Category: Pocket Superyacht Blog

The art of the sailor is to leave nothing to chance

This time of the year we do a lot of deliveries, bringing yachts to their summer cruising grounds. These trips at the beginning and the end of the season reminds many of us, Pocket Superyacht crew, why we made sailing the 50ft to 100ft range of luxury yachts our job; The true love for offshore sailing. In the middle of the summer the Mediterranean sailing conditions can sometimes be a little too comfortable and benign.   The focus shifts to keeping the yacht clean, to technical maintenance and of course to hospitality. Conditions are so easy that we stand the risk of becoming complacent towards safety until a September storm sends us a (not so) gentle first reminder. Bringing the yacht to the next pick up point for guests is done under time pressure which, in combination with light airs often prevents crew from quenching their sailing thirst.    But a delivery in March or April, that takes you through the Bay of Biscay or the Golfe de Lion, can put your salty sailors skills to the test again. “The art of the sailor is to leave nothing to chance.” This is a quote by Annie Van de Wiele which […]

Why do we only work with yachts between 50 and 100ft?

Invisible Crew focuses solely on the market of Pocket Superyachts. That’s the term we use for these high-end luxury yachts that are only different from super yachts because of their size. We don’t believe the traditional model of charging a one-off placement fee and offering a few months of warranty doesn’t works for these yachts where crew are working directly for owners. We want to be there to guide the owners and support the crew throughout their time together and eventually we warrant a seamless solution should the crew become temporarily or permanently unavailable to work.      Here are 6 challenges that illustrate why recruitment for Pocket Superyachts requires a detailed approach. Challenge 1: The confined space within which the crew has to live with each other as well as with guests and owners can magnify and quickly escalate interpersonal friction. Solution: We don’t race against other agencies to send the most CV’s over in the shortest time. We explain owners how we work and gain their trust to leave the job of finding the right people with us. We then carefully select the right personalities. Diplomatic, sensitive confident and caring people is what we always look for. Challenge 2: […]

Management Companies are a pain!

“They only cause confusion.” “They get in between me and the owner and I don’t like that.” “They demand me to work in ways that are just not practical.” “They write me from their desk while they have no idea what they are talking about.” These are some of the comments I have heard about yacht management companies. Despite offering yacht management myself,… I totally get it! It is ever so important to select the correct, in other words, relevant service provider! There is a reason why we advertise ourselves as the Pocket Superyacht management company and why we stick to just yachts between 50ft and max 100ft (in reality max 24m waterline). The reason is that this size range requires its own detailed approach! The crew needs to be able to maintain their personal / professional relationship with the owner -one of the hardest but also most important parts of the job- so this is where an intermediate has to tread carefully. Sometimes we bring an owners point home because we speak the same language as the crew, but sometimes we are advocates of the crew supporting their opinion. All of this helps to create a long standing owner / […]

The dark secrets of every Pocket Superyacht captain.

It’s one of the exciting things about yachts; there’s always something new to learn! The current thinking is that it should be a process of trial and error taking years to learn how to run a yacht. However, the current reality is that we are in dire need of young, energetic, personable and… ideally, highly knowledgeable crew to run luxury yachts between 50 and 100ft! Brands like Lagoon are splashing a new luxury catamaran between 50ft and 78ft every 2,5 days(!) and CNB is launching hull number 25 of the 76’ less than 3 years after the first one was christened, Swan is doing as good as ever and Oyster is seemingly back on its feet. The market of Pocket Superyachts is booming and there is not enough time for crew to grow in their role and learn all the different aspects of running a yacht before being expected to be an expert. And it’s not their fault at all!   Every Pocket Superyacht captain carries a set of dark secrets with them… This is a problem that the industry has created for itself. The high demand for new blood sucks people into positions, biting off more than they can […]

3 ways Invisible Crew professionalises operations on Pocket Superyachts.

Know your ship – a Shipload of info – the Ship’s show must go on!   Know your Ship: On Pocket Superyachts there is so much to know. Most crewed luxury yachts under 24 meters are run by single captains or by couples, usually young and energetic people. They are solely responsible for all the different departments on board. That’s a tall order to fill! On a discussion in the Palma Yacht Crew Facebook Group, one Pocket Superyacht captain described the job in the most accurate way I have ever seen:   2% Boat handling / Navigation 25% Corrective Maintenance / Repairs 40% Preventive Maintenance 20% Psychology 10% International relations 3% Improvisation   The first 2% of the job can be learned through the Yachtmaster course. The remaining 95% of required skills we teach with our online course www.howtofindworkonpocketsuperyachts.com with the aim of bringing improvisation down the inevitable 3%. In our module Mindset and Attitude we even cover how to deal with the stress that comes with improvising.   A Shipload of knowledge is usually what gets lost when one captain hands a yacht over to the next. The quality of the handover depends on   how well the resigning […]