Money and the contract

Take the advertised weekly rate and add roughly half again. On a fifty thousand dollar week you pay the base rate, an advance provisioning allowance of 25 to 35 percent, 7 percent Thai VAT on the base rate, national park fees of 300 to 500 baht per person per park, and a customary crew gratuity of 10 to 20 percent. That lands between about seventy-two and seventy-eight thousand dollars. The APA is a deposit against real spending and whatever is not spent comes back, so the final figure depends on how much fuel your itinerary burns.

The Advance Provisioning Allowance is a sum you pay up front, typically 25 to 35 percent of the base charter rate, which the crew spend on your behalf during the charter. It covers fuel, food, drink, marina and mooring fees, national park entry and any diving or excursions the crew arrange. The captain keeps receipts and accounts for it, and whatever is unspent is refunded at the end of the charter. If it runs out, the captain asks for a top-up before continuing to spend. Fuel is the reason the percentage varies: a sailing catamaran uses little of it, a planing motor yacht on long passages uses all of it.

Thailand's marine national parks charge foreign visitors between 300 and 500 baht per adult and half that per child, payable per park rather than once. Phi Phi is 400 baht with a 200 baht diver supplement, the Similans and Surins are 500 baht, Ao Phang Nga and Mu Ko Hong are 300 baht, and Mu Ko Lanta is 400 baht. Fees are cash only at the ranger station and are usually paid out of the APA. Similan, Surin and Lanta close by order from mid-May to mid-October, and Maya Bay closes separately from 1 August to 30 September.

Most crewed charters above about twenty metres run on the MYBA agreement, the standard form of the Mediterranean Yacht Brokers Association. Four clauses matter more than the rest: what happens if the yacht cannot be delivered, how cancellation is settled and at what notice, how the APA is accounted for and refunded, and what the owner's liability is limited to. A charter agreement that names only the broker rather than the yacht and its owning company leaves you with a claim against an agent, which is a weaker position than the form is designed to give you.

The usual pattern on a crewed charter is 50 percent of the base rate on signature of the contract and the remaining 50 percent, plus the full APA, around thirty days before departure. Bareboat operators often take a smaller deposit and settle the balance closer to the date. Cancellation terms are firm: the first payment is normally non-refundable once the yacht is withdrawn from the market, and the balance becomes non-refundable at the point it falls due. Charter cancellation insurance exists and is worth pricing against the deposit rather than assumed to be unnecessary.

The convention on a crewed charter in this region is 10 to 20 percent of the base charter rate, given to the captain at the end of the charter and divided among the whole crew. On a fifty thousand dollar week that is five to ten thousand dollars. It is not in the contract and it is genuinely at your discretion, but crew wages in the charter market are set on the assumption that it is paid, so treating it as optional in practice means paying people less than they were budgeted to earn. On a Thai day charter the scale is completely different, with a thousand baht being a normal figure.