When people think of superyacht chief stewardess tips, they picture flower arrangements and turndowns – not shipyard chaos.

But honestly? Yard periods are where you learn the most.

They’re loud, dusty, and full of contractors needing something yesterday.

You might be doing a shipyard period for a few weeks, for the winter season, or perhaps a full refit, which could be months and months.

Some of this stuff might normally sit with a Purser, Captain or with the Chief Stew, but I wanted to throw it all in here anyway, because depending on your setup, it might land on your plate.

If you’re heading into your first yard period, here are the things I would have loved to have known before my first one, as you don’t know what you don’t know. I hope this helps! 😅

🛏️ Crew Accommodation & Logistics

Where are the crew staying during your shipyard period? On the boat or ashore? For how long?

If ashore – who’s organising accommodations? Apartments or hotels? How far are they, and how will everyone get to work? Do you need cars, and what do you need to put into people’s apartments? (Think basics like salt, pepper, washing detergent, bin liners, rags, extra cleaning items, tea, coffee, milk, water etc).

Are there cleaners or will you need to send stews to clean any apartments?

For example, the Captain’s apartment weekly. 🧽

Is there a vacuum/ washing machine already there, or do you need to take anything? If they need to drive, can it be combined with people driving to get provisions?

👉 Moving crew on and off the boat:

• When crew move ashore at the start of the yard, what’s the plan? Does everyone move on the same day, or will you stagger it? 🚗
• Think about luggage space in cars – crew travel with A LOT more stuff than you expect. 🤦🏻‍♀️
• When moving back onboard, same questions – plan it like a mini-military operation so it doesn’t descend into chaos.

👉 Leave changes:

• What happens when people come and go from leave?
• Are apartments being swapped between crew? If so, do you need to liaise with the hotel/ apartment reception about check-ins and check-outs?
• Do they need passport copies in advance? Will you need to organise cleaners or a quick turnover between crew?
• Who will drop their uniform off at the apartment?

👷 Contractor Access & Yard Security

If you have contractors coming, are they regulars in the yard or do you need to organise to get them entry? Usually, this means getting their passports/IDs and letting the yard know. ✨

Make sure you also know which contractors are onboard and doing what. And can they even get onboard that day? For example, if you’re doing sea trials or the boat is going back in the water, are they still allowed on, or do you need to reschedule their work? 🧏🏻‍♀️

🪚 Interior Work & Scheduling

These were some of the hardest parts of superyacht shipyard survival for Chief Stews, because interior work always overlaps with other departments.

Are you having work done in the interior? Which areas? Are other departments having work done in your areas?

E.g. AVIT doing something with the internet and need all the deckheads down? Or are engineers doing maintenance work?

Do you have a project manager and do you need to make them aware of anything and make sure timings are all good?

For example, if you’re having the bridge floor runners altered, how long will they be taken away for? Do you need to organise for temporary floor protection to be put down during that time?

If so, you need to organise for them to come onboard and measure it and account for how long that’ll take.

I.e. you don’t want your floor runners taken away and then it be a couple of days until you can get the temporary protection down! 📏

👉 Protection details:

• Are the beds covered? 🛏️
• Is all the guest furniture covered? 🛋️
• Do you need to buy any couch/ furniture covers? (Amazon has some brilliant stretchy generic ones if you don’t already have or aren’t allowed to buy proper fitted ones). 🌸
• Do you need 10,000 drop towels from IKEA? They’re lifesavers for leaning deckheads against walls or taking TVs down + literally everything else. You’ll need more than you think! 🛒
• Is major work going on in areas with lots of contractors? Do you need to HEAVILY protect walls/floors with hard plastic sheets, or will your normal runners and covers be fine? 🚧
• Which areas will contractors walk through? Make sure they aren’t using the guest interior as a general shortcut if there’s a crew way they can use instead. Do you need to put up any “no entry” signs up or lock any doors or dayheads so they don’t get used? 🚷

👉 Needing help from other departments:

Do you need help from deck or engineers to take down deckheads? Or lights? Or to move heavy items? Make sure you coordinate with them well in advance, because they’re also slammed and can’t just drop everything to help you. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Pro tip: buy a box of cheap white service gloves for anyone (deck/engineers) handling interior panels – it stops grubby fingerprints and saves you hours of cleaning later. ✨

