ON THE ETHICS OF SHARING THE COSTS OF CRUISING

To every crew member, we ask 100€ a week, not including the food.

We feel justified in asking this money and this page is my attempt at explaining clearly why. It appears to me that every crew member we had so far understood and felt the participation was fair.
But people with no experience in crewing, while doing research and looking for a crew position on the internet, might be induced to think differently. I’ve been accused to be abusing my crew by asking them to share the costs and a south african webmaster has even been so far as to ban me from posting ads on his site. You can consult his view of the story on www.cruiser.co.za . I can't blame him for banning me, it is his website and he is entitled to his opinion, but since I keep using other websites to find crew, I think an explanation is necessary. Let's try to be realistic and to keep things in perspective.
Here goes.

There are skippers who do take advantage of their crew, by asking them big amounts of money to be on their boat, and pretending it is only sharing expenses. We are not talking here about real tall ships, that’s another matter, since their running costs are truly astronomical. We are talking about small private yachts, the ones this south african webmaster is so hard against. Their “cost sharing” participation of more than 250€ a week is not justified for the expenses it is supposed to cover and is closer to a charter rate.
Those skippers are perverting a perfectly sound concept and it is a shame. That is unfortunately the problem with any good system, people with low ethics will eventually go too far. Those people are actually doing a kind of charter, hiding the fact behind some false pretense of sail training, or using the eagerness, credulity and lack of experience of the would-be sailors to make a profit out of them. Doing charter is a profit oriented business; using a boat and charging people to come on board. I have nothing against doing charter. I do charter now and then with tourists and find it a good way to make cash.
What I am against is fooling people into thinking they are non-commercial crew members when they are paying charter rates. That's deceiving them, that’s ripping them off. I find it wrong. I agree with the south african webmaster on this point.

So now, a bit of semantics, let’s consider what is a crew member. In my mind the crew is the people who live on board and operate the boat. It doesn’t mean passengers. It doesn’t mean guests. It doesn’t mean employees either. Anybody could be living on board, helping to operate the boat and thus be a crew member.
Passengers are not expected to give a hand and that is why they are passengers. Guests are just that : guests, they'll leave soon. Employees are hired help, on board for the purpose of operating the boat. A crew member could thus be my mum, an old friend, a random backpacker, a RYA certified sailor wanting some sea miles, a professional skipper or a trained stewardess. A crew member is anybody who comes on a boat and does something to help, as opposite to just sit back and take pretty pictures of the dolphins in the sunset or wait to be dropped at destination. Being a crew member has nothing to do with financial participation, salary, experience or labor needed by the boat, but with what the person does on board. Clearly, crew members are not necessarily needed to run the boat. If a boat requires 1 or 2 people to be operated but that there are 4 or 5 people on board helping, it doesn’t mean that the 3 extras are not crew members.

So amongst the boats who ask money from their crew members are the sailing schools and the yacht charters. Those are commercial ventures. People agree on a deal and get what they pay for (hopefully).
Then there is another kind of paying crew, which interests the kind of people who contact me, some tall ships and unfortunately sometime those 250€ a week yachts.
Karaka is not really a sailing school; I am not qualified to be a sailing instructor and I won’t deliver diplomas to the crew members I teach. Beside the amount of money, the difference between what I do and a charter is that the people who sign on my boat don’t come to be passengers. They come to participate in a lifestyle, discover what it is and what it entails, sometime with the idea of buying a boat in mind. They come to get experience, knowledge and skills, and to enjoy a nice trip with like minded people at the same time. They want to be more than charter passengers. They want to be crew members, to participate, to sail, to live on board a boat, to stay for a few months, to go around the world. It is truly a great way to travel, a great lifestyle. It is a very gratifying way to see the world.
Most adventurous young travelers want to try it and get hooked.

We prefer to keep it non-commercial and not to consider our crew members as clients, not making a profit out of them. It is a personal choice; we think life is nicer that way. We don’t need to make a lot of money; our lives are very good as it is. I think as well that turning those people into clients would spoil the whole feel of the experience. It just wouldn’t be the same. One of the important things I feel is that in doing this we are doing something real. We are not buying and selling some good time. We are living. Unfortunately it costs money. And we are not in a position to be doing charity.

The deal on Karaka is only to ask money to pay for the expenses, because it costs money to run a boat, and as long as a crew member is going to enjoy a trip, using the ship, sailing, learning new skills, discovering places, diving, fishing, sleeping on board, using the toilet, the stove, the lights, there is absolutely no reason for me to pay for it all. It is not like if it was a hardship to endure, the crew members are on board to enjoy themselves, as we are with Kim, since this boat is on the water for this purpose. Karaka is not being delivered anywhere, is not hauling cargo, is not trying to make money.
Karaka is not doing anything but being a platform for people to enjoy themselves, each party providing what it can to make the trip happen. The crew members willingly provide their help and cash and our participation is a ship in working order, our knowledge of seamanship and all the cash we have.

