The short version: in Queensland you can legally drive any size of private motor yacht on a recreational licence, no Australian insurer publishes a length above which you must have a captain, and a competent couple can run a 60 to 70 ft boat themselves. The longer version is that the law is the easy part. What decides how much crew a yacht needs is how she is used, how she is kept, and what happens to everything her captain knows on the day he hands back the keys.
Key facts
- The licence — a Queensland recreational marine licence covers any engine over 4.5 kW, any length; the 12 m limit went in 2013
- Commercial or not — paid crew do not make her commercial; charter or hire does, and then AMSA rules apply
- Insurance — no published size threshold; policies exclude a skipper without “adequate skill and experience”
- The practical line — about 70 ft for an owner-operating couple; beyond 65 to 75 ft the upkeep is a full-time job
- Day crew — Gold Coast deckhand $400 a day; freelance captain $350 to $500; relief captain about $1,000 a day
- Full-time captain — $100,000 package on a 75 ft; about $113,000 employer cost before leave, flights and relief cover
Can I drive her myself?
Yes, legally. Queensland requires a marine licence to operate any boat with an engine over 4.5 kW and sets no vessel length or tonnage limit for private recreational use. The old rule that limited new licence holders to boats under 12 m was removed in January 2013. The licence is for life. If your licence is from another state you can boat here on it as long as it is current; once you move to Queensland you have three months to swap it. New South Wales runs the same way in reverse: a Queensland licence is good for three months of NSW boating, and a NSW general boat licence covers any length as long as the use is not commercial.
The line that matters is commercial use, and AMSA draws it clearly. A vessel used only for recreation is not a domestic commercial vessel, and AMSA specifically says that paying someone to operate or crew her, or paying an instructor to train you, does not change that. Chartering her, hiring her out, or taking money for a trip does. At that point she needs a certificate of survey, a certificate of operation and a certificated master: Coxswain Grade 1 for vessels under 12 m, Master under 24 m for most yachts in this range, Master under 45 m above that. The local pilotage rules only bite above 50 m, well beyond a 90-footer.
Worth knowing
Some Gold Coast pages still say boats over 12 m need an “advanced” licence endorsement. That is the pre-2013 rule. Maritime Safety Queensland’s own fact sheet is the source: any length, one licence.
What your insurer will actually ask
Every owner-operator question online ends with “your insurer will want a captain”, so it is worth reading what Australian policies say. None of them publish a length or a value above which a professional skipper is compulsory.
- Club Marine excludes any claim when the boat is under the control of an unlicensed person where a licence is required, or “a person without adequate experience to reasonably control that boat”. Its target market is an owner who “has a boat licence” and “adequate skill and experience to control the insured boat”. Paid skippers and crew in charge of your boat are not covered under your liability section; they need their own.
- Pantaenius excludes loss while the vessel is controlled by someone “who did not have the necessary experience and training to reasonably and safely control the vessel”, excludes charter unless cover is added, and lists single-handed sailing as an exclusion.
- Nautilus asks on the proposal form whether you are the normal skipper, how many years you have on cruisers, yachts and catamarans, full details of the usual skipper’s experience and claims, whether you have done a boating course, and what percentage of the boat’s value you spend on maintenance each year.
So the assessment is done at application, on your history. Where insurers get cautious is a large jump in size: a first boat at 70 ft, or a step from 45 to 75. The usual answer is not a permanent captain but a period of supervised handling, on your own boat, with someone who does it for a living. On the Gold Coast, the National Maritime College charges $405 for a three-hour session aboard your vessel and $135 an hour after that.
The honest limits
Owners who run their own boats say roughly the same thing across every forum and magazine. Around 70 ft is the largest boat a couple can manage comfortably as owner-operators. Pods, joystick docking, bow and stern thrusters, station-keeping, remote anchor controls and a set of headsets have pushed that number up a lot in fifteen years; a wireless docking remote for engines, thrusters and anchor costs $5,000 to $20,000 in Australia. Docking is the part that frightens people, and it is the part the technology has solved.
Upkeep is the part it has not. Yachting World’s view is that after 60 ft the time spent on upkeep starts to outweigh the enjoyment unless you live aboard. Owners on YachtForums put it more bluntly: a boat over 65 to 75 ft is a full-time job for one person to clean and maintain. A wash-down on a 70-footer is a couple of hours for two people, every week. The engine room, the systems checks, the trades, the paperwork and the yard are on top.
That is the real question. Not whether you are allowed to drive her, but who is going to do the other forty hours a week.
