessly. Recruitment fees, travel, uniforms, visas, medical examinations and handover periods all carry a price. Reduced efficiency during the transition carries another. If the departure involves a senior crew member, the replacement may also want to restructure the department or purchase different equipment. The expense can quickly exceed the cost of the professional development that might have retained the original person. This relationship can also be seen in the industry’s wider leadership and crew turnover problem and in the importance of documented systems that protect the owner experience. Gordon adds another dimension to that equation: experienced crew carry knowledge capital that even the most thorough handover cannot fully replace. Owners increasingly value seeing familiar faces when they return onboard. Familiarity creates confidence, protects privacy and allows service to feel intuitive rather than rehearsed. Yet that continuity cannot be demanded in the name of loyalty while investment in the people providing it remains optional. Why Superyacht Crew Training Is an Investment Securing owner support for superyacht crew training begins with translating professional development into terms familiar to ownership: value, risk and return. Gordon understands that owners and their representatives have a responsibility to scrutinise expenditure. A request built only around goodwill presents a cost; a properly constructed case explains what the course will enable, why the individual is worth retaining and what the yacht stands to lose if that person leaves. “Any time you can put some numbers in front of them and let the numbers speak for themselves, you’ll get them on board.” For Gordon, using numbers does not reduce a crew member to a calculation. It reveals the expenses that tend to remain hidden when training is declined. Recruitment, travel, onboarding, reduced efficiency and the loss of vessel-specific knowledge all belong on the other side of the ledger. Once those costs are considered, funding a qualification can become the more commercially disciplined decision. Her own results strengthen that argument. Crew members who remain for years develop an understanding of the vessel, the owner’s expectations and the rhythms of the wider team that no brief handover can reproduce. As they grow in responsibility, the return is felt in stronger capability, steadier service and fewer disruptions to the programme. This is not a case for approving every course or treating professional development as an unchecked entitlement. Gordon’s approach is more exacting: assess the relevance of the training, the commitment of the crew member and the value it creates for the operation. The budget may make the price of a course immediately visible, but that visibility should not be mistaken for greater expense. That discipline is also why Gordon favours arrangements that protect the owner’s financial commitment while giving trusted crew a meaningful route forward. A Corporate Model Reworked for the Yacht One member of Gordon’s crew had spent years working aboard private yachts and lacked several qualifications that became necessary when the vessel moved into commercial operation. The required courses would cost thousands. The alternative was to recruit someone who already held the relevant tickets, but doing so would mean losing a trusted crew member who understood the yacht, its standards and the people onboard. Gordon drew inspiration from corporate tuition-assistance programmes. The owner would fund the courses, the crew member would commit to remaining with the yacht for an agreed period, and an early departure would activate a repayment provision under their agreement. The proposal was approved. “You pay for my course, I give you time back.” The arrangement created value on both sides. The owner gained a more qualified and committed crew member. The individual received access to development that might otherwise have been financially out of reach. The yacht retained someone whose knowledge and trust had already been earned. The principle is more important than the precise structure. Training requests can be considered according to their purpose, operational value and the commitment attached to them, rather than being restricted by an arbitrary annual allowance. Training Cannot Come at the Expense of Recovery Investment carries responsibilities on both sides. Gordon protects crew leave while recognising that career progression also requires commitment from the individual. On her current Mediterranean-based programme, most crew have the winter off. In that environment, completing some professional development during the off-season may be reasonable. Her previous vessel completed 25 weeks of intensive charter each year. Gordon recalls taking only ten days of leave across two years. Asking exhausted crew in those circumstances to surrender their limited time ashore for additional coursework would not have been responsible. The contrast matters. A substantial seasonal break is not equivalent to a few precious weeks in which to rest, reconnect with family and recover from the demands of life onboard. There can be no responsible one-size-fits-all training policy. The yacht’s schedule, the crew member’s workload and the purpose of the qualification must all be considered. Training sits within a wider operational chain connecting safety, welfare, leadership and retention. For