Sea time on a yacht CV: how to count it, show it and prove it

Sea time is the currency of a deck CV, and increasingly of every department. A captain reads a career as a list of boats and dates and adds it up in his head. A training provider counts it in days against the requirements for the next ticket. An agency filters on it. So the CV has to show it in a way a reader can add up in seconds, and everything on the page has to survive a phone call to the boat.

This guide is about presenting sea time honestly and clearly. It is not a guide to the rules for how sea service counts towards a particular certificate. Those rules are specific, they change, and they differ by ticket and by flag; for anything you are relying on for a qualification, check the current MCA guidance or your training provider before you put a number on the page.

What sea time means on a CV

Three things get called sea time, and they are read differently:

• Time employed on a vessel. The dates you were crew on a named boat. This is what the vessel line shows and what a captain reads for staying power.
• Days at sea. Days the boat was actually under way, as opposed to alongside in a marina or in a yard. Tickets are generally built on this, recorded in a discharge book or testimonials, and a captain on a busy charter boat knows the difference between a season alongside and a season moving.
• Sea miles and passages. Crossings, deliveries, ocean miles. These matter most on deck and bridge CVs and for Yachtmaster-track candidates.

A good CV makes all three visible without making the reader do arithmetic.

The vessel line carries the first one

Every boat is one line: role, M/Y or S/Y, the vessel name in bold, length in metres, private or charter, Month Year dates. Months, never years only: "2024 to 2025" reads as concealment and unexplained gaps are a listed rejection reason.

May 2025 to Oct 2025, M/Y Blue Lark, 45m, private. Junior Deckhand. Seasonal.

The reader now knows you did a Med season on a 45m private boat and that it was a seasonal contract, which is expected to end in October. Label the contract type on anything that is not permanent: seasonal, rotational, relief, delivery, daywork. Short stints in those categories are normal. A permanent job that lasted three months with no reason given is the red flag, so give the reason in one clause: "left when the boat went into winter refit."

Days at sea and miles go in the bullets

If the boat moved, say how much, with numbers a captain can picture:

Atlantic crossing Antibes to St Maarten, 18 days, 4,000 nm, four-hour watches Full Med season: Côte d'Azur, Corsica, Sardinia, 9 charters, roughly 70 days under way

Only put a number on the page if it came from your own log, discharge book or testimonials. A round figure you half remember is the kind of thing a reference call contradicts.

For officer-track candidates, a short summary line near the top of the CV can do the adding up for the reader: "Sea time: 28 months on motor yachts to 60m, two Atlantic crossings, 9,000 nm." Keep it to what you can evidence.

Daywork counts, labelled as daywork

Daywork is the standard route in, and it belongs on the CV. The rule is to label it honestly and aggregate it, rather than listing every day on its own or passing it off as a job:

Mar 2025 to May 2025, Daywork, various yachts, Antibes. 22 days across 8 yachts, 30m to 70m: washdowns, polishing, tender cleaning, fender covers. References from M/Y [name] and M/Y [name].

Number of days, range of boats, actual tasks. That is what makes it credible, and it is what turns "no experience" into "some experience with people who will vouch for it." Update the entry after every stint. Whether daywork counts as sea service for a ticket depends on the ticket and whether the boat was under way; ask the training provider rather than assuming.

Deliveries are sea time with a route

A delivery is temporary by nature and one of the best ways a newcomer builds miles and references. List it like a vessel with a route:

Nov 2025, Delivery, S/Y Meltemi, 24m. Deck crew, Palma to Las Palmas, 6 days, 900 nm, watches 3 on 6 off.

Dates, vessel, route, role, what you did. Collect a testimonial from the skipper before you step off.

Everything below deck size matters too. Sailing yachts, ferries, commercial vessels and cruise ships are all vessel time, and captains say not to strip it out for not being superyacht work.

Proving it: testimonials and the discharge book

Sea time on a CV is a claim. What proves it is a sea service testimonial from each vessel, signed by the captain, and where you have one, a discharge book. Nobody attaches these to a CV, but a captain may ask for them at interview and a training provider will require them for a ticket.

Two habits that pay for years:

1. Ask for a testimonial the week you leave a boat, not a year later. Captains move, management companies change, and the boat you did a season on may be sold by the time you need the paperwork.
2. Keep a personal log. Dates on and off, days under way, passages and miles. It takes a minute a week and it is the difference between "roughly a season" and a number you can state.

For officer-track and engineering candidates the paperwork is the qualification. Check the current MCA guidance on what counts, how it must be recorded and how much is needed for the ticket you are aiming at, and check with your training provider before you book anything on the strength of your own count.

Rotation and relief work

Rotational and relief work can look like fragmentation on paper. Compensate with volume: trips completed, guests carried, duties held.

Feb 2024 to Present, M/Y Halcyon, 65m, charter. 2nd Engineer, rotational 2:2. 14 charters and two Atlantic crossings across four rotations.

Marked as rotational, with the numbers, that reads as a stable senior job. Without the label it reads as four short stints.

Gaps between boats

Never leave one unexplained. A season out, travel, study, family, illness: label it honestly in one line. Transparency resolves it; concealment turns a non-issue into a credibility problem. Yachting is small and reference-checked harder than almost any comparable industry, and captains make calls to boats you did not list.

A before and after

Before: Deckhand, various yachts, 2024 to 2025. Extensive sea time on motor and sailing yachts.

After:

May 2025 to Oct 2025, M/Y Blue Lark, 45m, private. Junior Deckhand, seasonal. Full Med season, Côte d'Azur to Sardinia, roughly 60 days under way. Mar 2025 to May 2025, Daywork, Antibes. 22 days across 8 yachts, 30m to 70m. Nov 2024, Delivery, S/Y Meltemi, 24m. Deck crew, Palma to Las Palmas, 6 days, 900 nm.

Same person. The first version is a sentence a captain skips. The second is a career he can add up.

Where sea time sits on the page

Yachting experience goes after certificates and before land experience, most recent first. On a green CV with only daywork and a delivery, that section is still worth having, because a named boat with a referee beats another certificate. If there is genuinely nothing yet, delete the section rather than leaving an empty heading; the deckhand CV guide covers the green deck CV in full, and what to include in a yacht CV covers every section.

If your CV currently says "extensive sea time" and nothing else, upload the CV you have and it is rebuilt with each boat as a vessel line, dates in month and year, daywork and deliveries labelled, and the numbers you give it in the bullets.

Next step

Upload your CV and it comes back with your sea time laid out the way captains add it up: one line per boat with length, programme and months, daywork aggregated, deliveries with routes, two pages, clean A4 PDF. Free, no account needed to start.