Planning a Yacht Trip When You’re Not a Millionaire

by Meg Renninger

A couple years ago my oldest brother Josh told me he was applying for the Peace Corps.

“Great!” I told him. “I’ll start saving to come visit you.” By Christmas he found himself in a country in the former Soviet Union I hadn’t heard of before, and he told me his new hometown sort of sucked for visiting.

He then mentioned he had been looking into Mediterranean yacht trips off the coast of Turkey and they were surprisingly cheap. Would I be interested in going on one of those instead? Heck yeah I would.

A short time later I met a guy and we talked about our future plans. I told him I had a boat trip I was saving for and that I’d like to get another dog someday. He thought that sounded pretty good, so we got married. We cheaped out on our honeymoon by staying in hostels and visiting national parks on a pass we received as a wedding gift. One friend gave us a cooler full of beer as a wedding gift and we drank it while watching the twilight come down over Yellowstone lake.

I now had two boat trip tickets to save for and two dogs to love. A few months later I interviewed for a waiting job at a brewpub. When she asked about my summer availability I mentioned I was mostly free minus a Mediterranean boat trip coming up. She rolled her eyes, perhaps assuming that I was a silver spoon kid. That changed when she saw how greedily I snatched up extra shifts from the college student employees. They had lakes to check out; I had seas to see.

Soon, I found myself on the docks off the coast of Turkey with my husband, brother and 14 friends, staring at my new home for the next seven days. The 30-meter yacht was a beauty in the crystal clear water. With a full crew, chef, and a luxurious Mediterranean itinerary, the yacht trip cost us $660 a person, minus flights.

Josh had pulled together a group of 16 twenty-somethings from all corners of the globe to meet for the trip of a lifetime for less than $100 a day. The work he put into making it happen gave us the opportunity for a millionaire’s vacation on a college student budget — my kind of budget.

The trip was amazing. I would wake up bleary-eyed and queasy from the cheap red wine and salty olives. I would stagger out of the room into the brilliant light and jump off the deck into the clear blue water. By the time I came up for air I was no longer hungover. My mind was clear and the world was perfect. The water was magical.

The days were spent traveling to tiny towns, ancient island ruins and party ports. We napped on the oversized couch beds, played board games and got to know one another. A couple guys with stellar cameras and talent became trip photographers. One artist drew gorgeous tattoos on our arms in permanent marker. We rehashed the day’s events with slideshows and stories in the evenings.

Throughout the trip we became increasingly grateful for the work Josh put into making this happen. His organization and determination brought us 90 percent of the way to this trip.

Looking back, it dawns on me the effective strategies he employed to make this happen:

1. Take ownership of the trip: “I told my friends it’s cheap to rent a yacht off the coast of Turkey and they ran with the idea so we went” said no one ever. This kind of trip is totally possible, but it will require a person to become trip organizer (probably you), to make it happen. Do your research. As the leader you should become the expert in the ins and outs of the trip. Spending 100 hours researching and talking with the yacht business isn’t an unrealistic expectation. Since this time is spread over the course of a year or more, this level of time commitment isn’t horrible.
2. Start talking about the trip early. For most people, springing an epic international boat trip on them a month out is unlikely to go far — especially with your under or recently employed friends. People need time to financially prepare. Give yourself at least a year to make it happen. Plant the seed over winter holidays cocktails with family and friends and then send out your first boat trip email in January to capitalize on the New Year resolution season and the crummy winter weather. Consider targeting the trip itself for the summer of the following year and see who might be interested. It’s easier to sell a dream when it seems far enough out to be merely a warm luxurious Mediterranean idea.
3. Set the price. After finding a group of interested friends and a reputable yacht company it’s time for the money email. Break the cost of the yacht trip down by person and add a 10 percent cushion to each ticket. This cushion will help weather changing currency rates from when you collect the money to when you pay for the trip. If there is money left over it can go into the collective booze fund or be reimbursed. In our case, we put the extra towards boat trip alcohol. Be extremely open about what the price does and does not include. For our trip $660 included the seven-day yacht trip, taxes, food, cleaning, and linens. What wasn’t included was booze and the actual transportation to the dock.
4. Collect the money Set deadlines for people to commit and Paypal you the first and second half of the money. For our trip, the verbal agreement deadline was a year before we set sail and the first and second payment deadline was 3 and 6 months later. This was helpful in weeding out flakes and preventing anyone from holding the financial bag. In a similar vein, our trip had a rule from the get-go that if someone paid into the trip and then wanted to back out their money would be refunded only after we found someone to fill their place. It sounds lame at first, but the entire trip hinged on 16 people shouldering the cost and its equally lame for someone to back out knowing that. All of this was extremely transparent and made it easy for people to really commit because one flake didn’t doom the trip.
5. Communicate often. Don’t let the initial exciting boat trip proposal fizzle out. Keep excitement and expectations high by updating interested parties every six weeks. Include links to the yacht company website and gorgeous photos of the private island you’ll be visiting. The boat company you work with will likely have advertising materials such as sample menus and itineraries. Include them! By being open and on top of your game your friends will begin to go from “that sounds cool” to “this is really happening!”
6. As the trip gets closer start constructing an itinerary for the arrival and departure from the boat. During our trip we all met up at a specific hostel in Istanbul before taking a bus ride together to the coast. By organizing this upfront everybody had a definitive date and time for when they needed to be in Istanbul and people were able to purchase the right ticket for their schedule. This was especially helpful for people who combined the boat trip into other travels throughout the continent.
7. The final email before the trip. The trip is so close you can taste the honey and olives. Before you jet off to start the trip don’t forget the critical last email. This email should summarize the trip plan and include as much contact information as you can provide. Give your group the number and address for the yacht company, the pre-trip meetup spot address and number, your pre-trip accommodations and your cell phone number if you’ll have one. Basically whatever you can provide to make yourself accessible as possible for the many people traveling thousands of miles to meet you. This information should also be handed out to other family members in case there is a natural disaster or emergency and they wish to contact you.

Other tips:

• Use a credit card to pay. Not only will this give you better protection but if you shop for the right card you can get awesome points. One perk of the job.
• Don’t stress too much about group composition. A perfect party boat has everybody knowing somebody and nobody knowing everybody.
• Find out if there are speakers on board and assign people DJ music responsibility.
• Don’t forget travel board games, cards, and sunscreen.

This story is part of our Travel Month series.

Meg Renninger lives in Northern Colorado with her dogs and husband. She blogs about human and animal evolutionary adaptations at Animals and Weapons. Follow her on twitter at @bazookabeavers

Photo: Chris Parfitt

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