Beyond the deck

Day four. The anchor is down in a bay so clear you can see it from the sundeck. There is a lounger, a glass of something cold and a plate of fish that was in the sea this morning.

It is lovely. It is also, if we are honest, the same afternoon you would have had on day two, and it will be the same afternoon on day six.

That is the quiet problem with a £200,000-a-week charter. It buys one of the most extraordinary platforms on earth, and then, very often, it is spent on a lounger.

What £200,000 actually buys

A week at that level typically puts you on a yacht of roughly 35 to 55 metres, sleeping up to a dozen guests across five or more cabins, with a full crew, large tenders and the kind of deck space that makes a lounger very tempting.

It is also not the whole bill. The weekly rate covers the yacht and crew. Fuel, food, drink and marina fees are normally paid through an advance provisioning allowance, commonly somewhere between a quarter and a third of the base rate in the Mediterranean. A discretionary gratuity for the crew is customary on top, often 10% to 15%, and VAT depends on where you cruise.

Add it up and an all-in week can sit comfortably above £270,000, and can approach or pass £300,000. Ask for a line-by-line estimate before you sign. These are typical figures, not quotes.

At that price, “lovely” is a low bar.

The deck problem

Many charters are specified like hotel rooms. Dates, yacht, area, number of cabins. The yacht is found, and the week is left to unfold.

That is not a criticism of the people who arrange them. They can only work from the brief they are given, and the brief many clients give is about the boat. The content of the week, the actual days, is too often decided on board, by a captain trying to fill a Tuesday.

The result is a week that is comfortable, beautiful and strangely interchangeable. The yacht is the stage. Nobody wrote the play.

What beyond the deck looks like

Think in three tiers.

Excursions are a half-day or a day off the boat. A dive with a marine conservationist. A guided walk through a village the cruise ships never reach. A day on the water with a local fisherman, ending with lunch cooked from the catch.

Experiences are access. A private after-hours visit to an art collection. An afternoon making perfume with an expert. A family-run vineyard, a cooking lesson with a local chef, a private performance on the beach at dusk. These are the things you cannot book from a lounger.

Expeditions are the week itself. Boat International's guide to expedition charters describes whale watching and glaciers along Alaska's Inside Passage, dog sledding and guided bear tours on shore, and, in Patagonia, fjords, fly-fishing and heli-skiing on a volcano. Further afield, it covers Antarctica, the Northwest Passage and the Galápagos, where strict rules apply and naturalist guides are part of the experience. That guide dates from 2018, so rules and availability will have changed, but the ambition has not.

Why it takes a brief

The best experiences are rarely spontaneous. They are lead time.

The same Boat International guide notes that Antarctica needs permits for almost every activity, from shore visits to diving, with approvals taking at least three months. In Alaska, entry to sites such as Glacier Bay and certain bear sanctuaries requires permits, and some applications must be made at least 30 days ahead. In the Solomon Islands, it says a local guide is essential because landings follow traditional protocols.

Closer to home the same rule applies. A private evening in a gallery, a table at the right restaurant, a guide who knows the quiet side of an island: all of them have to be asked for, early, by someone who knows what you want.

So the question is not whether the experiences exist. It is whether anyone told the people who could arrange them what you wanted, in time.

Who is actually on board

A brief has to serve the whole table. Charters are often family affairs, and increasingly span generations. That is a hard brief to improvise. A teenager who wants to dive, a grandmother who wants a quiet morning in a market, and a couple who have done the Amalfi coast eleven times.

The week that suits all of them is designed, not discovered.

Book it through Tailyr

Tailyr is built for the part of the process that comes before the booking: working out what the week should actually be.

Tell it what you want, not the yacht, the week. It talks the options through with you, and asks what a good week depends on: who is aboard, what they love, what they have already done, how far from the water you are happy to travel, and what must stay private. Then it turns that into a brief for the broker, covering the excursions, experiences and expeditions you want, and where lead time makes early planning essential.

When you plan and book your charter through Tailyr, that brief goes with it. The broker still contracts the yacht and crew and runs the logistics, and that expertise matters. What you bring is a far clearer picture of the week you want, and a week built around it. Your details are shared only with your permission.

What a brief might say

Here is an illustration, not a real client. A family of eight, two teenagers and two grandparents, in the Western Mediterranean in late May.

• A private after-hours visit to a museum or gallery, arranged for the grown-ups
• A morning cooking with a local chef, for everyone
• A dive day with a marine biologist, for the teenagers and anyone brave
• One unhurried day with no plan at all, which is also a decision
• Chef and menu preferences, allergies, and a quiet evening for the grandparents

That is not exotic. It is simply specific, and specific is what a captain and crew can build a week around.

An honest caveat

Not every week needs to go beyond the deck. Sometimes the lounger is the point, and a week of doing nothing in beautiful surroundings is a perfectly good thing to spend money on.

Two things are worth knowing. Experiences are priced separately from the base rate, since that covers the yacht and crew, so ask for them to be priced into your proposal. And the aim is not to fill every hour. It is to make sure the lounger is a choice.

The best seat in the house

A £200,000 week buys the best seat in the house. The question is what you do once you are sitting.

If you are planning a charter and want more from it than the view, speak to Tailyr and tell us what you want from the week. You can also read our look at Sunreef and the sun-powered superyacht, or our page for private offices.

Costs and rules vary by yacht, season and destination. Check the details before you sign and take professional advice on contracts.

Source: Boat International, the essential expedition charter list (2018)