How a the right delivery skipper protects your yacht (and how to choose one)

Big firm or solo freelancer? Ben Lowings weighs the pros and cons of yacht delivery services to ensure your yacht stays in safe hands

Imagine you’ve just bought your dream yacht, but it’s floating thousands of miles away. Getting it delivered to its new berth often involves arranging taxes, registration and insurance, and possibly refitting. Hiring a delivery skipper can help you with all of these things, not just sailing it.

I was recently a delivery skipper for a new owner who needed a VAT-free bargain yacht in Finland sailed over to the Republic of Ireland, once a Jersey flag registration was obtained. There are well-trodden delivery paths, for example a thriving trade takes new or refitted Hallberg-Rassys from Ellos in Sweden to all points south, and Lagoon Catamarans out from their base in Bordeaux, France.

A newly-acquired yacht might not need anything retrofitted, but a delivery skipper will require some necessities for an ocean passage. The capacity of a yacht’s watermaker or solar power arrays will need to be assessed for ocean deliveries. A time-sensitive voyage may well tip the power equation heavily in favour of engine use, so delivery skippers will route in favour of refuelling stops and budget for both refilling tanks and adding fuel cans lashed on deck.

Who to use?

There are pros and cons to choosing an individual skipper or a yacht delivery company.  PYD (Professional Yacht Deliveries), one of the UK’s largest firms, has dozens of skippers on its books. Operations director Peter Kloezeman says that for a transatlantic crossing they’d allocate an experienced skipper who “will usually have completed the crossing several times.”

Falmouth-based firm Halcyon Yacht Delivery is another major UK operator. Managing director Peter Green acknowledges that one-man-band delivery outfits can be cheaper options, but cautions, “If the [freelancer] has to cancel the job you could be left in the lurch.”

He recalls one yacht that was stuck in Spain when its booked skipper failed to show up. “The big advantage of choosing an individual skipper is you know who will be delivering your boat,” says Mark Treacher, who leads his own delivery outfit. “You can check out their feedback,” he adds. “As well as their experience in the waters you need your boat moved in.”

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Treacher asserts that working with an individual can help develop a connection between a vessel’s owner and a delivery skipper. An owner, he says, “can feel more assured that [their] boat will be in safe hands if [they] know exactly who is delivering the boat.”

I asked Treacher what would happen on a delivery should the skipper become incapacitated for whatever reason? “Most skippers I know have a network of skipper’s friends they can call upon,” he explains. “As delivery skippers are generally freelance it would be possible to find [one] you could trust to complete the job.

“It’s often the case that a delivery skipper not attached to a company will develop a very small team of crew who work together very often… it’s common that the first mate is both qualified and experienced to complete the delivery,” he says, adding that is how he operates. By contrast skippers working for big companies may take on different crews for each trip, with varying levels of experience.

Ocean knowledge

Logistically, transferring a larger vessel across an ocean is far more challenging than, say, hopping a 30-footer down the Channel. There’s more money at stake, and as delivery skipper Rollo Goodman notes: “If anything goes wrong then the repercussions are much higher. It calls for a certain professionalism and operational knowledge.”

Checking in and out with Customs, according to a specific flag registry, always requires up-to-the-minute intel. In the immediate aftermath of Brexit, my contacts in Brittany and good French helped smooth many deliveries.

As a delivery skipper, I’m confident about the Dover Strait – the world’s busiest waterway. But I’d be clueless about the world’s second busiest waterway, so don’t hire me to pilot the Strait of Malacca. But when it comes to big boat deliveries, the required ‘local knowledge’ can cover a vast area.

Eddie O’Malley, who runs Captain O’Malley Deliveries across the Indian Ocean, has world-class expertise on everything from the best pilots in the Suez Canal, to reefs in the Red Sea, to no-go areas like Eritrea and Yemen, as well as experience of weather patterns and paper charts that lack crucial details.

Team leader Rollo Goodman, whose outfit Ethos Captains is a flexible and highly reputable service, spoke to me while taking a 54ft yacht from Mallorca to Preveza. He said this trip was a good example of the complexities of the job.  Liftout slots in Greece for the yacht had needed to coincide with estimated times of arrival.

