LITTORALICIOUS- The 2026 base-pay map by vessel size and private-vs-charter — what the salary guides quote, and what chefs actually report.
- Every line of the package priced, so you can read a “low” salary that is really worth more — plus tips, ranked for what they truly add.
- The workload map (how hard guests-aboard really hits), the job ranked by what grinds you down, and a worksheet to build your own honest number.
A yacht chef's “salary” is the most misquoted number in the industry. The figure on the contract is rarely the figure in your bank, and two chefs on the same 45-metre can sit €4,000 a month apart for reasons that have nothing to do with talent. This is the honest map: what the number is, what stacks on top of it, what the job actually demands in return, and how to work out what yours should be.
Your real pay is three stacked numbers — base + package + tips — and the size of each is set more by the boat than by your CV. Vessel size, private or charter, solo or with a team, and how hard the itinerary runs will move your number further than another five years of experience. Read the boat before you read the offer.
What the boat pays — base salary, 2026
Base salary scales with one thing above all: length. Here is the current market, drawn from the 2026 crew salary guides, in the monthly figures contracts actually use. Read the top of each band as experienced, in demand, on a busy charter boat; the bottom as first season in the role.
| Vessel | Role | Monthly base | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 40m | Sole chef | €4,000–7,000 | €60k–84k |
| 40–60m | Sole / head chef | €6,500–9,500 | €78k–108k |
| 60–80m | Head chef | €7,000–14,000 | €96k–135k |
| 80m+ / mega | Head / exec chef | €9,000–18,000+ | €120k–200k+ |
US dollars roughly track euros at this level. Freelance day-work is a separate market: €200–400/day for relief and crossings, $350/day cook-stew, and $750–1,000/day for a New York period on a 70m+.
Sous chef & crew chef — the rest of the brigade
On a boat big enough to carry a galley team (roughly 45m and up), two more roles have their own bands — and everyone should know what theirs is worth. A sous chef works under the head (sections, mise, covering the pass) and earns about two-thirds of the head-chef number for the same boat. A crew chef cooks for the crew to a hearty, good standard, and is paid for that, not for guest fine dining. Below ~45m there is usually just a sole chef doing all of it.
| Role | 45–60m | 60–80m | 80m+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sous chef | €4,500–7,000 | €5,500–9,000 | €7,000–11,000 |
| Crew chef | €3,800–5,500 | €4,200–6,500 | €4,500–7,000 |
A sous on charter shares the tip pool (about €1,500–3,000/week); a crew chef a smaller share again. The interactive Pay Check tool runs all four roles — sole, head, sous, crew.
“Eight grand on a fifty-metre is almost insulting if you have been at this a while.” — and, the same week: “ten a month, that is the same rate it was twenty-five years ago.”
The guide numbers are the ceiling, not the floor. Across five months of real job ads the working offers sat below the guide mid-points often enough to feed a constant grievance — that pay has “not moved since 2017 while every other position on board went up 50%”. Two things are true at once: the guide bands are real and reachable on the right boat, and the lowball in your inbox is also real. Holding both is your leverage.
The package, priced — why a low salary can pay more
Base is one of three numbers. The package — everything the owner pays so that you do not — routinely adds 20–30% to the value of the job, and none of it shows on the salary line. Price it before you compare two offers.
| Package line | What it is worth | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Private cabin + all food | €1,500–3,000/mo saved | You bank almost all of base — no rent, no food shop. A shared cabin should show up as higher pay |
| Medical insurance | €1,500–3,000/yr | Private crew cover; check repatriation and dental |
| Flights | €2,000–6,000/yr | Joining, leaving and leave flights (crew travel runs €30–60k/yr fleet-wide) |
| Paid leave | 30–60+ days/yr | Every day of unpaid leave you would otherwise take is a day's pay lost |
| 13th month / bonus | up to +8% | Common on private programmes — never assume, get it in writing |
| Training budget | €500–2,000/yr | STCW renewals, ENG1, courses — ask who pays |
| Comms / phone | €20–80/mo | SIM or allowance on the better boats |
| Uniform + laundry | €300–600/yr | Provided; small, but real money you do not spend |
| Rotation (60m+) | equal time off | 2:2 / 10:10 — the standard on bigger boats; worth a lower headline for the life back |
| Repatriation cover | included | Flight home if you are sick, injured or paid off — an MLC right; confirm it is funded |
| Notice & severance | stated both ways | The contract should say what you owe, and what you are owed, if it ends |
| Pay terms | on time, set currency | A fixed pay day, currency named, gross/net spelled out — late or vague pay is a red flag |
The rule of thumb: multiply base by 1.2–1.3 to get true annual comp. A €5,500/month job with flights, full medical, 45 days' leave and a 13th month beats a €6,500 job with none of it. Compare the package, not the headline.
