This page contains affiliate and referral links. If you charter, book, or buy through them we earn a referral fee, paid by the broker or platform, at no cost to you. We have not adjusted our rankings for the referral rate. Full breakdown on our how-we-make-money page.
The MYBA charter contract says noon local time. Almost no charter actually begins at noon. On a 50m motor yacht in the Mediterranean during peak season, the realistic guest-aboard time is between 5pm and 6pm on day zero. The crew has spent the morning provisioning, bunkering fuel, washing down salt, and rebriefing on your preference sheet. The 12pm clause is contractual, not operational. If you arrive at the quay at 11:55am with eight friends and 22 suitcases, you will sit on a bollard in 32°C heat watching a chief stew politely buy you another hour. We have done it. We do not recommend it.
This guide is what actually happens on embarkation day, hour by hour, on a typical Mediterranean week aboard a 40m to 70m motor yacht. The same template holds in the Caribbean with the airport leg shifted earlier. The point is to spare you the half-formed expectations the broker brochure leaves you with and to flag where charter clients consistently get rinsed on day one.
The day before: what arrives in your inbox
The captain emails 24 to 48 hours out with a confirmed embarkation address (sometimes the marina, sometimes a buoy field if no berth was available), the tender pickup window if needed, your provisioning total to date, and a contact number for the chief stew. If you have not had this email by lunchtime on day minus one, call your broker. A captain who is silent the day before embarkation is a captain who is dealing with a problem.
Re-read your preference sheet. The crew is cooking from a document you signed weeks ago. If your eight-year-old has stopped eating prawns since you filed it, this is the moment to flag it. The galley will already be 60% loaded.
09:00 to 11:30: crew morning, you are not aboard
The chef finishes the market run. In Antibes, this is the Marché Provençal up the rue Sade. In Palma it is Mercat de l'Olivar. On a 50m yacht with eight guests for seven days, the chef will spend €4,500 to €7,500 against your APA on this single morning, depending on whether you put truffles, white asparagus, or aged beef on the preference sheet. The receipt goes into the APA ledger and you see it at the first briefing.
The deckhands wash down. The interior crew dresses the cabins with the linen package you specified. The chief stew lays out your welcome aboard. The captain runs the engine room checklist, calls the marina for any berth swap, and confirms the fuel slip.
If you are arriving by helicopter to a touch-and-go pad, the captain confirms the slot with the local authority. In Saint-Tropez and Cannes, helicopter movements in July and August are not on demand. They are slotted, and they get pushed when commercial rotations need the airspace. Build in 90 minutes either way.
12:00: the contractual clause
This is when the charter legally starts. Your weekly rate clock begins. APA started ticking from the moment the captain bought your first crate of San Pellegrino, but the seven-day window is now running.
Some yachts do offer a true 12pm boarding. They are typically smaller boats (under 35m), boats on a quick turnaround between back-to-back charters, or owner's boats where the captain has been told by the owner not to push the embarkation window. If your broker has promised a 12pm boarding, get it in writing in the central agent email chain. Otherwise, treat the noon hour as the moment your money starts working, not the moment you step aboard.
12:00 to 16:00: where to be
The most common day-zero mistake is to be at the marina at noon. The second most common is to be 90 minutes away in transit. Both are bad. The correct place to be on day zero is at lunch, near the harbor, with luggage in storage at the hotel you slept in the night before.
For a Cannes or Antibes embarkation, the cleanest move is a long late lunch on a terrace, ideally somewhere with the harbor in sight and tender access for the captain to confirm your boarding window. The Cannes shore restaurants the captain books for guests all do this. For Saint-Tropez, a pre-charter night at one of the hotels overlooking the gulf gives you the morning to swim and the early afternoon to pack a small tender bag.
For an Amalfi embarkation in Naples, the cleanest sequence is a pre-charter villa night above Positano the night before, a taxi to Sorrento or Marina Piccola in the morning, and lunch in town until the captain confirms.
The point is that you want the yacht to want you to arrive, not for the crew to be tolerating you while the deck is still being washed down.
16:00 to 17:00: captain confirms boarding
The captain or chief stew calls. They will say something like, "We are ready for you whenever you are." This is operational code for, "Please come, we are done." Move.
If you are at the quay-side, the deckhands take your luggage. Your bags do not travel with you to the cabin. They go to a luggage corridor and the interior crew unpacks them once you are on the upper deck with a drink. This is not optional service. The crew prefers it because it lets them pace the unpack to your dinner, and because charter clients reliably overpack and the interior team needs to spread the cabin storage carefully.
If you have brought hard cases for camera gear, scuba regulators, or musical instruments, mention them. The crew will move them to the appropriate locker or the dive compressor station, not your cabin.
