Terms of service

1. Who we are, and your agreement

yachtmuster.net (the “service”) is operated by YachtMuster, a company established in Latvia. Registered company details are available on request at crew@yachtmuster.net.

By creating an account or using the service you agree to these terms and to our privacy policy. If you don't agree, please don't use the service.

2. Who may use YachtMuster

You must be at least 16 and able to enter a binding contract. You must give accurate details, keep your password secure, and you are responsible for all activity on your account. One account per person; employer accounts must be created by someone authorised to act for that company or vessel.

3. What we are — and are not

YachtMuster is a platform that lets crew and employers find one another. We are not an employer, a crew agency, a manning agent, a recruiter, or a party to any contract, engagement or transaction between users. We introduce nothing and place no one; we host listings and let people contact each other.

In particular, we do not and cannot:

• verify that a vessel, company, position, qualification, certificate or reference is genuine, current or accurate;
• guarantee that you will be hired, that a role will be filled, or that any listing is still open;
• supervise, participate in or take responsibility for any interview, contract, voyage, payment, wage, working condition or dispute arising between users;
• guarantee the conduct of any user, whether online or in person.

Any dealing you enter with another user is entirely at your own risk and is a matter solely between you and them. Do your own due diligence: verify the vessel and the employer, never pay anyone to be given a job, and treat any request to move money or documents off-platform as a warning sign.

4. Crew obligations

• Your profile, CV, sea time and certificates must be truthful, current and your own.
• Do not upload documents you have altered or that belong to someone else.
• Only apply to positions you are genuinely available and qualified for.
• You are responsible for holding the visas, tickets and medical fitness any role actually requires.

5. Employer obligations

• Post only genuine vacancies, with accurate salary, rotation and vessel details.
• Never charge crew a fee to apply for, or be placed in, a position advertised here.
• Use candidate data solely to assess that person for the role and handle it in line with data protection law — once you receive it, you are an independent controller of that data and responsible for your own compliance.
• Comply with all applicable employment, immigration and maritime law, including the Maritime Labour Convention where it applies. Compliance is yours, not ours.

6. Community rules

The forum, reviews and marketplace exist for the benefit of crew. You must not:

• Post job adverts or job-wanted posts in the forum — those belong on the job board. Posts that read like vacancies are automatically held for a moderator.
• Post content that is unlawful, harassing, hateful, defamatory or obscene.
• Impersonate anyone, or misrepresent your rank or experience.
• Publish another person's private information, or content you have no right to share.
• Scrape the site, or use bots to collect crew or employer data.
• Spam, or advertise without buying a placement.

Reviews must describe your own genuine experience and be capable of being substantiated. Anonymous reviews remain attributable to your account internally, and the subject of a review has a right of reply. We may edit, hide or remove any content and suspend or close any account, at our discretion and without liability to you.

7. Your content

You keep ownership of everything you upload, and you alone are responsible for it — including its accuracy, legality, and any consequence of publishing it. You confirm you have the right to post it. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store and display that content for the purpose of operating and promoting the service. Deleting content or your account ends that licence, apart from copies we must keep by law or that other users have already legitimately received.

8. Content from other users and third parties

Listings, profiles, reviews, forum posts, marketplace items and messages are created by users, not by us. We do not pre-screen or endorse them and we accept no responsibility or liability for user content or for any reliance you place on it. We host such content as an intermediary service provider and do not monitor it generally.

If you believe content is unlawful or breaches these terms, tell us via the report function or the contact form and we will review it and act where appropriate. The service may also link to third-party sites we do not control and are not responsible for.

9. Payments, refunds and your right of withdrawal

• Paid plans, job adverts, marketplace listings and advertising are charged at the rates published on the site. Prices exclude VAT unless stated; VAT is added where applicable.
• Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled. Cancel at any time from your billing page; access continues to the end of the paid period.
• Consumers in the EU have a statutory right to withdraw from a distance contract within 14 days. Where you ask us to start the service immediately and acknowledge that you lose that right once it is fully performed, the right ends accordingly. Nothing here limits your statutory rights.
• We additionally offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on paid advertising and employer memberships — ask and we'll refund you.
• Card payments are processed by our payment provider; we never handle your card details.

10. Advertising

Advertising placements are subject to availability and to our approval. We may decline or remove any advert that is misleading, unlawful or unsuitable for our audience — in particular anything charging crew for employment. Advertisers are solely responsible for their artwork, claims and regulatory compliance, and we give no guarantee of impressions, clicks, responses or results.

11. The service is provided “as is”

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, timely, error-free or secure, that defects will be corrected, or that any content, match score or salary figure is accurate, complete or current. Salary data and match scores are indicative guidance only, never advice or a quotation. We may change, suspend or discontinue any feature at any time.

12. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for:

• any loss of profit, earnings, wages, opportunity, contract, business, goodwill, reputation or data;
• any indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss;
• anything arising from your dealings with another user — including any employment, engagement, contract, voyage, transaction or dispute;
• the conduct, content, acts or omissions of any user or third party;
• interruption, downtime, data loss, or unauthorised access not caused by our own failure to take appropriate security measures.

Our total aggregate liability to you for all claims in any twelve-month period is limited to the amount you actually paid us in that period, or EUR 100 if you paid us nothing.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded — including liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for intentional misconduct or gross negligence, or under our obligations as a data controller. If you are a consumer, your mandatory statutory rights under Latvian and EU consumer law are unaffected by these terms.

13. Your indemnity to us

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless against any claim, demand, loss, liability, fine or reasonable cost (including legal fees) brought by a third party and arising out of your content, your use of the service, your breach of these terms or of any law, or any dispute between you and another user. This does not apply to a consumer beyond what applicable consumer law permits.

14. Force majeure

We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control — including internet or hosting failure, outage at a supplier, cyber-attack, power failure, natural event, epidemic, war, sanctions, strike or act of a public authority.

15. Suspension and termination

You may close your account at any time from Privacy & my data. We may suspend or terminate an account that breaches these terms or creates risk for other users, without liability to you. Fees already paid are non-refundable where an account is closed for a breach. Sections that by their nature should survive termination — content licence, disclaimers, liability, indemnity — do so.

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms and will revise the date above. Where changes are material we will tell you in the app or by email. Continuing to use the service after a change means you accept it; if you don't, close your account.

17. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Latvia, and the courts of Latvia have jurisdiction over any dispute. If you are a consumer resident in another EU country, you keep the protection of the mandatory laws of your country of residence and may bring proceedings there.

Consumers may also use the European Commission's online dispute resolution platform, or in Latvia the Consumer Rights Protection Centre (Patērētāju tiesību aizsardzības centrs, ptac.gov.lv). We prefer to sort things out directly, so please contact us first.

If any provision of these terms is found invalid or unenforceable, the rest remains in force and the invalid part is replaced by a valid one that comes closest to its intent.

18. Contact

crew@yachtmuster.net or the contact form.

See also our privacy policy.