Yacht Workers Council (YWC) announced a new professional registry designed to give yacht crew one verified record of their identity, certifications, sea service, and career history. Yacht Workers Council was founded by Capt. James Battey, who is looking to bring the fragmented elements of a crew career into one secure, crew-controlled profile.
A YWC profile stays with the crewmember as they move between yachts, employers, and recruitment agencies, with certifications being verified through Crewdentials. Sea service is recorded through Digital Sea Service while employment history and professional references are retained as part of a long-term career rather than repeatedly rebuilt.
“Yachting prides itself on excellence and high performance, but the infrastructure behind a crew member’s career has never really caught up,” Battey said. “Crew still move between yachts carrying certificates, sea service records, references and employment history across different systems, inboxes and pieces of paper. YWC brings that together into one professional record that belongs to the crew member and that they control. For crew, it means building a verified career rather than continually starting again. For captains, managers and employers, it means being able to understand who they are considering far more quickly and clearly.”
YWC officially launched during the Monaco Yacht Show. The company’s ambition is to create a trusted professional registry that stays with a crewmembers throughout their career and reduces the industry’s reliance on scattered documentation, repeated registration, and informal word of mouth.
“We are not trying to replace the records that already exist,” Battey said. “We are connecting them. Yacht Workers Council is the infrastructure layer that has been missing, and our aim is very simple: to leave this industry better than we found it.”
