What a captain reads first
Chef hiring on a yacht turns on two things: can you feed 12 demanding guests and 12 hungry crew, alone, for a 14-day charter with no shop, and can the captain trust you with the provisioning budget. The CV has to answer both before anyone opens the sample menus.
- Guest and crew numbers, charter length, sole or with a crew chef. "12 guests and 12 crew on 7- to 14-day charters, sole charge" is the sentence a captain is looking for. It tells him the scale, the pressure and the autonomy in one line.
- Cuisine range, named. Mediterranean, Japanese, modern European. Not "international cuisine".
- Dietaries, by name. Gluten-free, vegan, kosher-style, allergen-restricted. Preference sheets are the job; say you work from them.
- Provisioning. Which ports, which jurisdictions, whether you ran the budget. Provisioning across the West Med and the Caribbean is a different skill from cooking in London, and captains know it.
- Land kitchens at a real standard. Michelin stars and rosettes stay on the page. A serious restaurant background is a large part of why a chef is trusted with a galley.
The sample above is a fictional third-season sole chef. His two boats are written with charter counts, event sizes and provisioning ports. His restaurant years are written in the same voice, with covers and sections.
The certificates this role needs
- STCW Basic Safety Training and ENG1 medical, both dated
- Ship's Cook Certificate, required on many commercially registered yachts over a certain size and increasingly asked for regardless
- Food Safety and Hygiene Level 3 for anyone in charge of a galley; Level 2 is the floor for a crew chef
- HACCP reads well alongside it
- PDSD, usually done with STCW
- A professional culinary qualification (City and Guilds, NVQ, culinary school). It goes under certifications, not education, because it is a trade credential. Without it the realistic entry is cook or a stew/cook combined role on a smaller boat, and the CV should say cook rather than chef.
How to write the experience lines
One line per boat: role, M/Y, name in bold, length in metres, private or charter, Month Year dates. Then two or three fragments with numbers. Covers, courses, events, dietaries, ports, budget.
- Before: Responsible for all aspects of the galley including menu creation, provisioning and delivering exceptional culinary experiences for guests.
- After: Sole charge of the galley on 14 charters over two seasons, 7 to 14 days each. Four-course plated dinners with wine pairings, canapés, beach barbecues and a 30-cover birthday party in St Barths.
- Before: Worked in a Michelin-starred restaurant, gaining extensive experience in fine dining.
- After: Sauce and fish sections in a Michelin-starred kitchen, 60 covers a service. Junior Sous from 2022: ordering, rotas for 6 chefs, allergen matrix for a 9-course tasting menu.
A sale or a refit inside a role is worth its own line. "Left when the owner sold the boat" is a complete reason for leaving and costs nothing.
If your CV is still shaped like a restaurant CV, upload the CV you have and it is rebuilt in this format: vessel lines with guests and crew counts, the personal block, certificates with dates, two pages.
Three mistakes that bin this CV
- Food photos in the CV. They bloat the file past what a satellite connection will download, break the two-page rule and clutter the layout. Keep the CV clean, put a portfolio link under your details, and keep a separate ready-to-send pack of dish photos and a seven-day sample menu.
- "International cuisine" and "high standards". Name the cuisines, name the dietaries, give the covers. Every line should be one a captain could check with your last skipper on the phone.
- Crew food left off. A crew chef or a sole chef feeds the crew three times a day for months. A separate crew menu that balances nutrition, variety and comfort food is a skill; say you ran one.
For the general rules on what goes where, read what to include in a yacht CV.
Where this role goes next
Crew Chef to Sole Chef on 40 to 55m, then Head Chef with a Sous or Crew Chef under you on 60m+, where the guest numbers, the dietaries and the budget all get bigger. Rotational head-chef roles exist on the largest yachts. The portfolio matters more at each step: a themed seven-day menu pitched at guest versus crew is the standard deliverable, and it is usually the higher-leverage document after the CV itself.
Salary
Published crew-salary guides put yacht chefs in a wide band that starts in the mid thousands of euros a month for a crew chef and rises well above that for a sole or head chef on a large charter boat, plus tips. Reported ranges vary widely; verify with an agency for the size of boat you are targeting.
