There is no single document called the superyacht safety checklist. What a large yacht actually keeps is a set of recurring checks whose contents come from three places at once: the international conventions, the yacht code its flag applies, and the vessel's own safety management system. This article sets out what that set usually contains, what changes the list, and what separates a check that satisfies an inspector from one that does not.
What decides the size of your list
Two thresholds do most of the work.
24 metres. A commercially operated yacht of 24m and over in load line length registered with a Red Ensign Group flag falls under the REG Yacht Code Part A, which came into force in 2019 and replaced the Large Commercial Yacht Code, LY3, that many crew still refer to by name. Part B of the same code is the Passenger Yacht Code, for yachts carrying more than twelve passengers. Other major yacht registries — Malta, the Marshall Islands and others — publish their own commercial yacht codes, which broadly mirror the same structure, so the shape of the list travels even though the document on your bridge may have a different cover.
500 gross tons. At 500 GT and above, the full weight of the international conventions lands: SOLAS, the ISM Code, the ISPS Code and the MLC apply as they would to any commercial ship. That is the point at which the checklist set stops being a flag-code matter and starts being a convention matter, and it is the single biggest step change in what the vessel has to run and record.
Below those thresholds, plenty of yachts run the same checks voluntarily, because charter clients, insurers and management companies increasingly expect the evidence whether or not a convention compels it.
The checks, by how often they come round
Most of a yacht's safety checklist set sorts by interval rather than by department, because that is how the regulations are written and how the mate plans the week:
- Daily and per-passage: pre-departure and pre-arrival bridge checks, engine room rounds, tender and toy checks before use, gangway and security rounds in port.
- Weekly: the life-saving appliance and fire-fighting equipment round, the general emergency alarm test, engines run on the rescue boat and lifeboats. These are set out in detail in LSA and FFE checklists.
- Monthly: the full life-saving appliance inspection against the checklist the vessel is required to hold, plus the monthly drill programme and its records.
- Quarterly and annual: servicing intervals that belong to third parties — liferaft and EPIRB servicing, fire extinguisher inspection, immersion suit testing — where the yacht's own check is confirming that a certificate is in date rather than doing the work.
- Before class, flag and Port State Control attendance: the pre-survey sweep that confirms the records for everything above actually exist and are signed.
How it divides by department
On board, the same set gets handed out by department, which is why one master list rarely survives contact with a real crew:
- Deck: LSA, mooring and anchoring, tenders and watersports, gangway and passerelle, security rounds, bridge equipment.
- Engineering: engine room rounds, fixed fire-fighting systems, bilge and fuel systems, emergency generator and steering gear tests, planned maintenance.
- Interior: cabin and galley safety, food safety and temperature records, guest safety briefings and their acknowledgements.
- Whole-vessel: drills and musters, crew familiarisation for joiners, hours of rest, and the ISPS security regime.
The practical consequence is that a checklist system has to let each head of department own their own checks without the captain losing sight of whether they were done.
What makes a completed check count as evidence
A surveyor is not testing whether the crew are careful. They are testing whether the safety management system is being followed and whether it can be shown. A check counts as evidence when it carries:
- A named person who completed it, and the senior officer who supervised where the regulation requires supervision
- A real timestamp, close enough to the event that the interval can be verified rather than asserted
- The actual answers, including the ones that were not satisfactory — a sheet with no failures on it all year invites more questions than one with failures that were closed out
- What happened next for anything that failed: who owned it, what was done, when it was signed off
That last point is the one that most often separates a well-run yacht from a well-intentioned one. The ISM Code's maintenance and inspection requirements are explicit that identifying a defect creates an obligation to act on it, and the audit trail is what demonstrates the obligation was met.
Running the set in one place
The Muster App holds the recurring checks as checklists built in the admin and completed by the crew on their own phones in the space being checked, or on the iPad. Items can be marked pass, N/A or fail, carry a note, a photograph, a reading against an acceptable range or a signature, and the ones that matter are flagged critical so a critical failure is named in the notification the moment the check is submitted.
Anything that fails becomes a Worklist item carrying the check it came from, with an owner and a due date, so the follow-up is tracked rather than remembered. Submitted checks are listed newest first with the crew member and rank who completed each one, and export to PDF a check per page for a survey folder. The same vessel keeps its drills and muster records, its ISPS visitor log and its hours of rest alongside them, which is usually the point: the evidence an inspection asks for is spread across all four.
What to read next
LSA and FFE checklists covers the weekly and monthly equipment rounds in detail. SOLAS and ISM drill requirements covers the drill programme that sits beside them.