The third number — tips
Tips exist only on charter, and they rewrite the maths.
- The convention: 15–20% of the charter base rate, paid by guests at the end of each week, split across the whole crew (the MYBA charter standard).
- A chef's share commonly lands €2,000–5,000+ per charter week.
- Over a season a full Med run (~20 charter weeks) can add ~€40,000; a Caribbean-then-Med back-to-back pushes total comp past €100,000–150,000 on an active boat.
But tips are not salary. They are held to season's end on many boats (an informal crew poll ran roughly 54 “paid per charter” to 1 “end of season”), paid in cash weeks late, and they vanish in a quiet season or a yard period. Bank the base. Treat tips as upside, never the plan.
What the money buys — the workload map
The same title is two different jobs depending on whether guests are aboard. Off-charter you cook crew meals and prep; the moment guests step on, the day roughly doubles. The honest intensity map:
| Mode | Cover / day | Hours | Intensity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yard / refit | crew only (6–20) | 8–10 | ★☆☆☆☆ |
| Cruising, no guests | crew (6–20) | 10–12 | ★★☆☆☆ |
| Owner aboard | crew + family + standards | 13–15 | ★★★★☆ |
| Charter week | crew + up to 12 guests, 3–5 services | 15–18 | ★★★★★ |
| Crossing / passage | crew, batch-cooked to sea state | 12–14 | ★★★★☆ |
Guests aboard means rolling breakfast to order (not a sitting), mid-morning something, a plated lunch, canapés, a multi-course dinner — crew meals threaded around all of it — plus the dietary sheet, the last-minute beach picnic and “we have invited eight more for dinner.” Fifteen to eighteen-hour days, often ten to fourteen straight with no full day off. The game is stamina as much as skill.
Run the hourly and the glamour falls away. A €9,000/month sole chef on a charter run — 30 days, 15-hour days — is about €20 an hour before tips. The headline looks large; the hourly is why burnout is the industry's defining problem, and why rotation has become the prize chefs chase harder than a raise.
The job, ranked by what actually grinds you down
Not every hour weighs the same. Ranked by what chefs themselves name as the hardest part — which is what you are really paid for:
| # | The demand | Why it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sustained hours, no real day off | The single biggest driver of burnout and turnover — the reason boats “can't keep a chef” |
| 2 | The solo load | Sole chef cooking guest and crew, every service, with no one to cover a sick day |
| 3 | Dietary complexity | Allergies, vegan, GLP-1 appetites and “preferences” that are really dislikes — all at once, all different |
| 4 | Provisioning under pressure | Sourcing to a standard in remote ports, to budget, on the boat's schedule |
| 5 | Standard on a moving platform | Fine-dining plates in swell, a tiny galley, and equipment that fails mid-charter |
| 6 | Guest unpredictability | Itinerary changes, head-counts that double in an hour, midnight requests |
| 7 | Living where you work | No commute home, the same nine faces, galley-pass politics with the interior |
You are paid for the hours and the pressure as much as the cooking. The boats that pay top-of-band are not the ones with the fanciest menus — they are the ones that ask for the most weeks, the most covers and the highest standard with the least relief.
