I will attempt now to explain to you what I willingly subjected myself to for 8 days on my most recent Greece holiday.
You know those vacation packages set up for families where you rent a mobile home for a week and you are given a map with several destinations through, say, the Rocky Mountains, that you should visit and each night you meet up with all the other families that are driving around in their rented mobile homes and have hoedowns and campfires and tell stories about the old days? You know, those vacations where at 20 years old your grandpa came up to you and said “darlin’, don’t tell your mom, but here’s a beer. now, you probably won’t like it at first, but you’ll get used to the taste. don’t act too drunk or you’ll get me in trouble.”
Ya, Yacht Week is just like that. Only it’s yachts instead of mobile homes. You’re with 7 of your hottest best friends instead of your family. Instead of going somewhere lame like the Rockies, you’re sailing around the Greek isles. And instead of roasting marshmallows and singing Kumbayah, you’re taking body shots off a victoria secret model, beer bonging out of a life vest and jumping off a trampoline on the back of a 50 foot catamaran into the Mediterranean Sea… naked. Oh and grandpa’s not sneaking you a beer. It’s Paolo*, you’re Italian skipper and he’s handing you two pills with smiley faces on them.”
“Don’t tell your mom”
No, Yacht Week is unlike anything else in the world.
Basically. You sign up with friends to rent a boat. Depending on the size of boat and how many people you cram on, determines how much you end up paying. On Day one you all meet up and load your boat for the week. For the next 7 or so days, you then sail from one island to the next. Our Yacht Week was in Greece, but they also do Turkey holidays, Croatia holidays, weeks in Italy and in the British Virgin Islands. Each day you are on a set course from one island to another and each night, you meet up with the rest of the Yacht Week participants (depending on your location, it’s a different amount of boats – for Greece it was about 30 Yachts, for Croatia I heard it can be up to 80). There is generally a set location for dinner where reservations are made as well as a club or series of clubs where your wristband gets you free entry to an all night party.
Yacht Week does all the organizing, including providing you with a Skipper to sail your boat if you have no one on board that is licensed to do so. When you arrive at your new location, you generally have a half day or so to explore before dinner and the night time festivities begin. In addition, most nights, the boats are all tied to one another and anchored in a way that requires climbing from one to another to get to the shore. Because not everyone eats dinner at the same time, there are constant pre and post parties on the boats.
The schedule is rigorous. Partying until 5-6 AM (some people later) and then waking up at 8:30 or 9 to begin sailing for the day. The cabins on the boat are too hot to sleep in during the day but the deck is too loud. Some boats smelled and looked like what you could imagine the inside of your stomach looks like after a night of drinking. That stench of vomit mixed with Johnny Walker mixed with latex with absolute debauchery strewn about on the floor: bottles of Diet Coke, Tequila and Red Bull and unidentified stickiness covering every surface not already covered by discarded undergarments and condom wrappers.
But like the worst hangovers, a dirty sticky boat is a telltale sign of a good night. And like the say in Sweden, the sweatier the Swea, the harder you raged.
* Paolo is not a real skipper, unfortunately. Sorry Louise, no offense, but you’re… well… a woman.