Last updated: June 2026
When a contract ends — especially when it ends suddenly — one question hits fast: how do I get home, and who pays for it?
The instinct is to assume it’s your problem. You’ve been let go, you’re in a marina far from home, and someone has told you to “sort your flight.” In most cases, that’s not how it works. Under the Maritime Labour Convention, getting you home is the shipowner’s obligation, not a favour — and it’s a right you generally can’t sign away.
This guide explains what repatriation actually covers, when you’re entitled to it, and what to do if the yacht won’t arrange it.
What repatriation actually means
Repatriation is your journey home at the end of your employment — and it’s more than just a plane ticket. Under MLC 2006, it generally includes:
- Transport to your destination (usually by air, by an appropriate route).
- Accommodation and meals from the moment you leave the yacht until you reach home.
- Transport of your personal luggage, within the allowance set out in your SEA.
- Your pay and entitlements up to the point your employment ends — repatriation doesn’t cancel what you’re already owed.
This is meant to get you home without you being out of pocket.
When you’re entitled to it
You’re generally entitled to repatriation at no cost to yourself when:
- Your SEA expires while you’re abroad.
- The yacht terminates your contract — including being let go at the end of a season.
- You terminate the contract for justified reasons (for example, the yacht is in serious breach, or unsafe).
- You can no longer carry out your duties — illness or injury, certified.
- The yacht is sold, changes flag, or the owner can no longer employ you.
There’s also a time limit working in your favour: MLC sets a maximum period of service on board before you’re entitled to repatriation — generally less than 12 months (often framed as no more than 11 months continuously aboard). If you’re past that point, the entitlement applies regardless of how the contract ends.
Who pays — and what you should never do
The shipowner pays. This is the part most crew get wrong.
- You should not be asked to pay for your own flight and “claim it back later.”
- You should not have the cost deducted from your final wages.
- The only narrow exception is where you’ve been found — under your flag state’s law — to be in serious default of your employment obligations. That’s a specific, high bar, not a label a captain can apply on the way out.
If you’re told to book your own ticket, you can — calmly, in writing — ask who is arranging repatriation under MLC Regulation 2.5. Often, naming the obligation is enough to move it back to where it belongs.
Where you can be sent
You usually don’t have to accept “a flight to wherever’s cheapest.” Your destination is typically one of a prescribed set of options — commonly:
- The place where you were engaged / joined the yacht,
- The place named in your SEA or collective agreement, or
- Your country of residence.
Check your SEA — the destination and luggage allowance should be stated there. If it isn’t, your flag state’s default rules fill the gap.
The first 48 hours if you’re told to leave
If you’re stood down abroad and repatriation isn’t clearly organised, protect your position the same way you would with any dispute:
- Don’t book anything yet — and don’t pay for your own flight before raising repatriation in writing.
- Get it in writing.“Could you confirm who is arranging my repatriation and to where, and the expected date?”
- Secure your documents — SEA, discharge book, passport, certificates, payslips — to a personal cloud, not yacht email.
- Note what you’re owed alongside the flight: outstanding wages, accrued leave, and any notice pay don’t disappear because you’re leaving.
- Don’t hand back originals of your SEA or discharge book.
If the yacht won’t arrange it: abandonment and your backstops
If the owner simply won’t repatriate you — or has stopped paying you and cut contact — that may meet the definition of abandonment under MLC, and there’s a safety net built for exactly this.
Since the 2014 amendments to MLC (in force from 2017), vessels covered by the Convention must carry financial security against abandonment — a certificate, usually displayed on board, naming an insurer or provider. This security is designed to cover:
- Outstanding wages (up to a set period — generally up to four months),
- Repatriation, and
- Essential needs — food, accommodation, medical care — while you’re stranded.
Beyond that, your flag state and the port state have backstop obligations: if the shipowner fails to repatriate you, the flag state should arrange it (and then recover the cost from the owner). The relevant authorities differ by flag — Cayman Maritime Authority, the Marshall Islands administration, Transport Malta, or the UK MCA for Red Ensign vessels — but the principle is consistent.
You don’t always need to invoke all of this. Knowing it exists changes how confidently you can ask the first question.
Were you let go – or did you “agree to leave”?
Watch the wording at the exit. If you’re steered into resigning or signing a “mutual termination,” be careful: depending on how it’s framed, it can muddy your repatriation entitlement and your claim to notice and final pay.
You don’t have to decide in the room. (See our guide on being fired from a yacht or how to handle the conversation.)
