Yacht Skipper: Career On Water
So you are in love with the waters and just want to spend the majority of your days navigating ships, boats, or yachts. But it is too bad since gone are the days when being a pirate is considered to be cool even though it is an illegal profession and the only thing that could be your best option to live and work on the waters is through becoming a yacht skipper.
The cruising business and the nautical industry have been booming especially now that cruising on your vacation via a luxury yacht or ship is considered to be a lifestyle. And with this, automatically, every cruise ship or yacht needs their own yacht skipper.
Becoming A Yacht Skipper
There are many institutions that give out the right training for anyone who aspires to be a yacht skipper. One of the most popular schools is the Maritime Professional Training that is located in Fort Lauderdale in Florida and they have a ten-day yacht skipper training that is ideal for ship or yacht owners or operators, mates, and deckhands. Their subjects include a five days off shore training and they are basic navigation, tidal calculations, internal and inland rules of the road, coastal pilotage, meteorology, anchoring and mooring, docking and undocking, buoyage systems, safety, voyage and passage planning, general ships knowledge, and seamanship.
These five days off shore trainings are conducted on board on one of the Maritime Professional Training’s own yacht for each student to have a hands-on experience during the whole course. They also do have written exams at the end of the shore based theory segment of the program. For more information regarding the Maritime Professional Training, schedules are available on their website at www.mptusa.com.
About The Career
So you are now determined to become a yacht skipper, right? Well, you need to know that you need to be certified first and you will need to have a license even the mates, the engineers, and other crew members of the yacht or the ship and the license should be recognized by the Flag State of the vessel. Also, for non-Americans, you will need to have a visa waiver that is only good for ninety days at a time for you to work on a cruise ship. And if you are on the look out to be hired by the big cruise companies, the best time to apply is before and during the winter time where most of the big cruise ships are starting to sail across the world, mostly in the Caribbean, Grenada, St. Barths to name a few.