Days With Nowhere to Be

You don’t need a fortnight at sea to feel it. A boat, a quiet bay and a good lunch will do it in an afternoon. SW looks at how a day on the water works, and a week too, whatever the time of year.

Most of the year runs to someone else’s schedule. A boat is one of the few places that runs entirely on yours. Summer is when most people think about it, and if the year builds to one long finish, the weeks after it are the natural time to go. It doesn’t have to be summer though. Yachts follow the good weather around the world, so there is decent water to be on almost whenever you want it. Some people take a full week. Most just want a good day or two, and that is often the better way in.

Start with the day out

It is the easiest to arrange and the one people tend to overlook. You take a smaller boat with a skipper for the day, usually something in the forty to eighty foot range, built for exactly this. Out of the marina in the morning, a quiet bay to swim and have lunch, the water toys, back into port by evening. No packing. No commitment past the day itself. If you are already staying at a villa or a hotel and want one day that feels completely different, this is it.

A week is a different kind of trip

You take a crewed yacht for seven days or more and it becomes your base. The captain and crew run it, a chef cooks on board, and each morning you decide where you want to be. One day it is a quiet anchorage with the kids in and out of the sea. The next it is dinner on deck as you come into port. The boat moves with you, so a week can take in several places without packing a bag twice.

The thing people value most

Whatever you choose, it tends to be the same. Privacy. Out there you are not sharing a pool or a beach club with anyone. You pick who is on board, and good crew are used to guests who would rather not be watched, so they get on with it. A day boat gets you away from the crowds for an afternoon. A week gets you away from them full stop.

Where, and when

In summer, the Mediterranean is the natural home for it, roughly May to October. Puerto Banus and Marbella. Ibiza and Formentera. Monaco and Saint Tropez, with Mykonos further east. All of them easy for a day out, all of them opening into proper cruising if you have longer, from Sardinia and the Amalfi coast to bays you can only reach by sea. When the Med cools off, a lot of the fleet crosses to the Caribbean for the winter, so a Christmas or Easter week in the islands is every bit as doable as a July week off Sardinia.

The money is simpler than people expect

A day charter is usually a set day rate for the boat and crew, with fuel and extras on top, so you know the cost before you step aboard. A week runs differently. You pay a base fee for the yacht and crew, then a running allowance on top, roughly a quarter to a third of the fee, that covers fuel, food and berthing. Whatever you don’t spend comes back.

Timing is worth thinking about early

A day out can often be sorted at short notice, which is part of why it is easy to say yes to. The best boats for the busy weeks go early though, often six months ahead, because those dates are the same for everyone and they fill fast. If there is a particular boat or a peak week you have your eye on, start the conversation early rather than the month before.

Where Odyssey Connections comes in

Odyssey Connections has looked after clients and their families for years, on the road and on the water, so yacht charter is nothing new to them. One person to speak to, and less for you to think about. The moment you land, the car is already there, right by the aircraft and ready to go, and the boat is waiting when you reach the water. The chauffeur side runs quietly through all of it, airport to marina and home again, by people who already know how you like things done.

Whether it is a single day or a fortnight, a short conversation is enough to start. Give them your dates, how many of you, and the kind of day or week you have in mind, and they come back with a handful of boats that fit, not a long list to wade through.

A day or a week, in the Mediterranean summer or the Caribbean winter, time on the water is worth getting right.

To start a conversation, contact the SW team on [email protected].