If you read my yachting holiday prep (here and here), you know this planning process started way back at the end of 2015. We knew the basics…who, what and just about where. But what started as conversations about a simple boat charter quickly diverted to something a little more elaborate…think the holiday of a lifetime.

The guys at Helm took our major considerations to heart : spacious accommodations, freedom to explore, excellent food, and of course, a good time! So we were all set up with the Grand Mare to set sail from Rhodes and then the adventure begin…

We all arrived at different times in Athens on Friday and you cannot imagine the excitement of meeting Saturday, bright and early at the airport to fly together to Rhodes! It had been over a year since I had seen some of these faces! We obviously celebrated with drinks at 40,000 feet…9am is never too early for friends?!

The water around Rhodes is the most stunning shade of blue! We pulled up to our stunning gulet yacht and the smiling faces of our crew–who knew by the end of the week these people would feel like family?!

They let us scurry through the boat, shrieking at the excitement that this thing was ours for a week, and then they fed us the first of many seriously incredible meals!

Each meal had a series of mezze to start, then an amazing local dish to follow (many times seafood that was caught that day!), and of course, insanely good desserts…our chef on board is a pastry chef so you know it was incredible! Also, every day we had tea time with Turkish tea and freshly baked cakes mid-afternoon….needless to say, the hubs was a little disappointed I couldn’t keep this up back home!

And then off to explore Rhodes….how much fun does this look?!

The next week was filled with exciting adventures exploring the stunning coast of Turkey and some gorgeous Greek Isles! Our Turkish crew was so fabulous at listening to what we wanted to see and then almost magically taking us there…we sipped coffee and shopped in adorable, small towns and when we wanted some privacy to blare our music and enjoy the water sports, we would arrive in remote bays!

One of my favorite moments, that truly captures how wonderful the Grand Mare crew is : the boys were off in the cove, snorkeling and swimming a bit, getting farther and farther away from the boat while us girls lounge in the sunshine on deck. We notice that the crew is whipping up their famous piña coladas and headed to the dinghy with a tray–with a confused look, we ask ‘did the boys ask for those?!’. With mischievous giggles, they answer ‘no, we’re going to surprise them!’. The boys see the dinghy coming and assume they’ve gone too far and are going to wrangled back in, but no, just a mid-swim piña colada delivered to them!

Chartering a yacht was truly a once in a lifetime experience–that I hope I can have more than once in this lifetime! It’s one of those adventures that should be on everyone’s bucket list and I cannot recommend the agents at Helm or the crew of Grand Mare enough!