Waterfront
The arithmetic of a charter week
The advertised rate is roughly two thirds of what you will pay. Here is the rest of it.
The life on the water
Waterfront
Waterfront covers the part of this life that floats: what a charter week really costs, how a boat is actually used, and why the best sea-facing houses turn their backs on the view for half of their rooms.
Waterfront
Waterfront
What a boat is actually for
Six weeks of use a year, ten per cent of the value in costs, and a reason that has nothing to do with money.
Waterfront
The house that faces the sea
Salt, wind and light do things to a building that no inland specification survives.
The short version
Owning, chartering, and the honest arithmetic between them
A yacht costs about ten per cent of its purchase price every year to keep, before you have moved it. Crew, berth, insurance, refit fund, class, fuel, agency. On a 30 metre boat that is a house in the Alps, annually, for something you will use six weeks a year.
Charter changes the shape of that number rather than removing it. A week on a comparable boat in the Mediterranean high season runs from 60,000 euro plus the advance provisioning allowance, which is typically 30 per cent of the base and rarely comes back. Add VAT at the cruising ground rate and a crew tip of 5 to 15 per cent.
The break-even is not where people expect. Below about ten weeks of annual use, chartering is cheaper and considerably less trouble. Above it, ownership starts to make sense, and the reason is almost never financial: it is that the boat is yours, set up your way, with your crew.
Worth knowing
Annual running cost of ownership
8 to 12 per cent of purchase price
Advance provisioning allowance on a charter
25 to 35 per cent of the base rate
Crew tip, Mediterranean convention
5 to 15 per cent of the base
Break-even against charter
roughly 10 weeks of use a year
The house vote
One week on the water. How do you spend it?
Use it now
Charter Calculator
Base rate, provisioning, VAT and the tip, for the week you are actually planning.
Questions people ask
Motor if the week is about the destinations and the guests are not sailors. Sail if the passage itself is the holiday. Mixed groups almost always end up happier on a motor yacht with good shade.
For July and August, by January. The good boats with the crew people ask for by name are gone before spring, and what is left in May is what nobody wanted.
Fuel, food, drink, berthing, port taxes, VAT and the tip. On a busy itinerary the extras add 30 to 45 per cent to the base rate.
Rarely. Bedrooms on the water get first light at five in June and the noise of the sea all night. The best plans put the living rooms on the view and the bedrooms on the quiet side.
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