Gordon, supporting crew does not mean removing personal responsibility from career development. It means making decisions that reflect the genuine demands already being placed upon them. It also requires captains to communicate the realities of life onboard and, when necessary, to say no. Shore-based offices go home at the end of the working day. Crew live, work and sleep alongside the same colleagues for months at a time. Those making decisions ashore cannot account for an operational reality that has never been properly explained to them. Owners who want the same trusted faces onboard must create the conditions that allow those people to stay. Training forms part of that commitment, alongside adequate rest, suitable living arrangements, mental health support, visible progression and leadership prepared to advocate with evidence. The cost of training is easy to identify because it appears in the budget. The cost of turnover is dispersed throughout the operation, making it easier to overlook, but no less substantial. The question is not whether a yacht can afford to invest in its crew. It is whether it can afford the consequences of choosing not to. The most expensive crew-training decision may be deciding not to fund it. Captain Kelly J. Gordon reveals the hidden cost of losing experience, continuity and trust.

By the time Hope Hicks reached out to Ryan Melogy, he had already spent years pushing for answers from a maritime system that seemed built to withstand pressure. He had reported what happened aboard the Maersk Idaho. He had followed records, filed requests, published survivor accounts, and forced questions into places where they had not been welcome. The Coast Guard had charged the man he had reported, and Maersk had eventually been fined for failing to pass his report to the Coast Guard, but the wider change Ryan had been fighting for still had not arrived. Then Hope Hicks contacted him. Her story did not create the problem. It exposed the scale of it in a way the industry could no longer manage through general statements, internal language, or carefully controlled concern. For years, sexual harassment and assault at sea had been discussed in categories, acronyms, statistics, and policy language that could make even serious harm sound administrative. Hope’s account cut through that. It was direct, specific, recent, and impossible to soften into abstraction. For Ryan, it also arrived at a moment when the work had become almost unsustainable. Maritime Legal Aid and Advocacy had already drawn in survivor stories at a pace he had not been trained or prepared to carry. He was still dealing with the consequences of his own case while trying to understand how many others had been failed by the same structures. The work had become personal, legal, investigative, and emotional all at once. Hope’s decision to come forward changed the direction of that fight. It brought public attention, media pressure, congressional scrutiny, and eventually helped move the conversation from exposure into action. That is the territory at the heart of Buried At Sea: The Fight For Accountability. This is where the story stops being only about what was hidden. It becomes about what happened once people could no longer pretend not to see it. Buried At Sea: When One Story Forces A System To Respond Institutions often survive uncomfortable truths by making them vague. The maritime industry has its own language for this. Sexual assault and sexual harassment become SASH. Abuse becomes misconduct. Failure becomes a gap. A survivor becomes a complainant. A pattern becomes a concern. Each term may have a place in policy, but when language becomes too broad, it can also become a way of keeping the human reality at a distance. Hope Hicks’ story resisted that distance. It was not a general discussion about safety culture. It was not a statistic in a report. It was a first-person account from a current student at the US Merchant Marine Academy, describing what had happened to her while assigned to sea. That mattered because it put a face, a timeline, and a human voice to a problem that had too often been treated as something everyone knew existed, but few wanted to confront directly. When the story began to spread, the response followed the familiar path of institutional pressure. Media picked it up. Maritime outlets amplified it. Public statements were issued. Congress took notice. People who had previously spoken in broad terms were forced to look more closely at the specific failures Ryan had been documenting through Maritime Legal Aid, including the lack of enforcement around reporting requirements and the records that suggested dangerous people had been allowed to continue working at sea. This is where accountability begins to move from principle into consequence. Not because the system wakes up one morning with moral clarity. Systems rarely do that. They move when the cost of staying still becomes harder to defend. The Safer Seas Act And The Work Behind The Change The Safer Seas Act was not born out of one conversation or one headline. It came after years of survivors speaking, advocates pushing, journalists reporting, records being gathered, and lawmakers being forced to confront what had been left outside earlier maritime safety reforms. Cruise ships had already received attention through legislation that addressed certain safety and reporting concerns for passengers. Non-passenger vessels had