👉 Deckheads specifically:

• Are they being taken down? Who’s doing it? 🔧
• Are they already labelled (hopefully they are!) Do they need to be labelled? If so, how will they be labelled? Make sure it’s discreet and removable.
• Do not let anyone get creative with Sharpies or tape in the wrong place. I once worked on a boat where someone, years before, had labelled the main salon deckhead panels with their locations IN PEN ON THE FRONT. 🫣 And as budget is a thing, it never got fixed.
• Or the time someone labelled floor runners on the underside with blue tape and pen, and the ink transferred straight onto the wooden floor. Nightmare. 🤷🏻‍♀️

🚗 Crew Cars

You will 100% get some fines through – speeding, parking, accidentally driving in a bus lane… it happens. 💸

The key is having a system. How will you track who’s using the car and when? Will you keep a physical sign-in/sign-out sheet in the car for crew to fill in (and then scan once full)? Or will you make a WhatsApp group where people message to say they’re booking/using it so it’s live?

Either way, you need a booking system so you can look back and see who used it when – and most importantly, who the fines belong to. 🌸

And don’t forget the car itself – who’s cleaning it, and when? Is deck taking care of the outside while interior do the inside? Agree it early so it doesn’t fall through the cracks.

Delegate, Seriously 💖

You will have about 100,000 things on your to-do list in a yard period. If you try to do them all yourself, you’ll be exhausted – especially if you’re covering both Chief Stew and Purser duties like I did.

Delegate wherever you can.

For example, I never used or went in the crew car, so I assigned the crew car sign-in sheet to one of the girls. She had to keep an eye on it, print new pages as needed, swap out the pages when they were full, and scan them for me. Done. She just let me know if she needed anything or if there were any issues, and I could deal with it.

People actually like having extra responsibility, and it frees up your brain for the bigger picture.

🧺 Laundry, Showers & Toilets

Is there a period when you won’t have access to the laundry onboard? What will you do instead? Is there laundry ashore you can use? How much does this cost? Or do crew have washing machines in their apartments? 🧺

Or is there a period where crew showers/toilets will be unavailable? What’s the plan during that time? 🤷🏻‍♀️

🍽️ Crew Mess

Will the crew mess be out of action at any point? If so, what’s the plan? 💖

Do you need to set up a shoreside crew mess? This might mean hiring a container and kitting it out with coffee machines, tables, chairs, fridges, microwaves, etc. Where will you source these from? Will you take things from the boat temporarily, or buy/rent cheap ones locally?

Don’t underestimate this one – a crew with nowhere to eat, make coffee, or just flop for 20 minutes will be a mutiny waiting to happen.

🍳 Food & Galley

Will any of your contractors be eating onboard? If yes, let the galley know in advance how many and for how long so they can plan properly. Nothing annoys a chef faster than surprise extra mouths to feed. 🍴

Where are the galley cooking during the yard? Are they still onboard, in a shoreside crew mess, or somewhere else? If you’re using a shoreside mess, do you need to schedule time for the interior to take food over each day?

Or are you skipping onboard meals entirely and eating out (cafes, yard restaurants, catering)? Decide early so everyone knows what’s happening.

🎄 Holidays in the Yard

Christmas, New Year (and Thanksgiving!) don’t just “happen” in the yard – you need a plan. 🎄

Where will you all go? Cook onboard together or head ashore? If you’re going out – book in advance. Restaurants close or fill up, crew numbers change last minute, and you don’t want to be the one scrambling for a table for 20 on Christmas Eve. 💖 Do you need to buy wrapping paper, decorations, and all the festive bits? 🎁

If you’re staying in – who’s doing what on Christmas Day? Dinner doesn’t clear itself – everyone needs to take turns helping with tidying, washing up, and supporting the galley. It can’t just fall on the watchkeeper or chef. 🫶🏼

(Speaking of gifts, check out these gifts the girlies actually want here.)

