Chartering for the first time

Bareboat means you sail the yacht yourself and it starts around four thousand dollars a week for a monohull; it needs a certificate and, more importantly, a sailing resume the operator accepts. Skippered adds a professional at roughly two hundred dollars a day and removes every navigational decision. Fully crewed adds a captain, a chef and usually a stewardess, starts around sixteen thousand dollars a week on a catamaran, and turns the boat into a hotel that moves. The question that decides it is not budget: it is whether anyone in the group wants to be responsible for the yacht at three in the morning.

Three nights covers Phang Nga Bay properly, because nothing there is more than three hours from anything else. Four adds the crossing to Phi Phi and the Rachas. Five reaches Krabi, Koh Haa and Koh Lanta. Seven is the hard minimum for the Similan Islands, which sit fifty-eight nautical miles offshore, and the Surins need the full seven with nothing else in the itinerary. Ten days lets you do both halves of the region without cutting anything, and it leaves room for the weather to be wrong for a day.

Count cabins, not berths. A four-cabin catamaran sleeps eight adults comfortably and ten at a squeeze that people regret by day four. Five cabins take ten, six take twelve. Twelve is the hard ceiling on a licensed charter yacht in Thai waters and it is a legal limit, not a comfort one: a group of fourteen needs two yachts, not a bigger one. On a crewed yacht, crew cabins are separate and do not count against your total.

You send an enquiry with dates, group size and budget. The broker returns a shortlist of yachts with rates. You choose, and the yacht is provisionally held for a few days. A contract is issued, usually on the MYBA form, and signing it with the first payment of fifty percent takes the yacht off the market. About a month before departure the balance and the full APA fall due, and a preference sheet goes out for food, drink, allergies and diving. A week before, the captain contacts you directly about the itinerary. On the day, you board, sign the crew list, and go.

First-time charterers and families with small children want Phang Nga Bay, because the water is flat, the passages are one to three hours and nothing depends on the weather. Divers want the southern route through Koh Haa and Koh Rok, or the Similans if they have seven days. People who want to sail rather than motor want the longer crossings to Phi Phi and the Rachas, where there is enough open water to make sailing worth doing. Anyone travelling between May and October wants the lee of Phuket and nothing else, because the west and south are closed or uncomfortable.