Catamaran cabin charter explained

Did you just see a sailboat or catamaran anchored in front of the beach you are sitting on, and now you are wondering how much these cost to buy and what you would need to do in order to get invited onto one of these hotels on the water?

Well, actually, it is possible to rent a catamaran and set sail to all the coves that you would normally need to charter a tourist boat with twenty other people on board to see a handful of sites. And no, it does not require twenty five thousand euros or six friends with matching annual leave.

It requires one cabin. Here is, what tour operators mean when talking about a cabin charter on a catamaran.

What is a cabin charter?

A cabin charter means you take one cabin on a crewed catamaran, at a price per person, for the week, rather than chartering the entire boat. Other guests take the other cabins, a skipper and chef come with the boat, and the route is already planned. You get a private cabin with a door that closes, and you share the saloon, the deck and the dinner table with six or seven other guests.

It is sometimes called a cabin cruise, a shared charter, a berth charter, sailing by the cabin, or in German, where much of it began, Kabinencharter or Mitsegeln. They all describe the same thing.

Cabin charter at a glance

• What you get: one private cabin on a crewed catamaran
• How it is priced: per person, per week
• Who else is aboard: guests with the same interest as you
• Who runs the boat: a certified skipper and a chef
• Sailing experience needed: none
• Typical length: seven nights

How does a cabin charter work?

You choose an available departure date and a sailing area, take one cabin, and arrive at the marina on the first afternoon. Everything between those two points has already been arranged for you.

The catamaran is chartered and prepared by the operator. The skipper plans the route around the week's weather, the provisioning is done before you arrive, your cabin is prepared, and you step aboard, put your bag down, and the holiday starts.

Compared with chartering a whole yacht, this removes the part most people find impossible and inaccessible, which is assembling six to eight friends who all have the same week free and the same idea of a good holiday. Finding them, agreeing on a destination, splitting a five figure invoice, and then negotiating which bottle of rosé fits the budget is a logistical undertaking. A cabin charter replaces all of it with one transaction.

How much does a cabin charter cost?

A cabin charter is priced per cabin, and you decide how to use it.

With us, a cabin taken to yourself is approximately 5,890 euros for the week. If you bring a partner or a friend and share it, you each pay 75 percent of that, which works out at roughly 4,420 euros each. Sharing saves you a quarter of the trip price, and there is no single supplement in either direction if you would rather have the cabin to yourself.

That price covers the cabin for seven nights, the skipper, the chef, all food on board, berth and mooring fees, national park tickets, fuel, and the crew's own costs.

For comparison, chartering an entire crewed catamaran for a week in the Mediterranean starts somewhere around 20,000 euros and climbs from there, and you still need to find six to eight people to fill it.

What is a day on a cabin charter like?

You wake up on anchor to the sound of water against a hull and very little else. Somebody is already up in the cockpit with coffee and the bay you are looking at is the one you anchored in last night.

Then comes the best part of the day, which is finishing that first sip of coffee and going straight over the side. No walking down to the beach, no towel on a lounger, no negotiating your way past anybody. You are already floating in the Mediterranean before you have properly woken up.

By ten the anchor is up and the boat is moving, and you are lying on the foredeck watching an island you have never heard of come closer, while the skipper explains that the wind has shifted and that this means somewhere better than the plan. By one you are anchored again, swimming off the back of the boat, waiting for lunch to appear.

That is the shape of it. Seven days of that, and then you go home and find that you have stopped checking your phone without having decided to.

Who else is on the boat?

Six or seven people you have not met yet, and this turns out to be the part guests talk about most afterwards.

The thing that makes it work is that everybody aboard came for the same reason. On a themed week, you are sharing a boat with people who already chose yoga, or hiking, or sailing, which means the common ground is there before anybody has introduced themselves. That bonds a group faster than almost anything, and it usually happens over the first dinner without anybody noticing it happen.

The boat is also big enough that you are never short of somewhere to be on your own. There is your cabin, the helm station, the forward lounge, and the aft lounge, so if you want an hour with a book and nobody to talk to, you take one, and nobody thinks anything of it.

What is the cabin like?

Your cabin is a double bed in the hull, with a window at eye level from the pillow so the first thing you see in the morning is the water.