🏋🏻‍♀️ Crew Welfare

Is there a crew welfare budget? Will it cover gym passes? Or crew meals/ activities? Honestly, these things make a huge difference when morale is circling the drain because the whole boat smells like paint. 💨

Organise crew nights out, Friday pizza, or even just buy half-decent coffee for the mess. Little things help people not lose their minds. 🫶🏼

👕 Uniform

What uniform are crew wearing during yard? Do you need to order any shipyard-specific uniform? Think hoodies, dock shoes, trainers you don’t mind replacing, or shipyard pants. Better to sacrifice cheap gear than ruin your good whites. 💖

🧽 Supplies & Inventories

What supplies will spike during yard? (Coffee, bin liners, cleaning rags, PPE, etc). Order them before the chaos starts. 📝

Also – photograph everything. Before the work starts, before anything gets removed, before anyone argues. And if the yard don’t do something properly or good enough, tell them! Don’t wait until it’s too late to fix. 📸

📢 Speak To People

The biggest mistake in a yard period? Thinking a WhatsApp group is enough. It isn’t. You need to actually talk to people.

Speak to your project manager, contractors, and other HODs regularly so everyone knows what’s happening. Ideally, you’ll have a proper schedule plus a printed calendar in the crew mess showing what’s happening on which day, across all departments. That way no one is surprised when the laundry gets ripped out for three days or the engineers shut off the toilets.

Have regular yard meetings and actually go to them, regular HOD catch ups, and quick daily check-ins if you need them. WhatsApp groups are great for updates, but the real secret is communication in person. 🗣️

🌸 Don’t Forget You

It’s easy to let the yard consume your entire life — early starts, late finishes, and a to-do list that somehow breeds overnight. But seriously, don’t forget you still exist outside the chaos.

Go to the gym. Go for a walk. Sit in the sun with a coffee that isn’t in a takeaway cup.
Shipyards can feel like time warps — you blink and three weeks have gone by — so make sure you’re doing at least one thing a day that’s for you.

Even if it’s just a 20-minute stretch, journalling, or a quiet coffee before everyone else gets onboard. You’ll handle everything better when you’re not running on fumes.

💀 Final Thoughts

A yard period will test your patience, your organisational skills, and your ability to not scream when someone undoes weeks of effort in 30 seconds.

Case in point: you’ve just had all the chipped corner wall panels on the crew staircase beautifully rewrapped… and the very next day, someone carries your brand-new ironing board down and bangs it into every single one. Oh, and leaves a massive dent in one for good measure. 🫠 You will be KICKING yourself for not immediately getting them protected.

That’s yard life.

But if you plan ahead, think about the knock-on effects of every job, and actually say something when things aren’t done right, you’ll survive it – and come out with way more confidence (and stories) for the next one. 🌸💖✨

💕 Quick Yard Survival Checklist 💕

• 🛏️ Crew accommodation sorted (apartments, cleaners, move-in/move-out plans, leave swaps).
• 👷 Contractor passes organised (know who’s onboard, when, and if they can access during sea trials/launch).
• 🪚 Interior protected (beds, furniture, floors, drop towels from IKEA, contractors not cutting through guest areas).
• 🤦🏻‍♀️ Deckhead plan in place (labelled properly, handled with gloves, no Sharpies or dodgy tape).
• 🚗 Crew car system set up (sign-in/out sheet or WhatsApp group, fines traceable).
• 🧺 Laundry/showers planned (backups ashore if systems are offline).
• 🍽️ Crew mess alternatives (container with coffee, tables, chairs).
• 🍳 Galley/food plan clear (who’s cooking where, contractors eating onboard or not).
• 🎄 Holiday prep done (booked restaurants or onboard plan, wrapping paper, crew rota for tidying/clearing).
• 🏋️ Crew welfare covered (gym passes, pizza nights, good coffee).
• 👕 Shipyard uniform sorted (hoodies, dock shoes, trainers).
• 🧽 Supplies topped up (coffee, rags, bin liners, PPE).
• 📸 Photos taken before works start (protect yourself from disputes).
• 📢 Communication clear (daily meetings, WhatsApp groups, whiteboards).
• 💀 Patience stocked up (because someone will destroy something brand new).

You’ve got this! x

P.S If you’re at that “should I stay or should I go?” stage in yachting, this is my story of leaving (and coming back) or needing some self care, check out 9 Amazon Faves That Will Fix Your Hair, Your Feet & Your Life a Bit✨

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