FAQ

Every night carries its own price and its own colour. White is available, green is your selection, blue is turnaround — the time we need between charters to clean, provision and refuel — and red is already taken. A purple dot marks a public holiday.

Click the night you would like to board, then the morning you disembark. The calendar checks the whole run as you go: the minimum stay for the season, the notice that charter needs, and the turnaround either side. If a run will not work it simply will not select, so you cannot accidentally book a week that cannot be sailed.

Because overnight charters occupy nights, not days. A charter from the 1st to the 4th uses the nights of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd; the 4th is a disembarking morning. Guests leave before lunch, so that date is still available as somebody else’s boarding day. It is the same convention hotels use.

Rates follow the season and the day of the week, and the calendar shows you the real figure for each night rather than an average. That is why a week that crosses into high season costs more than the week before it — and why moving your dates by a few days sometimes changes the total more than you would expect. The quote at the end itemises every night, so you can see exactly where the number comes from.

Yes. There is a country picker above the calendar, and your holidays appear alongside ours. Useful if you are working backwards from a long weekend at home, or avoiding one here.

The second card on the booking page. It asks where you would like to sail, and turns the answer into real numbers.

First choose your cruising grounds — the US Virgin Islands, the BVI, St Martin and so on. Then build the route itself: pick where the charter starts, and add anchorages one at a time. Each one arrives with the distance from the last, the hours under way, and whether that reads as a short hop, a good sail or a long day. Underneath, a running total gives the whole week in miles, hours and the number of nights it suits.

You are planning, not committing. Nothing here is locked in when you book.

Drag them. Cruising grounds and anchorages can both be dragged up and down into the order you want to sail them in, and everything is re-measured the moment you let go — so you can see immediately whether your preferred order costs an extra hour or saves one.

On a phone, tap the one you want to move and then tap where it should go. The same gesture works for both lists.

The first one in the list, and yes. The base is where your charter is priced from and where it starts, so moving another ground to the front moves the starting point with it. The anchorages you are offered as a starting point come from that first ground only.

A return charter starts and finishes in the same place, and the route includes the sail home — often the longest leg of the week, which is why it is shown rather than hidden.

A one-way charter finishes somewhere else: Charlotte Amalie to Road Town, say, or Marigot to Gustavia. You choose the finishing point separately, and it can be in any of the grounds you picked. Because that leaves the yacht away from her base, there is a delivery back afterwards; where it applies, it is quoted on the page with the distance beside it, not added later.

The planner gives a range rather than a single number, because the same anchorages can be a relaxed fortnight or a hard week. The upper figure is a night at every stop. The lower one is the fewest nights the route can be done in at the pace you chose — gentle, balanced or brisk, shown as hours a day so you know exactly what you are agreeing to.

Once you have dates, the summary sets the two against each other and says plainly whether your week is comfortable or tight.

The list is governed by what can realistically be reached. You are offered grounds within range of home to begin with, then anywhere within reach of the last one you chose — so you can work down an island chain in stages, and somewhere that looks impossible at first appears once you have added the stop before it.

If where you want to go is still not there, it is not a refusal. Ask us — longer passages and repositioning charters are quoted by hand.

The form tells you before you pay, rather than selling you a week that cannot be sailed. You are shown your route with the reckoning and an invitation to plan it with us instead. Add a night, drop a stop, or choose a brisker pace and it clears.

No. Choose a charter and your dates and you are done — the route card is there if you want it. Anything you do build is saved with your booking and reaches the captain, so it becomes the starting point for planning rather than a form you filled in twice.

Not at all. Weather rearranges itineraries and always will. What you build is a starting point and a shared understanding of what you want from the week; your captain will shape it around the forecast once you are aboard.

Payment is taken by Stripe, which handles card payments for millions of businesses worldwide. You are sent to Stripe’s own secure checkout to enter your card, and your card details are never seen by, sent to, or stored on our website.

We take credit and debit cards, and Stripe offers Apple Pay and Google Pay where your device supports them. All prices are in U.S. dollars. The full charter price is paid at booking, which is what secures the dates — there is no separate deposit to chase later.

They are held for twenty minutes the moment you start checkout, so nobody can take them while you are typing. If you abandon the payment the hold simply expires and the dates go back on sale — nothing is charged and nothing is owed.

As soon as Stripe confirms the payment your booking is created and a confirmation email arrives with your reference, your dates and the route you planned on it.

Yes. Nothing is lost by closing the page — start again whenever you like. If you signed in with your email we may follow up with what you had chosen, which is usually the quickest way to pick the conversation back up.

Once you have paid, your confirmation reference and email address open your booking again at any time on the Boarding Pass page.