Location Guide

Sixty islands and cays packed into a sheltered channel, none more than an hour or two apart: the BVI is the template the crewed-charter industry was built on, and for good reason. Mornings are a short beam reach, afternoons a snorkel at the Indians or the Baths' granite boulders, evenings a painkiller at a beach bar with your toes in the sand.

The water is protected in almost any weather, which makes it the perfect ground for first-time charterers and families — and the density of anchorages means no two itineraries need look alike. Most of our fleet is based here year-round, with pick-up in Road Town or Virgin Gorda.

Next door to the BVI and often blended with it in a single week. Two-thirds of St John is national park, and its north-shore bays — Maho, Trunk, Francis — are as pretty as protected water gets. St Thomas brings the region's easiest arrival airport for US travellers, plus the shops and restaurants of Charlotte Amalie.

Only US-licensed yachts can operate here, so if starting or finishing in St Thomas matters to you, say so early — around a third of our fleet holds the paperwork.

A different flavour from the Virgins: proper open-water passages between islands, French and Dutch harbours, and in Gustavia the most polished little port in the Caribbean — boutiques, white-tablecloth restaurants and a harbour full of serious yachts, especially over the festive weeks when St Barts is simply the place to be.

Anguilla's beaches and Grand Case's food street round it out. Passages are longer and livelier than in the Virgins, which suits parties who want more sailing in their sailing holiday.

Between St Barts and Martinique runs a chain the charter brochures too often skip past: Antigua with its 365 beaches and the Georgian dockyards of English Harbour — the spiritual home of Caribbean sailing and its great regattas — Barbuda's pink-sand emptiness, Nevis's single perfect cone, and the French islands of Guadeloupe trailing the Saintes behind them like a flotilla.

Antigua has the region's best flight connections after St Thomas, making it a natural charter start point; from there the chain unrolls north or south in easy day-hops with real trade-wind sailing between.

South of the Leewards the Caribbean grows taller, greener and emptier, and the sailing gets real: proper trade-wind passages between big volcanic islands, each one a country with its own accent, food and rhythm. This is the connoisseur's Caribbean — fewer crowds, longer legs, bigger rewards.

A classic route runs Martinique to Grenada over ten days to two weeks, but every island below deserves its own week. Some of our BVI-based yachts position south on request (relocation fees usually apply), and we source locally based yachts throughout the chain — worth planning early either way.

The Exumas are barely an hour's flight from Florida and feel like another planet: a 120-mile ribbon of cays laced with sandbars, iguanas, swimming pigs and water in shades of blue that look colour-graded. Shallow draft is the key — this is catamaran and powercat country par excellence.

Note the Bahamas levies a charter tax (currently around 14%), one of the few Caribbean grounds with a meaningful tax line. A small number of our yachts range here; we can also source locally based boats.

Behind the longest barrier reef in the northern hemisphere lies a 190-mile lagoon of flat, gin-clear water scattered with hundreds of palm-topped cayes — and offshore, the Great Blue Hole, the most famous dive site on earth. Inside the reef the sailing is sheltered and shallow; outside it, the Meso-American reef delivers snorkelling and diving to rival anywhere in the hemisphere.

Life ashore is barefoot — beach shacks, rum and drum at San Pedro and Placencia — and the charter scene is real and growing, mostly catamarans working out of Placencia. A superb wildcard for parties who've done the eastern Caribbean.

Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera: four islands, four personalities, one short flight from most of Europe. Palma is one of the great yachting capitals, with a old town worth a day in itself. Sail east to Menorca's quiet calas, or south to Formentera's Caribbean-clear shallows and Ibiza's legendary nights.

Superb infrastructure, reliable summer weather and dining that runs from beach chiringuito to multiple Michelin stars. Spanish VAT (21%) applies; licensed charter yachts only — which we verify as standard.

St-Tropez, Cannes, Antibes, Monaco: the coastline that invented the yachting summer, at its best in June and September when the quays breathe. Day-hop between beach clubs and old ports, then cross to Corsica for the counterpoint — the wild red cliffs of Scandola, the Lavezzi islands' granite pools, and mountain villages above the anchorages.

This is the most expensive water in the Mediterranean, and worth doing properly: French VAT at 20% with possible reductions for international waters, big-event weeks (the Grand Prix, the film festival) booked a year out.

Capri at dawn before the ferries, Positano stacked in pastel, the Aeolians smoking gently on the horizon, the Costa Smeralda's impossible emerald coves: Italy is the Mediterranean at maximum intensity, on the plate as much as over the rail.

Distances between the great sights are real, so a week needs shaping — Amalfi and the islands, or Sicily and the Aeolians, or Sardinia and Corsica, not all three. Italian VAT at 22%; berths in the marquee ports are gold dust in August and we book them early.

The Dalmatian coast is made for chartering: over a thousand islands stacked conveniently along the mainland, medieval walled towns — Dubrovnik, Korčula, Trogir — rising straight from the water, and national parks like Kornati and Mljet where the sea turns to glass. Distances are short, marinas are excellent, and the value is the best in the Med.

VAT on charter is a comparatively gentle 13%, and the sailing is mostly sheltered island-hopping. Our first Croatia-based yachts are already on the system, with more arriving.

