Author: Tom Voigt

by Chef Tom Voigt. #26/0024.

The Epic Odyssey of Your Lost Résumé:
A Descent into the Fires of Job-Hunting Purgatory
By Tom Voigt
Ever wondered what actually happens to your beautifully polished résumé (yes, that résumé — the one some ex-yachtie “CV guru” charged you for, basically stitching together a Word or PDF file between watch shifts and calling it professional) the moment you smash that “Send” button?
Let me paint you a picture. A big one.
Imagine a massive field full of grain silos—except they’re not filled with corn. No. They’re filled with résumés. Yours, mine, everybody’s. All packed in there, waiting to “shine”… or, more realistically, waiting to develop a healthy layer of dust. These silos are the black holes of our professional dreams, sucking every hope into quiet oblivion.
And speaking of outer space—sometimes sending your résumé feels exactly like launching it toward Mars. You know it’s floating out there somewhere, drifting through the cosmic void, but good luck getting it back. NASA has a better chance of finding alien life than you have of getting a reply from your “dream job.”
If résumés ever do make it back to Earth, they fall like biblical rain over a single job posting—thousands of them crashing down in a blizzard of desperate ambition. Somewhere in that storm, your tiny résumé is just trying not to drown. It’s like playing “Where’s Waldo?” but with higher stakes and absolutely zero cute illustrations.
And those résumés that get filtered out?
Picture a giant celestial toilet flushing them into the HR underworld—your hopes, your dreams, swirling away into the eternal septic tank of corporate recruitment. Farewell, sweet résumé. We barely knew you.

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Crew agents and recruiters — our industry’s gatekeepers (or gate-blockers?)
Now let’s talk about crew agents and recruiters—the people supposedly guiding our “career paths.”
Are they overwhelmed, undertrained, or just cruising on autopilot? Hard to say. Half the time they’re sipping coffee in existential silence, staring at their screens like they’re trapped in a slow-motion horror film, pretending to process the daily avalanche of CVs—paper, pixels, whatever gets hurled at them before lunch.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Most of them don’t really read CVs.
Not properly. Not deeply.
It’s basically speed-dating with résumés.
Maybe it’s a machine with the empathy of a toaster scanning everything for keywords and tossing out half the field. Or maybe—on a brave day—a real human glances at your life story, squints, sighs dramatically, and wonders why they ever joined recruitment in the first place.
And let’s be honest:
Matching candidates should be like scouting elite football players.
You’re not just looking for someone who can kick a ball—
you’re looking for the one player who sees the field, shifts the game, and wins the match.
But here’s what actually happens:
The “scout” doesn’t notice the talent.
The recruiter skims past the one skill the client is practically begging for.
And plop—your CV drops straight into the cosmic toilet bowl of missed opportunities.
Talent lost. Time wasted.
All because nobody read the damn thing properly.

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Welcome to the comedy club of job platforms
And then there’s the pure comedy of job platform requirements.
Some agents still demand:
“Upload your CV in Word only — PDF not accepted.”
Really? In 2025?
Imagine a solid candidate who designs a clean, modern CV in Canva.
Looks great.
Professional.
Polished.
Except—oops—Canva doesn’t export in Word.
So the platform rejects the file.
The agent can’t process the application.
And the yacht never even gets the chance to hire the candidate.
A career dead on arrival…
not because they weren’t qualified, but because they didn’t have a .docx file from 2009.
Sad, isn’t it?

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And when replies do come in…
Either they show up never,
or they arrive so late you’d think your résumé stopped for a cappuccino on the moon.
By the time someone actually emails you back,
you’ve forgotten you even applied and you’re already on Plan Z: professional cat-sitting.
And then we get the magical mismatched job offers.
Why do men get job ads written clearly for women, and vice versa?
Did the recruiter screw up?
Or is AI just running an elaborate cosmic prank on all of us?
And honestly—do these jobs even exist?
Or is the whole ecosystem just a giant data-harvesting trap, feeding our résumés right back into those silos in the sky?

