Sun, sea and lots of boats: Welcome to The Yacht Week

They enforce a strict 50/50 boy-girl ratio

| UPDATED

While most people are doing some last minute Christmas shopping, hundreds of people are sailing around Thailand right now on boats.

The Yacht Week is seven days of fun and excess on the sea, sailing around Croatia, The Caribbean, and soon to be Brazil.

Everyone who’s been has a TYW story, whether it’s how they got their callsign or how they spent a week barely touching dry land.

We spoke to people and skippers behind it to find out what The Yacht Week about what goes on outside of international borders and their extremely strict 50/50 gender rule.

Ben Jones – The Yacht Week Product Manager – described it as “nothing like the real world”.

He added: “What goes on TYW, stays on TYW, but one of the co-founders once faked his own deportation out of Croatia as a birthday surprise for the other co-founder.

“The police, mayor and Swedish embassy were involved, so it was quite a stunt.”

Explaining how The Yacht Week first began, Ben said: “It started sort of accidentally. Two friends, William and Erik, were skippers in Croatia taking care of retired folk and older families. They figured why not invite their friends down and spice up the itinerary a bit.”

“A key ingredient is a week that is 50/50 guys and girls, after all nobody likes too much bap with their bacon.

“There’s no such thing as a typical week. But every week includes sunshine, good vibes, new friends, raft parties, local flavours and hidden gems suggested by our brilliant skippers.

“Croatia is our original and biggest route. We also do Greece, Italy, Turkey, the British Virgin Islands and Thailand, which are all incredible for their own reasons. We also may be visiting Brazil this New Year.”

Uwe Dettelbacher, used to be a paratrooper in the Austrian army but now works as a skipper for The Yacht Week – getting paid to navigate tours around by day and party by night.

He said: “There are loads of funny stories I remember about this summer and The Yacht Week. For example how I got my callsign, but I am pretty sure that shouldn’t be printed.

“The average day of a TYW skipper starts quite early, with preparing the ship for the day. After that the fun part starts – leaving the marina or anchorage for some nice sailing in one of the world’s loveliest sailing areas, having swim stops in lonley bays or a little noon party at the circleraft.

“In the meantime the skipper is also taking care of dinner reservations and table bookings for the parties. After arriving at the destination there is normally always some daytime left to explore the island or try out some watersports.”

Jan Komaro has been sailing for nearly all his life and now works as a professional seafarer, diver and diving instructor.

Last year he was in charge of sailing a 67ft catamaran from Falmouth to Gibraltar, The Canary Islands, Cape Verde and across the Atlantic to St Lucia and Antigua.

He said: “Days are spent checking the boat and crew, then we go sailing, swimming and have fun in the sun. After that we anchor and have some food and wine.

“Nights are all about awesome places, drinks, beautiful people and good music.”

Find out more about The Yacht Week on their websitehttps://charterlux.com.

All images courtesy of @theyachtweek