Frequently asked questions
From booking modes and skipper verification to crew documents, payments and route changes — find the practical details here.
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Malaka is a marketplace for sailing holidays and professional skippers. You can either book a complete hosted sailing experience, or find only a skipper for a yacht you already have.
Both sides of the marketplace use the same trust layer — skipper profiles, verification status and reviews — so you compare people, not just prices.
You are booking a sailing experience, not only a yacht. The yacht is part of it — but so are the route, the skipper and the way the week is run.
A hosted booking on Malaka is structured in three layers:
An Experience is the sailing holiday concept — the reusable idea behind the trip. It holds the route, the itinerary, the style of sailing, the highlights and the general trip information.
The same Experience can run many times across a season. That's why the Experience page describes the trip, and the Departure page tells you about one specific week.
A Departure is the exact dated instance of an Experience: specific dates, the specific yacht, the specific skipper, the availability and the price for that week.
When you compare two weeks of the same trip, you are comparing Departures.
A Booking is your confirmed reservation — either for a specific Departure, or for a skipper offer you have accepted. It carries the payment record, the terms that applied at confirmation, and the link into the trip organisation area.
You browse Experiences, open the one you like, choose a dated Departure, and book it in the mode that suits you — whole yacht, a cabin, or a single berth where the Departure offers it.
Once the booking is confirmed, the trip moves into the Holiday Hub, where crew, documents, payments and meeting details are organised.
No — many hosted trips are suitable for people who have never sailed. The yacht is operated by the skipper, so you are a guest first.
Because trips differ, the expected sailing level is stated on the Experience and on the Departure. Some trips are relaxed and coastal; others involve longer passages and earlier starts. Read that line before booking, and ask if anything is unclear.
The assigned skipper. They are responsible for navigation and for the safe operation of the yacht throughout the trip.
On many trips, yes — guests who want to take the helm, trim a sail or learn the basics usually can, subject to the skipper's guidance and the conditions on the day.
It is equally fine to do none of it. Tell the skipper what you're after at the start of the week.
Week-long trips are common on the marketplace, but the actual duration is set by each Experience and its Departures. Shorter and longer trips exist. The exact dates are always shown on the Departure before you book.
On a hosted trip the published route is part of the Experience — it is what the other guests booked too.
If you book the whole yacht, there is more room to discuss preferences with the skipper. Even then, the skipper may adapt the route for operational or safety reasons.
You reserve the entire yacht for that Departure, for your own group. Nobody outside your group joins the trip.
The person who books becomes the Group Leader and invites the rest of the crew afterwards.
You reserve one cabin on a shared departure. The cabin is yours; the rest of the yacht is shared with the other guests and the skipper.
It suits couples and pairs of friends who want their own space without booking a whole yacht.
You reserve one place on a shared sailing departure. It is the usual way to join a trip solo and meet the rest of the crew on board.
The Departure page shows how the berth is arranged and who else the trip is open to.
Yes, as long as the Departure still has enough availability. The remaining places are shown on the Departure page.
The person who books becomes the Group Leader. After the booking is confirmed, you invite the rest of the crew and they complete their own information for the trip.
No. Booking modes are configured per Departure. Some weeks are whole-yacht only, some are shared, some offer both. The Departure page shows which modes are open.
No — the same rule applies. Availability and booking modes are set for each Departure individually, so a trip that offers berths one week may not the next.
On the Departure page. The Departure is the dated instance of the trip, so it carries the yacht assigned to that specific week — with its model, layout and photos.
Not necessarily. An Experience runs across a season and can use more than one yacht, so its page may show a typical or representative boat for the trip.
The Departure page is where the specific yacht for that week is shown. If you care about the exact boat, check there before booking.
It can happen — boats have technical issues and seasons get rearranged. If an assigned yacht changes, you should be informed according to the booking terms that applied to your reservation.
Depending on what the skipper has published, a yacht profile can include:
A monohull has one hull. It leans over as it sails, which is the classic sailing feeling, and it tends to be the more affordable option.
A catamaran has two hulls joined by a deck. It stays much flatter, has more deck and living space, and cabins are usually further apart — which many people prefer with children or mixed groups.
Neither is better. Monohull for the sailing, catamaran for the space and stability.
