Would you be interested in a boating charter that takes you out on the deep sea fishing adventure of a lifetime? Or maybe you are the type who would just like to spend your days sipping cool drinks by the onboard pool while someone whips up gourmet food to your tastes. A boating charter can range anywhere from a few hours out looking at dolphins to a full-fledged vacation of days or weeks at sea visiting exotic ports and islands along the way. While most people cannot afford the luxurious lifestyle of an extended boating charter vacation, many people can afford to try the shorter trips and may find them to be very enjoyable.

A bareboat boating charter is one of the less expensive options. You gain possession of the boat, but you have to hire the crew and bring your own supplies. With the increased popularity of yachting, this type of boating charter is also gaining in popularity. It is a way that you can “own” a yacht for a short period of time without going into all of the expense. Almost any type of boat can be hired for a barebones charter including a sailboat, a fishing boat, or a catamaran.

If you don’t really feel comfortable in hiring your own crew and supplying the boat, you can do a time or voyage boating charter. The voyage charter has an already decided destination and you can hire all or part of the boat (meaning you split the total costs with other passengers.) A time charter is when you can decide the destination, but you only have the boat for a specified amount of time in this boating charter.

Although for most people any type of yacht would feel luxurious, some are more luxurious than others and are worthy of the title “luxury yacht.” A regular yacht will have sleeping quarters and sitting areas as well as a kitchen, bathroom and some other added amenities such as maybe a bar. But, a luxury yacht would have many rooms with luxurious furnishings, a gourmet kitchen, a Jacuzzi, and maybe a swimming pool as well.

Whether you decide that you can afford an afternoon of deep-sea fishing with the guys, or you want to spend a month touring the Greek Islands with a full crew and gourmet meals, you can charter a boat online or through a charter brokerage. You can easily find just what you are looking for.

Before you try to get a job working on a luxury yacht, you will need to complete a 5-day course called “Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping” (STCW 95).

The $800-$1200 USD price for this course may seem like a hurdle to jump over before you can start your yachting career, but it is critical for 4 reasons:

1) STCW certification is mandated for all positions on board which have a safety role in the crew “muster list” for emergencies (which is literally every crew member on board a luxury motor or sailing yacht).

2) You will be more confident in your role and better able to perform in your job.

3) Captains simply will not hire you without it for reason #1 above, or other job candidates will have it, which makes you a less attractive hiring option since you will have to fit in time for training instead of working. Yachts used to cover the course cost if the situation warranted it, but this is quite rare now.

4) Taking your course at a reputable training school can be a good way to network with others and instructors. You may get job leads and/or build confidence by seeing others going for it!

After completing your STCW course, you will receive a certificate that you will need to keep and present to your hiring captain. Your first paycheck or charter tip will certainly cover the course tuition.

Remember STCW is just the bare bones in training. After you are certified, you are simply eligible to be hired for your first job (assuming you are right for the job). Continue to learn on the job and soak up the details surrounding you.

If you plan to work your way up to captain, engineer, or chef, then obtaining further training, licensing, or certification doesn’t necessarily need to be done right away. The experience you gain on the job is 10X more useful, plus it will help you better identify the appropriate training and courses you may wish to take at a later time.

I am a firm believer in on-the-job training when you can find a suitable position to grow in. Unfortunately, STCW is not one of those. It is a “box” that you must check to enter the professional yachting industry and it proves to others (and yourself) that you are committed to becoming an excellent yacht crew.

It is a large demand for provisioning, outfitting and supplying super yachts Ultra quality products and services are essential for the owners of super yachts and the people working on them.

Super yachts often enjoy very generous departmental budgets to help ensure that only the best products and services are used by crew.

But are Marine businesses overcharging yachts for these premium products and services?

Claire, is a Chief Stewardess working on a superyacht based in the Med and thinks that service providers for yachts have taken advantage of two key things when it comes to yachting – the inflated budgets that many yachts enjoy and the often small window of time that crew are given to provision a yacht, obtain a luxury service for guests, and acquire very specific items.

But other crew feel that it’s precisely this short notice that that warrants service providers to charge high prices.

