To respond to Steamer’s witty post, it was a Cayman-flagged Feadship. And the requirement of “adequate crew” came directly from the COI. The reality of the situation was that the manning requirement specifics was more likely to be determined by the insurance company than the flag state. Also, Steamer, there is no nonsense in this post. When I left the boat in 2006 after the boat sold, the only holdover was the deckhand who was promoted to first mate. The second mate and deckhand were also new. And, other than the captain, nobody had a license. I got off after the Atlantic crossing that December. The captain stood watch with the chief stew, I stood watch with the chef and the unlicensed second mate stood watch with the deckhand.
When I had been onboard the mega-yacht is was pretty professional Under the old owner, the captain required the two mates to have a 200 GT/500 ITC license with Radar, ARPA and GMDSS. These were the captain’s requirements - not the requirement of the COI. Perhaps the rules Cayman Island class rules have been tightened up since them. And maybe one now needs more than 55 days of sea time to be a 200-ton RYA captain.
Also I am posting this in chronological order.
Also, the purpose of this thread is to share a perspective (eventually) about licensing and the Coast Guard And to do that I need to provide my background to show where my perceptions come from. I make no judgement here about sail boats versus power boats, commercial versus private, MCA versus Coast Guard.
As far as boats I have been on, I picked each boat because I thought it was a good learning opportunity.
More later.