By Neil Tufano
You can’t guarantee calm seas, but with a carefully chosen yacht management partner you can go a long way to ensuring that yacht ownership goes smoothly. Besides, as a busy person, do you really want the intricacies of management to detract from other activities? The right partner can save you time and help you get the most out of your investment – keeping your pride and joy earning its keep when you aren’t aboard – and making sure it’s ready for you when you are. Superyacht management includes several disciplines that are vital for safe, efficient yachting. These include the following:
- Crew selection and management
- Operations management
- Yacht chartering
- Maintenance and refits
- Yacht accounting
- A complete yacht management package.
The best management businesses will be able to help you with any of these.
Selecting and managing a crew
The best yacht and super yacht management partners handle crew selection and management (often called ‘crew services’). Depending on your preferences, this could even run to the administration of crew contracts, wages and salaries, mail forwarding, medical insurance and other minutiae of crewing. If your yacht will be used commercially, you’ll also need to ensure compliance with Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) rules and regulations – your management company can help.
Yachting operations management
Yachting operations management helps captains and crew operate a yacht on a day-to-day basis. This discipline covers areas such as weather routing, appointment of port agents and voyage planning. Whether you just spend weekends on the Solent or you need a full ocean yacht management package, there’s a specialist firm to help you.
A full yacht management package
Depending on your needs, you may be considering yacht management companies to handle all or some aspects of your vessel’s operation and administration. A full management package will look after everything to do with your yacht, to ensure its complete compliance with laws and regulations, wherever it is in the world. At its most comprehensive, full management means you can just fly out to meet your yacht when you want – safe in the knowledge that every aspect of its operation is in hand. You can even hire a marine travel agent to look after the transfer of your yacht crew.
Finding a reliable yacht management company
If you’re entrusting the management of your valuable asset to a third party, you’ll want to be completely sure that they’re trustworthy and that they have the necessary skills and experience. Unless someone you know recommends a specific yacht management business, you’ll probably find yourself searching the web. To simplify and speed the process you could go straight to a reputable online yachting directory, such as the SuperYachtsDirectory, where you’ll find selected businesses offering suitable yacht management services – it’s a great way to save time and effort, while quickly getting to the cream of these specialised yachting businesses.
Nautical Recreation 