You can stand upright in every cabin and throughout the interior, which sounds like a small thing until you have stayed on a boat where you cannot. This is a boutique catamaran, not a cramped sailing boat, and the difference shows the moment you step below.

You will live out of a soft bag rather than a suitcase, which is the one small adjustment everybody needs to make.

What about water and air conditioning?

The boat has a watermaker, so fresh water is not something you will be rationing. We also bring bottled water and keep it cold, because there is a difference between water that is technically available and a properly cold glass. Some days we put basil or cinnamon in the jug, to keep it interesting.

The air conditioning runs off the generator, and we run the generator during dinner rather than overnight. That means the cabins are cooled down before you go to bed, and then the boat is silent while you sleep, with no hum and no vibration through the hull. It is a small piece of planning that makes the difference between sleeping well on a boat and not. As we set this as a general rule, it also eliminates any fighting over if the AC should be on or not at night. From our experience, this is the best solution.

Furthermore, as we are not sailing in the full summer heat and will be on the water, the need for AC is normally not even needed. However, if you do charter with a company that does catamaran cabin charters in the full summer sun, make sure to ask how they handle the AC at night question beforehand. Many yachts do not even have AC and if you don't know that, you might face very hot nights.

Who is a cabin charter for?

It suits you if you like waking up somewhere different every day without packing a bag more than once, and if a week when the wind has a say in the plan sounds like an adventure rather than a problem.

It suits couples, because you get your own cabin and your own door and a whole boat of good company whenever you want it, which is a better balance than most hotels manage.

It suits solo travelers, because you arrive alone, and you are eating dinner with seven people by the first evening, which is far harder to arrange from a hotel room.

And it suits anybody who has spent a summer holiday queuing for a sunlounger and thought there had to be a better way to see a coastline. There is. It has been anchored out there the whole time.

The money, without the theatre

A crewed catamaran chartered whole, for a week in the Mediterranean in season, starts somewhere around 20,000 euros and climbs steeply from there once you add a cook, premium provisioning, and a newer boat. Split four ways between couples, that is still a serious number, and it assumes you found four couples.

Cabin charter is priced per person, per week, and it lands in roughly the same territory as a mid-range hotel week in the same country, which is to say it is not hostel money and it is not five-star money, but the price of a decent hotel with a decent view, ferries, a rental car, and food for a week.

Who cabin charter is not for

Worth saying plainly, because filtering the wrong people out early is far cheaper for everybody than disappointing them in a bay somewhere off Lefkada.

It is not for you if you need a full sized bathroom, a bath, or unlimited hot showers, because fresh water on a boat is finite and it behaves exactly the way a finite thing behaves when eight people all want some of it.

It is not for you if you need to know precisely where you will be standing on Thursday afternoon, because the wind decides the route and a good skipper will always get you somewhere lovely, although not necessarily to the particular cove in the photograph you saved back in February.

It is not for you if a week of other people's company sounds more like work than a holiday, which is a completely reasonable way to feel, and in that case you should charter the whole boat or take the hotel with our blessing.

And it is not for you if a rough first morning would ruin the whole week rather than simply be a rough first morning, because most people find their sea legs by day two, and most is not the same word as all.

What you need to know

Cabin charters follow all sorts of itineraries, and the first thing worth understanding is that we follow the wind and we put safety ahead of everything else, which is why we do not sell you a fixed route. Plenty of companies do, and it looks wonderful in the brochure, right up until the weather turns and the town they sold you so hard on ends up on the wrong side of the forecast, at which point the week takes a turn that nobody on board wanted.

We would rather you arrived without that particular attachment in the first place. So instead of spending Thursday quietly disappointed about one harbor you did not reach, we make sure you are here for the reasons that hold up in any weather, which is to sail, to do some yoga if that is your thing, to read for longer than you have in months, and to enjoy the feeling of having your own boutique hotel on the water that happens to move while you sleep.

The second thing worth knowing is that the price you see is the price. We already include berth fees, national park tickets, and fuel as well as food for the crew. No kitty, no envelope on the first evening, no settling up on the last. Only dinners on shore are not included, but you decide if you want to go and where and if it's with the others from the boat or not. It's your holiday, treat it as such.

And the cabin is yours to use however suits you. If you want it to yourself, you pay the price as listed. If you would rather share it with a partner or a friend, the two of you each pay 75 percent of that price, which means there is no single supplement to argue about in either direction.

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