Hire a Boat and Stop Watching the World From the Shore
There is a version of travel that most people never access. Not because it is expensive. Not because it is complicated. But because no one told them it was possible.
Hire a boat. Go where the roads end. Wake up in a bay that has no name on any map. Eat what you caught an hour ago. Watch the sun set over water with no one else in the frame.
This is not a fantasy. This is what a week on a catamaran actually looks like.
What It Really Means to Hire a Boat
When most people think about hiring a boat, they imagine something complicated — licences, maritime regulations, a skipper’s exam, years of experience before anyone lets you near a vessel.
This is a misunderstanding that costs people some of the best weeks of their lives.
When you hire a boat with a licensed skipper on board — which is how most first-time sailors do it, and how most experienced travellers prefer it — you need none of that. No licence. No sailing experience. No knowledge of weather patterns or nautical charts.
You need a group of people you want to travel with, a destination that excites you, and the willingness to spend a week living closer to the water than you ever have before.
The skipper handles the vessel. You handle the experience.
The Difference Between Hiring a Boat and Every Other Kind of Holiday
A hotel gives you a room with a view of the sea. A boat gives you the sea.
This distinction sounds simple. It is actually enormous.
When you hire a boat and live on it for a week, your relationship with the water changes completely. You are not a spectator. You are not a guest permitted to use the beach between 8am and 6pm. You are on the water, of the water, moving with it.
You anchor in coves that are accessible only from the sea. The beaches you find are empty because no road leads to them. The fish you eat were in the ocean this morning. The silence you experience at midnight — anchored in a bay with mountains on three sides and stars overhead — is a silence that no hotel can manufacture or sell.
This is what people mean when they say that hiring a boat changes how they travel. It is not hyperbole. It is a direct description of a different quality of experience.
Types of Boat Hire: What Are Your Options
Bareboat charter
You hire the boat without a skipper. You are responsible for navigation, safety and the vessel. This requires a recognised sailing licence (RYA, IYT or ISSA) and confirmed sea miles. For experienced sailors who want total independence.
Skippered charter
You hire the boat with a licensed skipper on board. The skipper manages the vessel, plans the route and is responsible for safety. You have complete freedom to participate as much or as little as you want — from pulling ropes to lying on the deck reading a book. No experience required.
Crewed charter
A fully crewed vessel — skipper, hostess, sometimes a chef. The Philippines expedition we run, for example, includes an on-board chef preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. This is the most comfortable option and the one that most closely resembles living on the water rather than managing it.
Retreat format
A skippered charter with a structured daily programme — breathwork, yoga, meditation, Sharing Circles, mindfulness practices. The boat becomes a platform for a different kind of travel: one that combines the physical experience of sailing with something that works on the inside.
This is what we do.
Where to Hire a Boat: The Best Destinations
The world looks different from the water. Some parts of it look spectacular.
Greece
The classic European sailing destination. Turquoise Ionian and Aegean waters, whitewashed villages, ancient ruins visible from the sea. The Aeolian Islands off Sicily offer volcanic landscapes that are impossible to reach any other way. The Greek sailing season runs May to October — warm, reliable winds, manageable waves.
Hire a boat in Greece: from 980–1520€ per person per week.
Canary Islands
November to March — warm and sunny when the rest of Europe is grey. Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma. Wild Atlantic, dolphins in the water, lava fields that reach the sea. A genuinely different landscape from the Mediterranean.
Hire a boat in the Canaries: from 980€ per person.
Seychelles
One of the finest sailing regions in the world. Short passages between islands, warm water, coral reefs, giant tortoises, white sand beaches that appear to have been placed there specifically for photographs. The Indian Ocean at its most extraordinary.
Hire a boat in the Seychelles: from 1580€ per person.
French Polynesia
Bora Bora. The lagoon you have seen in photographs. The reality is better. Raiatea, Taha’a, Bora Bora — sailing the Society Islands on a Lagoon 52 catamaran is one of the defining travel experiences available to a human being.
Hire a boat in French Polynesia: from 2920€ per person.
Norway
The Arctic fjords. Northern lights in March. Midnight sun in July. Arctic fishing. Sauna followed by a plunge into the Arctic Ocean. A landscape so powerful that it reorganises your priorities without asking permission.
Hire a boat in Norway: from 2420€ per person.
Philippines
December sailing season. Coron to El Nido — Kayangan Lake, Twin Lagoon, Secret Beach, Nacpan Beach. Wild islands that tourists rarely reach. On-board chef included. A catamaran that becomes home in the most extraordinary tropical archipelago on Earth.
Hire a boat in the Philippines: from 2280€ per person.
How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Boat
Less than most people think. Considerably less than what the experience is worth.
The key insight is that boat hire is shared across the group. When you hire a catamaran for six to eight people, the per-person cost is often comparable to a mid-range hotel — and the experience is incomparably richer.
