The Naora participation fee looks, at first glance, like a significant number. The Coastal membership at €9,000 per year for one week. The Offshore membership at €29,000 per year for forty days. The Ocean Explorer at €59,000 for one hundred days. These are the numbers that the person who has been looking at Mediterranean charter websites will compare to the charter quote they found last summer and will conclude, without the full calculation, that the charter was cheaper.
The charter was not cheaper. The charter quote was cheaper. The charter itself, with the fuel, the marina fees, the provisioning, the crew gratuity, the local taxes, the port dues, the water, the ice, and the specific line items that the charter industry collects under the heading of the Advance Provisioning Allowance, was considerably more than the quote. T
he Naora membership is the number that contains all of these costs. The charter quote is the number that precedes them.
What the Naora Annual Participation Contains
The Naora annual participation is genuinely all-inclusive. The word all-inclusive is used carelessly in the travel industry, the resort that is all-inclusive except for the premium bar and the specialty restaurant and the spa and the excursions is not all-inclusive. It is room-and-basic-meals-inclusive with a marketing label that overstates the scope.
The Naora participation includes: the cabin for the duration of every leg booked within the annual allocation. All meals, three per day from Richard’s galley, provisioned from local markets, the trolling line, and the stores the circumnavigation carries. The diving programme: tank fills from the onboard 300-bar compressor, briefings, guided dives, the freediving and snorkelling programme.
The water sports equipment: SUP boards, kayaks, the dinghy. All transfers to and from shore by dinghy during the legs. The fuel for the passages, the diesel the engines consume and the renewable energy the solar and wind and hydro generators produce. The harbour dues and marina fees at every stop on the route. The crew: Sven, Ludo, Céline, Richard, fully compensated as part of the operating cost rather than supplemented by the member’s gratuity. The Circle membership and everything it provides between legs.
There is no APA. There is no fuel surcharge. There is no end-of-week settling of accounts. The number is the number and the number contains everything the offshore sailing leg produces for the duration it lasts. The comparison with the charter quote requires the full charter cost, the quote plus the APA plus everything the APA funds, not the quote alone. When that comparison is made correctly, the Naora participation is the number that wins it.
