For many yacht stews, the long-term question is not whether they will eventually leave the industry. It is what they will do when they leave.

Yachting can offer excellent salaries, travel and responsibility at a relatively young age. But translating that experience into a career ashore is not always straightforward. Running the interior of a yacht may involve logistics, service, purchasing, guest management and an extraordinary level of organisation, yet those skills do not always fit neatly into the job titles employers understand on land, for similar reward.

Cooking is different.

It is a practical, recognisable and highly transferable skill. It can increase your value while you are still working at sea and open up far more options when the time eventually comes to move ashore.

That doesn’t mean taking a short course and calling yourself a yacht chef. It means building solid foundations, gaining experience and creating another possible direction for your career.

The crossover is already happening

On smaller yachts, job descriptions are rarely as rigid as they appear on paper.

A stew may prepare crew food, help with breakfasts, cover the galley during a chef’s “time off” or take on more cooking during a yard period. On some boats, the stew-cook role is already an established and important position.

Often, this progression happens accidentally. Someone is needed in the galley, a stew volunteers, and gradually cooking becomes a larger part of the job.

But there is a difference between being able to put together a few familiar meals and having the confidence to plan, organise and consistently produce good food for other people.

That is where structured, intentional, learning can help.

The aim is not to bypass the experience of professionally trained chefs. Those who have spent years in restaurant kitchens have developed speed, judgement, discipline and technical ability that cannot be recreated overnight.

The more realistic goal is to gain a grounded understanding of the foundations of cooking: how ingredients behave, how dishes are built, how to organise preparation, how to plan menus and how to work safely and efficiently. And to gain some experience while doing so.

From there, it is up to the person how far, or in which direction, they want to develop.

A skill that can increase your value onboard

For a stew currently earning around €3000, moving into a genuine stew-cook position could potentially add €2000-€3000 to their monthly salary, depending on the yacht, experience and responsibilities involved.

The financial incentive is obvious, but the wider value is even more important.

Crew who can move comfortably between the interior and galley become particularly useful on smaller vessels, private programmes and boats with leaner crew structures. They can cover holidays, support the chef during busy periods and provide greater flexibility when plans change.

That versatility can make someone more employable, but it must be backed by competence. Being willing to cook is not the same as being ready to take responsibility for feeding guests or crew.

Learning the foundations properly gives you a safer and more credible place to start.

Yard periods and off-seasons are an opportunity

Yachting is intense, and trying to learn something new during a full charter season is rarely realistic.

Yard periods, quieter contracts and time between seasons can offer a better opportunity to improve. Instead of waiting until a galley role suddenly becomes available, crew can use that time to develop their skills deliberately.

This might begin with learning better knife skills, improving sauces, understanding meat and fish cookery or starting to think about proper menu planning.

It should also include the less glamorous parts that make professional cooking possible: preparation, timing, organisation, storage and working cleanly.

Good cooking is not only about the plate that reaches the table. It is about creating a system that allows you to produce that plate calmly and consistently, considering “the brief” carefully so you have the best chance of matching, or exceeding, the expectations for the next dining experience .

This is something I have become increasingly focused on throughout my own career. You should always be asking the question - How can we give just a little more than what the guests are expecting, as efficiently as possible. 

I have worked on yachts, on and off, from 30 to 100 metres since 2003. For the past ten years, I have also managed the central catering operation for a ski company in the French Alps, producing food for around 200 to 250 guests per day across 19 properties.

Whether it is a yacht galley or a large catering operation, the principle is much the same: the better the organisation behind the scenes, the more time and energy can be spent on the food itself.

The exciting advances in the tech world in the last few years have meant I’ve finally been able to migrate my complex spreadsheets and systems into a digital galley “ally” named Clara. From learning to cook, to running all aspects of a galley, Clara has your back. 

The career after yachting

The strongest reason for learning to cook may not be the next yacht job. It may be what comes afterwards.

At some point, almost every stew starts thinking about an exit strategy.

Life at sea can be exciting and financially rewarding, but it is not always a career people want to continue indefinitely. Relationships, family, stability and the desire to live in one place eventually become more important for many crew members.

The difficulty is working out how years of yachting experience translate ashore.

Cooking offers several possible routes. Depending on the level of experience someone develops, those opportunities might include private-chef work, chalet catering, villas, retreats, events, food businesses or further professional training.

It is a skill that travels well, and everyone needs to eat.

Learning to cook does not lock someone into becoming a full-time chef. It simply gives them another option—and in an industry where flexibility is key, it's a solid step for stews that peer into the galley and think, maybe one day?

Foundations first, experience next

The galley does not have to become your entire career. But learning to work effectively in one could give you far more control over what that career looks like. 

Unlike a restaurant kitchen, where each person may be responsible for one section at a time, a private or sole chef has to wear every hat at once: planning menus, shopping, preparing, cooking, serving, managing dietary requirements and keeping the whole operation organised. That demands more than recipes. 

It requires experience, strong systems and the ability to pull everything together under pressure. That is what makes Clara’s training different. It’s built around gaining practical experience from the very beginning, with Clara working alongside you in the galley to help you plan, solve problems, stay organised and steadily become a more capable and confident cook.

I love this industry and Head Chef Murray Slinn will be happy to answer any questions you may have 

Please feel free to text him on WhatsApp +33 7 68 19 54 68