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A four-person close-protection team running a 7-day Mediterranean charter in 2026 costs between $56,000 and $168,000, before flights, accommodation on transit days, and the broker's coordination fee. That number is the first thing the people asking about this rarely hear from the booking broker, who often quotes only the day rate and leaves the rest of the line items to surface when the invoice arrives. This post is the math, the operational reality, and the four things you should write into the contract before the team embarks.
We are writing for the charter client who has already decided they want a protection presence aboard. Whether the decision is right for the profile is a separate question, and one we do not answer here. What we answer is what you actually buy when you buy a yacht security team, what good looks like, and what the broker's commercial incentive will quietly obscure.
What a yacht close-protection team actually does
The term covers a range. At the low end, two operators sit quietly on the sundeck during the day and rotate watches at night while the yacht is at anchor. At the high end, a six-person team manages embarkation control, shore-movement advance work, tender escorts, vehicle coordination ashore, and a 24-hour rotating watch with continuous bridge contact. The price gap reflects the gap in scope.
The vocabulary you will hear from the team leader, who is almost always ex-SAS, ex-SBS, ex-DEVGRU, ex-GIGN, ex-Sayeret Matkal, or equivalent, includes the following. Principal: the person being protected. PES: protective escort section. RST: residential security team, in this case yacht-resident. Advance: the operator sent ahead to a planned restaurant, shop, or beach to assess the venue before the principal arrives. None of this is dressed up. The teams that try to dress it up are the ones to avoid, for reasons we will get to.
What the team does not do: drive the tender, cook, serve drinks, work the deck, or assist with luggage. Mixing the protection brief with the crew brief is a known operational failure and a reason team leaders insist on a discrete role. The crew on a 70m yacht runs to 18 to 22 people, and adding a four-person protection team puts the headcount near 26, which is a real berthing and galley load. We come back to this.
Day rates by tier, as of May 2026
The market splits into roughly four bands. These are per-operator, per-day, exclusive of travel, accommodation on positioning days, kit shipping, and insurance.
- Tier 1, ex-tier-one military close-protection operators with maritime training, multilingual, current with maritime security firms based out of London, Dubai, Tel Aviv, or Cape Town: $4,500 to $6,000 per operator per day. Team leader uplift typically 25%.
- Tier 2, ex-British Army or equivalent NATO infantry with completed close-protection course and at least 200 days of maritime task: $3,000 to $4,500.
- Tier 3, generalist close-protection operators with limited maritime experience, often sourced for a one-off task through a UK or French firm: $2,000 to $3,000.
- Tier 4, local-market operators in Greece, Croatia, or Italy, used for shore-side movement only and embarked on day-trips: $800 to $1,500.
A typical 7-day Med charter with a high-profile family will run a two-person Tier 1 PES embedded full-time, plus two Tier 2 operators on the night-watch rotation, plus one local Tier 4 operator on call for shore advance. Cost band: $90,000 to $135,000 for the week, before flights and embarkation overheads.
The four things the broker will not put in writing
This is the part of the conversation that decides whether the contract holds. We have seen, repeatedly, the same four gaps.
One: the chain of command on departure decisions. The captain has command of the yacht. The team leader has authority over the principal's movement and immediate environment. When the captain wants to depart an anchorage at 0300 due to a forecast wind shift, and the team leader is content to stay because the shore environment is benign, who decides. Write it into the protection contract. The default is the captain's call on nautical matters and the team leader's call on protective matters, but the seam between the two is where every dispute happens. The seam is largest when the team has not worked on yachts before, which is most of them.
Two: armed vs unarmed and the jurisdictional reality. Armed close-protection is almost never legal in EU waters for non-state actors. The licensing regimes in France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, and Greece do not permit private armed protection on yachts in territorial waters except under specific maritime-security contracts for HRA transit, which the Mediterranean is not. The teams that tell you otherwise are either lying or planning to bring weapons aboard outside the regulatory frame, which exposes the yacht and the principal. Get the unarmed scope in writing. If you need armed cover, you are operating in the Indian Ocean transit corridor or off the Horn, and that is a different contract with a different operator class.
Three: who pays for accommodation on positioning days. Teams typically embark the day before the charter and disembark the day after. That is two extra nights of hotel for four to six people, which at Cannes or Saint-Tropez peak rates is $4,000 to $8,000 in addition to the operator day rate, which often continues through the positioning days at the full rate or at 50%. We have seen brokers quote the seven-day rate and absorb the positioning costs into a separate invoice line that arrives at the end of the charter. Get a clean total in advance.
Four: the crew berth load. A 70m yacht has perhaps three to four spare crew berths. A four-person protection team eats those berths immediately, which means the chief stew cannot bring on the additional pastry chef she was planning to add for your week, and the captain cannot rotate the third engineer ashore for the leave he was owed. The yacht's operational margin is degraded for the duration. On a 50m, a four-person team often cannot berth at all, and either the team rotates in shifts from a shore base, or the team sleeps on the saloon sofas, which we have actually seen, and which is the moment the contract should have been re-scoped.
