Yacht delivery

Yacht delivery is an industry organized around moving vessels - sailing or power yachts - from one destination to another anywhere around the world on their own hulls. It is largely a private industry working on daily or lump sum rates, where normally the captain is paid the most or is the only person among the crew that is paid. There are tens of thousands of private yachts, which move from country to country or coastwise within a country annually.

Mostly they follow the charter market, for example to the Mediterranean or New England in the summer and the Caribbean or South Pacific in the northern hemisphere winter. Captains and crew are answerable to the licensing authority of their citizenship or the flag of the vessel they work on. Private owners, by comparison, generally undertake cruising, without using professional crew.

The vessels

The vessels themselves must meet standards set up and enforced by the flag state (the port where they are registered, which could be for tax domicile), the classification society (a neutral surveying and engineering organization) and insurers. However in terms of global and uniform regulation or even captains' unions, there are few such organizations. The term yacht is derived from Dutch and generally refers to a private craft used for pleasure, whether propelled by sail, engine, or both. Conscientious delivery companies will insist on safety equipment being aboard, including a life raft that must be serviced in-date and a suitable flare pack. An EPIRB and satellite phone will also be required for longer blue water passages.

Parameters

Though any boat or yacht can be delivered there are parameters. For coastwise delivery, generally within sight of land, or less than 12 miles from shore, any seaworthy craft can be delivered, weather permitting. This includes open outboard powerboat and small sailboats. For ocean-going deliveries, particularly in shoulder seasons such as fall, spring, or hurricane season, a boat should generally be at least 30 feet (9.1 m) in length and have both engine and sails and a crew of at least three, ideally four or more.

Vessels above 50 feet (15 m) in length generally have full-time captains and do not require a separate delivery crew. In other words, while they are still delivered from port to port, the crew is not parachuted in just for the task - it is performed in the usual course of duties, generally without passengers and owners. Such trips are considered repositioning voyages as well.

Reason for service

The primary reason for having a yacht delivered is for the owner to use, enjoy, race or charter their vessel in a warmer seasonal climate for a season, then to return the yacht to the home cruising grounds, whether in Europe, the US, Asia, Australia or cities in the Mideast. There are over 600 yacht delivery companies or one-person services listed at Charternet.com, though there are thousands globally who offer this service. When a broker or owner sells a boat or needs it moved to a boat show, they would pay a delivery crew to move it on its own hull, or possibly by road, rail or air, which falls beyond the ambit of this definition. Large shipping companies also deliver yachts on the backs or decks of semi-submersible ships, which is growing in demand as doing so saves costs, fuel, crew error, and wear and tear (although this very much depends on the skill and experience of companies that deliver yachts under sail). The challenge of ship delivery is to ensure a flexible schedule which suits owners' needs. The owner must also have a crew on standby to load and unload the yacht.

Crews and expenses

Crew on delivery voyages vary greatly in skill and experience. A reputable company will ensure that all crew are suitably qualified and experienced. Delivery skippers generally work on a freelance basis and each contract can vary in terms of remuneration. Experienced crew usually get their travel and food expenses covered.

It is up to the delivery company to apply its own filters for qualifications and suitable experience, according to the standards it offers its clients. In the US and in generally other crew, including mates and engineers, a medic or someone hired as a cook or sail maker would expect to be paid, from $50 a day up to $200, or a lump sum for the voyage, and they would have their travel, expenses, and food paid for. Captains are often paid a lump sum amount and they decide how to pay their crew, travel and food from that amount. Otherwise they can negotiate a daily rate ranging from $100 a day to $1,000 or more a day, depending on experience. Some well established specialist companies provide central routing and weather advice to their skippers, which allows them to concentrate on the business of sailing the yacht rather than worrying about the planning aspects, including finding the crew and setting up the budget with the client.

An experienced captain will be working around the clock, 24 hours in often adverse weather and will bring a decade or more of experience. He or she could be responsible for a yacht valued at $1Million or more, and the lives of the crew. Often the delivery crew is carried on the insurance policy of the yacht, either generally or by specific rider for that voyage. The hurricane or cyclone belts must be avoided during certain months of the year as mandated by insurance, so often yachts will not sail into the belt (i.e. South of Beaufort, North Carolina) until November or north of Trinidad & Tobago before June, depending. Failure to adhere to these parameters could void some insurance coverage.

