For a long time, sailing résumés were not required for anything other than working on boats or joining race crews. Recently, however, I’ve heard a fair amount of talk about sailing résumés becoming more prevalent, particularly that charter companies and insurance companies have wanted to see a summary of a client’s experience. Fortunately, this is not nearly as onerous as it sounds.
In both cases, summarizing your sailing experience is the primary objective. For insurance companies, much will depend on the kind and size of boat you’re trying to insure and where you intend to sail.
“Seeking a sailboat insurance policy isn’t that difficult,” GEICO’s Marine Insurance public relations office told me. “However, many boat insurance companies today want to see increasing levels of experience when it comes to insuring a large vessel. If you are trying to insure a large vessel as your very first boat, it’s possible that an insurance company will not want to underwrite that risk…GEICO does not require a customer to submit a formal sailing résumé—but they do want to see a progression of ever-larger vessel operation (when looking for insurance on a large sailboat, for example). GEICO does not have firm guidelines as boaters’ experience can vary, and they look at each application individually.”
GEICO’s advice to “start small; build your way up” is borne out by anecdotes across the sailing world. For example, a long-time marine surveyor from Massachusetts told me that, “There is a trend toward requiring more experience from the operators, or the use of a qualified captain during the early stage of [an insurance] policy. Usually, the insurers want experience in similar type and size vessels.”
Chartering is another area where summaries of experience are increasingly common. The Moorings has prospective sailors complete a short sailing résumé to help identify the destinations and yacht types and sizes that best fit their experience. Sunsail, Desolation Sound Yacht Charters, Horizon Yacht Charters, and many other companies are similar, all requiring a short summary of experience. Almost all charter companies provide a form you can fill out with this information.
This is mostly to provide you with the most enjoyable and safest experience; you probably won’t have much fun on your charter if the boat or the destination is beyond your current abilities. If all your experience is in dinghies, for example, bareboat chartering a 50-foot cat on your first charter might not be possible or prudent. However, The Moorings—like most companies—tries to help as much as possible, offering skippered charters or providing a skipper for the first day or so to familiarize less experienced sailors with their chartered boats.
While charter companies’ forms make the sailing résumé easy to fill out, it’s probably a good idea to go ahead and craft your own ahead of time. It can come in handy if you’re hoping to join a private boat as crew on a longer journey, for instance (paid or unpaid), since the skipper and owner will want to know as much as possible about your experience. Insurers are also unlikely to have a prefab template for you to fill out. So, keeping track of your experience and putting it together into an easily comprehensible résumé that you can continuously edit and present right away when asked is a wise bit of prep work.
I can think of essentially two approaches to a sailing résumé, and one is not necessarily better than the other. Those who hold U.S. Coast Guard master’s licenses, or who are working towards one, will present their experience in days. For the purposes of the USCG, a “day” is considered eight hours “in an assigned position in either the deck or engineering department of a vessel.” This is certainly the most comprehensive and measurable way to document one’s sea time and will give your résumé reader a very clear idea of your experience.
But most of us probably aren’t working toward a license that demands this much detail, so another approach is to focus on nautical miles sailed. For most recreational sailors this probably makes the most sense, especially if you are putting together a résumé for the first time after many years of voyaging.
Regardless of whether you write that you have 2,500 days on the water or have sailed 100,000 nautical miles, the important thing is to present your experience clearly. Your reader will want to know how much experience you have in the type of boat you will be operating, and in the waters where you’ll be sailing. So you’ll want to break down your experience into categories, or particular vessels if most of your experience is aboard just a few boats. Categories would consist of dinghies, small vessels, larger vessels (whether you express this by tonnage or length), catamarans, monohulls, power vessels, and sailing vessels.
It’s also a good idea to break down your sea time by type of experience and locations. For example, I present my experience sailing my former 34-foot ketch up the Eastern Seaboard separately from my experience crossing the Pacific aboard my current 40-foot sloop. Even though they are similar vessels, one voyage was coastal sailing and the other involved extensive bluewater passages.
Finally, it’s also helpful to break down your experience by your role on board: skipper, crew, watch captain, navigator, etc. And it’s a good idea to present recent experience—how many days or miles you’ve sailed in the last few months, the last year, and the last five years.
As to the form your résumé takes, the most important consideration is to make sure it’s easily understood. For some sailors this may take the form of a spreadsheet-type log, showing days (or miles) as captain, crew, etc.; days/miles in various types of vessels or individual boats; days/miles offshore versus coastal; days/miles in various locations or at various times of year; and days/miles in the most recent time periods. This method is similar to how aircraft pilots break down their experience and will make the most sense for those who have been logging their time consistently for a USCG license.
But, if you’re putting together a résumé for the first time after years of experience, it may make more sense to construct it much like a conventional job résumé, in reverse chronological order and highlighting the most relevant experience. My own sailing CV follows this “conventional résumé” approach; over the decades I’ve been sailing, I have not kept close track of each day I’ve spent at sea, but I do have a very accurate picture of the ocean miles I’ve sailed.
I begin my sailing CV with a bullet-point summary. Certain things should be included in this list, especially certifications and boating safety courses. These are important to insurers and charter companies. In fact, it’s impossible to skipper a charter yacht in some Mediterranean countries without certain certifications—RYA Skipper, ICC (International Certificate of Competence), US Sailing Basic Keelboat, etc.
In my own bullet-point summary, my total sea miles head the list and are followed by my major voyages, my sailing awards, and some statistics like number of ocean crossings and number of Arctic Circle and equator crossings. The remainder of my CV is in reverse chronological order, beginning with my most recent experience and working backwards through my major voyages. This also happens to organize my experience by vessel and allows me to expand on the locations I’ve sailed and any remarkable experiences I’ve had, such as the storm I encountered off the Cape of Good Hope. Because my ocean experience is much more extensive than my sailing before my bluewater voyages, I list my inshore racing, instructing, and tall ship coastal sail-training at the end of the CV under “Other Experience.”
Whatever your approach to constructing a sailing résumé, the most important thing is to convey clearly that you are qualified to operate the yacht you’d like to insure, crew aboard, or charter. The more experience you have on similar vessels, and in the waters where you plan to sail, the better. Experience of offshore sailing and challenging locations or circumstances is important to highlight as well. Even if you are planning to simply sail along the New England coast in summer, if you’ve sailed to Bermuda or offshore to Newfoundland, it’s likely the insurer will appreciate knowing that.
March 2025
