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Rules for volunteer work

These rules have evolved over the years and grew out of practical experience with some of our volunteers. Fortunately there were not many of them. They were people looking for loopholes to their own advantage, whose aim was not to help the ship, learn something while working and get a fair reward for it. The rules are written strictly, with the aim of preventing later disagreements and rather putting off people who do not enjoy work. An agreement between us is, however, always possible in advance.

Rules for volunteer work on La Grace

  1. Every volunteer gets to the ship at their own expense.
  2. Everyone on board contributes to the cost of shared food. We usually collect 150 Kč/person/day.
  3. Work starts every day, weekends included, at 8:30 with preparation, and from 9:00 the work itself begins
  4. Working hours are at least 8 hours (until 18:00).
  5. The day ends after 18:00 with tidying up.
  6. The lunch break is 30 minutes to 1 hour.
  7. Heavy smokers, coffee drinkers and storytellers can make up the hours their hobby takes.
  8. If someone wants to go on a trip, that is no problem, but those hours or that day do not count towards their total.
  9. The first and last day count only if the person works 8 hours, or at least these 2 days at 4 hours each.
  10. Everyone does their own job, but people help each other out whenever it is briefly needed.
  11. In the evening we prepare for the next day's work (shopping, materials, discussion, tidying up)
  12. A separate point is putting tools and materials away before rain. And above all, everything goes back where it belongs.
  13. When a job cannot be finished (for example because of missing material, the weather and so on), other work is done in the meantime and later the person comes back to the original job to finish it.
  14. Important work takes priority, not the work people happen to feel like doing! 😡
  15. But it is not just about the plain number of hours worked. The work a person is assigned should correspond to a certain number of hours in the eyes of whoever assigned it, and to common sense. In other words: writing down that you spent a whole week hanging one picture will not fly 😊
  16. Volunteer hours for cooking and the subsequent cleaning of the galley only count if there are more than 10 people on board. If there are fewer people, the volunteers take fair turns in the galley and count only the hours worked on their assigned job.
  17. If someone destroys something on the ship, they repair it, or replace it by agreement with the owner.
  18. Help with work in the Czech Republic can count as volunteer work as well. In that case an agreement on the number of hours, days and money must always be made in advance.

In conclusion

  1. At the end of each day everyone writes into the table what they did that day. If the days are not properly recorded, they do not count. We keep a notebook for this on board.
  2. Checks are made by the responsible member of the permanent crew, who at the end signs off the total number of hours you have written down. For an amount proportionate to the days worked, the La Grace s.r.o. office will issue a gift voucher for that amount, no longer for a number of days, as was the case before 2014. Please feel free to check your voucher at any time with Vera@LaGrace.cz, who keeps the records. If anything is unclear, please sort it out at once and not after 5 years.

The same applies here: if you do not add up the days and record them properly, they do not count, because there is simply no way to do it.

Rules for using days worked off

  1. For a day of honest and necessary work, that is at least 8 hours, every worker earns a free day of sailing in the cadet position, worth up to 1 000 Kč. If a worker would rather use it for a place as a guest, or for a more expensive voyage, they put the financial credit they have worked off towards the necessary amount and pay the difference. The difference can be paid either in money or in further days.
  2. Days worked off are not transferable or saleable to another person without prior agreement. An agreement is possible only in exceptional cases.
  3. Days worked off can be used within 5 years, or, by mutual agreement concluded before that deadline, for up to 10 years.

Signed Pepa Dvorský, captain of La Grace and managing director of La Grace s.r.o.

Volunteer Work on La Grace