The charter contract is the most expensive text of your trip — and the least read. These eight clauses can decide thousands of euros if things go wrong: deposit, excess, governing law, cancellation, check-in times, named skipper, cruising area and extra costs.
In short
Eight passages in a charter contract are worth reading before you sign: the amount and form of the deposit and the refund deadline; the excess and what deposit insurance really covers; governing law and jurisdiction (almost always foreign law in Croatia and Greece); the cancellation scale; the actual check-in and check-out times; who is named as skipper and with which licence; the cruising area limits, including any ban on night sailing; and the extra costs due on site. Clarify these eight points and you know your real costs and your real risk — and what you would be arguing about in a dispute.
The charter contract usually arrives as a PDF attachment, somewhere between the deposit invoice and the arrival information. Fourteen pages, small print, partly in English, partly in a translation you have to read twice. And because the yacht is already booked and the whole crew is looking forward to it, it gets scrolled through and signed.
That is understandable. It is still the most expensive piece of text on your trip. Because the moment someone at check-out points at a scratch, or the deposit is still not back in your account three weeks later, what decides the matter is not your sense of fairness but whatever it says on page nine.
The good news: you do not have to read fourteen pages. You have to read eight passages.
A quick note first: this article is guidance from charter practice, not legal advice. Contracts vary a great deal, and the amounts mentioned are ballpark figures from the Mediterranean for yachts between 40 and 45 feet, not a price list. For larger sums or an ongoing dispute, there is no way round a review by a lawyer.
Charter disputes almost never revolve around exotic legal questions. They revolve around the same things every time: money that does not come back. A promise nobody has in writing. A condition the crew knew nothing about. The eight clauses below are exactly where these problems arise.
Two of them — deposit and excess — determine your financial risk. Two — governing law and cancellation — determine what you can actually enforce if things go wrong. Four — times, named skipper, cruising area, extra costs — determine whether your trip goes the way you planned it.
The amount is the part everyone knows. The other two are more interesting.
The form: is the deposit merely blocked on your credit card, or actually charged? That is a significant difference. A block only uses up your card limit and is released. A charge is real money that you have to reclaim — and that you are without in the meantime. Some bases require the deposit in cash, which means someone in the crew travels with a four-figure sum.
Also check whether your card limit can actually cover the deposit. A €3,000 deposit blocked on a card with a €2,000 limit is a problem you will not solve on the pontoon.
The refund deadline: does the contract state a period? If it says "without delay" or nothing at all, you have no date to point to. An explicit deadline of 14 or 30 days is a much better contract feature than most charterers think.
The excess is the amount you bear in the event of damage — usually the same as the deposit. Deposit insurance (sometimes sold as a damage waiver or excess insurance) reimburses exactly this amount, for a premium in the region of a few per cent of the charter price.
The catch lies in the exclusions, and you have to read them against the charter contract, not just the policy on its own. The following are regularly not covered:
The point is not that the insurance is bad. The point is that it covers exactly the cases in which you kept to the contract — and that it does not help with the cases that really cost charterers dear.
This clause is usually right at the end, in two lines, and has more consequences than anything else in the contract.
For a yacht in Croatia, Greece, Italy or Turkey, the law of that country generally applies, with jurisdiction at the charter company's registered office. Any other law only applies if it is expressly agreed — the German original of this guide notes that this does happen with German brokers and agencies, but practically never with foreign owners.
What that means in practice: a dispute over €800 of retained deposit is not economically worth pursuing in a court in Split. Lawyer, translation, travel — the costs exceed the amount in dispute before anything has even happened.
This leads to the most important takeaway of this whole article: your protection is not legal action, it is the documentation at check-in. Timestamped photos, a handover report signed by both sides, every scratch recorded individually. How to do that systematically is covered in the charter check-in checklist. Anyone who has understood the governing-law clause takes the check-in far more seriously.
You can almost always cancel. Almost never for free. Scales are common, rising as the start of the trip approaches and reaching the full charter price in the final weeks.
More important than the exact percentages is a clause many people overlook: the right to provide a substitute charterer. If the contract allows it, that is generally the cheaper route — you pass the trip on instead of writing it off. If the option is not in there, it is worth asking before you sign and getting the answer in writing.
And one more distinction that costs money when it matters: travel cancellation insurance does not replace the cancellation scale. It pays for certain reasons — illness, accident, in some policies job loss — and for no others. "The crew fell out" is not an insured event.
The brochure says "Saturday to Saturday". The contract tells the truth, and it often looks like this: check-in Saturday from 5 pm, return Friday by 6 pm, disembark Saturday by 9 am.
That is not a detail. It is a whole day less than most crews plan for — and the reason things get hectic on the last evening and the last night is spent in the base's marina rather than in that lovely bay.
Also check what happens if you return late. Arrangements range from lenient to flat fees that really hurt for every hour or part hour. Knowing this changes how you plan the last leg.
These times belong in your trip plan before the route is fixed — more on that in the guide to planning a sailing trip in 10 steps.
The contract contains a name and a licence number. That person commands the boat. If someone else is actually at the helm when something happens, it can cost you your insurance cover — and then it is no longer about the deposit but about liability as a whole.
Three things to note:
All this assumes you know which licences your crew actually holds, before you fill in the contract. In our experience, this is exactly where two weeks of WhatsApp questions go.
These conditions are rarely in the main contract. They are in the charter terms, the handover report or an additional sheet you sign on the pontoon. Typical examples:
In the event of damage, a breach typically costs you both the hull cover and the deposit insurance — see clause 2. And the night-sailing clause is the most common unintentional breach of all, because a longer passage runs late and the crew enters harbour in the dark without anyone thinking of the additional sheet.