Safety

Bermuda Radio and the Bermuda Maritime Operations Centre and similar organizations in various ports, as well as amateur radio nets such as Southbound II, offer comprehensive weather information, safety bulletins, and collect a database on casualties. Such services are rare and sporadic. With new voluntary vessel tracking systems, there is a centralized database of yachts under way globally, using satellite tracking devices, such as AIS, for Automatic Identification System, VIS, or Vessel Identification System, and AMVER, or Automatic Mutual Assistance Vessel Rescue System. This shows information on vessels on the radar and navigation screen, including destination, speed, course, size, etc. This is an improvement of the EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) system, which would only be used in emergencies.

Licensing

In terms of professionalism, more stringent requirements for licensing of masters, engineers and crew are making the yacht delivery industry more accountable and improving the sector's reputation. The primary licensing authorities in the Atlantic are the British, United States and Canadian governments, though each state with waterborne commerce has their own protocols. In the US, a captain can obtain a 6-passenger, 25-ton, 50-ton, 100-ton Master's license (technically becoming officers in the United States Merchant Marine), with endorsements for the likes of offshore voyages, celestial navigation, radar operation, etc. In the UK the prevailing license is known as the Yacht Master's Certificate (with Commercial Endorsement) and, unlike the US version which is mostly multiple choice questions with some chart work, the British Royal Yachting Association / Maritime and Coastguard Agency require actual sea trials from applicants before qualifications are issued. Both the US and UK require considerable documented experience ("sea time") for a license

There are new internationally accepted and mandated licenses for mega-yacht skippers who generally work full-time, but these rule do not necessarily trickle down to delivery voyages. Strictly speaking, if there are no paying passengers on a delivery, no licenses or training are required to operate the vessel, as participants are presumed to have assumed the inherent dangers and risks of a sport, whether professional or amateur. Some delivery companies, however, maintain a core of selected and highly experienced captains who are effectively the elite of the profession and in high demand by owners of premium yachts.

Because of a perception that some skippers were self-serving swashbucklers and adventurers whose priorities were the use and enjoyment of the vessel rather than its safe and timely delivery, the sector's reputation suffered in the 1970s and 1980s. This was particularly in instances where yachts being delivered were used as mules to smuggle drugs into the US. Though deliveries since are generally carefully contracted, there is nothing preventing an owner from hiring a little-known acquaintance such as the offspring of a neighbor to deliver their boat for cheap and free, then worrying about the consequences, and causing rescue coordination authorities and larger ships diverted to their aid to enact remedial measures if and when things go wrong.

Delivery casualties

Each year dozens of yachts become casualties during delivery voyages, either because of overwhelming weather, equipment failure, loss of the rigging or engines (propulsion) flooding, fire, grounding, explosion, sinking, or loss of rudder or injury to the crew. Bermuda Radio keeps a log of hundreds of "incidents" annually on their website which is updated.

Incidents

Though specific figures are hard to ascertain, probably close to 50 crew drown or die annually in the course of offshore voyages, a number of them single handed sailors who fall overboard, but crew die in the normal course of duties from storms or collision. Because deliveries often happen in the shoulder between seasons – going into or coming out of winter, and since the crew do not generally have much time to know the boat or work together closely, it continues to be a dangerous occupation for some, with three primary occupational hazards, namely becoming dead, drunk, or divorced. Those who work for thoroughly professional companies benefit from an impeccable safety record at sea that reflects the work that goes into preparing for and running their delivery passages. Unfortunately this standard is not regulated or necessarily the industry norm, so crew need to be aware of the potential risks when going to sea on delivery passages with unproven captains.

It is difficult to tabulate exactly how many vessels are delivered annually except by looking at port records of certain yacht Meccas such as Antigua in April/May, Georgetown Exuma, Newport RI, St. George's Bermuda, Gibraltar, Nice, Sardinia, Suez, Cape Town, Panama, Sydney, Auckland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Hawaii, etc.

Determining the level of crew participation can be done through crew agents, mostly in the Mediterranean, Florida, and UK, or publications such as Dockwalk in Fort Lauderdale that track the industry. Likewise, monetizing the industry is difficult unless one looks at fuel supplied to vessels, and port records, extrapolating from same, as most yacht delivery contracts are private and not published.