The Charter Glossary: 25 Words That Say You've Done This Before

You can tell within one sentence whether someone has chartered before, and it is never the boat they mention. It is the word they use for it. Say tender instead of dinghy, ask about the APA instead of the extras, and the conversation with a broker changes register before the price is ever discussed.

None of it is difficult. It is simply never explained, because the people who use it forgot they ever had to learn it. Twenty five words, in sixteen entries, because several travel in pairs.

Bareboat, skippered, crewed

Bareboat means you rent the vessel and run it yourself, with the licensing to prove you can. Skippered adds a captain and nothing else. Crewed is the full service: captain, chef, deckhand or stewardess depending on size. Nearly everything in the Miami market is crewed.

Day charter and term charter

A day charter is priced by the hour, usually with a four hour minimum, and returns to the same dock. A term charter runs by the week, includes cabins and moves between anchorages. The Exumas are term charter territory. Biscayne Bay at sunset is a day charter.

APA

The Advance Provisioning Allowance: a deposit, typically 25 to 35 percent of the weekly rate on a term charter, from which the crew pays for fuel, food, drinks and dockage. Whatever remains is refunded at the end, itemized. A good captain offers the accounting before you ask.

Plus expenses and all-inclusive

Two ways a rate is quoted. Plus expenses means the base price covers yacht and crew, and the APA covers the rest. All-inclusive folds fuel, food and bar into one number, common on most Miami day charters. Neither is cheaper by nature; compare total cost for your actual plan.

Preference sheet

The questionnaire sent before boarding: allergies, aversions, the coffee order, the wine, who sleeps where and what the trip is for. It is the chef's playbook and the captain's first draft. Fill it in as if someone will read every line, because someone will.

Provisioning

Stocking the boat, and the reason the preference sheet exists. On a term charter the chef shops against your sheet in the last forty eight hours, which is why late changes to the guest list cost more than money.

Tender

The small boat carried by the big one, used to reach beaches, restaurants and sandbars the yacht cannot approach. Never call it a dinghy. Its size and horsepower quietly decide how much of a coastline you can use.

Passerelle

The gangway between the stern and the dock. It is where you take your shoes off, where the crew greets you by name, and where you say thank you at the end. Most of a charter's small rituals happen on a plank six feet long.

Stern-to, or Med mooring

Backing the yacht into a berth with the stern to the quay and the anchor holding the bow out, the way every harbor from Antibes to Mykonos is arranged. The most watched maneuver in yachting, and the reason a second helm on the flybridge turns docking into a spectator sport.

Draft

How much water the boat needs beneath it. A yacht drawing seven feet cannot cross the Bahamas banks or reach half the sandbars in Biscayne Bay; one drawing four can. In south Florida, draft matters more than length.

Beam and LOA

Beam is the width at the widest point; LOA is length overall, swim platform included. Together they describe how the yacht lives. A wide beam is why a fifty foot catamaran feels like a seventy foot monohull.

Flybridge

The open upper deck above the main helm, usually with a second station, seating and a wet bar. By four in the afternoon, everyone is up there. We have a whole piece on why it wins the afternoon.

Cruising permit

The paperwork a foreign-flagged yacht needs in another country's waters, and the reason a Bahamas run involves a customs stop in Alice Town before anyone swims. Crews that make the crossing regularly send it ahead. Ask whether yours does.

Sea state and swell

What the water is doing, as opposed to what the wind is doing. A two foot chop on the bay is a different day from a two foot ocean swell with a long period, which is barely felt. When a captain reroutes your morning, this is what he is reading.

Gratuity

Customary, discretionary, and paid to the captain at the end for the whole crew. Ten to twenty percent of the base rate is the range most people would quote, weighted toward the top when the trip involved a proposal or a plan that changed three times.

Embarkation, disembarkation, turnaround

Boarding time, departure time, and the hours between one charter and the next when the crew cleans, provisions and resets the boat. Turnaround is why a week boards at noon and leaves by ten, and why staying aboard longer is the one request a crew cannot grant.

Nobody aboard will test you on any of this. What the vocabulary buys is a faster, more honest conversation: with a broker who can skip the primer, with a captain who can say what he is thinking, and with a listing that reads like a description rather than a brochure. For everything else, there is the field guide.

Ready to use a few of these in a sentence? Explore the fleet.