If you know this in advance, you plan your legs differently. If you do not, you find out at the worst possible moment.
The charter price is the price for the boat. On site, the following regularly come on top:
This list does not belong under "odds and ends" but in your budget. What a trip realistically costs per person once these items are included is covered in What does a sailing trip cost? — and how to then share the amounts fairly across the crew in Sharing the boat kitty fairly.
A practical tip: before you travel, find out which of these items have to be paid in cash. In some cruising areas it is more than you would expect, and the nearest cash machine is not always on the quay.
The eight clauses fall into three moments:
Before you sign — clauses 1, 2, 3, 4: deposit, excess, governing law, cancellation. These are the points you can no longer negotiate afterwards. If something does not suit you, now is the only time when asking questions will change anything.
After booking, before you travel — clauses 5, 6, 8: build the times into your plan, report the skipper and licences correctly, factor the extra costs into the kitty and tell the crew what to bring in cash.
At the base — clause 7 and everything on the additional sheet: read the conditions before you sign, and document the check-in as if you already knew about the dispute. Because thanks to clause 3, the documentation is the only thing you can really rely on.
To be honest: you have to read the contract yourself. But three of the eight clauses create work that can be shared out.
The licences for clause 6. In Sailto, each crew member creates their own profile, including sailing licences and radio certificate. You can see at a glance who holds which licence instead of asking everyone individually — and before you fill in the contract you know who can be named as skipper and who as radio operator.
The documents for the base. Licences, ID documents and proof of insurance go into the trip's documents section, where they belong, instead of in a chat history. When it is time to register the crew, you have them all together.
The extra costs from clause 8. Final cleaning, transit log, mooring fees: if you record them in the kitty, you can see at the end of the trip what it actually cost, and Sailto calculates the settlement with the fewest possible transfers. Split mode is free for good; what the individual features cost is on the pricing page.
What Sailto does not do: check your contract, monitor deadlines or remind you about the deposit. That remains your job.
Usually yes, mostly digitally, often together with the crew list and copies of licences. Important: the contract usually takes effect with your booking confirmation and deposit payment, not only when you sign. If you only read it when you sign, you are reading it too late.
Rarely with large charter companies; with smaller bases and owners more often than you might think — especially on check-in times, substitute charterers and extras such as the outboard. Asking costs nothing, and the answer belongs in an email, not a phone call.
First, ask politely in writing and refer to the deadline in the contract, if there is one. Then attach the photos and the handover report. If the trip was booked through an agency, the agency is the right point of contact — agencies have an ongoing business relationship with the base and therefore leverage that you do not have. If you paid by credit card, a chargeback may be possible, depending on the card provider.
Deposit insurance and skipper liability insurance are two different things. One reimburses the excess on the charter boat; the other covers damage you cause to other people's property or to people — the classic case is the neighbouring yacht when coming alongside. The charter company's hull insurance does not always cover this in full.
No. If you book a berth rather than a boat, you are not the charter company's contractual partner but a guest or participant. The organiser's terms then apply, and the deposit and liability lie with the skipper or the provider. That is far more relaxed — and the reason many crews choose exactly this option.
Going through the eight clauses takes half an hour, once, over a coffee. It is the same half hour that saves you, at check-out, from arguing about something you cannot prove.
And once the yacht is booked: set up your trip in Sailto, send the invite link to your crew, and collect licences, documents and expenses in one place instead of four chat groups.
For a yacht of 40 to 45 feet, deposits are usually between €2,000 and €3,000, and for large catamarans sometimes more than €8,000. What matters more than the amount, though, is the form: whether the sum is merely blocked on your credit card or actually charged, and within what period it is returned. Both are in the contract and vary considerably from one company to the next.
For many people yes, but only if you know what it covers. It reimburses the excess retained in the event of damage, typically for a premium in the region of a few per cent of the charter price. Gross negligence, breaches of contract conditions such as a ban on night sailing, and damage that is not settled via the deposit at all are generally not covered. The policy terms and the conditions in the charter contract have to fit together.
Almost always the law of the country where the base is located, with jurisdiction at the charter company's registered office. Any other law — such as German law in the German original of this guide — only applies if the contract expressly says so; that happens with some agencies but practically never with foreign owners. The practical consequence: a dispute over €800 of deposit is barely worth pursuing in a court in Split or Athens. That is why the documentation at check-in matters more than any clause.
The person who actually commands the boat, with their name and licence number. A wrong entry, or one changed after the fact, can cost you your insurance cover — and not just the deposit, but liability as a whole. If the skipper changes after booking, tell the base before the trip, not in passing on the pontoon.
In the event of damage, typically neither the hull insurance nor the deposit insurance will pay out. Cruising area limits are often not in the main contract but in the charter terms or the handover report, as are conditions such as a ban on night sailing or a wind-strength limit. If you want to sail from Croatia to Montenegro or Italy, you will usually need express written permission.
Regularly: final cleaning, tourist tax or transit log, bed linen and towels, an outboard for the dinghy, fuel, mooring fees along the way and optional extras such as a SUP or Wi-Fi router. For a week on a 40 to 45-footer this quickly adds up to a three-figure sum that does not appear in the charter price. The list is in the contract or the base's price list — and belongs in your kitty budget.
You can usually cancel at any time, but rarely for free. Cancellation scales are common, rising as the start of the trip gets closer and reaching the full price from about 30 days before. Many contracts expressly allow you to provide a substitute charterer — often a cheaper route than cancelling. Travel cancellation insurance does not replace the scale; it only covers certain reasons.
No. It describes which passages in a charter contract regularly lead to disputes in practice and which questions you should ask before signing. Contracts vary considerably, and for larger sums or an ongoing dispute there is no substitute for review by a lawyer.