Last updated: August 2026
“Just sign it and send it back — we need you aboard by Friday.”
That’s how a lot of yacht jobs start. A recruiter calls, the money sounds right, the boat sounds well run, and the contract lands in your inbox with a deadline attached. Most crew sign. Very few are told what they’re actually signing — or what protections are supposed to sit behind the job before they ever step aboard.
This guide is for crew about to take a position through an agency or placement service. It covers what a recruiter is meant to tell you, the documents that are supposed to protect you, and the questions to ask before you sign — not after something goes wrong.
The story nobody tells you at the interview
In May 2026, a seafarer aboard the general cargo ship Lady Mina contacted an ITF inspector in Las Palmas. He wanted to go home. His contract had expired and he’d been on board for more than 13 months — well past the roughly 11-month cap on continuous service that the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC 2006) works out to before a seafarer is entitled to repatriation. He’d asked to be sent home repeatedly. Nothing happened.
By the time inspectors were finished, six crew were owed a combined USD 68,000. The Spanish Maritime Authority detained the vessel. It was sailing without required statutory certificates — and the paperwork for the financial security that’s supposed to protect seafarers in exactly this situation appeared to be forged.
Yes, that’s commercial shipping, not a superyacht. But the mechanics are identical, and yachting is not immune — Nautilus has recovered well over a million pounds a year in unpaid superyacht wages, and abandonment cases surface in Mediterranean marinas too. The difference between the crew who get paid and the crew who don’t is usually decided long before the dispute: at the point of signing, with documents most people never checked.
What a recruiter is actually supposed to tell you
Under the MLC, recruitment and placement services (Reg 1.4) have real obligations. Two of them matter to you directly:
- They cannot charge you a fee to find you work. Standard A1.4 puts recruitment costs on the employer, not the seafarer (a few narrow exceptions aside). If anyone asks you to pay to be placed, treat it as a red flag.
- They’re expected to make sure you understand your rights before or during engagement — including how the seafarer financial-protection system is meant to work.
In practice, a lot of this simply doesn’t happen. Good agencies do it well; plenty don’t do it at all. So the safe assumption is that nobody is going to walk you through it — which means you do it yourself.
The five things to verify before you sign
1. The Seafarer Employment Agreement (SEA) — read it as the whole deal, not a formality. Your real protections live here, not in the recruiter’s phone call. Four clauses decide most disputes: the governing law (which country’s rules apply if things go wrong), the notice period (the MLC floor is not less than 7 days — Standard A2.1), how and when wages are paid (monthly, in full — Standard A2.2), and repatriation (who pays to get you home, and when). A verbal “don’t worry, you’ll be looked after” is worth nothing next to what’s written.
2. The flag. The flag state sets a lot of the enforcement reality. A well-regulated flag with a functioning maritime authority is a very different prospect from a flag of convenience that changed twice last year. You’re allowed to ask what flag the vessel flies before you commit.
3. The abandonment / financial-security cover — the document that was forged on Lady Mina. Since the 2014 amendments (Standard A2.5.2), vessels are required to carry financial security that covers unpaid wages and repatriation if crew are abandoned. There’s usually a certificate for it, often posted on board. It exists specifically so that a stranded crew has something to claim against. Ask whether it’s in place. On Lady Mina, the paperwork looked legitimate and wasn’t — which is exactly why “there’s a certificate” isn’t the same as “you’re covered.”
4. Who actually employs you. The name on your SEA may not be the owner, the yacht, or the agency. It might be a management company or a shell entity in a third country. When wages stop, you claim against whoever is legally your employer — so know who that is before you sign, not after.
5. The placement service itself. Is the agency licensed or certificated in a country that regulates recruitment? Will they put the terms in writing? Do they go quiet the moment you ask a specific question? How a recruiter behaves before you sign is a fair preview of how they’ll behave when you need them.
Why “am I protected?” almost never has a simple answer
Here’s the uncomfortable part. Whether you’re actually protected — and what you can do if you’re not — depends on the combination of your flag, your governing law, your employer’s jurisdiction, where the vessel physically is, and your own nationality. Change any one of those and the answer changes with it. That’s exactly what the union organiser in the Lady Mina type of case means when she talks about “multiple jurisdictions” in a single contract.
This is why generic advice (“keep everything in writing,” “join a union,” “you’re entitled to your wages”) is true but not enough. It tells you the principle. It doesn’t tell you what your SEA, on your flag, actually gives you. The only way to know that is to read your specific documents against the specific rules that apply to them — before the deadline pressure, not during a dispute.
The review-first habit
The crew who avoid the worst outcomes tend to share one habit: they treat the contract as something to be checked, not signed on trust. Before you commit to a job through a recruiter, it’s worth having a second set of eyes on the SEA — someone who can tell you what your governing law and notice terms actually mean, whether the repatriation and wage clauses are normal or quietly stacked against you, and what questions to put back to the recruiter before you say yes.
That’s what our SEA Contract Review (€199) is for. It’s a fixed-fee, plain-English read of your agreement that shows you what you’re really working with, so you’re deciding with the full picture instead of a Friday deadline. It’s not legal representation and it’s not a hard sell — it’s the check most crew wish they’d done before, not after.
In short
- A recruiter’s pitch is not a protection. Your SEA is where your rights live.
- The MLC gives recruiters real obligations — no fees to you, and a duty to inform you — but don’t assume they’ve been met.
- Verify five things before signing: the SEA clauses, the flag, the abandonment cover, who employs you, and the agency itself.
- Whether you’re protected is jurisdiction-dependent. The only reliable way to know is to check your own documents before you sign.
- Lady Mina is what “we didn’t check” looks like from the inside: 13 months aboard, USD 68,000 owed, and a safety-net document that turned out to be fake.
Related reading:
What to do if you’re owed wages as yacht crew
The four SEA clauses that decide most crew disputes
Repatriation rights: who pays to get you home, and when
Pay and leave: what the MLC actually guarantees
CrewRights provides fixed-fee information and document-preparation support for yacht and commercial crew. This guide is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney–client relationship.