Ultimate The Yacht Week Planning Guide

I was THRILLED when my friend Jess and I decided to plan a yacht week trip. I honestly had no idea what I was getting into, but it sounded like a good time.

Naturally, I started researching. I found a few really helpful blog posts, but most of them were focused on whether you should or shouldn’t go. At that point, I was already committed. I needed DETAILS. Costs, packing lists, itineraries, do’s and don’ts...you get the idea. I found a couple posts that helped answer my questions, but that’s still a pretty small pool of people’s experience. So, without further ado, here is my contribution: my Ultimate Guide to The Yacht Week.

Planning phase: 

*Background on what yacht week is*

Within the first few minutes (okay, maybe hours) of my research, I learned a couple things. First, I actually did have a long attention span if I was doing something I was interested in (groundbreaking, I know). Second, Yacht Week can mean many things. There’s the original “The Yacht Week,” which is a company that runs several events throughout the summer, with several routes. Then, there’s Sail Week. And Bucketlust. And just renting a yacht for a week. Or a sailboat for a week. The possibilities are endless. For simplicity’s sake, we decided to go with The Yacht Week (TYW) on the original Croatia route. There are several routes through TYW, including Croatia, Greece, Italy and the British Virgin Islands. There are also concert routes, but from what I read, those seemed more about the destination (the concert) than the journey (yachting). For this first time, I wanted the most original TYW experience.

And now for my glorious spreadsheet:

I think this spreadsheet is my biggest pride and joy of my TYW planning. Since our group wasn’t all geographically close, this made it easier to coordinate trip plans and share information without blowing up the group text.

I was also able to compile a budget based on other blog posts and articles I had read. Since it was gonna be a pretty big investment (in what, I’m not sure), we decided to book later in the summer so we would have time to save up. Most of the posts I found didn’t have an exact budget (which I get is hard with vacations sometimes) but I’ve been trying to be more proactive with money and pay off some debt, so I wanted to make a realistic budget. I also went off of the higher estimates for costs, since I would rather save more than I needed than show up without enough spending money. I also did something new (for me at least) and budgeted for all of the supplies I would need for the trip. I included everything from earplugs for sleeping to a GoPro (which I later decided to skip because Hubby has one I can borrow). 

There was a pretty broad spectrum when it came to the budgets that I saw for TYW. It also seemed to depend on the gender ratio on the boat. Since we were going to be an all-female boat of pretty thrifty (read: cheap) girls, I figured that we would come in under-budget. Here’s how it actually turned out:

And here’s how my personal budget for shopping went:

One common theme I noticed in all of the reviews of TYW was the limited space on the boat. Because of that, I wanted to keep my luggage to a minimum. I decided to go with my Vera Bradley bag (a thrift shop steal from a few years ago) and some packing cubes. I tend to overpack for vacations, so I spent a while making sure I would only bring what I needed—nothing more, nothing less. Here’s what I planned to pack:

Usually, when I pack for a trip I do a good job of planning everything out and then throwing a bunch of stuff in my suitcase at the last minute. I knew there would be limited space on the yacht though, so I wanted to avoid bringing a bunch of stuff I wouldn’t use.