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The final truth
So next time you hit “Send,” remember this:
Your résumé is about to embark on an odyssey more epic than anything Odysseus ever survived—just with a much lower chance of a happy ending.
(Like most of my observations, this comes from decades of conversations with colleagues about all the strange wonders of the yacht industry.)

by Chef Tom Voigt. #26/0023.

The Anglosphere Pipeline
How Hiring Culture Shapes the Modern Superyacht Crew (1990–2026)

A factual review of fleet growth, labour structure and nationality dynamics in the modern yacht industry
The international superyacht industry has undergone a profound structural transformation over the past three decades. What was still a comparatively niche sector in the early 1990s has evolved into a globalised, highly professionalised industry employing tens of thousands of crew members across several thousand vessels.
With growth came complexity. With complexity came filtering mechanisms. And with filtering mechanisms came recurring debates about nationality, language and access to opportunity.
This report does not seek to accuse or dramatise. It seeks to clarify what can be factually supported, what can reasonably be inferred, and what remains anecdotal.

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1. Fleet Expansion and Structural Change (1990–2026)
   The scale of the industry today is fundamentally different from that of the 1990s. According to technical industry data referenced by RINAUTIC, the global superyacht fleet reached approximately 5,092 vessels by the end of 2019, representing more than a sixfold increase compared with the mid-1980s baseline. This expansion reflects long-term growth rather than a short-lived bubble.
   Post-pandemic momentum accelerated this trend further. BOAT International reported that the global superyacht order book reached historic highs in 2023, marking one of the strongest new-build cycles in the industry’s history. Although the order book has since stabilised, it remains elevated compared with pre-2020 levels.
   With fleet expansion comes increased crew demand. Industry sources such as SuperyachtNews, citing estimates from The Superyacht Agency, suggest that the number of active superyacht crew globally lies in the range of 60,000 to 70,000 individuals, although precise figures remain difficult to establish due to rotation, relief crew and short-term contracts. It is important to emphasise that no centralised global census of yacht crew exists.
   The absence of comprehensive statistical transparency is a structural characteristic of the industry and must be considered when analysing nationality representation.

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2. What We Actually Know About Crew Nationalities
   There is no official longitudinal dataset documenting nationality composition of superyacht crew from 1990 to 2026. However, certain surveys provide insight into recurring patterns.
   ISWAN – The Welfare of Superyacht Crew (2018)
   The International Seafarers’ Welfare and Assistance Network (ISWAN) conducted a substantial survey of superyacht crew in 2018. Among the most represented nationalities within the respondent sample were British, American, South African, Australian and New Zealander crew members.
   It is crucial to clarify that this survey does not represent the entire global workforce, nor does it claim to. However, it does indicate a visible and recurring presence of crew from English-speaking countries and South Africa within the active yacht community.
   ISWAN – YachtCrewHelp Annual Review (2022)
   In ISWAN’s 2022 YachtCrewHelp report, which analyses usage of its confidential helpline service, 27.2% of identified nationalities among service users were British, while just over 10% were South African. Crew from at least 42 nationalities accessed the service.
   Again, this is not a workforce census. It measures helpline engagement rather than total employment distribution. Nevertheless, it confirms that British and South African crew are highly visible and engaged within the yacht ecosystem.
   Industry Estimates Concerning South African Crew
   Several industry publications, including reporting referenced by Marine Industry News in connection with Superyacht Cape Town, have cited estimates suggesting that South African nationals may account for up to 30% of the global superyacht crew workforce. These figures are described as estimates rather than verified statistical totals, and should be treated accordingly. They reflect recurring industry perception rather than audited demographic data.

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3. Language as Structural Advantage
   English has become the operational language aboard most internationally active superyachts. This development is not ideological but practical. Charter operations, multinational guest groups, regulatory documentation and global mobility all favour English as the default working language.
   In practical terms, this reality creates an advantage for native or near-native English speakers during recruitment processes. Communication reliability under pressure is a legitimate operational concern for captains and management companies. When shortlisting candidates, recruiters frequently prioritise linguistic certainty.
   This structural factor does not require explicit discrimination to generate unequal outcomes. It operates as a functional filter.