The delivery was delayed at first because Goodman arrived in Spain to discover the boat’s batteries were dead, so he initially had to spend the time in the marina recharging the batteries. Maintenance bookings need to be synchronised as much as possible with delivery schedules.

Goodman’s firm sets a different pay rate for maintenance and preparatory work. This reflects the fact that the demands for this work are different from the job of delivering a boat across an ocean.  While with a smaller yacht there might be a skipper and a single volunteer, for a longer ocean passage on a larger yacht the delivery skipper may recruit and be responsible for up to five paid crew, which brings its own complications.

“The balance is [on] not spending too much money but getting competent crew,” Goodman says. “You need leadership qualities to manage a team. You’ve got to be able to evaluate their skills when you hire them.” Flexibility in a delivery skipper’s schedule is vital, with many reasons such as weather windows or flight times for crew changeovers requiring a shift of plans.

A departure day may change as much as four times before a vessel finally slips her lines. A skipper’s experience will show through in making those decisions. “You’ve got to be able to think on the spot,” says Goodman. A big boat delivery skipper should not ‘wait to be told’.

What to have on board

Instruction manuals and full specification documents are most useful for brand new yachts – after all, no skipper can claim to have model-specific experience if the boat is fresh out of the yard. In addition to registration and VAT-paid documents, radio licenses and insurance for the passage, Mark Treacher says he insists on a letter of authorisation from the owner to confirm the appointment of the skipper.

Delivery skippers also require safety kit and spares. “A delivery should never be carried out without an in-date serviced liferaft applicable for the passage,” points out Treacher. “If the boat does not have one, they can be hired.” There is scope for misunderstanding, as I’ve discovered from my own experience.

For example, owners may tick the ‘autohelm’ box on an inventory, only for the skipper to discover their only backup is a disused tiller bar with corroded sockets. ‘Autohelm in good working condition’ would be a far better description on the checklist.

Making a plan

Rollo Goodman says having a plan for an ocean passage is not good enough: you’ve got to have five or six. For an autohelm, by way of example, Goodman will require a spare system with electronic parts that he would be able to install in its entirety while underway, or a hydrovane windvane gear with essential spare parts aboard.

Goodman goes through his plans meticulously. On one trip, he says: “We had plan A, Plan B, Plan C, Plan D… and we actually got down to D.” Preparing these plans involves carefully thought-out sequences in case of different scenarios. Making procedural lists of step-by-step actions also prevents any panic that might otherwise spread among the crew when the situation is changing rapidly.

An ocean delivery also requires the owner to spend more money on backup equipment. “It is wiser to go out and buy an extra satphone, than to not have it and suffer the consequence,” Goodman points out. But unlike a cruising passage, deliveries do come with an element of time pressure. “If you can’t sail at over five knots, then the engine comes on,” he adds.

Typically, for a delivery from the Caribbean to the UK, if there’s not a need to stop in the Azores, the delivery crew will usually ‘crack on’. Having said that, both skipper and owner do have to be reasonable. Taking a boat from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean, Goodman explains, “You will never not stop in Gibraltar.”

It’s an obvious pit-stop for all yacht crews. The pace is something to bear in mind if you’re considering going along. “Owners are welcome to join a delivery,” says PYD’s Pete Kloezeman, “although the delivery crew will routinely sail 24 hours a day with only brief stops as necessary.” Mark Treacher adds the skipper must ensure that if the owner does not have enough experience then other crewmembers are brought along as well.

A learning experience

Some delivery firms offer an RYA course to the owner if their delivery skipper is a qualified instructor, though balancing the need to complete a delivery to a certain time frame and the demands of training can be difficult. One good compromise is to recommend the owner joins the delivery at a later stage.

If it’s  an ocean crossing passage then that could be an island stopover. It’s also worth bearing in mind that weeks at sea may give you plenty of opportunity to practise with a sextant, but it’s no good for learning how to park in a tricky marina berth.

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