Crewed, Skippered or Bareboat
A crewed charter comes with a captain and crew employed by the owner: they command the yacht and the charterer is aboard as a guest. A skippered charter puts a professional skipper aboard a boat the charterer otherwise runs. A bareboat charter hands the yacht over with nobody aboard, and the person named as skipper takes command of it along with the responsibility. Greece requires that person to hold a certificate of competence its port authorities recognise, and to sail with a second competent adult aboard.
Three arrangements
The three words describe who is aboard. Everything else follows from that.
Crewed. The yacht comes with its own captain and crew, employed by the owner. They run the vessel, cook, serve and maintain it. The charterer is a guest on somebody else’s boat, with the run of it.
Skippered. A professional skipper joins a yacht that otherwise has no crew. The skipper navigates and takes responsibility for the vessel. The guests do everything else themselves, including the cooking.
Bareboat. The yacht is handed over with nobody aboard. The contract names one of the party as skipper. That person takes command of the vessel and everything that comes with commanding it.
Who is in command
On a crewed charter the captain commands. The captain decides when the yacht moves, where it can safely lie, and what weather it will and will not go out in. A charterer proposes a plan, and the captain decides whether the sea allows it. This is how command works, and it is the arrangement the charterer has paid for.
On a bareboat charter that authority passes to the named skipper, and so does the risk. The deposit, any damage, the decision to cross a strait in a rising meltemi and the consequences of getting it wrong all sit with the person whose name is on the paperwork. In Greece in August that is a real responsibility, as the meltemi explains.
What Greece asks a bareboat skipper to show
Greek port authorities, the limenarcheio, check the paperwork before the yacht leaves. They do check.
In practice they ask for three things.
A recognised certificate of competence for the person taking the boat. The port authorities accept certificates from the established training bodies. A lifetime of sailing without one does not count.
A second competent adult aboard. This is the two-person rule. A signed co-skipper declaration naming that person normally meets it. Ports differ on whether the co-skipper must hold a certificate of their own, so the answer is best settled with the operator well before arrival, not at the quay.
A radio operator’s certificate for whoever works the VHF radio.
Without them the yacht does not leave, and the party loses a day it cannot spare.
What licences the yacht itself needs
Greek law treats a yacht carrying paying guests as a commercial vessel, whatever it looks like.
The framework is Law 4926/2022. It replaced the earlier rules and governs professional pleasure craft, their registration and their charter permissions. A crewed charter that starts or ends in Greece runs on a yacht licensed for it. A foreign-flagged yacht faces further conditions, set out in foreign-flagged yachts in Greek waters.
For a charterer the practical question is short: whether the licence exists and can be shown.
What the crewed week buys
Comparing the three arrangements on price alone misses what separates them. The difference is not really the crew’s wages.
A captain who has worked the Cyclades for 15 years knows which bay is safe to stay in when a north wind blows at 25 knots. They know which quay has water, which harbourmaster answers at 9pm, and where the yacht can lie while a guest sees a dentist on a Sunday. None of that is in the boat’s specification.
The other half is domestic. On a crewed yacht somebody else buys the food, cooks, cleans, moves the tender, contacts the next port and washes the towels. On a bareboat the party does all of it. For some people that is the holiday. For others it is the reason the week does not work.
Which arrangement a brief needs
Two questions decide it.
Does anyone aboard want to be responsible for the vessel? If nobody does, the question is settled. A bareboat charter puts that responsibility on somebody, whether they want it or not.
What is the week for? A party that wants to sail is well served by a bareboat or a skippered yacht. A party that wants the Aegean brought to them, with the sailing as the setting rather than the activity, is describing a crewed charter. Anything else will disappoint them.
Neither arrangement is better than the other. They are different holidays that share a vocabulary.