Unlike a bareboat charter, where you rent the boat and do everything from the captaining to cooking yourself, a crewed yacht comes with a captain and chef. The chef plans three meals a day, plus snacks and pre dinner hors d'oeuvres. You won't find hard tack biscuits or baked beans straight from the can among the menu selections. Charter chefs take their job seriously. At minimum, they bring long years of successful entertaining on land to the table, and a growing number have also furthered their culinary skills with formal training from prestigious institutions like the Culinary Institute of America in New York or Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.
Charter companies send vacationers a preference sheet in advance of their voyage.
You can also specify whether you'd like big meals or small, hot meals or cold, and what you're snacking and dessert preferences are. Indicate them all on the preference sheet and the chef will provision and prepare accordingly. Susan Chandler is another of those charter chefs who delights in planning personalized menus. Weight watchers, light meal eaters and non-snackers often quickly change their preferences once the sea spray wafts into their nostrils. Don't worry, seasoned charter chefs like Corrine and Susan are amply prepared.