How to Book a Wheelchair-Friendly Charter Yacht

The 113-foot Codecasa Mimu surprised me. As I stepped from her aft deck through the glass doors and into her main salon, I expected my bare feet to go from feeling teak decking to being atop plush carpeting. That’s what most motoryachts have in their salons, after all.

Instead, I felt the cool chill of tile beneath my toes, and I looked up to see an entire room of the crisp, white stuff. The tile wasn't there as a design element, nor as a mini-foyer of any kind. It ran clear through the salon to the formal dining room and the master cabin all the way forward on the main deck. While many motoryachts have marble or granite in their companionways on this deck, I think Mimu is the first I've seen in some thirteen years of touring boats that has an entire deck covered in the smooth surface.

Of course, the design element immediately made sense—and it got me to thinking about charter yachts that are advertised as “wheelchair friendly.” There used to be maybe one or two out there on the water with, shall we call it, decent accessibility. But today, more and more yacht owners are installing features that allow for the comfort of all types of charter guests, including those who use wheelchairs.

The 190-foot Trinity Mi Sueno has a wheelchair-sized elevator and an entire guest cabin built for accessibility, including over-sized entry doors to the cabin and to the bathroom, where the shower has a large handrail. The 148-foot CRN Stella Bella has onboard furniture sized and arranged to let a wheelchair maneuver around it, as well as a small elevator on the aft deck that carries a person in a wheelchair down to the swim platform. The 116-foot Lazzara Serenity has wheelchair-friendly features including a chair lift that helps guests navigate the rounded staircase from the main deck to the staterooms one level below.
What’s especially noteworthy about all of these examples is that the yachts span the bulk of the size range for charter yachts overall, and that they are available in lots of popular destinations. It used to be that only the largest megayachts were making space for features even remotely like these; today, these features and more can be found aboard charter motoryachts barely longer than 100 feet.

Wheelchair accessibility is not only becoming available on more and more yachts, but it’s also becoming available in more and more price ranges and places—making the charter experience itself accessible to an even wider range of people. And that, of course, is a really great thing.