Executive officer

There is no official rank of 'commanding officer' within a crew, and no official duty station or indicator to show who is in charge. Each and every Officer (or Senior Officer, or Captain) can take any officerly action on a ship at any time.

However, it is a common convention within the YPP Community for each voyage on the high seas to have a designated Commanding Officer (CO) - sometimes also referred to as the 'officer in charge' (OIC) - for that voyage.

Sometimes one mate will set out on a voyage and run into Real Life troubles, and be forced to log out quickly or otherwise become distracted. The idea of having a Commanding Officer is to ameliorate the complete failure of a voyage in such circumstances. (If you have ever found yourself on a boat at sea and there is no officer aboard, you can fully appreciate why it is a good idea to give someone that job).

The Commanding Officer has no official responsibilities, and their exact form might differ from Crew to Crew, but the basics are that the CO:

 - gets to assign crewmates to stations (such as Guns and Duty Navigation)
 - is responsible for checking that stations are well manned
 - has to handle the posting of invitations
 - gets to decide who to hire and who to plank
 - generally has to stay until the end of the trip
 - is commonly the one divvying the booty

Sometimes COs will take several other tasks on, such as doing a duty station at the same time, as well as battle navigating the boat and possibly filling their own guns.