17:00 to 17:30: the welcome aboard
The chief stew runs this. Cold towels. A round of champagne unless the preference sheet says otherwise. A short tour: the saloon, the deck plan, the sundeck, the gym, the beach club if there is one, the spa if there is one. Tour pace varies by stew. The good ones do it in 15 minutes. The bad ones turn it into a 45-minute monologue and you will feel it.
Cabins are revealed at the end of the tour. Most captains assign cabins on the preference sheet a week out, but the chief stew gives you the final walk-through. If you have requested specific cabin assignments and they are wrong, fix it now. Cabin swaps after day one require the interior crew to re-strip and re-dress two cabins overnight, and it eats their sleep.
17:30: the safety briefing
SOLAS requires this within the first hour aboard. The captain runs it. Muster station, life jackets, fire alarms, what to do if you smell smoke, how to use the tender ladder, the no-go zones of the engine room, and a tender briefing for any guest who plans to drive the small tender themselves. Some yachts will not allow charter guests to helm the tender at all. Some require a license check. Ask before you assume.
The briefing is not optional. We have seen guests try to skip it because they have chartered before. The captain will run it anyway. Smile through it. It takes 12 minutes.
18:00 to 19:00: the captain's briefing
This is the moment that defines the week. The captain sits down with the lead guest, the trip-planner, or whoever has been corresponding about the itinerary. They walk through the weather window for the next 48 hours, the proposed route, the dinner reservations the chief stew has held, the lunch anchorages, and any sea-state issues to expect.
This is also when the captain shows you the APA ledger. The opening number includes the chef's market run, the fuel that has been bunkered, the initial dock fees, the welcome flowers, and any pre-charter laundry. On a 50m yacht with €420K weekly rate at 30% APA, you will already have spent 8% to 12% of your APA before dinner.
If the APA opening balance feels high, ask the captain to walk you through each line. The captain expects this. A captain who deflects is a captain to be skeptical of for the rest of the week.
This is the moment to flag itinerary preferences. If you have been told by the broker that the captain will take you to Cap Roux for lunch and the captain has just said the wind will be 25 knots from the southwest tomorrow and Cap Roux is exposed, you let the captain decide and you do not push. Charter clients who override the captain's weather call on day one have a measurably worse week. We have data.
19:30 to 21:30: first dinner aboard
Most yachts serve the first dinner at anchor in a sheltered cove rather than at the dock. The departure from the marina is therefore the first piece of the actual charter. The deck crew lifts the lines, the captain calls the marina pilot if required, and you push off. Total maneuver from line-off to anchor-set is typically 45 minutes to two hours depending on the destination.
Dinner is on the upper deck if the weather allows. The chef will run a five-course or seven-course tasting menu on the first night, because the first night is when the chef makes the case for the rest of the week. Treat it as a calibration: if you do not like a course, say so. The chef is rewriting the next six menus in their head as you eat.
The friction
Two things, consistently, across most Mediterranean charters.
First, the welcome champagne is almost always a non-vintage Veuve Clicquot or a non-vintage Moët, both of which are correct, expected, and uninteresting. If you care, write the bottle into the preference sheet. The chief stew will buy a vintage or a grower champagne for the same money and you will start the week better.
Second, the first-night tasting menu is usually too long. Charter clients arriving on a 12-hour transit are not hungry. We routinely ask for a three-course dinner on night one, hold the tasting menu for night two when the family is rested. Captains will not suggest this. You have to ask.
Passed on
Day-zero champagne and dock photoshoots produced by some brokers as part of the welcome aboard. We mention this because two of the larger Antibes-based agencies bundle a quayside photographer with their charter handovers, and the resulting photos are functionally indistinguishable from a cruise line's marketing material. The first hour aboard is not for marketing. Decline.
FAQ
What time does a MYBA charter actually start? Noon local time on the embarkation date is the contractual standard, but most yachts ask guests aboard between 5pm and 6pm so the crew has the morning to provision, fuel, and clean.
Do I need to be at the marina at 12pm? No. The contract clock starts at 12pm but boarding is almost always late afternoon. Have lunch ashore. The captain will call you when the yacht is ready.
Who unpacks my luggage? The interior crew. Bags go to a luggage corridor, get unpacked into cabins while you are on the upper deck, and you will find them stowed when you go down to change for dinner.
Do I pay APA before I board? Yes. The advance provisioning allowance is wired to the central agent escrow before embarkation, usually 7 to 10 days out. The captain shows the running ledger from day one.
Is there a safety briefing? Yes. SOLAS requires a guest safety briefing within the first hour aboard, covering muster station, life jackets, fire alarms, and tender procedures.
Can I bring guests aboard for the welcome aboard who are not on the charter? Only with the captain's permission, and only at the dock. Once the yacht has left the marina, non-manifest guests are an insurance problem.
Can I change the itinerary on day one? Yes, with the captain. Itinerary flex is normal. Itinerary override against a weather call is not.