Chartering a yacht sounds so bougie that I was embarrassed to tell my friends we were doing it. And I’m not gonna claim it’s cheap! But I learned that not all yachts are 200-foot superyachts reserved for characters out of Kevin Kwan novels. It turns out that chartering a yacht can be a doable vacation — albeit a splurge — for those of us in the 99%.
During most of the year, you can rent something like a 42’ yacht with four double cabins in the Bahamas for a week for about $6,000. Of course, you also need to pay a few extra costs, like the fee for a skipper to pilot the boat, diesel and possibly renting mooring balls to connect to at night.
But if you are a couple splitting the cost of a yacht charter with two other couples, you could get this fancy vacay for a few thousand dollars each.
But what’s it like to sail on a private yacht? When my husband told me his dream for his 50th birthday vacation, he said: “I want to stay on a boat, and I don’t want to be in charge of driving it.” When I started researching how to make his dream a reality, I had little notion of what that would entail. Where would we go? What would we do all day? Did a private yacht rental mean staying on the boat for a week without touching land? Or spending all day exploring various islands and only returning to the boat to sleep? I had so much to learn.
The guide to chartering a yacht for the first time
If you, too, have nautical dreams, let me save you some time by sharing my research on chartering a yacht.
Where and when to yacht
The main areas I learned about for private yacht rentals are Europe (like Greece) and the Caribbean (mainly the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas). The European yachting season is April to October. You can yacht in the Caribbean all year, but the main season is November to April. Late summer and fall is hurricane season.
I’ve heard tell of yachting in the summer to island hop in Greece. This sounds divine! You spend each day exploring historic ruins, then move on to a new island the next morning. One thing that appeals to me about a summer yacht trip is that you could enjoy long daylight hours for morning and evening swims.
But with kids in high school and college, the only time everyone in our family was available to take this special vacation was just after Christmas. So I focused on the Caribbean. Within the Caribbean, I learned that the most popular place for island-hopping is the British Virgin Islands. However, I had trouble finding affordable and expedient flights from California to BVI. I did find some decent flights to the Bahamas, though, and learned that there are some yacht charters there as well. So I settled on a Bahamas yacht charter.
Are the Bahamas warm enough in January to enjoy yachting? I checked the average temperatures for January: high of 75, low of 65. Of course, I optimistically focused on the high temp. As it turned out, the temperature was closer to the average low on a couple days of our trip.
But you know what? The water temperature stays steady at around 70 no matter what the day’s weather. That means that as long as the sun was shining, swimming felt good. So yes, I feel like the weather was warm enough for a Bahamas yacht charter in January. However, I think chartering a yacht would be even more fun if the temperature is in the 80s, because you’d be more inclined to jump off the boat to swim. We mostly waded on beaches, but didn’t really swim off the boat.
In the Bahamas, the most convenient place to fly into is Nassau. We could have even flown to Nassau with Southwest Rapid Rewards points, my favorite mileage program. However, I learned that Nassau yacht charters aren’t well reviewed. Nassau, it turns out, is more of a cruise ship port. We chose to start from Marsh Harbour, on the island of Great Abaco, instead.
Types of yacht charter arrangements
I learned was there are two main types of yacht charters: crewed charters and bareboat charters. A fully crewed charter may come with several staff members to wait on you, usually including a chef. Think of the TV reality show Below Deck. (The show features a superyacht, but you can also do a fully crewed charter for a smaller yacht, just with a smaller crew.) A true bareboat charter is for people who are qualified to pilot the yacht they rent.
But there’s a spectrum between these two extremes. You can bareboat rent a charter, then ask the company to provide a skipper/captain as an add-on. This is what we did. Some people in the yachting world call this a bareboat + skipper, while others told me we weren’t bareboating at all if we had a skipper. I guess it depends who you talk to!
You can also hire a chef as an add-on when chartering bareboat. We wanted to do this at first. Not having to cook for ourselves was actually part of my husband’s birthday yacht dream! The chef’s fee would have added around $1,700 to our cost (plus tip), which we were willing to pay.
However, I ended up not hiring a chef for two reasons:
- Unless you are able to hire a captain/chef couple, the chef will need their own separate cabin. This would have pushed us from the four-cabin boats we were looking at up to a more expensive — and less common — five-cabin boat. We could have alternatively chosen a yacht with a pull-out bed in the saloon and made our son sleep there, but we didn’t want to make him do that.
- A yacht is obviously close quarters, and the galley kitchen is part of the main living space. I felt uncomfortable with the idea of another stranger — in addition to the captain — joining us for our family vacation. Where would the cook hang out when not working? Would I feel like an intruder if I wanted to get something from the fridge? I’m used to being the family chef, and in the end I was not willing to deal with the awkwardness of sharing the kitchen.
Where to rent a yacht from
I spent endless hours poring over online reviews and Facebook posts to figure out who to charter the yacht from. From what I learned, you have three main options:
1) Chartering from a broker that represents multiple charter companies
2) Chartering directly from a company
3) Chartering even more directly from a yacht owner (who might also serve as your crew)
As a first time charterer, I decided to skip option 3. I didn’t know anyone in the business, and didn’t feel confident enough to evaluate a single individual’s trustworthiness. And if the owner didn’t serve as captain, I didn’t know how I would find a reputable freelance captain on my own. It felt too daunting.
