Flag E · Altering course to starboard
About
Us
Started in 2023 by people who had done the seasons themselves, and got tired of agencies that had not.
Between us we have stood the anchor watches, turned the guest cabins, run the tenders and been landed in a port we did not choose. That is not a marketing line. It is the reason we ask a boat what its watch system is before we send anyone near it.
Offices in Sydney and Antibes. Crew placed across the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Pacific and the yards in between.
Why we started
The complaint was always the same, from both ends of the dock.
Crew were being put forward for boats nobody had described to them, by consultants who had never spent a night at sea, and then hearing nothing at all — not a no, not a reason, just silence while the season filled up around them.
Captains were getting shortlists assembled on keyword matches. Six CVs, five of them wrong, and no one on the other end who could tell them which of the five would actually last until Antigua.
Both problems have the same cause: nobody was doing the unglamorous part. Ringing the last captain. Asking the boat what really happened to the person before. Telling a candidate the truth about a rotation that exists on paper and nowhere else.
So we built an agency around doing that part properly, and accepted that it makes us slower than the outfits sending forty CVs a morning. It also makes our placements last, which is the only measure that means anything to either side.
Flag N · Negative
We have all been the one waiting on the dock.
Which is why crew never pay us. Not to register, not to apply, not to be placed. The Maritime Labour Convention forbids charging seafarers to find work, and we would not do it in any case.
Owners and management companies pay, and only when a placement sticks. If it does not last, that is our problem to fix, not yours to fund.
Flag M · Made fast
Two offices, most of the clock
Sydney
33°52′S · 151°12′E · AEST
Our home port, and the reason we can answer a Pacific boat at a civilised hour. Covers Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific islands and the South East Asian yards.
- Address
- [Street address, Sydney NSW postcode]
- Phone
- [+61 0 0000 0000]
- [sydney@oceanyachtcrew.com]
Antibes
43°35′N · 7°07′E · CET
On the ground where the fleet is. Covers the Mediterranean season, the Atlantic crossing, the Caribbean winter and the northern European yards.
- Address
- [Street address, 06600 Antibes, France]
- Phone
- [+33 0 00 00 00 00]
- [antibes@oceanyachtcrew.com]
Between the two we are reachable across most of the twenty-four hours, which matters when a chief stew goes down the day before a charter and the boat is nine hours from whoever answered your last email.
Flag U · You are running into danger
What we will not do
- Take money from crew. Not a registration fee, not a deposit, not a cut of your first month. Anyone using our name to ask for it is not us.
- Send you somewhere we have not asked about. If we cannot tell you the watch system, the crew mess and why the last person left, we say so rather than guess.
- Pass your details on without your say-so. Your CV, certificates and passport go to a named boat, with your agreement, and nowhere else.
- Leave you without an answer. Including the no. Especially the no.
- Advertise a berth that does not exist. No phantom vacancies to harvest CVs, and no listings we have not confirmed with the vessel.
- Place someone we would not sail with. Which occasionally costs us a fee, and has never once cost us a client.
Come and talk to us
Whether you are looking for a boat or looking for crew, start with a conversation rather than a form.