Yacht Guide: 5 People You Will Meet On Board

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At sea, no one can hear you scream - so choose your shipmates wisely.

The hot captain



He's British, but you're not quite sure where from. We're talking Indiana Jones, basically, but with a captain's hat and stronger forearms. He probably only owns two sets of clothes. Normally you'll see him in the white T-shirt and faded navy shorts he wears like a second skin. Come evening, though, he'll change into a white dress uniform and effortlessly out-alpha whichever portly, short-arsed billionaire is supposed to be his employer.

You've no idea how old he is. Somewhere between 30 and 58. On one cheek there's a scar that the crew will swear blind he got in a knife fight with an Indonesian pirate. Over dinner, he doesn't say much, but what he does say is astonishing: how to navigate by following seagulls; why you've misunderstood the philosophy of Kierkegaard; where best to punch a shark.

Sometimes there's a moustache, but it's never an ironic one. 'Yes,' this man would say to you, 'I have heard that there is such a thing as an ironic moustache in your cities these days. And that's why I prefer to be at sea.' And then he would gaze to the stars and the stars would twinkle back, as though they were hanging around, just like you are, only for the chance to be close to him. Although unlike you, they've probably spotted that he's gay.

The terrifying oligarch



Nobody knows how Sergei made his money, but he's clearly made a lot of it. Weirdly, though, none of the family photographs in the lounge cabin are of him. Instead, they're of his former business partner. Whom nobody has seen in a while. The one who had that blonde girlfriend. Who looked quite a lot like Sergei's blonde girlfriend, actually. Rumour has it that this was his yacht when it left Easter Island three months ago, but he sold it to Sergei and left between there and the Galapagos. Which is odd, really, because there aren't any islands between Easter Island and the Galapagos.

Sergei wears a yellow polo shirt and chinos and often has a yellow jumper thrown over his shoulders. He also wears a massive diving watch, which might explain why there's that big basket of diving weights at the stern, although not why some of them seem to be chained to pairs of old boots.

The first mate has a black eye that nobody wants to mention. Each night, Sergei holds wild parties at which all of the men seem to be 20 years older than all of the women. When he arrived at this marina, there were complaints from the bigger boat next door, which was full of very uptight East Coast Americans. They've left now, though. There was a fire.

The bored 16-year-old heiress



There's a pool on this yacht and a Cordon Bleu chef and the waters all around are azure and teeming with life. All she wants to do, though, is sit on a deckchair and Skype her friends back home on her iPhone.

Father, who is seriously interested in sailing knots, is going spare. The other day he managed to persuade her to do some deep-sea fishing. 'Darling! You've caught something!' he shouted.

'I think it's, like, a shark?' she muttered, and it was, and she stood there while the crew hauled it out, and killed it, and the deck ran red with blood. But she wasn't really paying attention because Tabitha back in Chelsea had posted a picture of her new nail extensions on Instagram. And that night, when the captain himself proudly brought her a fillet of it on a platter, she made a hairball sound and asked for a salad.

Tomorrow, they're docking at a lovely little port and Father wants Stepmother to take her into town and perhaps get her interested in a museum. Stepmother, who is no fool, reckons she'd have more luck trying to get her interested in Carlos, the Argentinian deckhand who rarely wears a shirt. Tomorrow, she might throw the iPhone overboard and get Carlos to dive for it. Perhaps the kid will start enjoying her holiday if he takes off his trousers too.

The angry chef



Power is supposed to flow down on yachts, but Gustav rules this one from below deck. The owner bought him along with everything else and now regrets it, but is far too scared to let him go. Sometimes, in the late afternoon, guests can hear screaming from the kitchens. The louder the screams, the better the dinners, though. So nobody really minds.

Gustav hates boats. Long ago he was sacked from a top London hotel for reasons that aren't wholly clear. Possibly he'd been goosing the waitresses; possibly he hit one with an actual goose. That was when he joined the yachting circuit. Once, two years ago, there was a vegan on this ship. Gustav only realised this midway through dinner, after he'd cooked a chateaubriand, which he then took back to the kitchen and wordlessly punched and punched until he could freeze it as mince. Gustav hates vegans. In fact, the only things he hates as much as vegans are ports, the sea, fish and everybody. Nobody goes into his kitchen without asking. Some nights, he'll come out to the dining room and allow himself to be congratulated. People are effusive. There's always a cleaver stuck in his belt.

The hedgie newbie



This guy has no idea what he is doing. Even his shoes are wrong. He says 'superyacht' when he means 'boat' and spends an hour with the captain each morning, fruitlessly attempting to learn the difference between port and starboard.

All he really wants is a chance to play with the big steering-wheel thing, but he doesn't know how it works and he's too afraid to ask. Now and again the crew come up to him with charts and ask his opinion; deep down he's scared that they're taking the piss, and showing him maps of the wrong island altogether, or maybe of Mars. In fact, there's quite a lot he doesn't understand. One day, he'll pluck up the courage to ask why the hell there isn't a sail.

Actually, the whole business of being at sea isn't for him at all. He prefers being docked in places full of girls who want to meet men who own boats. Although, whenever they are, the girls never seem to believe that he owns the damn thing and always think he's joking. Sometimes he wishes he'd just bought a Scottish estate instead. But he wouldn't have known what to shoot.

by Hugo Rifkind