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4. Visa Access and Passport Mobility
   Another documented mechanism influencing recruitment decisions is passport strength and visa flexibility. Interviews and analyses referenced in maritime academic work, including studies published via Theseus (Finnish maritime academic repository), highlight that owner preferences, visa requirements and ease of international travel can influence nationality selection.
   Crew members holding passports that allow smoother access to the United States, Schengen Area or Caribbean regions may be perceived as administratively less complex hires. In a fast-moving charter environment, operational efficiency frequently outweighs philosophical neutrality.
   This dynamic again reflects structural pragmatism rather than overt bias. However, its outcome can resemble nationality preference.

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5. Recruitment Agencies and Shortlisting Practices
   Modern superyacht recruitment is heavily agency-driven. Compared to the 1990s, when dock-walking and direct captain hiring were more common, today’s system relies on databases, CV filtering and curated shortlists.
   Industry platforms such as YPI CREW, cited via coverage in Yachting Pages, have openly acknowledged that qualified crew may occasionally be overlooked due to nationality-based preferences expressed by owners or management. The terminology used within the industry often refers to “owner preference,” “cultural fit,” or “communication standards.”
   These phrases are not inherently discriminatory. However, they can function as soft filters in candidate selection.
   The process is rarely malicious. It is often risk-averse.
   Captains and heads of department tend to hire from networks they trust. Once a national cluster establishes itself within a role segment, referrals frequently circulate within that same network. This network replication effect is observable across multiple nationalities, not exclusively among South Africans, Britons or Australians.

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6. The French Riviera Paradox
   A frequently raised question concerns the apparent underrepresentation of French yacht chefs in yachts based in Antibes, Nice or Monaco.
   Geographic location does not automatically determine crew nationality. Many yachts home-ported in Southern France are flagged elsewhere, owned by non-French principals and operated under English-speaking command structures. Job advertisements for Antibes-based roles frequently list fluent English as mandatory, with French described as beneficial but not essential.
   This does not demonstrate systematic exclusion of French professionals. However, it illustrates that local culinary heritage does not necessarily translate into hiring dominance.
   The Riviera is geographically French. Operationally, it is international.

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7. Then and Now: 1990 Compared to 2026
   In the 1990s, the industry was smaller, less standardised and less database-driven. Hiring often occurred through direct reputation, maritime background or personal introduction. Crews were smaller, and formalised recruitment agencies were less dominant.
   By 2026, the sector operates with:

• significantly larger vessels and crews
• increased charter turnover
• greater owner influence in hiring decisions
• formal recruitment databases and digital shortlisting
• globalised career mobility
  Professionalisation has improved efficiency, safety and service standards. At the same time, it has institutionalised filtering systems that were previously informal.
  Efficiency and homogeneity often travel together.

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8. Is There Evidence of Systematic Nationality Discrimination?
   There is no comprehensive dataset proving that a single nationality dominates or controls the industry. However, there is documented acknowledgement that nationality can influence hiring decisions in certain contexts, as reflected in recruiter commentary and survey findings.
   The distinction is important.
   Systemic mechanisms such as language dominance, visa convenience and network replication can produce patterns without requiring coordinated exclusion.
   The industry’s international identity remains genuine. Yet international does not necessarily mean proportionally representative.

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Conclusion
Between 1990 and 2026, the superyacht industry expanded dramatically in fleet size, crew demand and operational complexity. Surveys from ISWAN demonstrate a recurring visibility of British, South African and other English-speaking nationalities within crew populations, while industry commentary acknowledges that nationality can influence hiring outcomes in certain circumstances.
Structural factors—language, passports, owner preferences and agency-driven recruitment—collectively shape workforce composition. These mechanisms are practical, sometimes commercially justified, and rarely malicious. Nevertheless, they create observable patterns.
The industry prides itself on being global.
It is indeed global in geography.
Whether it is equally global in opportunity remains a question shaped less by intent and more by structure.
And in a sector built on precision, structure tends to matter.

#25/1091.

