The Charter Rate Card

The Rate Card Quotes One Line of the Contract

A charter rate card advertises the charter fee. Under the MYBA charter agreement, the industry standard form, the charter fee is one of four separate amounts on page one: the charter fee, the advance provisioning allowance, the delivery and re-delivery fees, and the security deposit.1

Three of those four are invisible on the rate card. That is not concealment, because the form is public and the amounts are filled in before signature. It does mean that a comparison between two advertised weekly rates is a comparison of one line item out of four.

This is the first part of a series that builds charter investment returns from published documents rather than from headline yields. It starts at the rate card because every later number in the series is derived from it.

What Clause 8 Says the Fee Includes

Clause 8 of the MYBA agreement, headed Operating Costs, is the definitive list. The charter fee includes the charter of the vessel with all its equipment in working order; tools; stores; cleaning materials and basic consumable stores for engine room, deck, galley and cabins; laundry of the ship's linen; the crew's wages, uniforms and food; and the insurance of the vessel and crew required under Clause 16.1

That list is short and it is mostly fixed cost. It is, in effect, the boat, the people who run it and the policy that covers it. Nothing in it varies with how the charterer chooses to use the week.

The insurance obligation is not nominal. Clause 16 requires cover on terms no less than Institute Yacht Clauses 1.11.85, extended for permission to charter, third party liability, water skiers, personal watercraft, war, strikes, pollution and crew injury. The economics of that line are priced separately in the ownership series under yacht insurance costs.

What the Charterer Pays On Top

Clause 8 then states that the charterer will pay, at cost, for all other expenses, and gives a non-exhaustive list: shoreside transport; fuel for the main engines and generators; fuel for tenders and water sports equipment; food and all beverages for the charter party; berthing dues and other harbour charges including pilots' fees, local taxes, divers' fees, customs formalities and waste disposal charges; charges for water and electricity taken from shore; ships' agents' fees; personal laundry; communications and internet use; and the hire or purchase cost of any special equipment placed on board at the charterer's request.1

The practical effect is that the two largest variable costs of operating a yacht, fuel and berthing, sit outside the advertised rate. Berthing in particular is a large and published number, priced per metre and per night, and the ownership series prices it in yacht berth and marina costs.

Clause 4 bounds the exposure a little. The charterer must restrict time under way to an average of six hours a day unless the captain, at his sole discretion, agrees to exceed it. Fuel burn is limited by contract as well as by budget.

The Advance Provisioning Allowance in Numbers

Those costs are funded in advance rather than billed afterwards. The advance provisioning allowance is paid before embarkation, held and spent by the captain, accounted for with receipts at the end of the charter, and refunded to the charterer to the extent it is unspent. If it runs low mid-charter the charterer must top it up.1

The MYBA form publishes the mechanism but not a percentage, and the percentage is market practice. Sailing yachts generally sit around 20 to 25 per cent of the charter fee because they burn less fuel, and motor yachts around 30 to 35 per cent, sometimes 40 per cent or more depending on operating demands.2

The advertised rate is therefore roughly 71 to 83 per cent of the cash a charterer commits, before delivery fees, the security deposit and any extraordinary expenses under Clause 8.

What a Week Actually Lists For in 2026

Yacht-Rent publishes a live statistics set built from its own listing inventory and updated weekly. For the 2026 season, across 9,369 vessels, the average advertised charter price is 5,908 euro a week. The highest average week is the one beginning 8 August 2026 at 8,299 euro, and the lowest is the week beginning 12 December 2026 at 4,719 euro.3

Two things are worth noticing before the next part of this series takes the seasonal spread apart. The cheapest and most expensive markets differ by roughly a factor of two on the same weekly unit, and the within-year range inside a single market is wider than the gap between most pairs of markets.

When the Owner Is Paid, and What Is Taken First

Clause 20 sets the payment waterfall, and it is more specific than most owners expect. All funds received by the broker are transferred to the stakeholder and held in a designated account. Fifty per cent of the charter fee is paid to the owner on the date the charter period commences, or the first working day after, and that payment is made after deduction of the full commission. The balance of the charter fee is paid to the owner on the first working day following completion of the charter.1

The advance provisioning allowance does not pass through the owner at all. It goes from the stakeholder to the captain before embarkation, or to the owner solely for onward transmission to the captain.

So the owner's cash from a chartered week arrives in two instalments, net of a commission taken in full at the front, and excludes the entire allowance. How that net figure is then divided between a vessel owner and an operating programme is the subject of part four of this series.

The Broker Is Paid on Signature, Not on Delivery

Clause 24 is the provision that most changes how a rate card should be read. Commission is deemed earned by the broker and the stakeholder on signature of the agreement and payment of the deposit, is payable by the owner on the full charter fee plus any delivery and re-delivery fees but excluding running expenses, and is payable whether or not the charterer defaults for any reason including force majeure. Where the charterer cancels, the commission is deducted as an expense from the deposit.1

Two further provisions extend it. If the charterer re-charters the same vessel within two years, the original broker is entitled to commission on that charter as well. If the charterer buys the vessel from the owner within two years of the charter commencing, the broker is entitled to a sales commission.

None of this is unusual in a brokered market. It matters here because it means the distribution cost of a charter week is fixed and front loaded, while the revenue is contingent on the week being sold at all.

Reading a Rate Card as an Owner Rather Than a Guest

A guest reads a rate card as a price. An owner should read it as a gross revenue line with three deductions already implied by the contract behind it: commission, taken in full at the front; the operating costs the fee does actually carry, which are the crew and the insurance; and the weeks that never sell, which is the subject of part three.

The single most useful discipline is to stop treating the advertised weekly rate as a proxy for anything. It is neither what the charterer pays, which is higher, nor what the owner receives, which is lower. It is the number the two sides negotiate around.

That distinction is also the cleanest test of a charter proposition. An operator who quotes a rate card and an occupancy assumption in the same breath, without saying which of the two is gross and which is net of commission, has not answered the question. The same point applies when comparing an owner programme against direct ownership, set out on the yacht ownership programs page, and when assessing the manager who sits between the two, covered in choosing a yacht management company.

Where This Analysis Is Weakest

The MYBA agreement quoted here is the 2009 revision, which is the current published specimen. Individual charters vary it by special condition on page one, and a negotiated agreement can move any of these allocations.

The allowance percentages are market practice rather than contract. The MYBA form publishes the mechanism and leaves the amount blank, so the 20 to 35 per cent range describes how the blank is usually filled, not a rule.

The Yacht-Rent figures describe advertised prices on one platform's inventory, weighted towards the Mediterranean and the bareboat segment. They are not transaction prices, and a discounted late booking will settle below the advertised rate. Whether the advertised rate is achieved, and in how many weeks, is exactly the question utilisation has to answer, and it is the number this industry publishes least willingly.

Finally, nothing here is a return figure. It is a description of a contract and a price series. Whether either clears an investor's hurdle is a separate question, handled in is a yacht a good investment and in the arithmetic of what a yacht costs to own.