Mid-Atlantic, the yacht laptop that holds the crew files, the APA tracker and six months of scanned receipts stops booting. The captain asks the obvious question: where is the backup? If the honest answer is that you are not sure, you have just discovered that you were not running an administration, you were running a single point of failure.
The system stack
| Layer | Typical tools |
|---|---|
| Yacht management / maintenance | Planned maintenance, defects, certificates, crew records, ISM documents |
| Accounting | The ledger, coding, reconciliation, reporting, often mirrored ashore |
| Payroll | Run by the yacht, the manager or a crew employment company |
| Crew and certificate tracking | Expiry alerts, training matrices |
| Documents and filing | Cloud storage with permissions and version history |
| Communications | Email, and a defined channel for confidential matters |
Fit the system to the yacht and the office. The best system is the one the office already uses, because it removes a reconciliation between two versions of the truth.
Digital filing that survives you
- One structure, written down. Year, then category, then month, then document. Publish it.
- One naming convention. For example: 2026-05-14_Supplier_Invoice_12345_EUR4200.pdf. Dates lead so files sort themselves.
- No personal accounts. Yacht records live in the yacht system, not in a crew member private cloud or personal WhatsApp.
- Version control. One live version. Superseded documents are archived, not left to confuse the next inspection.
Backups
Apply the 3-2-1 principle: three copies, on two different media, one of them offsite. Offsite means genuinely off the yacht — the office, or a cloud service that syncs when there is bandwidth. Test a restore, not just a backup: an untested backup is a rumour. Watch for connectivity gaps: many yacht systems only sync in port, which means an at-sea failure can cost days of work.
Data protection
The purser holds passports, medicals, bank details, next-of-kin and guest health data. In many jurisdictions health data is special category personal data and attracts stricter rules; the GDPR and equivalent regimes may apply depending on where the crew are, where the data is processed and how the yacht structure is set up.
- Collect only what is needed, keep it only as long as needed.
- Restrict access. Crew files are not readable by the crew mess laptop.
- Encrypt laptops and phones that hold crew or guest data, and lock screens.
- Do not circulate passport scans in group chats. It is the most common breach onboard.
- Report suspected data breaches to the management company immediately; some regimes have very short reporting deadlines.
Onboard Notes
- Access dies with the person who holds the password. Keep credentials in a managed password vault the captain and the office can reach.
- Confidential does not mean hidden. The captain must always be able to access yacht records.
- This is not legal advice on data protection. Which regime applies is a question for the management company and its advisers.