The Mystery of the Blacklist – A eulogy for Francis – and for everyone who didn’t fit the script.

by Chef Tom Voigt

R.I.P. Francis

In the belly of almost every boat, deep down in a dark bilge, hangs a board. Cracked by brackish seawater, reeking of rot. It sways with the rhythm of the waves, lost in the half-light, among crates, sour wine, and the luggage of crews long gone overboard, never found, never spoken of again. There it dangles: the Blacklist.
Yes, it exists. No myth, no rosy tale from Antibes. Real, rusty, indelible. And as true as McDonald’s food being crap, Francis’s name is on it.
Francis, born in the late sixties. Survivor of his own abortion attempt—his mother tried to get rid of him, no chance. A fighter before he was even human. His father did the rest, beating him through childhood. Until the day Francis turned sixteen. The old man raised his fist again, and Francis hit back. A dry hook, precise like his cooking would later be. Father on the floor, son packed his bag and disappeared.
He landed in a kitchen. In the eighties that meant hard school. A master took him in, a mentor who taught him that cooking was war, that knives weren’t just to be cleaned but sharpened, that timing ruled everything. Francis absorbed it. Twenty years in restaurants followed. Discipline, heat, sweat. Plates leaving the pass like clockwork. No gimmicks, no Instagram towers. Just craft. He loved it. The kitchen was home, ring, battlefield.
And still, something was missing.
In the early nineties he sat in his grandparents’ bar when an old captain with yellow fingers and rum breath spoke to him. “Crossing,” he said. Spain to Antigua. “Need a chef.” Francis barely knew what a crossing was, but he said yes. Weeks later he stood on a 60-meter yacht. VHS instead of Netflix. Dolphins instead of Instagram. Books instead of endless swipe chatter. Cooking, waves, sun. Silence. Freedom and calm, sea, fire, and his craft. Francis knew: this was his place.
Yachting in the nineties was different. People read books, real ones. Crew parties smelled of rum, not detox teas. Gluten-free? Nobody had heard of it. Vegan deckhands? Not even born yet. Instead of smoothie culture, there were real talks, real jokes, real fights. Francis fit in like the drum solo in In the Air Tonight.
He rose quickly. Owners loved him: charming, precise, flawless in front of guests. A butler in a chef’s jacket. Polyglot, five languages, a professional who shone in the cosmopolitan circus without ever begging for approval. Engineers respected him because he had no arrogance. Captains with balls tolerated him.
But the stews? A disaster. For Francis they were chickens. Two courses, a certificate in champagne pouring, and suddenly they thought they were queens of the seven seas. They knew nothing about gastronomy but carried themselves like monarchs. Francis called them backpackers in uniform. And he said it out loud—and laughed.
Too loud.
One day his name was on the blacklist. Not written, not stored. Carved into the belly of the industry. And there it stayed. But Francis didn’t care.
The truth: he was too old, too honest, too much of a pro. In a world that suddenly wanted selfies.
After 2000 the industry got washed out. Captains with smoothie cups. Crews who knew more about iPhone filters than sails. Influencers in uniform. All chasing followers, all dopamine junkies, all traveling the world like snobby tourists. Foreign languages? Cosmopolitan manners? Only left on the cocktail menu.
Francis shook his head and laughed. He was the hybrid analog artisan, and in his fifties already dismissed as a dinosaur. He mastered cooking, he could talk, he could stay silent. He could stand before an owner family like a butler, a gentleman, immaculate. But he couldn’t pretend a broken galley was a “small problem.” He couldn’t smile while the oven in a multimillion-dollar operation went cold.
And that was the problem. On yachts you weren’t allowed to be angry. You had to grin like a sheep. No matter if the kitchen was burning. Francis was no sheep. He was a wolf.
He exploded when the equipment failed. He cursed when the service was off. He laughed bitterly when the galley was patched together again like a bone after its third fracture. That earned him the stamp: Drama.
Drama means unfit. Drama means career over.
The irony: he was no drama. He was a pro. Twenty years in restaurants, discipline, precision. But professionalism in the yacht world is only welcome when it’s sugarcoated. Be too honest and you’re out.
And Francis was out.
Many say the blacklist is a myth. Bullshit. It exists. No paper, no registry. Just calls, whispers, emails. An invisible executioner.
Francis wasn’t alone. Whole generations vanished. Chefs, officers, deckhands. Pros with mortgages, families, children. And suddenly: silence. No calls. No jobs. House gone. Wife gone. Future gone.
The blacklist is a guillotine without blood. Quiet, but deadly.
And where there’s shadow, there’s light. The white list. A secret club of friends and pros, invisible. That’s where the survivors are. Not the best chefs, not the best people. Just the best players. The ones who know when to shut up, when to crawl.
Names on that list get the calls, the superyachts, the contracts. Those not on it can have ten thousand Instagram followers—still ends up cooking pasta on 20-meter wrecks.
Francis was never on the white list. He didn’t play. He lived.
After eighteen years it was over. No more calls. The blacklist had swallowed him. Francis moved north, back into restaurants. Plates instead of Instagram. Guests instead of followers. But the system had left its scars.
Cancer. A long, cruel death.
Francis wrote until the end. Cynical, sharp, merciless. His notes said:
– Yachting isn’t a career ladder. It’s an offshore service job.
– Anyone who thinks they’re climbing is only falling harder.
– After yachting, there’s rarely glory. Just debt, divorce papers, no pension.
He wrote about the pretenders. Stews with certificates and selfie filters who replaced the pros. Captains who needed detox. Crews who collected milk varieties instead of experience.
Francis saw it all coming. He still laughed. But he knew: the blacklist is real.
He wasn’t a victim. He was a symbol. For everyone too honest, too old, too real. For the pros pushed out because the industry would rather book young plastic with Instagram profiles than seasoned craftsmen with gray hair.
The blacklist doesn’t erase names. It makes them immortal. Francis still hangs there, rusty, indelible. A warning. A monument, in some bilge, in the belly of a yacht.
And while up on deck the would-be queens with certificates and follower counts sip their champagne, the truth hangs below, in the dark.