What is typically included when you hire a boat:
- The vessel for the full charter period
- Vessel insurance
- Licensed skipper
- Bed linen and towels
- Final cleaning
- Sailing tuition for anyone who wants it
- Daily practices (on retreat-format charters)
What is typically separate:
- Fuel and marina fees — usually 150–400€ per week, split between the group
- Food and drinks
- Flights to the departure point
- Refundable security deposit
The instalment question:
Yes, instalment payment is available. You do not need to pay the full amount upfront. A deposit secures your spot.
Hire a Boat Without Sailing Experience: Is It Really Possible
Yes. Completely. Without qualification.
When you hire a boat with a licensed skipper, you are a passenger in the best sense of the word — present, participating, free to engage as deeply as you want with the sailing, without carrying the responsibility for it.
In seven years of running sailing retreats, every single participant who arrived without experience left with the ability to handle sails, understand the wind, assist with docking and navigate short passages under supervision.
Not because we teach it as a course. Because when you are on a boat for a week with a good skipper who loves what they do, the knowledge transfers naturally. You watch, you ask, you try. By day three most people want to take the helm.
Seasickness is the other common concern. The honest answer: it exists but it is manageable. A good skipper will show you how to adapt your body. Standard motion sickness medication works effectively. In seven years of expeditions, 100% of participants have managed — regardless of age or prior experience.
Why Hire a Catamaran Specifically
When people decide to hire a boat, the choice usually comes down to monohull sailing yacht or catamaran. Both have their place. But for groups, for comfort, and for the retreat format we specialise in, the catamaran wins clearly.
Stability. Two hulls create a platform that moves very differently from a single-hulled vessel. The catamaran does not heel dramatically in a gust. It does not bury its bow in a wave. For first-time sailors and for anyone prone to seasickness, this difference is significant.
Space. A 42-foot catamaran has roughly twice the living space of a 42-foot monohull. Separate cabins in each hull, a full saloon, a galley that functions like a real kitchen, a wide deck that becomes a yoga studio in the morning and a dining room in the evening.
The trampoline. The net stretched between the two bows of a catamaran is one of the great pleasures of sailing. Lie on it at anchor and watch the water through the mesh. Sit on it while the boat moves and feel the spray. It is the best seat on any boat.
Shallow water access. Many catamarans have a shallower draft than comparable monohulls, allowing access to lagoons and anchorages that a keelboat cannot reach.
What a Week Looks Like When You Hire a Boat With Us
This is not a cruise. There is no entertainment director. There is no fixed itinerary that you must follow. There is a route, a skipper who knows it well, and a group of eight people who chose to be somewhere extraordinary.
Morning: Breathwork on deck while the anchorage is still quiet. Breakfast. A conversation about where we are going today — which depends on wind, weather and what the group wants.
Day: Sailing. Sometimes fast, sometimes gentle. Fishing from the stern. Swimming in water that changes colour from blue to turquoise to green depending on depth. Finding a beach that requires a dinghy to reach and spending two hours there with no one else.
Evening: Cooking together from whatever the sea provided. Or a restaurant in a small harbour that serves the kind of food that only exists in places most tourists never reach. Sharing Circle — an evening practice of honest conversation in a context that makes honesty feel natural. Stars. Silence.
Night: The kind of sleep that only happens when the air is clean, the body is tired from being outside all day, and there is nothing scheduled until morning.
Repeat for seven days.
People return from this kind of travel changed in ways they cannot fully explain at the airport. Quieter. More deliberate. Somehow both more rested and more alive than when they arrived.
How to Hire a Boat: The Process
Simpler than you think.
Step 1: Choose your destination and dates. We will help you match the right vessel and format to what you are looking for.
Step 2: Reserve your spot with a deposit. Instalment payment available for the remainder.
Step 3: We handle the logistics — vessel, skipper, marina, transfer assistance, packing list, everything you need to know before departure.
Step 4: Arrive. The rest happens on its own.
We have been organising sailing retreats since 2018. Mediterranean, Caribbean, Norwegian fjords, French Polynesia, Seychelles, Pacific Ocean. We know the waters, we know the vessels, and we know what makes the difference between a good trip and a trip that changes something.
The Question Nobody Asks But Everyone Should
Not: can I afford to hire a boat?
But: can I afford not to?
The experiences that stay with you — that show up years later when someone asks about the best thing you ever did — are not the ones where you played it safe and chose the hotel with the best TripAdvisor rating.
They are the ones where you went somewhere your ordinary life couldn’t follow you. Where the landscape was too large for your problems. Where you woke up somewhere beautiful every morning and went to sleep somewhere different every night.
Hiring a boat gives you that. Not as a metaphor. As a literal week of your life.
Ready to Hire a Boat?
We are currently running expeditions to Greece, the Canary Islands, the Seychelles, French Polynesia, Norway and the Philippines — with upcoming departures in 2025, 2026 and 2027.
Maximum 8 participants per vessel. Licensed skipper on every departure. Instalment payment available.
👉 Contact us at yachtingretreat.com to discuss your dates, destination and the right format for your group.
Or write directly on Telegram or WhatsApp — we respond within a few hours.
The water is waiting. And the best anchorage you have ever seen is out there, empty, with your name on it.
Come find it.