What moves your number, up and down
Start from the base band for the vessel size, then adjust. These are the levers that explain why two chefs on identical boats earn thousands apart.
| Factor | Effect | Rough impact |
|---|---|---|
| 5+ years on this size of vessel | Adds | +€500–1,500/mo — the reference that lets you ask top-of-band |
| Each size band up (~10m) | Adds | +€1,000–2,500/mo per band |
| Charter vs private | Shifts | Private base 15–25% higher; charter total higher via tips |
| Solo, no sous (sole charge) | Adds | +€500–1,500 over a teamed kitchen of the same size — you carry it all |
| Running a brigade (sous / crew chef under you) | Adds | Head-chef-of-a-team pay on 60m+ — leadership, not just cooking |
| Rotation (2:2, 10:10) | Cuts headline | Often a slightly lower monthly for half the year worked — a pay cut you buy your life back with |
| Dual role (chef/stew, chef/deck) | Small boats only | A sole-chef reality on smaller vessels — two jobs, one salary; €3,500–4,500 hybrids are underpaid. Not a head-chef role: on a 60m+ a head chef should never be doubling as stew or deck |
| Hard itinerary (long season, remote, world cruise) | Adds | The busiest, most demanding programmes pay up to keep chefs |
| Michelin / strong fine-dining CV | Adds | Opens the top band and exec roles — worth most on a charter show-boat |
| Tickets (Ship's Cook, STCW, ENG1, Food Safety L3) | Gatekeeper | Rarely a raise — but missing them caps you out of the better boats |
| Visa / passport (B1/B2, EU rights) | Gatekeeper | Not pay, but it decides which boats — and which seasons — you can take at all |
Build your honest number — the worksheet
Put it together. This is the back-of-an-envelope every chef should run before accepting an offer, or countering one.
| Step | Do this |
|---|---|
| 1 · Base | Take the band for the vessel size from the map above |
| 2 · Place | Bottom (first season), middle (proven), or top (in demand, busy charter boat, strong references) |
| 3 · Modify | Apply the levers — solo +, team-lead +, dual role −, rotation − headline, hard itinerary + |
| 4 · Package | Add 20–30% for flights, medical, leave and 13th month; mark down any offer missing them |
| 5 · Tips | Charter only — add as upside, banked separately, never counted as base |
| 6 · Hourly | Divide by realistic days and hours; if it falls below what the demand justifies, that is your line |
Walk in with the band, the modifiers and the package priced, and you negotiate from data, not hope. The chefs who land top-of-band are not the best cooks — they are the ones who can say exactly what the boat is asking of them, and what that is worth.
What to negotiate — and how to defend your position
You have the band and the package. Here is how to use them at the table — and exactly what to say when a line is missing from the offer or the payslip.
| If the offer… | Ask for, or say |
|---|---|
| sits below your band | Name the 2026 standard for your role and size; ask for the floor now, or a dated three-month review with a number attached — in writing |
| has a shared cabin | Ask for a single, or an accommodation bump to offset it |
| has no rotation on a 60m+ | Trade for a higher base or extra leave, and a written rotation-after-a-year clause |
| is vague on tips | Get “X% of the charter fee, paid per charter” into the contract — not “discretionary, end of season” |
| has no 13th month (private) | Ask for a season-completion or loyalty bonus instead |
| drops flights, medical or training | Each is a line you can add or convert to an allowance — price it from the package table and put it back |
| loads on a second role or creeping duties | Agree the exact scope in writing; a real second department is a premium, not a freebie |
Three rules hold it together: lead with the band, not a feeling; get every promise into the contract (verbal is nothing, “we'll sort it later” is nothing); and agree the scope line so the job can't quietly grow past the pay. Defend the package as hard as the number — it is a fifth of your real income.
Stop doing the arithmetic by hand. The interactive Pay Check tool takes your vessel size and pay and returns your standard band, a plain verdict (underpaid / at market / above), and a printable cahier des charges — exactly what the job should, and should not, ask of you for that price. Open Pay Check →
If you remember one thing
The boat sets the number more than your CV does — so read the boat first: its size, whether it charters, whether you are solo, and how hard it runs. Then stack the three numbers honestly: base from the map, package at plus-a-fifth, tips as upside only. Quote yourself in those terms and you stop being lowballed. From the dock.
- 2026 superyacht crew salary guides — Foreland Marine, Yotspot, YPI CREW, Lighthouse Careers, Yachtly Crew (base bands by vessel size and role).
- MYBA charter agreement — gratuity convention (15–20% of charter fee, split across crew).
- Maritime Labour Convention 2006 — leave, repatriation and contract minimums.
- UK Seafarers' Earnings Deduction (HMRC) — the tax position behind “tax-free” sea pay.
- Anonymised superyacht chef-group job listings and pay discussions, 2026 (the working-floor reality and the rotation/tips debate).
What did your last contract pay — and has the number moved in your years aboard?
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