Yachting Culture #25/1060.

SUPERYACHT ENGINEERS – PART II

The Girls in the Grey: Not your stew. Not your fantasy. Just your last line of defence.

By Chef Tom Voigt

Some guests mistake them for a junior stew…

“Oh how sweet, she’s helping clean the engine room!”

No darling.

She is the engineer.

She’s not helping.

She’s fixing the thing that keeps your rosé cold and your toilet flushing at 3am.

Let’s be clear:

She didn’t fall into engineering because she likes overalls.

She’s here because she’s good.

And because someone needs to crawl through the bilge like a mouse in the shadows to save your sorry weekend from becoming a rescue op.

They call her a unicorn.

They mean it as a compliment.

But really?

She’s more like a Phoenix—

Rising from the ashes of burnt wiring and broken fuel pumps—

Only to show up two hours later in a dress and heels that make the deckhands forget their own names.

She wears high heels that whisper “boardroom” but stomp like “bilge pump.”

Slight hint of diesel.

Heavy notes of don’t even try me.

She disappears like Batman into the underworld of the yacht—

Silent, unseen, deep into the steaming guts of steel, wires, and diesel.

No one noticed…

And then,

She strolls back to our table—flawless, in a dress like a weapon.

Winks without a word and orders a bloody steak.

She sips a very dry martini.

As if nothing had happened.

And maybe nothing had.

Just a minor leak.

Or the beginning of the end.

By day, she’s as precise and versatile as a Navy SEAL, a Swiss Army knife.

When night falls, she’s pure Marly Delina.

Yes, she drinks.

Yes, she swears.

Yes, she can strip a watermaker faster than you can Google “why is my engine smoking.”

She can tell a lie from a pump by ear.

She knows the generators better than her ex.

And she will, without a doubt, drink you under the table on a Tuesday—

Then fix the stabilisers on Wednesday while you nurse your ego and a hangover.

She doesn’t post selfies from the engine room.

Not because she couldn’t.

But because she doesn’t have time for your vanity metrics.

She’s busy keeping the boat alive.

And no, she doesn’t need a hashtag for that.

