Roles on a Yacht
A Playful Guide for a 10-Person Crew
Dividing the Deck Without Pretending to Be the Royal Navy
Why Divide Up the Yacht at All?
Your skipper has all the experience, and they can run the boat alone if they have to. They shouldn’t have to. The more small jobs the crew picks up, the more headspace the skipper has for the things only they can do — reading the weather, picking a harbour, threading the entrance at dusk. Dividing up ten friendly job titles is not pretending to be the Royal Navy. It’s giving everyone a bit of ownership and keeping the skipper free to skipper.
Below are ten roles for a ten-person charter. Some are serious (skipper, navigator, bosun). Some are jokey on the outside and genuinely useful underneath (the purser — keeping bananas off the boat and the dinner bill fair — is one of the most important non-sailing jobs on the week).
And don’t be scared to cross-delegate. Just because you have a purser and an assistant purser doesn’t mean the scribe isn’t pulled into the shopping run. Just because you have a navigator doesn’t mean the second mate can’t check the plotter. Every role below is a starting point, not a fence.
1. Skipper
The One Who Actually Knows
Your skipper holds the licence, carries the responsibility, and makes the calls nobody else wants to make — which harbour to duck into when the forecast changes, whether the kids can swim off the back, when to reef. Everyone else gets to relax because the skipper can’t.
Why it matters: experience. Your skipper has done this a hundred times. That’s what keeps everyone safer. Your job isn’t to second-guess them — it’s to make them look good. Listen at the briefing. Learn where your own lifejacket lives. When the skipper says “fenders in”, you don’t finish your coffee first.
A bit of history: “skipper” comes from the Dutch schipper — literally the one who moves the cargo.
Cross-delegation: a good skipper delegates freely. They’ll ask the bosun for the winch handle, the navigator for a waypoint, the purser for the cheque book. Expect to be drafted in.
2. 1st Mate
The Skipper's Right Hand
On a proper yacht the first mate is second in command: runs the deck while the captain sets the strategy. On your 10-person charter, the first mate is the person the skipper trusts to pass orders down to the crew and carry problems back up.
Why it matters: when the skipper is threading between two ferries in Hvar harbour, someone needs to be counting heads, checking fenders, shouting “all clear aft” with authority. That’s you.
Morning brief: the first mate runs it. Weather, destination, who’s on galley, who’s swimming first, any gotchas on today’s passage.
Cross-delegation: pull anyone in. If the scribe is idle, hand them the log. If the booze kitty is empty, send the assistant purser up the pontoon. Nobody should be sitting while someone else is struggling.
3. 2nd Mate
The Watch Leader
The second mate covers watch when the first mate sleeps. You won’t run formal watches on a week’s charter — but the second mate is who the skipper calls when they want a twenty-minute lie-down on a long leg.
Why it matters: eyes on deck. Scanning for lobster pots, pot markers, floating plastic, and the inevitable idiot on a jetski. You’re the early warning system.
Spare hands: you’re also the muscle for anything physical. Dropping the anchor, flaking the mainsail, grabbing the boathook, rigging a snubber.
Who suits it: often the keenest learner on the boat — the one who wants to graduate to first mate next year, or get their own Day Skipper ticket. A great role for the sailor-in-training.
4. Navigator
Where We Are, Where We're Going
The skipper should not be the only person on the boat who can look at a chart and say “we’re here, the next waypoint is there, that’s twelve miles on a bearing of 140.” If the skipper slips on a gangplank in Šibenik and breaks an ankle, someone needs to be able to get the boat home.
Why it matters: redundancy. Modern navigation is 90% Navionics on an iPad. Your job is to keep it charged, keep a paper backup at the chart table, and plot the day’s passage each morning with the skipper so you both agree what you’re doing.
Side effect: you become the authority on “how long till we get there?” — a question the navigator will answer roughly four hundred times in a week. Fifty of those will be from children.
Cross-delegation: the scribe’s log and the navigator’s chart-work pair naturally. Work together.
5. Purser
The Shore Bursar
The purser holds the kitty. Collects the money at the start of the week, pays the marina fees, settles the dinner bills, keeps a running tally so nobody feels short-changed.
Why it really matters: charter disputes almost never start on the water. They start on land, at the last dinner, when someone realises they’ve paid for five more bottles of rosé than they drank. A good purser stops that before it starts. It is one of the most important non-sailing jobs on the boat.
Classic superstition — no bananas: eighteenth-century Caribbean trade vessels that disappeared tended to be carrying bananas. Possibly because bananas ripen fast and the vessels had to sail hard, possibly because of tropical spiders in the stems, possibly because fermenting bananas give off methane. A purser who knows their history throws the bananas overboard before boarding.
