Skippered yacht charter offers the perfect blend of relaxation and adventure. This charter type allows you to rent a boat while enlisting a professional skipper to navigate it for you.
Who Chooses Skippered Yacht Charter?
- Novices with limited sailing experience
- Sailors without formal qualifications
- Explorers hesitant to navigate unfamiliar waters alone
- Seasoned sailors seeking stress-free vacations
Benefits of Skippered Yacht Charter
Your skipper assumes boat responsibilities, granting you a carefree holiday. Their local expertise leads you to prime anchorages, scenic bays, top dining spots, and vibrant nightlife. As a newbie, you can even acquire sailing skills, while experienced sailors can fine-tune their expertise.
Meet Our Skippers
We meticulously select skippers to ensure your utmost satisfaction. Alongside sailing skills, we prioritize friendly, knowledgeable individuals. Our skippers, passionate about the sea, hail as local professionals and experienced sailors, often multilingual and possessing rich cultural insights.
Cost of Skippered Yacht Charter
This charter includes yacht rental, skipper’s fee, and skipper’s meals. The skipper’s rate is 1.540€ weekly plus meals. Other costs – boat, mooring fees and the fuel- are the same as when bareboating – see Bareboat yacht charter in Croatia.
Skipper’s Responsibilities
- to take care of your safety and at the same time ensuring that you have an enjoyable holiday
- to safely skipper the yacht and bring it back in undamaged condition
- to advise on suitable destinations based on local knowledge and the prior experience, but eventually, comply with your wishes, unless the weather forecast is in contradiction with those. The skipper cannot be responsible if in the long run predicted weather conditions do not materialize
What are your obligations towards the Skipper?
- the skipper needs three meals a day (at least one hot out of three) and enough to drink: when planning your provisions onboard you need to include the skipper in all meal plans for the week. When going out in the restaurant (usually for dinner but it can also be lunch), you either take the skipper with you or give him a stipend for dinner upfront in the amount of 40€
- a place to sleep – when choosing a boat you need to ensure that your party plus the skipper fits in the maximum number of berths onboard (and max number of persons allowed onboard). Please bear in mind that you cannot expect the skipper to share a cabin with someone from your party. It is highly recommended that you charter a larger boat and provide the skipper with his own cabin, but in case your budget doesn’t allow it you can have the skipper sleeping in the saloon provided that it can be transformed into the sleeping area. In this case consider the saloon his private area and ensure that he has enough time to sleep and to rest
- treat him with respect
- don’t ask him to prepare food for you, wash the dishes and clean after the whole crew; he will give his share in doing these jobs if your party arranges this in the way that everyone needs to contribute but you cannot assume that it is his duty to do it after the whole crew. If you will need such services, hiring a hostess together with the skipper is an option for you
- assist the skipper with lines and fenders when he is mooring the boat, especially if the weather conditions are bad
Security deposit and Skippered Yacht Charter
Security deposit is the deposit that you leave to us (usually by credit card pre-authorization) during your check-in on the boat to cover the insurance policy deductible in case of damage (the insurance house refunds the damage amount only above the deposit amount).
You are obliged to leave this deposit even if you hire a professional skipper; you will not be liable for the potential damage that occurred due to the navigation but for the damages caused by you or your party.
Since in Croatia, the naval authority verified crew lists (lists of all the people onboard) are mandatory for all charter boats (each exchange of the crew should be reported), it should never be a question of who is responsible for certain damage. The person marked as a skipper on the crew list bears all the responsibility for the damage caused due to the navigation.
You and your party will be responsible only for the damages caused by you: e.g. broken window, burns in the kitchen, blocked toilet, lost or damaged dinghy or motor (if you used it yourself) and similar.
Since all the skippers we work with have the skipper’s insurance policy which covers their liability you shouldn’t worry about the possible charge for the damage caused by the skipper since none has any interest in doing so.
Some useful tips for Skippered Yacht Charter in Croatia
If this is your first time chartering a boat please consider the following tips which might make your living onboard easier:
- on the first day of the charter sit down with your skipper and discuss your itinerary, as well as the other aspects of living aboard:
– what do you want from your holiday
– destinations you plan to visit
– sailing vs. motoring hours
- don’t aim for over-ambitious distances between the islands, since the sailboat is a rather slow means of transport, don’t end up motoring the whole day with little or no stops for lunch in a bay, relaxation onboard, swimming … you can not see everything there is to be seen anyway
- please understand that sometimes due to the weather conditions, the skipper will not be able to provide the entire route that you agreed on, but this is only for your and the boat’s safety
- whenever, during your trip, you feel that you are not getting what you want from your holidays, discuss it with the skipper or let us know and we will look into the solution
- the boat is a confined space, if there are a lot of people onboard, consider taking a larger boat as well as going for the overnight mooring in the area with the marinas and ports since they have got not only good toilet and shower facilities but also more entertaining options.
Tipping your skipper
Tipping is a common practice in the hospitality industry in Croatia yet not obligatory. It is customary though not obligatory to tip your skipper at the end of your charter. The typical tip amounts to 5-15% of the total charter cost. Your budget and satisfaction should guide your tipping decision. More about tipping etiquette on charter can be read in our blog post here.