Four ways to run a yacht
| Model | Who drives | Who does the upkeep | What it costs, published |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner-operated, with management | You | A management company’s crew on a schedule; trades booked and supervised for you | Wash-down crew by the day or the visit; management fee per vessel |
| Owner-operated, day crew | You | A freelance deckhand on the days you need one | Gold Coast listing: $400 a day for a temporary deckhand; freelance deckhands and mates $150 to $500 a day |
| Part-time or relief captain | A freelance captain for passages, deliveries and the days you want one | You, or day crew, in between | Freelance captains $350 to $500 a day; a relief captain on a 32 m was advertised at about $1,000 a day plus flights |
| Full-time captain | The captain | The captain, plus crew on bigger boats | $100,000 package for a junior captain on a 75 ft; $10,000 to $14,000 a month including super on a 100 to 120 ft; about $113,000 employer cost on a $100,000 base after 12% super and WorkCover, before leave, flights, training and four weeks’ relief cover |
A full-time captain also comes with a five-and-a-half or six-day week, four weeks’ leave that someone has to cover, and a cabin. On a boat under 80 ft that is used some weekends and a few weeks a year, most owners find the first three rows cover it, and the money goes into the boat instead.
When the captain leaves
Here is the problem nobody writes about from the owner’s side. Industry turnover runs at 20 to 40% a year. A 2023 survey found 40% of captains planning to look for a new boat that year, and only 69% expecting to still be a captain in five years. Replacing a captain-level role is estimated to cost more than 200% of the salary once you count the search, the gap and the mistakes.
The expensive part is not the recruitment. It is what leaves with the person: the service history, the known faults and how they are worked around, which contractor to call and which to avoid, the passwords, the way she likes to be brought alongside in a north-easterly, the list of things that were “going to be fixed after the season”. One marine software company describes the new captain’s first month as “digital archaeology”: piecing the boat together from PDFs, spreadsheets and old emails. Another tells the story of an engineer retiring with twenty years of engine history in his head.
A proper handover helps. The checklists cover documents, certificates, safety gear status, open defects, logs, accounts, safe codes and passwords, and a five to ten day overlap with maintenance logs handed over in the first 48 hours. But a handover only works if there is something to hand over, and if the next captain leaves in two years you are doing it again.
The fix is structural: the record has to live with the boat, not with whoever is running her this season.
Where Marine HQ comes in
We are the layer that stays. Whether an owner runs the boat themselves, has a captain, or something in between, Marine HQ sits underneath as a support network for the vessel:
- A team on call. Crew for wash-downs, day work and turnarounds on a schedule or when needed, engineers and trades booked and supervised, someone on the hardstand at the yard.
- Relief and delivery skippers. When the captain is on leave, when the boat needs moving to Sydney or the Whitsundays, or when an owner wants a professional aboard for a passage.
- Support for the captain, not competition with them. A good captain gets a maintenance schedule already written, trades already vetted, quotes handled, and a second pair of hands for the jobs a crew of one cannot do alone.
- Continuity. When a captain leaves, the boat’s record, her schedule, her history and her contacts are all still there. The new captain starts from the boat, not from zero, and the owner does not lose a season.
MyYacht: the record that lives with the boat
MyYacht is the Marine HQ owner and crew app, and for a team it is the single place the boat’s life is kept.
- The worklist. Every job on the boat, standard maintenance and boat-specific, with a code, a due date and who it is assigned to. Crew see their own jobs; the owner sees all of them.
- Jobs, quotes and approvals. A request from the owner or a fault found by crew becomes a job, gets quoted, and is approved in the app before work starts. Photos and progress notes sit on the job.
- The maintenance schedule. Engine and generator services by hours, antifoul and haul-out by date, safety gear by expiry, so nothing depends on someone remembering.
- Hours and reporting. Crew clock on and off against a job, submit their day, and the hours flow to the job card. The owner sees what was done and what it cost.
- Documents and certificates. Registration, insurance, survey, the vessel dossier and the standard operating procedures, with expiry reminders.
- Where she is and what the weather is doing. Live position and the coastal forecast for wherever she is.
- Photos with notes. Crew and directors talk on one thread, the owner sees what is shared with them.
A captain who joins a Marine HQ boat opens the app and finds three years of history, the open defects, the trades, the schedule and the standard procedures. A captain who leaves takes nothing the boat needs.
Learning to run her yourself
If the plan is to drive her yourself, the Gold Coast is a good place to learn.
- Own-boat tuition. National Maritime College, based on the Gold Coast, runs three-hour sessions aboard your vessel for $405, with extra hours at $135. Southern Cross Yachting and Paradigm Training at The Boat Works offer own-boat and powerboat courses on enquiry.
- A commercial ticket, even if you never charter. Coxswain Grade 1 at TAFE Queensland’s Coomera campus is four weeks, $4,645 full fee or $1,665 subsidised, and covers seamanship, navigation and engineering to a standard most owners never otherwise reach. Sea School at Burleigh and Paradigm at Coomera run the same ticket.
- A stepping-stone boat. The forum advice, repeated by brokers, is to learn on a 40 to 55 ft boat before stepping to 70. Insurers like it too.
What we do
Marine HQ supports owners at every point on this spectrum on the Gold Coast: crew by the day or on a schedule, relief and delivery skippers, a maintenance and trades team behind whoever is at the helm, and MyYacht holding the boat’s record so that no departure resets it. If you are weighing up a captain, a bigger boat, or running her yourself, call 0439 748 387 or email yachtsupport@marinehq.com.au and we will talk it through with the numbers in front of us.