Cell Phones & Yachts: Why it’s Easy to Disconnect at Sea

There’s something deliriously freeing about casting off on a yacht, watching as land and all its cares drift out of sight. You feel suddenly lighter, happier. Nothing can touch you out here as you float toward the distant horizon.

In days gone by, travelling by sea would mean that you were largely out of contact too, relying only on a VHF radio or satellite phone if you desperately needed to communicate with the outside world.

These days you don’t lose signal nearly so easily. On today’s luxury yachts, the cell and WiFi coverage carries on right through many cruising grounds. The advance of satellite footprints means that on modern superyachts, you can spend your whole vacation on your smartphone if you like.

The funny thing is, barely anyone does. Cell phones are always the first thing to be put down and ignored on a yacht (after the obligatory photos and “I’m on vacation in the Caribbean!” Facebook posts).

Superyacht vacations are the ultimate tech detox, in that you can use your phone … but you just don’t want to.

On a yacht charter, you’ve got much better things to pay attention to. Rays of sunshine shining through a patch of cloud onto the water and the feel of the wind and spray on your face. The silky feel of water enveloping your skin as you dive off the swim platform or as you launch off the yacht’s waterslide into the sea.

Helping your kids learn to jet-ski, drinking cocktails on the sundeck, and watching dolphins surfing the bow wave as the captain drives the yacht to the next beautiful destination.

On a yacht, you soon get into the rhythm of slowly passing days, of sunsets and sunrises that play across sky and sea. Of dreamy afternoon naps in your cabin as the water laps gently at the hull, and amazing meals on deck, chatting and laughing with family and friends, your phone on silent somewhere, in another room.

On a yacht charter, your phone — the device you cannot live without on land — is pretty much the last thing on your mind.

It belongs to another world. One of stress and competing demands on your time, of overflowing inboxes and annoying phone calls that need to be made. Your phone is the very symbol of the world you’re escaping from by going on vacation.

Sometimes it’s only when you get a bit of distance from something that you realize how much it controls your life. Smartphones are great, but sometimes they’re too great — and we inadvertently spend great swathes of our lives looking down into their glowing screens, being drawn into an infinite barrage of emails and news stories, social media scrolling and videos of kittens chasing lasers.

Yachts are the perfect environment to switch off and connect wholeheartedly with the people around you. Your kids. Your family. Your friends.

Modern life is hard. We may not be fighting tigers anymore but we have more stimuli wearing us out than ever before. Give yourself a break.

You can actually track the holiday’s calming effect on your stress levels by how you look at your phone less and less over the first couple of days. By day 3 of a charter vacation, you realize that you don’t know where your phone is, and after a brief whisper of curiosity, you realize you don’t actually care.

By day 5, you look at your phone with a frisson of distaste: it anchors you to a world that you are quite happily adrift from. I suggest you pack it in your luggage at this stage to really get the most out of the rest of the charter — unless you need it to take photos of all the amazing moments and memories you’re having.

On a yachting holiday, you can chat with your boss if you want to. But you’ll probably find you don’t. Your relatives might call to find out how the yacht charter is going, but then again, they’re probably still sulking you didn’t have room for them to come too.

You soon realize that, barring emergencies, there’s very little in life that can’t wait a few more days. So you leave your cellphone in your cabin more and more, perhaps charging on your bedside table or switched off entirely, waiting patiently for when you re-enter the world.

So no, you don’t need to go on a rustic camping retreat to break yourself of your tech addiction. You just need to go on a luxury yacht. And that way you won’t wake up in your tent with a deflated air mattress, freezing cold, and with a rattlesnake lying in between you and the pit toilets.

You’ll be on a yacht, floating through paradise and sleeping in soft feather beds while your private chef makes you breakfast. That’s what we call a win-win.

To find out more about switching off with a luxury yacht charter, contact Denison Yachting today.