It is week eleven of back-to-back charters. The chief stew is running on four hours a night, three coffees before breakfast and a bottle of wine after the guests go down. Everybody on the boat is doing some version of this. That is exactly the problem: when a whole crew is coping badly, nobody looks unusual.
Fatigue is the multiplier
Chronic sleep deprivation is not a side issue in yachting. It is the ground everything else stands on. Persistent short sleep degrades mood, patience, judgement and memory — the four things a struggling person needs most. It also makes ordinary difficulty feel unbearable, and it makes recovery from anything harder.
Practically, this means two things:
- When you are worried about someone, ask about sleep. It is the least threatening question in the whole conversation and it opens the door.
- A rested crew is not a luxury. Rest hours are a wellbeing intervention that happens to also be a legal obligation.
The alcohol question
Alcohol is the default decompression on most boats. It is social, available, cheap, culturally expected, and it works — for about four hours. Then it disrupts sleep, worsens low mood the following day, and quietly becomes the only tool someone has.
You are not the drinking police. But it is worth knowing what a shift looks like:
- Drinking alone, or in the cabin, rather than with people.
- Drinking to stop feeling something, rather than to enjoy an evening.
- Needing it to sleep, or to face a charter.
- Defensiveness when anyone mentions it.
- It is bleeding into work: lateness, hangovers on charter, near misses.
The same applies to any other substance. The concern is not moral. It is that a coping tool has become a second problem stacked on top of the first.
Other quiet coping
- Overworking. Never stopping, never taking leave, first up and last down. Praised onboard, which is precisely why it hides so well.
- Isolation. Cabin, headphones, phone. Looks like introversion, and sometimes is.
- Control. Rigid routines around food, exercise or cleaning, tightening when everything else feels uncontrollable.
None of these are proof of anything. They are worth noticing when they are new, escalating, or beginning to cost the person something.
What you do with this
Nothing clever. You notice, and you ask an ordinary question at an ordinary moment: "You have been having a rough one — how are you actually sleeping?" You do not diagnose it, you do not confront it, and you do not lecture. If it involves alcohol or substances affecting safety-critical work, that is not just a welfare issue any more and it needs to go up the chain.
Onboard Notes
- Fatigue is the multiplier. Ask about sleep first — it is the easiest door to open.
- Alcohol is the default coping tool onboard, which is exactly what makes it easy to miss.
- Watch for coping that is new, escalating, or costing the person something.
- Substance use affecting safety-critical work must be escalated, not managed quietly between friends.
- Preparatory study only. Not a certificate and not clinical training. Recognise, listen, signpost, escalate - never diagnose, treat or counsel.