Who we are

Ocean Yacht Crew is a crew recruitment agency placing deck, interior, engineering and galley crew on sailing and motor yachts across the Mediterranean, Caribbean and beyond.

In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean [FULL REGISTERED COMPANY NAME], [company number / ABN], registered at [REGISTERED ADDRESS]. We are the data controller for the information described here.

If you have any question about this policy, contact us at [privacy@oceanyachtcrew.com].

Information we collect

If you register as crew

• Name, date of birth, nationality, contact details and current location
• Passport and visa details, and your right to work in relevant jurisdictions
• Seafarer's discharge book and seafarer identity documents
• CV, employment history, sea time, references and referee contact details
• Certificates of competency and training — STCW, ENG1 or equivalent medical fitness certificate, powerboat, dive, chef and other qualifications
• Photograph, and any video introduction you choose to upload
• Salary expectations, availability, preferred vessel type and itinerary
• Emergency contact and next of kin details
• Where a role or flag state requires it, criminal record or background check results

If you are a yacht owner, captain, manager or agent

• Your name, role, employer and contact details
• Vessel details and crewing requirements
• Records of our correspondence and the placements we have made for you

If you simply visit the website

• IP address, browser and device type, pages viewed and referring site
• Anything you type into a contact or enquiry form
• Cookie data, as described in section 11

How we collect it

Most of it comes directly from you — when you create a crew profile, apply for a vacancy, email us, or speak to one of our placement team.

We also collect information from other sources: referees you nominate, previous employers and captains, training providers where we verify a certificate, background check providers where a role requires one, and public professional profiles such as LinkedIn or crew networking sites. Where a captain or agent refers you to us, we will have received your contact details from them.

Why we use it, and our legal basis

We only use your information for the purposes below. Where the UK or EU General Data Protection Regulation applies to you, the legal basis for each is shown alongside.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it to make automated decisions that have a legal or similarly significant effect on you. A person always reviews a shortlist before it goes to a client.

Medical and other sensitive information

Some of what we hold is treated as special category or sensitive information — in particular your ENG1 or equivalent medical fitness certificate, any health information relevant to service at sea, and criminal record check results.

We collect this only where it is necessary for a placement or required by a flag state, an employer or maritime law, and we rely on your explicit consent to do so. You can withdraw that consent at any time, though we may then be unable to put you forward for roles that require the document.

We do not ask for your medical history. We ask only whether you hold a valid certificate of fitness and when it expires.

Who we share it with

• Yacht owners, captains, management companies and agents — when you apply for a role, or where you have asked us to put you forward. We tell you which vessel or client before we send your details wherever we can.
• Referees you have nominated, when we take up a reference.
• Service providers who run our systems on our behalf — website hosting, email, applicant tracking, background checks and IT support. They act on our instructions and may not use your data for their own purposes.
• Professional advisers such as our accountants, insurers and lawyers.
• Authorities — port state control, immigration, flag state administrations, tax and law enforcement, where we are legally required to disclose.

If our business is sold or restructured, crew and client records may transfer to the buyer. We would tell you before that happened.

Sending information overseas

Yachting is international by nature. A vessel may be flagged in one country, managed in a second, owned in a third and cruising in a fourth, so your details will often be sent outside the country you live in — including to countries whose data protection laws differ from your own.

Where we transfer information out of the UK or the European Economic Area, we rely on an adequacy decision where one exists, or on standard contractual clauses with the recipient. Where Australian privacy law applies, we take reasonable steps to ensure overseas recipients handle your information consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles.

You can ask us for details of the safeguards that apply to a particular transfer.

How long we keep it

• Active crew profiles — for as long as your profile is live, and for [24] months after your last activity, after which we contact you to ask whether to keep it.
• Placement records — [7] years after the placement ends, to meet tax, employment and insurance requirements.
• Unsuccessful applications — [12] months, unless you ask us to keep your profile on file.
• Enquiry and contact form messages — [24] months.
• Website analytics — [26] months.

You can ask us to delete your profile sooner, and we will unless we are legally required to retain part of it.

How we protect it

Your profile and documents are held on access-controlled systems, transmitted over encrypted connections, and available only to staff who need them to do their job. We review who has access, and we require our service providers to maintain appropriate security.

No system is completely secure. If a breach occurs that is likely to put your rights at risk, we will notify you and the relevant regulator within the time limits the law sets.

Please help us by using a strong, unique password on your crew account and by not emailing scans of your passport to anyone who asks for them without checking who they are. We will never ask you to pay a fee to register, and we will never ask for your bank details in order to send you a vacancy.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you can ask us to:

• Give you a copy of the information we hold about you
• Correct anything that is wrong or out of date
• Delete your information, where we have no continuing reason to keep it
• Restrict or object to how we use it, including profiling for job matching
• Send your information to another service in a portable format
• Withdraw consent — for job alerts, or for holding your medical certificate

You can update most of your details yourself by signing in to your crew profile. For anything else, email [privacy@oceanyachtcrew.com]. We will respond within one month, and we do not charge for this.

We may ask you to confirm your identity first, so that nobody else can obtain your certificates or passport details by pretending to be you.

Cookies and analytics

We use cookies to keep you signed in, remember your search filters, and understand which vacancies are being viewed.

• Essential cookies keep your session and your application secure. These cannot be switched off.
• Analytics cookies tell us how the site is used, in aggregate. We set these only with your consent.
• Preference cookies remember choices such as your saved searches.

You can change your choices at any time through the cookie settings link in our footer, or by clearing cookies in your browser. Blocking essential cookies will stop the job application process from working.

Other websites

Our pages link to training providers, flag state administrations and client websites. Those sites have their own privacy policies and we are not responsible for how they handle your information.

Crew under 18

Our services are intended for people aged 18 and over. Where maritime law permits a younger person to serve at sea and we accept a registration, we require verifiable parental or guardian consent before we hold or share any profile. If you believe we hold information about a minor without that consent, contact us and we will remove it.

Changes to this policy

We update this policy when our services or the law change. The date at the top shows the current version. If a change materially affects how we use your information, we will tell registered crew by email before it takes effect.

Contact and complaints

Talk to us first — most concerns are resolved quickly.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the data protection regulator where you live. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office; in Australia, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner; in the EU, your national supervisory authority.

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