What we passed on
Three patterns we will not coordinate or recommend.
We pass on protection teams sourced through the same broker who is also booking the charter, unless that broker has a separate, declared maritime-security division with its own indemnity insurance. Most brokers do not. The conflict is that the broker is incentivized to recommend the cheapest team that closes the deal, not the right team for the principal's actual risk profile. Use a separate security advisor and let them tender the contract.
We pass on teams that arrive in identical black polo shirts with conspicuous sidearms-on-the-hip body language. The job of close protection is to be unremarkable to anyone watching. A team that looks like a team is a team that has already failed the first part of the brief, which is to not draw attention to the principal. The best teams look like the guests' friends from a finance background who play a lot of tennis. That is the standard.
We pass on operators with no prior maritime task list. Land-based close protection translates badly to a confined, multi-deck environment with limited egress, a transom that becomes a kill zone in any unauthorized boarding scenario, and a tender that has to operate as both an extraction vehicle and a regular shore taxi. The yacht is a environment with its own rules, and operators who have not learned them on prior tasks will make basic errors. Ask for the prior-task list and call two captains who used the team before.
Operationally, what this looks like on a real week
A two-person PES typically embeds in the principal's cabin corridor, with the team leader in a single cabin adjacent and the second operator in a twin cabin on the same deck. Watches rotate four-on-eight-off if the team is two-person, six-on-six-off if four-person. The night watch is run from the bridge wing or from the yacht-deck, with continuous comms to the officer of the watch, who is part of the bridge rotation. The team leader briefs the captain at 0700 every day with the day's planned movements and any change to the threat picture, and the captain briefs the chief stew and the second-in-command on the impact to crew movement.
Tender movement is the most dangerous part of the operational picture. The tender to the shore restaurant is the point where the principal is most exposed, with the smallest team footprint and the slowest reaction time. The PES sends one operator on the advance run, who clears the restaurant, the route to the table, and the bathroom corridor, and only then signals the second operator to bring the principal. If the advance call goes bad, the principal stays on the yacht and dinner moves to the saloon. That has happened on a charter we know of, twice in the same week, and the principal was furious until the team leader showed him the threat traffic.
The math, end to end
A representative scope for a high-net-worth principal with two children chartering a 70m yacht for seven days in the western Mediterranean in July 2026:
- Two Tier 1 operators at $5,000/day for nine days (one positioning, seven charter, one disembarking): $90,000
- Two Tier 2 operators at $3,500/day for nine days: $63,000
- Local Tier 4 operator on day rate at $1,200/day for shore-advance days only, say four days: $4,800
- Flights, business class, four operators, return: $24,000
- Hotel two nights at Cannes pre- and post-charter, four operators, $600/night: $9,600
- Kit shipping (medical kit, comms, body armour for transit only): $3,500
- Coordination fee from the security agency, typically 12 to 18%: $24,000 to $36,000
Charter-week total: $218,900 to $230,900. The day rates alone undersell this by 30% to 40%. Brokers who quote you only the day rates are giving you a number that the real bill will exceed. Ask for the all-in.
What good looks like the morning after
The right team is the team you forgot was on the yacht by Tuesday. The principal is moving freely. The crew is operating normally. The captain has had two coffees with the team leader and the chief stew has stopped asking why the second operator has not eaten. The team has not raised the threat picture in front of guests and has not asked for anything other than what the contract specifies. On Friday morning the team leader gives the captain a written debrief, the captain countersigns, and the team disembarks without ceremony at the berth that afternoon.
If you can describe your last charter that way, the team was correctly chosen and correctly briefed. If you cannot, the failure was in the brief, not in the operators. Brief better next time.
FAQ
Can a yacht charter include armed security?
Almost never in EU waters. Most charter-grade close-protection teams operate unarmed in the Mediterranean and in most Caribbean jurisdictions. Armed contracts are typically limited to transit through HRA-designated waters under specific maritime-security licensing, which the Mediterranean and the Caribbean are not.
How much does a yacht security team cost per day?
Day rates range from $2,000 to $6,000 per operator in 2026, with 2- to 6-person teams typical depending on guest profile, destination, and whether shore movements are in scope. Add 30% to 40% for positioning days, flights, hotels, kit, and the security agency's coordination fee.
Does the captain coordinate the security team?
The captain retains command of the yacht. The team leader coordinates with the captain on movements, embarkation, and any deviation from itinerary, but does not give nautical orders. Conflict between the two roles is the single most common operational failure on a security-equipped charter.
Where do the protection team sleep on a 70m yacht?
Usually in spare crew berths adjacent to the principal's cabin corridor. On smaller yachts under 50m there is typically not enough crew berthing, and either the team rotates from a shore base or the scope is reduced.
Can I source the team myself or does it have to go through the broker?
You can and often should source the team separately, through a dedicated maritime-security firm with declared yacht task history. Get the team leader and the captain talking to each other two weeks before the charter so the operational brief is settled before the principal embarks.