Career Crisis: Is Your Time In Yachting Ending Or Can You Reboot?

Strategic Career Transitions

Let’s get a few preliminary questions out of the way and see what we’re dealing with.

1. Are you mid-season when having this career crisis? If so, don’t make any sudden moves!
2. Is it the first time you’ve thought about leaving the industry? If so, don’t make any sudden moves!
3. Have you recently dealt with hard stuff? Relationship breakdowns etc.? If so, don’t make any sudden moves!
4. Were you reasonably happy onboard before a new captain/HOD/crew member came onto the scene? If so, don’t make any sudden moves!

Considering Changing Course

When it comes to a career, it’s probably best to approach the whole thing with the advice ‘don’t make any sudden moves’. Successful career changes take planning and aren’t done on a whim. But what if it’s not mid-season, you’ve thought about it plenty of times before, and your relationship (or lack thereof) is excellent, thank you very much? Well, that’s an excellent basis for considering your exit strategy. First, however, we’d encourage you to think about a few things before hanging up your epaulettes.

1. Have you considered a different boat or a different role?
   • A significant change, mainly if it involves new challenges, new people, and new skills, can often trigger a new appreciation for an industry you’ve been in for a long time.
2. Consider your goals.  
   • Are there still bucket-list places you’d like to visit on a yacht, perhaps ones that will be difficult to see another way? Is there a financial goal that yachting will help you meet? Will your alternative career plan enable you to reach those goals in the same timeframe?
3. Can you reboot your enthusiasm with a personal project?  
   • Knowing that you’re working on yourself — whether that’s learning an instrument, writing that manuscript, getting fit, or rediscovering your love of sketching — will often give you a new enthusiasm for life in general and the energy back to continue with yachting for as long as it suits you. Sitting on the foredeck or spending evenings in your cabin with your sketchpad, guitar, or laptop will make you feel more personally fulfilled and give you something outside your boat job, and that’s important.
4. Have you considered a shore-based role?
   • We’ve published an article about career options that helps you use the industry knowledge you’ve built up rather than watching it float away. 

Yachting: Your Value & Opportunities

Please know this: We are not in the business of telling people to stay in yachting that don’t want to. This job is for people who love it, and there is always more crew waiting in the queue to join the industry than jobs for them.

However, we do know that existing crew are valuable to the industry. You are experienced and knowledgeable, and losing skilled people is a real shame — mainly if it’s on a whim rather than a considered decision.

From our many years in this crew placement business, we have seen countless crew leave the industry —only to return the following year, realising suddenly what they have given up on.  

We also know that many crew overcome their temporary career lulls and go on to spend more fulfilling years yachting before planning their eventual exit in a way that works for them. Is this possibly you, or are you at the end of the road?

We are here to support crew in their career decisions, whatever they are. So please get in touch if you want to discuss your next move or want advice on how to exit gracefully.