Now that you've completed your sailing courses, practice, got your certificate, you're ready to charter. The first charter, like every other charter, involves just as much preparation, on the principle of "good security overcomes bad security".
As we insist in the charter skipper training course Hands On Practice, proper preparation gives you the subsequent relaxation in the charter week. I'll be debating more topics in the future related to luggage and what you should have with you as a skipper, but today we're talking about documents, paperwork and formalities.
After choosing the right yacht for your requirements and budget, from www.capetancharter.com, you book it and, with confirmation, you receive the invoice, the charterparty and details of how to get to the marina/yacht. You are then provided with a crewlist which must be completed and returned with copies of your ID and licence. ICC or RYA (and in some cases radio booklets). These documents no longer need to be printed - we're helping the planet and we're glad we can do that - they're digital enough.
We fast forward and arrive before the charter starts. Normally, as specified in the charterparty, a typical charter week is Saturday to Saturday, with a check in at 17:00 and a check out the following Saturday at 9:00 (mandatory with arrival on Friday evening before sunset at the marina as specified in the charter contract). If you didn't know, capetan.club members benefit from early check-in (12:00) and express check-out (possibility to return the boat on Saturday at 9:00 without the obligation to return on Friday afternoon). At the check in you will be presented with the original contract and invoice, then the boat will be picked up. Capetan comes to your aid with an application, available both on Androidas well as on IOS, to ensure an efficient check in, without worrying about missing important points, regardless of the check in papers provided by the charter. The more thoroughly you can check in, the more your week will be free of unpleasant surprises. In the app, along with the digital check in form, you will also find the crew briefing form, which is very useful after the crew is on board.
Once you have carried out all the necessary checks and completed the check in procedure with a satisfactory result, there is one step left before you receive the boat papers - paying the deposit specified in the charterparty. The deposit, whether you leave it by card/cash/waiver, is in short a deposit from the insurer; in case of damage during the charter week, the countervalue of the damage will be deducted from the amount of the deposit. What many people don't know is that the deposit can be insured or a deposit waiver can be used, but I'll come back to these in a post on charter insurance.
When you take the boat in you must make sure you have: original boat documents, boat insurance, crewlist stamped by the local authority and, more recently, a medical logbook that you can download from here.
Note that these formalities often take at least 2 hours, so it's good to keep this in mind when you make your departure plan so you don't have any unpleasant surprises.
