Can I sail one-way?

Sailing in a circular route is an ideal way to spend the week. You know where you’ve come from, and where you’re headed, and can accurately gauge your sailing time to suit you. If you’re new to a sailing area, there’s also almost always enough places to moor up the night that you won’t need to go to the same place twice.

Somewhat understandably, to some people a circular route lacks purpose, and they want to sail from A to B because they see sailing one-way as more of a real voyage, and seems more exciting. They might also like the romance of sailing one-way, or occasionally they have somewhere to be, and want to arrive in style!

Arranging a one-way charter

We can arrange a one-way charter on any boat, to any destination. There are two different types of one-way charter:

Delivering the boat

The first is where, by chance, we can match your ambition to charter from e.g. Split to Dubrovnik with a yacht charter company needing to get their boat to the same place at the same time.

These are pretty rare, but they do crop up from time to time: essentially, you’re delivering the boat for the yacht charter company and doing them a favour, so there’s no additional fees to be paid, and you’ll be able to sail from 5pm on the first Saturday to 9am on the second Saturday (as you would a normal one-week charter going to and from the same base).

[Ask our team to search for one-way charters if you know what dates, destinations you would like, but you will likely not have much choice on the boats available]

Arranging your own one-way charter

We can arrange a one-way charter on any boat, to any destination. That bit is simple. But there are additional impacts on money and time on board to consider:

• A one way fee - the yacht charter company will have to pay someone to travel down to the destination by land to meet you, and then to skipper the boat back to the home base after you disembark – probably on the motor, so they will be burning up fuel all the way. The additional one-way fees often be over €500+ (see a few sample rates below)
• Leaving the boat early – in addition to the extra one-way fee, there’s also a likelihood that you’ll have to disembark the boat early. This isn’t the yacht charter company trying to make fleece you, it’s just that they need the boat to be back in the home base and ready for the next set of holiday-makers, who will be excited and eager to get on board by 5pm on the Saturday. A boat can only go so fast, even on a motor, so you might have to sacrifice a day or so of sailing if you want to charter one-way.

To arrange this sort of charter, then there's no need to wait - you can go ahead and book a boat as normal (e.g. from Split to Split) (or reserve it for €20) and then let us know you want to transform it into a one-way charter - our team are happy to help advise you through the process.

Typical one-way charter fees in Greece and Croatia

We’ve listed ball-park figures for the likely costs for chartering some traditional one-way routes:

 
But is it worth it?

Everyone has their own value of money, and likewise, you’ll know if you can bear to lose a day of sailing. If you’re really keen to see another place, then do a quick check as to how long it will take to get there by car – sailing between Split and Dubrovnik may take a week, but you can get there in 3 hours by land, so it might be easier, cheaper and more time-efficient to sail a circular route and then hop into a bus/taxi/transfer to drive down to Dubrovnik instead.

Ask our team about one way charters, and we'll see what we can do