Yacht Owners Speak Up at U.S. Superyacht Association Summit

Craig Jackson and Chris Stacey, both yacht owners, spoke about crew, their experience as owners, and more during the 2025 U.S. Superyacht Association (USSA) Summit on March 18. Moderated by Graeme Lord of Professional Yacht Crew, the panel hosted Jackson, chairman and CEO of Barrett-Jackson, and Stacey, founder of Rock the Ocean.

One of the first topics of the discussion was the level of regulation that Jackson expected when looking for a yacht. Comparing the regulation levels to jets, yachts are much less regulated, even less than cars, Jackson said.

“I’m like, ‘How do I know if this thing hasn’t sunk?’” Jackson said. “There’s no registry, we don’t know anything by VIN number, it comes from a foreign country, [and] you don’t know anything about it.”

While surveys are usually the answer to his questions, Jackson said inspections happen in the aviation world too, but that doesn’t stop them from keeping logs of everything. Jackson was surprised by a captain on board a yacht he looked at that kept all the original records and documents on everything that has been serviced.

“That’s like an airplane, I like the way you manage the boat,” Jackson said.

Jackson also mentioned that the captain he spoke to has been working on board for a long time, leading Lord to mention the topic of crew retention and rotation. Jackson has had trouble keeping a captain due to his goal of traveling around the world, saying world travel is not something all crew want. Meanwhile, Stacey doesn’t see his yacht having rotation on board, but not because he doesn’t like the concept.

“I want to have a boat that I can captain as well, so I would probably rotate with the captain and myself,” Stacey said.

The conversation then went to the topic of insurance. Lord asked different audience members that work in insurance what they see clients do wrong most often, with a lack of knowledge of insurance being the answer from one member of the audience. Another audience member says insurance is not your friend and clients need to know the conditions, limitations, and what’s excluded. Finally, one audience member shared his secret on the best insurance out there — good fenders.