Researching crew culture in super yachting - would love to hear from anybody who’s worked on yachts
Hi r/yachting,
Perhaps an unusual one: I work in commercial aviation, and I've been spending this year looking at how the human factors frameworks we use in aviation — things like crew communication, decision-making under pressure, speaking up to senior crew, and how hierarchy affects safety — translate to the superyacht world.
In aviation these challenges nearly caused catastrophic accidents before the industry built structured ways to address them. I think there's something similar going on in yachting, and I'm trying to understand whether that's actually the case before I do anything about it.
I'm not selling anything and I'm not affiliated with any yachting company. I'm just researching and I want to hear from people with real experience on board — any role, any size of vessel.
If you've worked on a yacht and have three minutes, I'd really appreciate your input on this short survey:
https://forms.gle/AbduiUT2N2EQfp3d8
It covers things like:
How communication works between departments and up the chain of command
Whether people feel comfortable raising concerns with senior crew
How decisions get made under pressure
Whether you think there's a gap in the market for something that addresses this
There are also a couple of questions about whether you think a business in this space would be useful — your honest opinion on that is just as valuable to me as your experience.
If you'd rather just share a story or a thought in the comments, that's equally welcome.
Thanks in advance.