It means the skipper's identity and professional documents have been submitted and reviewed before their profile was allowed to take bookings.
Verification is a trust layer, not a promise. It tells you the paperwork has been checked — it does not remove the ordinary risks of being at sea.
Depending on the skipper and where they work, the review can cover:
No. The documents themselves are not shown to customers. What is public is the verification status and the profile information the skipper has chosen to publish.
Yes, where they exist. Reviews appear on the skipper's public profile alongside their experience, sailing areas and languages.
On a hosted trip, the skipper is shown on the Departure — so you know who is running the week before you book, and you can choose a different Departure if you prefer another skipper.
On a skipper-only request, you choose directly: you compare the offers you receive and accept the one you want.
It is possible — illness and unforeseen events happen. If an assignment changes, you should be informed according to the booking terms that applied to your reservation.
Yes. Find a Skipper is a separate flow on Malaka for people who already have the yacht and need a professional to run it.
No. You may own the yacht, or have chartered it from a company elsewhere. Malaka is only providing the skipper in that case.
You describe the trip once, and suitable skippers respond with their own offers.
Enough for a skipper to judge whether the job suits them:
Yes. Approximate details are fine at that stage — area, rough dates, yacht size — and you can update the request once the charter is settled. Say in the notes what is still provisional so skippers know what they are quoting on.
The product supports inviting a suitable skipper to look at an open request — useful if you have sailed with someone before, or found a profile you like while browsing.
An invitation is not a commitment on either side: the skipper still decides whether to make an offer.
No. Posting a request only makes your trip visible to suitable skippers. Nothing is reserved and nothing is owed at that point.
No. An offer is a proposal you can read, compare and ignore. A skipper booking is created only after you choose an offer and accept it.
Enough for you to compare offers side by side rather than guess:
Not necessarily. An offer should clearly separate the skipper fee from any additional agreed expenses, so you can see the whole cost before accepting.
If something is unclear in an offer, ask before you accept rather than after.
Yes — the product supports pre-booking questions so you can clarify an offer before committing. Most of the useful conversation happens here: route feasibility, crew experience, what the skipper expects from you.
An open request can receive several offers, depending on matching and on who is available for your dates and area. How many you get is not fixed — a popular week in a busy area behaves differently from a short-notice request.
A Skipper Booking is created, and the trip can move into the Trip Workspace — where the practical organisation happens: crew, documents, meeting details, messages and the payment record.
That depends on the specific Departure or skipper offer — the payment schedule belongs to the booking, not to the platform as a whole.
Whatever applies to you is shown before you confirm: the amount due now, what remains, and when the rest is due.
The booking model supports deposits and instalments, but the exact schedule depends on the booking you are making. Check the payment section of the Departure or offer before confirming.
Inside the booking itself — in the Holiday Hub for a hosted trip, or the Trip Workspace for a skipper booking.
Payment details are handled through the platform's payment infrastructure or payment provider. What the booking interface shows you is the payment record and the schedule — not your raw payment credentials.
Not when you post the request, and not when offers arrive. Payment starts once you accept an offer and a skipper booking is created.
You become the Group Leader for the booking and can invite the rest of the crew. Each person then completes their own information for the trip, rather than you collecting passports over messages.
Crew members may need to access the trip flow to complete their own information, depending on how the trip is set up. The invitation you send explains what each person has to do.
Depending on the trip and the destination, this can include:
No — being the Group Leader does not mean seeing everyone's private documents.
What the Group Leader sees is readiness: who has completed their part and who has not. Sensitive documents stay appropriately protected.
A status showing whether the required crew information has been completed. It exists so that chasing people before a trip is a glance at a list, not a series of messages.
It depends on the destination, the trip and the operational requirements that apply. Commonly:
The status is always visible to the person the document belongs to, so nobody has to guess whether something went through.
No. Documents uploaded for a trip are not published anywhere on Malaka and are not visible to other guests.
Only where it is operationally required — a crew list for the authorities is a real requirement in many places — and according to the permission model that applies to the trip.
It is not general access to everything a guest has uploaded.
A structured operational summary generated from the relevant crew information — the list of who is on board, in the form the trip needs it.
The Holiday Hub is where a confirmed hosted trip gets organised. Once your booking is confirmed, everything moves there and stops living in email.
