A yacht charter looks, from the outside, like a booking. It is closer to composing a week: a boat, a crew, a route, a licence, a contract, and a set of decisions that are much easier to make in January than in June. What follows is the sequence as it actually runs on the French Riviera, stage by stage, with the costs and the deadlines attached to each.
Stage one — deciding what you are actually chartering
Before any boat is named, three things need answering: how many are sleeping on board, how much of the week is spent moving, and whether the yacht is the holiday or the extension of one. A family of eight who want to swim, eat well and be back in Cannes each evening need a different vessel from six friends intending to reach Corsica.
Size follows from the answer, not the other way round. Below 24 metres you are on a boat with three or four cabins and two crew — informal, quick, well suited to a week between Saint-Tropez and Antibes. Between 30 and 45 metres you gain a chef, a proper interior crew, tenders and toys, and the ability to cross to Corsica comfortably. Above 50 metres the yacht becomes a small hotel with its own logistics, and the planning horizon lengthens accordingly.
- Guests sleeping on board — twelve is the regulatory ceiling for a charter yacht at sea, whatever the cabin count suggests.
- Cruising or anchoring — a route-heavy week costs materially more in fuel and rules out some hulls.
- Motor or sail — space and speed against draught, quiet and a different rhythm entirely.
- Dates — event weeks and August are a separate market with separate rates.
Stage two — the shortlist, and why it should be short
A serious shortlist is three to five yachts, not twenty. Each one should be there for a stated reason: this one for the beach club, this one because the chef is exceptional, this one because it is the only 38-metre still free the week of 14 July. We build ours from current availability, from the crew we know personally, and from the last survey and refit dates — a yacht that has just come out of a winter refit behaves very differently from one that has not been touched in four seasons.
Where possible, visit. Boats are photographed generously. Twenty minutes on board at Port Vauban or in Golfe-Juan tells you more about ceiling heights, cabin layout and the feel of the crew than any brochure. Off-season, most yachts on the coast can be seen within a day or two.
We keep a live view of what is genuinely available on the coast each season.
Stage three — the offer and the contract
Once a yacht is chosen, the broker issues an offer: charter fee, dates, delivery and redelivery ports, cruising area, and the APA percentage. If accepted, it becomes a MYBA agreement — the standard Mediterranean crewed-charter contract — and the first payment falls due, typically fifty per cent on signature with the balance and the APA thirty days before embarkation.
Three clauses deserve attention. The cruising area determines whether you can legally take the yacht to Italy or the Balearics. The delivery and redelivery ports determine whether you begin your week in Antibes or spend the first four hours repositioning. And the cancellation schedule is unforgiving by design — charter deposits are rarely refundable inside ninety days, which is precisely why charter cancellation insurance exists and is worth its premium.
Stage four — the money, honestly
The headline charter fee is roughly two-thirds of what you will spend. The rest is the APA and VAT.
| Item | Basis | Order of magnitude, week |
|---|---|---|
| Charter fee, 25–30 m motor | Fixed, per week | €40,000 – €70,000 |
| Charter fee, 35–45 m motor | Fixed, per week | €100,000 – €220,000 |
| APA | 25–35% of the fee | Fuel, food, berthing, taxes |
| VAT | Itinerary-dependent | Typically 20% in French waters |
| Crew gratuity | Customary | 5–15% of the fee |
The APA — Advance Provisioning Allowance — is not a fee. It is your money, held by the captain, spent on your behalf and accounted for. You receive a statement at the end of the week and the balance is returned, or topped up if a fuel-heavy itinerary has exhausted it. Ask for the running total mid-week; every good captain expects the question. We set out the full arithmetic in our note on what a French Riviera charter really costs.
Stage five — the preference sheet, which matters more than it sounds
Four to six weeks out, the crew send a preference sheet. It reads like an administrative form and is in fact the single document that determines whether the week feels tailored or generic. Allergies and dietary requirements, obviously. But also: how you take your coffee, whether you want music at breakfast, which wines you actually drink, whether the children swim confidently, whether you would rather eat at eight or at ten.
Fill it properly. A chef given three sentences will cook well; a chef given a page will cook for you specifically. It is also the moment to declare intentions the itinerary depends on — a dinner ashore in Saint-Tropez on the Thursday, a lunch at anchor off the Lérins, a helicopter transfer on the last morning.
Stage six — routing the week
The classic Riviera week runs Cannes or Antibes as a base, with the Îles de Lérins for a first quiet lunch, Saint-Tropez and Pampelonne mid-week, Villefranche and the Cap Ferrat anchorages for calm water, and Monaco for one evening. That itinerary works because it keeps legs short — most passages are under two hours — and leaves the yacht at anchor rather than under way, which is where the pleasure actually is.
Two hours further out, the options open up: Corsica overnight, Portofino and the Ligurian coast eastward. Both are worth doing and neither should be attempted on a week already full. Our day cruise itineraries give the shape of the shorter routes.
Stage seven — embarkation, and the first hour
You board at the agreed port, usually from mid-afternoon on the Saturday. Passports are collected for the port authorities, the captain runs through safety and the week’s outline, and the yacht generally moves within the hour to its first anchorage. Bring soft luggage — hard cases have nowhere to go on most boats — and expect the pace to slow deliberately once you are off the dock.
When to start
For a July or August charter, begin in the autumn before. For shoulder season, three months is comfortable. For an event week, a year is not excessive. Between the enquiry and the contract there is generally three to four weeks of real work — shortlisting, visiting, negotiating dates and terms — and that work is far better done slowly.
We arrange charters across the coast and, where the week calls for it, alongside a villa ashore. If you would like to discuss dates, our charter team will start from what your week is actually meant to feel like, not from a list of boats.