Six thousand islands and no wrong answers: the Cyclades for whitewashed drama (and the meltemi's afternoon bluster), the Ionian for green hills and gentle seas, the Saronic for antiquity an hour from Athens, the Dodecanese for Byzantium and Ottoman lace. Swim off the boat into water the colour of hammered silver, eat grilled fish at a taverna whose tables stand in the sand.

Wind matters here: July–August meltemi in the Cyclades is a genuine consideration for comfort — the Ionian is the calm-water choice. Greek VAT runs up to 24% with meaningful reductions commonly available on longer or qualifying charters.

The Carian coast between Bodrum and Antalya is one long ribbon of pine-backed bays, ruined Lycian cities and water that earns the name Turquoise Coast. It is the home of the gulet — the traditional wooden motorsailer, crewed generously and priced kindly — and the best-value crewed chartering in the Mediterranean basin.

Hospitality is a national art form; expect the warmest crews you'll meet anywhere. Outside the EU VAT area, which helps the bill; access is via Bodrum, Dalaman or Antalya.

Norway's fjords are the most dramatic cruising grounds in Europe — thousand-metre walls dropping into black-green water, waterfalls off the spreaders, and in high summer, daylight that never quite ends. Further south, the Swedish and Finnish archipelagos scatter tens of thousands of smooth granite islands into the Baltic, dotted with red cabins and saunas on the rocks.

Add Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo as bookends and you have a charter unlike anything in the south. The season is short and yachts are few, so this is a plan-early destination — typically explorer yachts and hardy sailing fleets.

Polar bears on the ice edge of Svalbard, whales feeding under the midnight sun, Greenland's cathedral icebergs drifting past the rail, Iceland's volcanoes steaming into the sea. Arctic chartering is expedition territory: ice-classed explorer yachts, expedition leaders aboard, zodiac landings instead of beach bars.

There is essentially no 'life ashore' — that's the point. This is the most profound scenery a yacht can reach, for parties who want the planet raw.

The white continent by private yacht is the rarest experience in chartering: penguin colonies a zodiac ride from the gangway, leopard seals on blue ice, silence you can hear. Most itineraries stage from Ushuaia and cross the Drake Passage — two days of serious ocean each way (some charters fly the Drake to King George Island instead).

A small handful of ice-classed yachts work the peninsula each austral summer, with permits and expedition staff arranged far in advance. The ultimate wow; the ultimate logistics.

The Society Islands are the postcard the whole tropics are judged by: Bora Bora's lagoon, Taha'a's vanilla farms, manta rays over coral gardens, and passes where the ocean breathes through the reef. Fiji adds three hundred islands of soft-coral diving and villages where visiting yachts are welcomed with kava.

Within the lagoons the water is silk-calm; between islands you're in real ocean. The flights are long and the reward is proportionate — this is honeymoon and bucket-list water, best combined with a week ashore.

Two countries, four utterly different charters. Queensland's Whitsundays offer Whitehaven's silica sand and resort islands inside the Great Barrier Reef; the Kimberley in the far north-west is pure expedition — tidal waterfalls, ancient rock art and saltwater crocodiles, explorer yachts only.

Across the Tasman, New Zealand answers with the Bay of Islands' green harbours and, in the deep south, Fiordland — Milford and Doubtful Sounds, where waterfalls drop a thousand feet onto the deck. Seasons flip southern-hemisphere: their summer is the Caribbean's winter, which chains the two neatly.

Nowhere else does the wildlife simply ignore you: sea lions surf the tender's wake, marine iguanas pile on the rocks, boobies dance beside your feet. The entire archipelago is an Ecuadorian national park with famously strict rules — fixed itineraries, licensed naturalist guides aboard, and charter only on the small fleet of locally licensed vessels; foreign-flag yachts can't simply sail in and cruise.

That scarcity is the point: visitor sites are quota-controlled and pristine. We arrange the licensed boats and permits — lead times are long and the best vessels book out a year ahead.

The Seychelles' granite islands — boulders like sleeping giants on powder beaches — make for the most sculptural anchorages in the tropics, with giant tortoises and vanilla-scented hills ashore. The Maldives are the opposite geometry: a thousand coral rings on open ocean, the finest water clarity and reef life a charter can offer, best explored by yacht rather than resort.

Both are direct-flight accessible from Europe and the Gulf, and both suit dive-minded and honeymooning parties perfectly.

Phang Nga Bay's limestone towers, Raja Ampat's outrageous reefs, Komodo's dragons and pink beaches: Southeast Asia is the most exotic chartering on earth, with crewed phinisi schooners and modern yachts alike. The food, ashore and aboard, may be the best of any charter region at any price.

Distances are large and the seasons flip between coasts, so itinerary planning matters — but value is remarkable for what you get.

The classic American summer: Newport's mansions and 12-Metre races, Nantucket's grey-shingled lanes, lobster rolls at the dockside shack, fog rolling off the Sound. A civilised, sail-driven alternative when the Caribbean sleeps through hurricane season.

Some of our Caribbean yachts migrate here for the summer — Le Rêve among them — so the two seasons chain together neatly.