It can include:
The broader operational trip environment — used for skipper-only bookings, private trips and other confirmed trips that are not hosted departures.
Same idea as the Holiday Hub: one place where the trip is organised.
Booking is the transaction — the reservation, the terms and the payment record.
Trip Workspace is the organisation — crew, documents, route, meeting details and messages.
One is what you agreed. The other is how the week actually gets ready.
Yes — the product model supports externally sourced and private trips being organised inside the platform, which is often how skipper-only bookings work.
No. The published itinerary is the planned route — the trip the skipper intends to sail. At sea, plans respond to conditions.
This is normal on every sailing holiday, and worth knowing before you build a flight around one particular island.
A changed route usually means a better week, not a worse one — the skipper is choosing the sailing that works in the conditions you actually have.
The skipper. They are responsible for navigation and for the safe operation of the yacht, so the final call is theirs.
Meaningful changes should be communicated through the trip's communication flow — the messages and route sections of the Holiday Hub or Trip Workspace, and on board directly.
You can always discuss preferences — and on a whole-yacht booking there is real room for it. Ask early rather than mid-week.
The final operational decisions remain with the skipper.
The rules that apply to your booking are the cancellation terms shown to you before you confirmed it. They are attached to the booking, so you can read them again inside it at any time.
If a confirmed skipper cannot perform the trip, the booking status and the applicable terms are handled through the platform process rather than left between you and the skipper.
Weather usually changes the route, not the trip. A day of strong wind means a different bay or a night alongside — not a cancelled holiday.
Where weather does affect a booking, the applicable booking terms are what govern it.
Refund eligibility depends on the applicable booking and cancellation terms. There is no single answer that holds for every booking on the marketplace.
Where a refund applies, it appears in the payment record of the booking.
In two places: the policy page, and inside the specific Departure or offer — which is the version that applies to you.
Reviews are associated with completed trips and bookings where the product supports it — so a review generally comes from someone who was actually on board.
Yes. The skipper is a distinct part of the experience and is reviewed as such — which is also why skipper profiles carry their own review history across trips.
The review model can cover several aspects of a trip — skipper, route, yacht, organisation and value — so a good week with a tired boat reads differently from a bad week with a good one.
The product may support skipper responses, so context can be added to a review rather than only argued about elsewhere.
Reviews linked to completed trips provide stronger context than reviews that are not. The exact review-verification rules depend on the platform's final policy, so we don't claim that every review on the marketplace has been individually verified.
No. Sailing involves real operational and environmental risk, and no marketplace can remove that.
What Malaka can do is make the people and the trip legible before you commit: who the skipper is, what has been verified, what the trip involves and what past guests said.
No. Verification is one trust layer — a check on identity and professional documents. It is not a guarantee of risk-free travel, and it should not replace your own judgement about a trip.
No. Neither skipper documents nor crew documents are published. What is public is verification status and the profile information a person has chosen to show.
Follow the skipper's onboard instructions and contact the appropriate local emergency or maritime services.
Through the support and report-a-concern flow. If it relates to a specific booking, raise it from inside that booking so the context comes with it.
Malaka is intended for professional and appropriately qualified independent skippers — people who already work on the water, not enthusiastic amateurs.
Your documents are not shown to customers. What they see is the status and the profile you publish.
Yes, according to the product model — trips that did not come from the marketplace can still be organised in the workspace, so your season lives in one place.
The skipper workspace supports boat profiles, which are then used when you build Departures and answer requests.
Earnings and payout details are shown inside the skipper workspace according to the applicable payment model. We don't publish a single payout schedule here, because the one that matters is the one attached to your work.
Platform fees are shown clearly before you publish a paid service or confirm skipper work — so you see them at the moment they apply to you, not as a number on a marketing page.
Through the Contact page or the Help Center. If your question is about a specific booking, start from inside that booking — the context travels with the message and you skip a round of questions.
Support availability and response times are shown through the official support channels. We don't claim round-the-clock cover here.
No. For anything urgent at sea, follow the skipper's instructions and contact the local emergency or maritime services.
Still need help
Send us the trip context — the departure, the request or the booking — and we'll point you to the right place.
For anything urgent at sea, follow your skipper's instructions and contact the local emergency or maritime services. Malaka support is not an emergency service.