Pooling the resources to make things happen instead of competing against each others seems to us a very sensible thing to do. It's a win-win situation and it is not utopian, it has been working for 5 years now with over 55 different people. This makes Karaka an anarchist boat, not a capitalist one and maybe that is why hard-core capitalists have a hard time understanding this radical concept.
For us, this way of doing things has many advantages, namely it pays for the running of the boat, it helps greatly with the actual labor of sailing, it allows us to sleep at night during passages since we are many on board to stand watches, it greatly improves our diet as crew members get creative in the kitchen, it keeps the boat well maintained as many crew members come with useful skills, etc. But that is not the most important. We could work hard and make a lot of money and all that would be possible. Money buys furling gear, autopilots, radars, gourmet chefs and local workers to do the work. That is what most yachties think.
One of the two things that are really making it worthwhile is that we don’t have to work our ass off to make money till we're too old to do this and neither are our crew members. Usually, on yachts where the owner doesn’t take crew but sail with his family, he has to pay for everything, usually with his savings. The ones who had the guts to leave early in life mostly have to dry-dock the boat for 6 months or a year now and then to go back home to earn some money. From the crew member point of view, rates on a charter boat vary greatly but you'll be hard pressed to find anything cheaper than 100 euros a day and despite being the lowest quality you'll find it is still usually too much for a vast majority of young travelers.
Contrary to what most people think, one of the things that cruising boat owners lack most of the time is money. On the other hand, Europeans and north Americans who take time to go traveling the world, usually do so with a reserve of cash.
To them it might not seem a big amount but from my experience, the total cost of crewing on a boat like Karaka in remote places and sharing the expenses with others is inferior to the cost of renting a place to live in a European or an American city. It also costs less than backpacking in most tropical countries.

Some people might object that there are boats on which the owner pays for everything anyway. That is true, but from my experience it is either because they are lonely and want company, usually young and female company that can cook and clean and looks decent in a bikini... Or else they actually need the crew, simply because they are not fit or knowledgeable enough to sail on their own. In any cases, they will pay for the crew expenses only if the crew fit within a certain profile, out of need, be it based on boob’s size or on actual experience and skill or plain man power. Professional crew is something else altogether, the average unexperienced person won't find a paid job on a yacht. Even fully qualified sailors have a hard time finding interesting jobs that don't require them to spend hours polishing brass, clean toilets and be at the mercy of the owners. A job is a job, and while working in the boating industry can be interesting and remunerative, don't mistake it with cruising.

One thing I’ve been told a couple times is that if I can’t run the ship on my own without the help of others financially, I shouldn’t have that boat and that my place is somewhere else working hard until I can afford to come play in the big boys field. Or else that I should do proper charter until I can afford to cruise without other people’s money. I think that's a very odd way to look at life and that the people who say that are missing the point entirely. Or else they must be jealous they didn’t think of doing it when they were young themselves. Now that they are old, they sit in marinas on the expensive shiny yacht it took them 40 years to buy, tired with their life and their wife, with sore joints and bad sight, and it seems they don’t have anything else to do than to envy younger people enjoying themselves.
It’s very sad in my opinion; but let’s not get carried away on that and let’s go back to the point. I already expounded my view on the subject at length in the “plan” page.

The second thing that make this system really worthwhile is that since there is a constant flow of new faces on board, new stories, new skills, new interests, new crew, new friends; it makes the atmosphere on board lively, ever changing, in fact, not boring. The yacht becomes a ship. The home becomes a community. It is exciting and it is fun. Of course, I’m not saying people who sail on their own or with their family are bored all the time. I just think it is more fun on a boat packed with 5 or 6 young fit open-minded people, playing music, exchanging points of view, enjoying life, tackling projects...
I understand it is not so for everybody. Many skippers, mostly older solo sailors or older couples, tell me they couldn’t share their boat like that. The constant invasion of their privacy, the constant teaching and learning, the constant challenge, the constant unknown, the constant change, the constant adventure. I understand their point of view, but on the opposite, that is exactly what attracts me in sailing and crewing. Sailing on my own doesn’t appeal to me. I expect a bit more from my life than the luxury and ease of cruising around the world. I want to make what I am doing with my life meaningful.

So altogether, I find the paying crew concept very good. I get what I want out of my boat, it is self sustainable and we're having a wonderful time in good company.
And the crew has a wonderful time too.
So everybody is happy.

This concept, which I didn’t invent, is working on several boats around the world, some of them owned by old shipmates or crew members of mine.
I salvaged karaka with the specific idea of doing this. I knew there was no way I could afford refitting her AND keep her. There was no way I could go sailing on my own yacht without spending most of my time running after money either. As it happened, I got her for free. And she was big enough to take crew. So I spent all I had on the refit, and then gave a try at taking paying crew. It is working.

It is a good system but like all systems it is not perfect and I would gladly change it if I found a better one. In my years of sailing and with all this time to think and ponder on the subject, I have only managed to improve on it, I have yet to come up with anything better that is workable. Since Kim came on board, we have managed to come up with some alternatives, but we are still working on putting them into action. The ideal would be to have a way for a whole crew to earn some money as we are travelling, making it sustainable for all on board. One thing we are seriously considering is to put together a bunch of artists and musicians so we could perform at every port and work our way like that. New people could join if they can participate when someone feels like jumping ship and doing something else with their lives. If you are reading this and are interested by this concept, please contact us by all means. But that still seem a very difficult thing to do, especially by staying in less developped area with few tourists... An other option we are studying is to set up Karaka as a non profit association, then mount expeditions or studies, taking long term crew members actively involved in the projects and then finance it all by grants and donations. It is easier dreamed of than done but Kim is working hard on it.

