Do the Math
One of the more interesting conversations that keeps coming up here at the charter show on Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, is about the difference you can see in service when you understand the number of weeks of charter a boat does each year.
Most boats here are looking for 20 to 26 weeks a year of charter. It takes about 18 weeks a year for a boat in this size range, say 40 to 60 feet long, to “break even” on expenses, so those extra two to eight weeks or so become the boat owner’s profit.
The vast majority of owner-operated boats stop there, using the rest of the year’s weeks for maintenance and crew rest. But some yacht owners–it seems, in particular, the yachts operated by large companies–push the crews to do more. The crew onboard the sailing catamaran Caribbean Dream, for instance, told me that they previously worked onboard crewed yachts for The Moorings–which had them do 42 weeks of charter last year. The team onboard the sailing catamaran Bliss, which is part of the Voyage fleet, told me that their aim is to do as many as 32 weeks of charter this year.
I asked both crews how in the world they can provide top-notch service when working so many weeks a year, especially when same-size boats in literally the next slip over have crews getting far more rest and going into charters with much more energy. The team on Caribbean Dream told me that they had to simply try to power through before leaving The Moorings to come to their new yacht, while the team onboard Bliss said they were hoping their current company would come through with a plan to place “relief crew” onboard boats that have to do more than five weeks of charter in a row with less than 24 hours in between each booking.
“Some of the brokers look at the calendar now, and try to pick weeks where we’ll have had some rest before their client’s charter,” the captain of Bliss told me–an interesting idea that you can use to your advantage no matter what kind of yacht you book, and not matter whether it’s part of a large, hard-run fleet or is owned by an individual who allows more time for crew rest.
Ask your broker how many weeks of charter your chosen boat typically does in a year, and take the crew’s ability to get some rest into account when you add up the pros and cons of different yachts. Most crews will always try to offer the best possible service, but when a crew hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in more than a month, the odds are their depleted energy level is going to affect your charter negatively. It’s simple human nature. Tired people can’t do what well-rested people can.
Look for charter yachts whose crew are thriving instead of simply surviving, with the number of weeks of charters booked as an apples-to-apples barometer for comparisons.