Nobody talks about provisioning until it goes wrong. Here is what a week actually takes, and the three things that ruin it.
A charter week is roughly twenty-one meals, in a galley the size of a generous wardrobe, with no shop between Tuesday and Thursday. Everything that makes it feel effortless was decided before anyone boarded.
The arithmetic
Water is the first constraint. Most sailing yachts of forty to fifty feet carry between three and six hundred litres, and a group of eight will get through that faster than they expect once showers are involved. The watermaker, if there is one, is the single system a skipper worries about most.
Refrigeration is the second. Fridge space is small, ice is finite, and the fridge runs off the batteries, which means it competes with everything else. This is why provisioning is planned in order of perishability rather than by meal — fish and salad early in the week, roots and preserved things later.
- Day one to three
- Fish, shellfish, soft fruit, leaf salads, fresh dairy. Everything that will not survive to Thursday.
- Day four to five
- Meat that has been frozen from the start, hard vegetables, tomatoes, hard cheese.
- Day six to seven
- Pasta, pulses, cured meat, tinned fish, whatever the islands have provided along the way.
- Throughout
- Bread bought fresh wherever it exists, and eggs, which last far longer than people believe.
What gets bought ashore
The best food on a Croatian charter is not loaded in Split. It is bought en route: fish off the boat that landed it, cheese from the island that made it, oil from a press that sells forty litres a year and never exports. That requires knowing which villages have what on which day, which is knowledge and not planning.
The good weeks are provisioned twice – once in the supermarket, and continuously from the islands.
The three things that ruin a week
Dietary requirements collected too late. A coeliac guest discovered on the Sunday is a problem that lasts seven days, because gluten-free bread does not exist on Vis. Requirements are asked for at booking for a reason.
Underestimating water. Long showers on day two mean a marina stop on day four that nobody wanted.
Over-provisioning. The most common mistake by far. Excess food takes fridge space, goes off, and gets thrown away in a country where the fish was swimming that morning. A well-provisioned boat looks under-stocked on day one.
What a good hostess actually carries
Beyond the food: proper knives, a decent pan, salt worth using, coffee that is not an insult, and the small unglamorous things — foil, freezer bags, a bottle opener that will not be lost, and enough dishcloths for a week where everything is wet.
And a plan for lunch on the day nobody wants to cook, which is always the Thursday.