not been treated with the same urgency. Cargo ships, training vessels, offshore operations, and other parts of the maritime world were operating in spaces where young cadets and seafarers could be isolated, vulnerable, and far from meaningful protection when something went wrong. Ryan’s work helped connect those dots. He had already been examining the history of 46 USC 10104, the reporting law he discovered while studying for his chief mate exam. He had filed FOIA requests, reviewed records, and questioned how a law requiring sexual assault allegations aboard US-flagged vessels to be reported to the Coast Guard could exist for decades without appearing to produce meaningful enforcement. When Hope’s story drew attention, that existing body of work became harder for lawmakers and regulators to ignore. The Safer Seas Act did not solve everything. No single piece of legislation could. But it strengthened reporting, expanded oversight, introduced requirements around cameras on many US commercial vessels, addressed master key control, and gave the Coast Guard stronger authority around credentials in cases involving sexual assault and sexual harassment. For an industry that often speaks fluently about safety while struggling to confront power, that matters. It matters because enforcement is the point where a policy either becomes protection or reveals itself as decoration. Crew do not need another document telling them they matter if the system does nothing when they are harmed. Cadets do not need another promise if the person they report can continue working. Survivors do not need institutions to express concern while quietly calculating liability. They need systems that act. Why Written Protection Is Not Enough Maritime is an industry built on rules. It understands certification, compliance, inspection, licensing, reporting, insurance, liability, and consequence. It can track maintenance, fuel, crew hours, weather windows, passage plans, and operational risk with extraordinary attention to detail when the vessel, owner, cargo, schedule, or asset is at stake. The question this series keeps returning to is why human harm has so often been handled differently. A reporting law should not depend on whether a company wants scrutiny. A regulator should not become active only when public pressure becomes inconvenient. A survivor should not have to become the investigator, advocate, media strategist, and emotional anchor of their own case before the system begins to respond. Yet that is often what happens when accountability is weak. The burden moves downward. It lands on the person with the least power and the most to lose. That dynamic is familiar across maritime sectors, including yachting. Crew are told to report through proper channels, but those channels may lead straight back into the hierarchy they are afraid of. They are told to trust management, but management may be more directly tied to the owner, captain, or programme than to the crew member seeking help. They are told to document, but they may not understand how their own messages, timing, words, or emotional state could later be used against them. They are told there are protections, but they may not know where those protections actually begin or end. Written protection matters. Legislation matters. Policy matters. But none of it means enough without enforcement, access, independence, and consequence. What This Means For Yacht Crew For yachting, the relevance of Ryan’s work is not theoretical. In the final part of Buried At Sea, the conversation moves directly into the private yacht world through a case involving a crew member who was sexually assaulted while working on board. The legal structure was familiar to anyone who understands how yachts are often arranged: foreign flag, offshore entities, layered ownership, employment agreements through separate jurisdictions, insurance questions, and a vessel operating across multiple territories. To crew, that kind of structure can feel like a wall. Many assume that if something happens on a foreign-flagged yacht, outside their home country, under a complicated ownership arrangement, there is nothing they can do. That assumption is understandable, but it is not always correct. Ryan’s point is important. Jurisdiction is not the crew member’s job to solve alone. A seafarer who has experienced harm should not have to understand flag state law, corporate ownership, insurance provisions, base of operations, maritime liens, or vessel arrest before asking whether they have options. That is the lawyer’s work. In the yachting case discussed, the legal team looked beyond the paper structure. They examined the vessel’s connections, including where it operated, where it was financed, where it was insured, where it chartered, where it repaired, and whether there was a meaningful connection to the United States. That investigation led to legal action against the vessel itself, including the arrest of the yacht through the maritime court system. For crew, that matters because it challenges one of the industry’s most damaging assumptions: that complexity equals protection for the powerful and helplessness for everyone else. It does not always. Sometimes the route is difficult. Sometimes it is uncertain. Sometimes it requires lawyers willing to look harder than others have. But difficulty is not the same as impossibility, and yacht crew should be very careful about accepting “there