You are the deckhand, not the chef. But the chef is ashore provisioning, the guests want lunch on the beach, and you have been asked to carry the cool boxes, plate the salads and hand out the wraps. Ask yourself, honestly, whether you know what you are allowed to touch and what state your hands are in.
Who counts as a food handler
A food handler is anyone who handles food or surfaces likely to touch food. That is not just the chef. Onboard it includes:
- The chef and any galley assistant.
- Interior crew plating, garnishing, carrying, serving, clearing and washing up.
- Deck crew loading provisions, running beach picnics and manning the barbecue.
- Anyone making crew mess food, coffee, ice or baby bottles.
If you touch food, food equipment or food surfaces, the law and the yacht's system apply to you.
Your core duties
| Duty | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Protect food from contamination | Separate raw and ready-to-eat, cover food, control physical and chemical hazards |
| Maintain personal hygiene | Wash hands properly and often, clean protective clothing, no jewellery, hair covered |
| Report illness | Tell your supervisor before you start work, not after |
| Follow the system | Work to the yacht's documented procedures and complete the records honestly |
| Report problems | Broken fridge, missing probe, pest sighting, out-of-date stock - report it, do not work around it |
| Keep training current | Know what you do not know, and ask |
Illness and the exclusion rule
This is the duty most often broken onboard, because crew are proud and short-handed. The standard rule taught in catering is that a food handler with vomiting or diarrhoea must not handle food, and must remain excluded until 48 hours symptom-free without medication. You must also report infected wounds, skin infections, sores, discharge from the eyes, ears, nose or mouth, and any diagnosed food-borne infection.
You must report before starting work. A stew who works through a night of vomiting because the boss is watching a berth-change is not being tough; she is running an outbreak.
Honesty in records
Signing a temperature log you did not take is falsification. It is also the fastest way to destroy the yacht's legal defence, because the records are the evidence that the system was working. If you did not do it, do not sign it. If the reading was wrong, write the true reading and the corrective action you took - a corrective action recorded is a system working, not a failure confessed.
Where personal responsibility bites
Food safety offences can be brought against the individual, not only the company or the owner. "The chef told me to" is not a defence for serving food you knew to be unsafe. Equally, "I was busy" is not a defence for skipping a handwash. You have a duty of care to the people who eat what you touch - guests, and the crew you live with.
Onboard Notes
Yacht hierarchy makes speaking up hard: the chef outranks the junior stew, and the charter clock outranks everyone. Agree in advance, at the pre-charter briefing, who has the authority to stop food going out - normally the chef or chief stew - and make clear that any crew member can raise a concern without it becoming a personality issue. Write down illness reports in the crew log; the day the port health officer asks, memory is worth nothing and a dated entry is worth everything.
Scope note: xplor is not an approved centre or an accredited training provider. This lesson is preparatory study only - no certificate and no regulated qualification is awarded here, and the Level 2 food safety award must be sat and assessed with an approved centre of a regulated awarding organisation.