It is the end of a back-to-back charter month. The captain asks for the interior hours-of-rest records before a port state control inspection tomorrow. You have three stews, a season of long guest days, and a set of records that were filled in from memory last Sunday. This is exactly the situation the regulation exists to prevent.
What MLC 2006 is
The Maritime Labour Convention 2006 (MLC) is the international convention setting minimum standards for seafarer working and living conditions — employment agreements, wages, accommodation, food, medical care, and hours of work and rest. Interior crew are seafarers and are covered.
MLC is implemented through your flag state, and the detail — the exact limits, the permitted exceptions, the record format — comes from flag-state legislation and the yacht own policy, not from memory or from what the last boat did.
The principle you must hold
- Seafarers are entitled to regular periods of rest that are long enough, frequent enough and predictable enough to prevent fatigue.
- Rest may be split, but only within limits, and one of the periods must be a substantial unbroken block.
- Rest hours must be recorded, the record must be accurate, and the seafarer must see and sign it.
- Exceptions exist — for emergencies, drills, and by collective agreement — but they are defined, not improvised.
Do not work from remembered numbers. Check the current limits in your flag-state guidance and the yacht rest-hours policy, and ask the captain if the itinerary cannot be made to fit.
Who does what
| Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Individual crew member | Records their own hours honestly and signs |
| Chief stew(ess) / HoD | Builds rotas that can actually deliver compliant rest; checks the interior records |
| Captain | Overall responsibility for compliance and for the records held onboard |
| Flag state / port state control | Inspects records; non-compliance can detain the vessel |
Common interior failure modes
- Retrospective filling. Records written at the end of the month are guesses.
- Rest recorded, not taken. The stew was "off" but was on call, awake, and answering the guest bell.
- On-call time misrecorded. If a crew member is called out, the rest period has been interrupted and the record must show it.
- Turnaround days. A back-to-back charter changeover is the classic point where rest quietly disappears.
- Rotas that were never legal. If the plan required someone to work through, the record can only be honest or compliant, never both.
Onboard Notes
- Record daily, at the same time each day, and have crew sign. A record signed a month late is worth very little.
- Never falsify a record, and never ask anyone to. It is a serious matter for the crew member, the captain and the vessel, and it removes the only evidence protecting the crew.
- Fatigue is a safety issue, not a toughness issue. An exhausted stew carrying hot plates on a moving deck is a hazard.
- If guest demand makes compliant rest impossible, that is a conversation with the captain before the trip, not an entry problem afterwards.
- This lesson is independent study, awards nothing and is not legal advice. For anything binding, the flag-state instrument and the yacht safety-management system are the authority.