is nothing you can do” from people whose first instinct may be to protect the programme, the vessel, or the reputation around it. The Insurance Question Yachting Cannot Ignore One of the most uncomfortable points raised in the yachting case is insurance. Ryan explains that, in that matter, the yacht’s insurance specifically excluded sexual assault and sexual harassment, and that his research suggested this was common. If that reflects wider industry practice, it raises serious questions for owners, captains, managers, insurers, and crew. Insurance exclusions are not small print in a world where crew live where they work. They are signals. They show what an industry recognises as possible, what it chooses to cover, and what it may leave exposed when the harm is not theoretical anymore. For owners, this should be a serious conversation. If a yacht carries sophisticated coverage for machinery, liability, operations, guests, tenders, toys, crew medical needs, and disruption, but leaves major gaps around sexual assault or harassment, then what exactly is being protected? For captains and managers, it raises practical questions about duty of care, reporting, crew accommodation, cabin arrangements, hiring decisions, alcohol culture, disciplinary action, and what happens when something is reported on board. For crew, it is another reason not to assume that the polished surface of a yacht means the protection underneath is adequate. Luxury does not equal safety. A well-run itinerary does not equal accountability. A respected programme does not guarantee that the system will know what to do when one crew member harms another. Document, Report, And Get Proper Advice The advice Ryan gives to crew is not romantic, and it should not be. Document what is happening. Report through the proper channels. Tell the truth. Understand that anything written, texted, emailed, recorded, or shared may become part of a legal record later. And if the response is not adequate, speak to attorneys who understand maritime abuse, harassment, assault, injury, and jurisdiction. That last point matters because not every lawyer will know how to look at a yacht case properly. A lawyer unfamiliar with maritime structures may see a foreign flag, a foreign entity, or an incident outside the United States and assume there is no route forward. A lawyer who understands the industry may ask different questions. Where does the vessel really operate? Where is it financed? Where is it insured? Where does it charter? Where does it repair? Where are the commercial ties? Is there a claim against the vessel itself? Are there avenues through civil action, criminal reporting, licensing, or regulatory pressure? Crew should not be expected to know those answers before making contact. They should also not be misled into thinking that reporting is simple. Once someone reports serious harm inside any organisation, including a yacht, they may become a problem for that organisation. That does not mean they are wrong to report. It means they need to understand the environment they are stepping into and avoid walking that road alone if the matter is serious. This is not about encouraging panic. It is about encouraging preparation. There is a difference. The Fight For Accountability At Sea The final chapter of Buried At Sea is not a neat ending, because accountability at sea is not a neat process. It is slow, contested, expensive, emotionally punishing, and often resisted by the very systems that claim to support safety. But it is possible. Hope Hicks’ story helped force a wider response. Ryan’s records and advocacy helped bring long-ignored failures into view. Congress acted. The Safer Seas Act strengthened protections. Cases have been brought. Licences have been surrendered. Yachts have been arrested. Survivors have found lawyers, language, and routes forward that many had been told did not exist. None of that means the work is finished. It means silence is less secure than it used to be. For yachting, that is the lesson worth carrying forward. The industry cannot keep treating abuse, harassment, assault, psychological harm, and retaliation as unfortunate exceptions while relying on structures that make reporting difficult and accountability uncertain. It cannot ask crew to speak up while leaving them exposed to systems that protect the vessel first. It cannot hide behind flags, management layers, insurance gaps, or jurisdictional confusion and still claim to take crew welfare seriously. At sea, accountability has to be more than a statement. It has to reach the cabin door, the crew mess, the bridge, the engine room, the management office, the insurer, the courtroom, and the regulator. The question is no longer whether people are willing to speak. They are. The question is whether the industry is willing to listen before it is forced to. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SUPPORTED BY Moore Dixon ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Moore Dixon provides global insurance support designed for yacht crew, including medical cover for emergencies, routine care, and practical protection when the unexpected happens. 🌐 mdbl.im In Buried At Sea: The Fight For Accountability, maritime lawyer and former seafarer Ryan Melogy examines how survivor testimony, legal pressure, congressional attention, the Safer Seas Act, and yachting jurisdiction are reshaping the fight for accountability after abuse at sea.