At first, I didn’t realize the difference between option 1 and option 2, and almost signed a contract with a brokerage. But then I realized I could save on the broker fee by going directly to the company that charters the yachts. Working directly with the charter company also allowed me to see more specific info about what yacht I would be renting.
The main yacht charter companies in the Bahamas including The Moorings, Dream Yacht Charters and Naviagare. After reading many reviews, I selected Navigare because their reviews were overwhelmingly positive. Specifically, I wanted to rent from the Navigare base in Marsh Harbor, on the island of Great Abaco, because people seemed to have bad yacht charter experiences out of Nassau with all charter companies.
The yacht chartering process
Once we finally decided on Navigare, I started the charter process online on their Bahamas page. Navigare’s web site includes a ton of info to get you started, so just clicking through can help you learn a lot about the yacht charter process.
When I was ready to start, I used the “BOOK YOUR VACATION TODAY” tool on the right side of the screen. I input my dates, selected Marsh Harbour as the location, entered the number of cabins we wanted (4), and clicked “select yacht.”
Note that if you are not licensed and ready to pilot a multimillion-dollar yacht, you need a skipper on the vessel with you. The skipper will need their own cabin. So if your family needs three cabins, like mine did, you need to choose a four-cabin yacht.
This brought me to a page with pictures of a dozen or so yachts to choose from. At first, I had no idea what criteria to use to select a yacht. Who am I, Thurston Howell? So I just sorted by price, and printed out the info sheets about each yacht in our price range.
Some of the choices you can look into:
- Do you want a sailing yacht or a motor yacht? Motoring gets you to your island destinations faster. On the other hand, we thought sailing would be more peaceful and ecofriendly. So we chose a sailing yacht. But guess what? Our captain never ended up using the sails once during our charter. After that experience, I honestly have no idea which kind I would choose if I were to do it again.
- Do you want a catamaran or monohull? I thought maybe the catamaran would be more stable to avoid seasickness. But I’m not sure that’s true.
- How old is the yacht? One thing I learned from reading is that yachts being used for charters age pretty quickly. So I looked for a yacht made within the last few years.
After studying my info sheets for days, I thought I had chosen a yacht. I ended up clicking the chat button on Navigare’s site because I had a few final questions. The agent I chatted with quickly suggested we talk on the phone.
When I called, the sales rep was really helpful! After hearing about our needs and desires, he ended up suggesting a different yacht than the ones I had been considering. Based on his advice, we rented a Bali Catspace yacht. This type of yacht has a cool feature: A garage-style door that opens up the saloon to make it feel like you are eating outdoors. Once I was sure, the agent sent me the contract to sign, and a credit card link for paying the deposit.
Note: Normally Navigare’s minimum charter time is three days. This honestly would have been perfect for us, because after three days we all started to feel tired of being on a boat. Unfortunately, they have a longer minimum for holiday weeks. I don’t remember if it was five nights or six nights, but we ended up booking for six nights.
Paying for the yacht charter
We ended up booking our yacht in June for our January Bahamas charter. They gave us a 5% discount for booking six months in advance. We were able to pay for the whole thing by credit card with no additional fee. That was great for racking up credit card miles! I chose to use my Chase Sapphire card, because of its trip cancellation insurance. (I would have paid part with one of my Southwest cards, except that I didn’t need extra points to hit the Southwest Companion Pass last year.)
This was the payment schedule:
- Upon signing: $1,000 deposit.
- Five months before charter: 50% of remainder
- Two months before charter: The full remaining balance.
Navigare automatically includes a “Carefree Package” that covers insurance on the yacht (thank goodness), final cleaning, a starter pack of supplies and full diesel and water tanks. Our total price also included the captain’s fee of around $300 per day.
What’s not included in your upfront payment
We paid for a few expenses when we arrived in the Bahamas for our yacht charter:
- Wi-fi. For about $120, we rented a wireless wifi router from Navigare. This worked very well for our whole trip, but it was an unnecessary expense that we didn’t need! Why? Because, 1) We had also paid for Airalo e-sim data plans on our phones which kept us connected to the outside world, and 2) We had little to no need to use the Internet while on the yacht. We weren’t working and we couldn’t log into US streaming services from outside the country (the kids tried).
- Toy rentals. I had planned to rent two paddleboards. The Navigare web site says these cost $22 per day, but at the office I was told they would cost $250 each. When checking in I impulsively changed to renting something called a “lily pad” for $150. We never ended up using this.
- Refuel. Just like with a rental car, you need to return the yacht with a full fuel tank. This should add a few hundred dollars to your cost.
- Captain’s tip and provisions. This added $1,100 or so to our cost. A grand for the tip and $100 for his food. You certainly don’t have to tip that much. I had been planning on $100 a day but my husband intervened.
- Your own provisions. Of course you’ll need to eat and drink on your yacht. You can order from a provisioning service or hit the grocery store before you board.
What I would do differently next time to save money
Along the way, I learned that the yachts that charter companies rent out are owned by individuals. In fact, I by chance met the owner of our yacht on Facebook! These individuals sometimes rent out their yachts directly to the customer for a lower price than the booking company charges. Now that I am familiar with the process — and with the yacht — I would feel comfortable booking directly from the owner next time.
Another way to save on subsequent yacht trips is to get to know your captain. Chances are they might be willing to arrange your next trip independently for less.