Nobody decides to buy a boat at a show. They decide on the seventh day of a charter.
A show gives you an hour on a boat that is switched off and tied to a dock, with someone waiting behind you. A week gives you the same boat working: underway, at anchor, overnight, with your own family aboard and an itemized bill at the end of it.
If you are circling a purchase, that week is the best research you can do. It might confirm the boat. It might point you at a different one altogether. And it will show you things you had not thought to ask about.
You can charter the exact boat you are considering
Here is the part most people do not realize: the boat you are thinking of buying is very likely available to charter. For production yachts, the model you have your eye on is already working in a charter fleet somewhere you would want to sail.
Nearly every recent Fountaine Pajot, Lagoon and Sunreef can be chartered. Around half of the recent Sanlorenzos, Azimuts and Ferrettis can too. It gets thinner with Princess, but it is still worth asking.
Chartering the exact model is the smartest thing you can do before you buy. A week costs a fraction of the purchase, and you get to live on her working: underway, at anchor, overnight, with your own people aboard.
Charter the size you are actually buying. A week on a 55 foot catamaran is a great holiday, but it does not tell you much about an 80 foot motor yacht. Get on the boat you mean, or the closest thing to her.
We have booked weeks that existed for exactly this. One client would only take a brand new Fountaine Pajot 59, because the week was his test. By the end of it he was asking about the 61. That is the process working.
Above roughly 130 feet you are testing a particular yacht rather than a model, and we can usually find her, a sister ship, or the yard’s closest hull. Tell us the boat and we will find the week.
Which features you actually use
Especially with a first boat, you do not really know what you want until you are out there. Most people have clear ideas about what matters, where they will spend their time and what they will be doing. On the water it can be completely different.
You might think you want full sun and find you want shade. You might expect to spend the week on the flybridge and end up on the aft deck every day.
The jacuzzi is the classic one. Plenty of clients want one, and then spend the whole week in the sea instead, because the sea is right there and it is the best water they have ever swum in. Filling and heating the tub turns into a hassle nobody asked for.
None of that is a mistake, and it is not something a viewing can tell you. It is also the kind of thing that decides whether you end up liking the boat you bought.
A week aboard settles it. You come back knowing which spaces you actually used, which you walked past, and what you would ask for on a boat of your own.
What she feels like underway
At the dock every boat feels solid. The week is where you find out how she actually moves, and that is one of the best parts of doing this.
Listen for the noise in the saloon at cruising speed, whether a conversation still works on the aft deck with the engines running, how she takes a short chop on the beam, and how much she rolls at anchor when a ferry wake comes through.
You also get a feel for how well she has been kept. A boat whose owner reinvests every season shows it in how she runs, right down to the tender.
Ask the captain for one longer leg during the week, not only short hops between anchorages. One real passage tells you more than a dozen photos.
Whether you can sleep on her
At a show everything is switched off. At anchor you find out what runs all night.
The generator is the question. Some boats hold air conditioning overnight on batteries, some run a generator through the night, and on some hulls the owner’s cabin sits far enough forward that you would not notice either way.
Sleeping aboard is the only way to answer that. Ask the captain to run one night with the generator off and one with it on. By morning you will know which boat you are buying.
The rest is the same kind of detail, and it is all useful. How much light comes in at six in the morning. Whether the crew moving around at dawn reaches the forward cabins. Whether the cabin you assumed was yours is the one you would actually choose.
What she really costs to run
At the end of a charter you get an itemized statement of the week: fuel, dockage, food, drinks, moorings and local taxes. It is the closest thing to a real operating budget you can see before you own a boat, and it beats any estimate.
Read it as a busy week rather than a typical one. A charter runs the boat hard, with a full guest list, restaurant standard provisioning and prime marina nights. Your own weeks would usually cost less.
Then notice what is not on it: crew wages, insurance, winter maintenance, the next refit, management and the off season berth. That is the owner’s year, and knowing the shape of it before you buy is exactly the point.
The way costs are structured varies too. Most boats take an onboard budget, the APA, as a percentage of the charter fee. A Princess 95 in the Bahamas, for example, runs 35 percent plus the 14 percent local tax on a base of 90,000 to 100,000 USD a week.
A Lagoon 55 in Croatia does it differently, with a flat 8,000 EUR weekly budget and VAT already inside the rate. Seeing both models up close tells you a lot about how a boat is really run.
The crew tip sits outside all of it, roughly 10 percent in the Mediterranean and 15 percent in the Caribbean.
Whether you want crew living aboard
Ownership is also a staffing decision, and a week is the easy way to see what that means. The numbers surprise people. A 55 foot catamaran for eight guests runs on two crew, a captain and a stewardess who cooks. A 120 foot motor yacht for eleven runs on seven.
More crew does not mean more people in your space. On the catamaran the two crew share the deck you are sitting on. On the motor yacht the seven have their own part of the boat, so you see them when you ask for them.
A week tells you which of those you prefer, and whether two people is enough for the way your family really uses a boat. That is a question you can only answer by living it.
And you get to see good crews up close. Some stay with a boat through the winter and do the maintenance together, which is worth knowing when you think about your own.
Whether you want to own at all
The week answers this one too, and either answer is a good one.
If you take two or three weeks a year, chartering gives you a different boat, a different sea and no off season. Owning gives you your own boat, your way, whenever you want her. A week aboard shows you which of those you actually value.
The numbers help you decide. That 120 foot motor yacht charters at 145,000 to 190,000 EUR a week plus expenses. Set three weeks of that against a year of owning her and you have a real comparison, made with real figures.
We see it go both ways, and both are wins. A guest came off a long charter last season wanting to own one. Another finished a week, called it the best vacation they ever had, and asked us to find a Sunreef to charter next because they were thinking about buying one.
The common thread is that a week gives you a clear answer. A day aboard rarely does.
So talk to us before you commit either way. We plan charter weeks and we sell yachts, so whichever answer the week gives you, we can help with the next step.
If the week tells you that you want your own, our sales team can take it from there, with a shortlist that already knows what you liked. If it tells you that you would rather keep chartering and pick a different boat every summer, that is a great answer too.