At crew dinner, she arrives late.

Not because she’s slow.

But because she was still inside a fan belt when you were choosing your shirt.

And when she walks in, smelling faintly of hand soap and heaven—

Everyone goes silent.

Deckhands suddenly find their manners.

Stews take notes.

The captain adjusts his posture.

She doesn’t demand attention.

She is attention.

She is not your dream girl.

She is your emergency contact.

She’s not one of the boys.

She’s not one of the girls.

She’s one of the gods.

And while you wonder how her lipstick stayed on during a coolant flush,

She’s already down in the bilge again—

Saving your trip,

Your pride,

And your engines.

Because real engineering doesn’t care about gender.

But it’s about time yachting started to.

#Yachtgasm

#TheGirlInTheGrey

#DieselAndHighHeels

#SuperyachtPhoenix

#NoEngineerNoYacht

#TorqueMeTender

#GoddessOfTheBilge

#SheKnowsWhatThatNoiseWas

Yachting Culture #25/1059.

Superyacht Engineer – ain´t ghost in the bilge, but god of the boat

by Chef Tom Voigt

Some guests on a luxury yacht will always say to the chef:
“Ah, here she/he is – the most important person on the boat.”

Oh, right. The guests on a superyacht see the chef as the absolute pinnacle of their luxurious existence. Because clearly, in a world of multi-million-dollar floating palaces, surrounded by 360-degree ocean views, heli decks, jet skis, mirrored ceilings and seven crew per toothbrush…
It’s the guy (or girl) doing the foie gras reduction that’s holding the ship together.

Because obviously, without the chef, they’d starve.
In a floating fridge with ten kinds of caviar and a freezer packed like Fort Knox.

True words.
But wait a minute.

Let’s talk about the guy no one talks about.

Somewhere below deck, past the polite smiles and perfumed cabins, there’s a man.
You won’t see him at the welcome drinks.
He’s not on the beach.
He’s not part of the white-polo-and-Ray-Ban department.

No tan. No shine.
Just oil under the nails and the face of someone who’s crawled inside a fuel filter because no one else would.

They call him the engineer.
Most rookies call him “the weird guy downstairs.”
To the rest, he’s just the one who makes sure this floating palace doesn’t turn into a floating blackout.

Some say he sleeps too much.
Some say he’s basically a ghost, living like a banished mechanic in the bowels of the yacht.
And some green deckhand is always making jokes about “the guy on the sofa.”

Yeah. That guy.
The one who hasn’t slept in three days because the shore power shorted in Naples and the battery charger caught fire.
The one who’s replaced a raw water impeller mid-storm while the captain was on TikTok.
The one who knows the sound of every pump – and when they’re lying.

The truth is:
He’s invisible until something breaks.
And then he’s suddenly the most important person on board.
More important than the chef.
More important than the captain.
More important than whoever brought the champagne.

You think this yacht runs on sunshine and Instagram likes?
Try skipping a day without him.

No engineer = no toilets.
No engineer = no aircon.
No engineer = no cold rosé in Porto Cervo.
No engineer = you stuck at anchor, staring at a dead dashboard while the guests ask why the jacuzzi’s cold.

And yes – sometimes he naps.
Because he works 20 hours a day.
Because he hasn’t had a proper shower in a week.
Because he just climbed inside a generator exhaust duct to fix something that should’ve been replaced 5 years ago.

The sofa he sleeps on?
It’s not a bed.
It’s a battlefield.
And it smells like diesel, despair, and quiet competence.

You want to know how I know all this?

Because in my 15+ years of yachting, working with over 98% of the engineers on board was not just functional – it was the best part of it.
Real friendship. Real respect.
Still is.
Still proud of every engine room laugh, emergency repair, and deadpan joke at 4am.

Because if there’s one crew member who really keeps it all going,
one who doesn’t just look like a legend but actually is one…

…it’s that strange, invisible man downstairs.
The engineer.

#Yachtgasm #TheManBelow #DieselOverDrama #SuperyachtEngineer #GhostOfTheEngineRoom #NoEngineerNoYacht #YachtRealityUnfiltered