Get down on your knees in the guest cabin and look at the room from ninety centimetres. Now you can see it: the blind cord looped at throat height, the socket beside the bed, the drawer that will slide open and shut on small fingers in any swell, and the heavy watertight door that will close with several hundred kilos of force. A superyacht is a beautiful machine that was never designed for children.
Hazards and controls
| Hazard | Control |
|---|---|
| Stairs and companionways | Gate if possible; hand held, one child at a time, never carried down while carrying anything else |
| Sliding and watertight doors | Never let a child operate them. Hands and fingers - watertight doors can crush. Latch open or closed |
| Rails and gaps | Check every gap a body or head fits through; mesh or netting where allowed; never let a child climb a rail |
| Hot surfaces | Galley, exhausts, funnel, deck in the sun, jacuzzi heater. Test deck with your own hand before bare feet |
| Galley | Chefs domain, and out of bounds unless the chef invites and supervises. Knives, hot pans, boiling liquids in a moving vessel |
| Laundry and chemicals | Locked. Detergents, bleach, solvents, pool chemicals - poisoning risk. Never decanted into drink bottles |
| Crew mess, engine room, machinery spaces, bridge, tender garage | No-go zones. No exceptions, not even a quick look |
| Swell and motion | Everything not secured becomes a projectile. Children fall in a beam sea |
Childproofing the cabin and nursery
- Cot safety: a proper travel cot or ships cot with a sea rail, firm flat mattress, no pillows, bumpers, toys or loose bedding for infants. Infants sleep on their back, in their own sleep space.
- Bed rails for toddlers, and consider a mattress on the sole for a very restless child in a seaway.
- Secure furniture and everything else: lamps, drawers, TVs, mirrors, suitcases. Latch drawers and lockers.
- Choking hazards: small parts, batteries - button batteries are a medical emergency if swallowed - coins, magnets, grapes, nuts. Sweep the sole daily.
- Blind and curtain cords: tie up, cleat off, or remove. Strangulation risk.
- Plug sockets: covers where fitted. Note that voltages and socket types vary on board.
- Balcony doors, hatches and portholes: locked, and the key not where a child can reach it.
Onboard Notes
Do a childproofing walk with the chief stew or bosun before the family boards, and write down what you cannot fix. Then agree the rule that replaces it: if a hazard cannot be engineered out, it must be supervised out, and someone has to be named as the person doing the supervising.
Preparatory study only. These lessons are not a childcare qualification and are not first aid training. Caring for children at sea requires a recognised childcare qualification and a current, practically assessed paediatric first aid certificate from an approved provider.