In the meantime, the boat still sails around and needs money so I hope that by now the reader can make the difference between the different ways of crewing on somebody else's yacht. I'm sure anybody will agree that abusing crew members by fooling them into believing they are sharing the costs while they are in fact being charged charter rates is low and blameworthy. But I hope that everybody understand that asking money from the crew to cover expenses is fair.

Now, I think the main reason left for misunderstanding is the problem to define “expenses”.
No two boats have the same expenses. Some people consider expenses are only docking fees, fuel bills and food. I think they are wrong.
For me expenses are nothing less than the money needed to run the boat. Not only today, not only for the two months the crew was on, not only for a single passage. It is the money that needs to be spent so the boat can not only run today but can continue to run tomorrow. It goes beyond fuel bills and marina fees. It is all the money that is spent on the boat, at anytime. It is not the money that was spent to buy the boat and to get her ready for sea originally. It is the money needed to keep her ready for sea. And it is only fair that anybody who enjoys the use of the ship shares those expenses unless the boat is earning money another way. If everybody on board is here for his pleasure, but the expenses are not shared by all, somebody is abusing someone.
For example, on an actual one month crossing, the money actually spent will amount to zero since you are at sea. Yet at sea everything deteriorate fast, the amount of money spent to get the boat back in shape after the last passage will have been a lot. And the amount of money needed to be spent after completion of this crossing will be important too. So would it be fair if the crew members that leave as soon as the boat reaches land paid only his share of the direct costs for that passage: the fuel bill, the food bill, the marina fee at the arrival maybe and nothing else? I don’t think so. Those crew members benefited from the money spent before they arrived on board so they had a seaworthy ship to sail on.
They should compensate for it one way or another so the next crew members to join also have a seaworthy ship to sail on and so that the owner doesn’t end up with a wreck.

But where is the limit? How much does it amount too? How to make sure it is fair? How can you tell if a skipper is overcharging his crew or not? There is no way to answer those questions. There is no expense control by the government; we’re not depending from any government. The captain has total control over it. So it is a matter of common sense, feeling and trust. That is why I am writing all this, so you, who might be a potential crew member on karaka, realize that I’m frank, honest and that I am actually offering you a good deal.
The way it is done on my boat is that I experiment with various amount of weekly participation, depending on the location, the number of crew, and the work provided by the crew member, in order to always have enough, yet never ask too much. I always try to find the lowest amount of money that enables us to keep the boat in good shape. It is not an easy thing to do. I’m not saving to buy myself a new boat and I’m not supporting a family with this money. All the money eventually goes back to the boat. She needs it.

The maximum I ask at present is 100€ or more or less 150 dollars a week per person. That is what we start with. It is often reduced.
A while ago it was 100US$ per week because the euro and the dollar were almost the same. But the dollar is worthless now and it was not enough so I had to ask more to be able to keep up and rounded it up at 100€. I was also probably too kind and lowering the participation too easily. I don’t like to ask money from my crew, but I found it is the best way to sail and share the boat with others. If you think I'm asking too much, I suggest you visit a shipchandler or a shipyard some day, check the prices of the items or the services offered in there, and then reconsider.

For those who are wondering, Kim's and my share for the expenses and our personal stuff like going out, booze, internet, the food, health insurance, etc, we pay with our own cash. To earn that cash, we do what we can, usually chartering, smuggling(never risky cargo though, no drugs, weapons or people) or the odd little job when it arises. To be perfectly honest, we try to make it a point not to use the boat money personally but I have to admit I am a terrible book keeper and the line between the boat money and our personal money is somehow blurry.

While I mention it, to clarify, when we do charters, we do it illegally. A charter is illegal when the skipper doesn’t pay taxes and doesn’t declare anything to the authorities. I find that perfectly all right because in most worthy charter locations around the world, the officials are corrupt and they would just take bribes out of the skipper anyway. In places where officials are not corrupt it is usually too controlled to do charter illegally so only licenced companies do charter there. For somebody like us, it saves bureaucratic hassles as well as money and time to stay illegal, and at the end of the day, everybody has a good trip, the profit is higher and everybody is happy. No harm done, as long as the local charter companies are respected. Illegal charter is not sustainable on long term and thus is reserved for foreign yachts passing through. If you want to do it for a long time, you get licenced, if you just want a bit of extra cash, you do a couple low profile trips and then clear the area.

In conclusion, I hope I make myself clear concerning what we are asking and proposing.
We don’t need employees, we don't do charity, and we are not trying to rip our crew off. We just want to have cool people we get along with to come on our boat, to enjoy sailing around.

So let’s share the expenses, and too bad for those who still think badly of it, they don’t know what they are missing.