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The Charter Yacht Index is every charter yacht we have reviewed or catalogued. The target inventory by month 12 is 12,000 yachts ranging from a 24m motor catamaran in the BVIs at $48,000 a week to a 110m Lürssen in the western Mediterranean at €2.4M a week, all refreshed quarterly. Search by size, type, builder, destination, and price band. Each yacht page shows the same data fields in the same order so two yachts can actually be compared without translating between broker brochures.
Every yacht page is built on the same checklist: LOA, beam, draft, GT, year built, refit year, classification (MCA, ABS, or Lloyd's, with the actual cert number), guest capacity, cabin configuration, captain name and tenure with the boat, crew count and role split, peak and low-season weekly rate, APA percentage, included versus excluded in the headline, fuel burn per hour at cruise, range at cruise, top speed, the broker handling charter inquiries, our short verdict, and the field we call "what we would change." If the field is empty, the page is not finished, and the yacht is not shown.
How the index is organised
The four primary views, all stacking. You can hit "50m to 60m + Mediterranean + motor + 12 guests" and get the working list.
- By size. Six brackets: under 30m, 30 to 40m, 40 to 50m, 50 to 60m, 60 to 80m, 80m and up. The most useful first filter for budget calibration. See under 50m, 30 to 40m, 40 to 50m, 60m and up, and 80m and up.
- By type. Motor, sailing, catamaran, explorer, classic. Type sets the trip shape. A 40m sailing yacht in Croatia is a different week from a 40m motor yacht in the same waters.
- By builder. Feadship, Lürssen, Benetti, Sanlorenzo, Heesen, Oceanco, Amels, Abeking and Rasmussen, Perini Navi, Baltic, Wally, Royal Huisman, plus the smaller specialist yards. Builder is shorthand for engineering culture, refit cadence, and resale liquidity. See the Builders pillar for the full profile work.
- By destination. The cross with our 40 charter destinations shows which yachts are positioned where for the season you are planning. A yacht catalogued in the Mediterranean in August will not be in Antigua in March without a repositioning week.
What we filter out
The index excludes yachts that fail one of three tests, regardless of how heavily a broker markets them.
The first filter is condition. Yachts that have not seen a substantive refit in over 15 years, where the broker cannot show a current MCA certificate, or where the last reported charter ended in a documented mechanical or generator failure with no fix on file, do not appear. We have removed three named yachts from the index in 2026 alone after charter clients sent us post-trip reports we could verify.
The second filter is captain stability. A yacht with a captain on the boat under 18 months and no clear handover record from the previous captain is a yacht we will not put in front of a $500,000 week. We list it once tenure stabilises, or we list it with a flag.
The third filter is rate honesty. If the broker has been caught quoting a "base rate" that does not reflect the actual contract floor, we mark the yacht and the broker. Some brokers do this systemically. Their listings get pulled.
What is on each yacht page
A working yacht page is roughly 1,800 to 2,200 words. The fixed fields appear first, in the same order on every page, so a reader scanning ten yachts in the 50m bracket can pattern-match.
- Header: name, builder, LOA, year, refit, the broker handling charter inquiries, the peak and low-season rate, the APA percentage.
- Spec block: beam, draft, GT, classification, guest count, cabin configuration with notes (two-cabin masters, on-deck VIPs, convertible bunks), crew count by role, captain name and tenure, chef name where relevant, helipad type (touch-and-go or certified), at-anchor stabilisers, tender list.
- Editorial section: our take on whether this yacht is worth the rate in its size class, with two or three named comparisons (better at this rate, worse at this rate, similar but different trip shape).
- "What we would change" section. Every yacht has one. If we cannot find one, we have not vetted the yacht hard enough.
- Verdict: Worth it, Worth it with caveats, or Pass. Three labels, no five-star inflation.
Where the data comes from
We pull from broker feeds where they exist (Burgess, Edmiston, Camper and Nicholsons, IYC, Fraser, Northrop and Johnson, Y.CO, Ocean Independence) and aggregator feeds (BoatBookings, YachtCharterFleet, CharterWorld). For the editorial layer we add captain references, post-trip reports from clients we can verify, refit yard records, and our own observations from inspections at the major boat shows (Monaco, Cannes, Fort Lauderdale, MIPIM-Cannes-Yacht-Forum). Where a fact is reported but not verified, the page carries an inline [VERIFY: pending] marker rather than a polished-but-invented sentence. We do not invent specs or rates.
How to use the index if you already know what you want
Most readers arrive here either with a destination locked and an open yacht decision, or with a yacht in mind and a destination decision pending. The fastest paths:
- Destination locked. Start from the destination page and use the embedded spec index there. The destination page shows only yachts positioned in that region for the requested season.
- Yacht in mind. Search by name or builder. Each yacht page shows where it is positioned by month for the next 18 months, so you can match the yacht to your dates.
- Size and budget locked. Use the size brackets above or the yacht charter cost by size page to land in the right band, then filter into a single working list of 8 to 12 yachts.
The aim is a working shortlist, not a complete catalogue. Six yachts on the shortlist after 45 minutes is the right velocity.