Yachts will very often arrive in a port requiring some carpentry or steel work, for example, and they need that work done immediately because the owner or charter guests are due to arrive within days. Under these circumstances the service provider can charge above the rate that say a commercial vessel would pay because they would have booked the work in advance.

However, some yachts are overcharged, simply because the product or service is targeted at the maritime industry. Engineering spare parts are a classic example, yes they are precision engineered, but more so than that of a car? The answer is most often no, but you’ll pay through the nose because it’s got ‘marine’ stamped on it.

However, in some instances the mind can only wonder at the circumstances surrounding prices being charged to super yachts and the people working on super yachts.

Trust is the delivery of expectation and sometimes, as in this example, crew expectations are simply not met. While shopping for provisions at Cap 3000 shopping centre in Nice with two Stews (wearing our crew uniform), here is an issue we encountered:

Having picked up half a dozen decorative pieces, a couple of tissue boxes, some small place mats and eight small to medium sized teak effect baskets, we found that the bill was well over $2,000. Hardly any of the items were clearly marked with the price and I wasn’t even shown the total before my card was put through the payment system!

After our initial shock we started to argue about the cost of the items and then endured a farcical situation where for half an hour after I repeatedly said no to the price she was charging; she would then reduce the price by a fraction until she was prepared to give me the baskets for $50 instead of $150.

We put this situation down to the fact that we were wearing crew uniform. Had I walked in on my own not looking exactly like a Stewardess, would I have been taken advantage of in this manner? Probably not.

The trouble was that I needed those baskets because they fitted perfectly, were in keeping with the interior décor, and were an answer to a storage conundrum but if the price can be reduced so dramatically under pressure from me, why were they so expensive in the first place?

However, someone might have reasoned that in comparison to what is spent overall in a yacht’s budget that is a comparatively small amount for things you need to make the interior of a yacht “work”. Claire summed it up by saying, “If you think it is too expensive, it probably is.”

So when is it appropriate to pay a bit more than market rates?

One determining factor is quality of service. If what I was purchasing directly affected the safety of the vessel or if it was something that affected the owner’s trip in a negative way, then I would be prepared to pay a higher fee on condition that quality of service was not affected and that the job could be done within our time constraints.

On one occasion, we had a life raft serviced in Sri Lanka, only to discover at the next annual service it had been filled with old car tyres and the raft stolen.

There are more companies today, offering products and services to the megayacht industry than at any other point in its history and this trend can only benefit crew in the long term as fighting the competitive game on products and services is most likely to lead to “lowest price” scenarios for the industry.

With the apparent myriad of choices now available to crew working on super yachts, it’s important to remember that the price you pay will be dependent upon the circumstances at the time, the alternatives available to you, the perceived risk and your level of urgency.

Sourcing a fair deal has never been easier than it is today but no matter what you are trying to producer, remember this: The true value of any product is the price you pay for it.

A sailing yacht once denoted a large, comfortable recreational boat used by the ultra-rich which had over-all lengths of over 100 ft. With the largest of these, the difference between it a yacht and a ship became difficult to define. Although a lot of privately owned crafts such as these fall now in the range of about 20 to 45 ft and the cost of building a yacht rises exponentially as the length increased, a few mega-rich do maintain a few of the larger ones but hardly ever sailed on them. However, since the larger yachts are difficult to operate alone and expensive to maintain, more and more are turning to motorized yachts for recreational boating.

The smaller sailing yachts between 20 and 50 ft are now generally called sailboats and the sport of sailing on it is commonly referred to as yachting, which brings to mind a competitive racing sail boat manned by sailors who race against each other and battle for honors in the presence of the most dangerous elements known to men. Whether alone on a one-man sailing yacht or in the company of a team on a larger one, many sailors have died amidst the gale-force winds and gigantic waves of the ocean.

Yet sportsmen still find this sport attractive. Even with the prohibitive price of the sailing yacht, sportsmen still find means of acquiring a yacht to compete in regattas all over the world. Sailing or yachting competitions are now so competitive and prestigious that yacht clubs continuously compete with each other for the prestige of being the top racing team that will represent their country in world matches such as the America’s Cup.