Cross-delegation: hand the shopping run out. Ten people, one trolley, a supermarket in a language you half-speak — this is never a solo job.
6. Assistant Purser
Bag Carrier and Till Checker
The assistant purser is the purser’s second pair of hands. Carries the shopping, translates the receipts, cross-checks the tally at the end of each day.
Why it matters: ten people, one shopping trip, a supermarket you don’t know, a language you half-speak, a trolley that won’t fit down the aisle. This is not a one-person job. Two people make it tolerable; four make it fast.
Secret superpower: the assistant purser is the one who spots the items the purser forgot. Ice. Bin bags. Suncream. Loo roll. The bottle opener you thought you packed.
Cross-delegation: frequently dragooned onto the booze kitty as well. Everyone helps with the shopping at some point. Nobody gets to sit in the cockpit reading while others lug the crates down the pontoon.
7. Steward
The One Who Makes It Feel Like a Holiday
Hospitality. Lays the table. Keeps the galley sane. Makes sure the coffee is on by 08:00 and dinner is on the table by 20:00. On a crewed boat the steward is a professional; on your bareboat it’s whoever volunteered — or didn’t object fast enough.
Why it matters: the galley on a 40-foot yacht is the size of a wardrobe. Without somebody running it, the sink fills with yesterday’s mugs by lunchtime and nobody can find the bread knife.
Run a rota: nobody cooks two nights in a row. Nobody washes up for their own cooking. The kids dry. This one house rule, written up on day one, saves the week.
A bit of history: “steward” comes from Old English stigweard — “hall guardian”. The one who runs the house while the lord is away. Same idea on a boat.
8. Assistant Steward (Booze Kitty)
Keeper of the Cold Drawer
Runs the bar. Collects a separate drinks kitty. Stocks the cold drawer with beer, wine, rosé and the one nice gin somebody insisted on. Handles top-ups at the next marina. Posts the running tally on the fridge door where everyone can see it.
Why the split from the main kitty: food and drink have very different supply runs. Food is one big shop twice a week. Drinks are top-ups every time you tie up in a town with a mini-mart. Separating the two keeps the accounting clean and stops the purser losing their mind.
Classic failure mode: the booze kitty runs dry at 18:00 on day six, three miles from the nearest harbour. A good assistant steward plans the re-stock on day four. A great one also brings an emergency bottle from home.
Not a small role. Ten people on a hot deck drink more than you think.
9. Scribe (Fare Log)
Keeper of the Week
The scribe keeps the log. Not the yacht’s log (that’s the navigator and skipper) — the fare log. The memory of the trip: the anchorage with the octopus, the waiter who brought extra bread, the sunset in Pomena, the dolphin off the stern on day three, the thing the kid said on the helm that made everyone laugh.
Why it matters: a week on the water blurs. By Wednesday you’ve forgotten what Monday’s lunch was. The scribe is why, five years later, somebody pulls out a creased notebook and reminds everyone what actually happened.
Useful on the boat too: the scribe tracks the best restaurants, the worst moorings, the things-to-book-next-time. The next skipper at the next annual reunion thanks them.
Cross-delegation: scribe pairs naturally with the navigator (both spend time at the chart table) and the steward (both spend time watching the table).
10. Bosun
The One Who Knows Where the Bolt Croppers Are
Bosun (pronounced bow-sun, short for boatswain) is the oldest rank on this list — medieval English navy, the warrant officer in charge of the deck, sails, rigging, anchors and boats. On a bareboat charter the bosun is the person who knows where every piece of kit on the boat lives.
This suddenly comes to life mid-week. “Get me the bolt croppers.” “Grab the bosun’s chair.” “Where are the bungs?” On a yacht you’ve been on three days, nobody else will know. The bosun does.
Why it matters: when something breaks at sea, you have about ninety seconds before it matters. The bosun walks the boat on day one with the skipper, opens every locker, and mentally rehearses: winch handle here, bolt croppers here, spare shackles here, fire blanket here, emergency tiller here.
The pay-off: when the skipper says “winch handle”, a winch handle appears three seconds later. That’s the difference between an average week and a genuinely smooth one.
One Last Rule: Swap and Share
Roles are for a purpose, not a uniform. On day one, print the list. On day two, find out who hates theirs and swap. By day four everyone has landed where they’re useful. By day seven the skipper has had their easiest week in years and the scribe’s notebook is full. That’s the goal.
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