Then a friend booked us on a 50-foot cat down in the BVIs last month. Completely changed my mind.

The last time I was on a 130-foot Benetti, getting to shore was just terrible. If you haven't been on one... they sit way too deep in the water to actually go near a beach. You just anchor a mile out.

If we wanted to go to Positano for lunch, it was this whole event. The crew had to crane the tender into the water. You end up sitting in orange vests getting sprayed with saltwater for half an hour just to reach the dock. Going ashore basically turns into a scheduled logistics meeting.

Plus, on the big boats, you are constantly stressed about the schedule. You have to secure slips in these glamorous marinas months in advance. If you’re paying €5,000 a night just to park the Benetti in Monaco or Capri, the captain is going to make damn sure you are moving on time. You spend half your vacation looking at your watch.

And the crew is just always there. There were nine of them. I’d walk into the kitchen at 6 AM just wanting coffee, and suddenly two people in uniforms are asking me what I want for breakfast. It’s nice for two days, and then it just gets exhausting.

I was expecting a catamaran to feel cramped. I figured it was basically camping.

It wasn't. There wasn’t a massive crew. Just a captain and a chef.

When we got on, they didn’t do a whole formal welcome speech. The captain just pointed at the fridge and said to grab a beer while he started the engines. Whole thing took two minutes.

I asked the captain where we were going. He just checked a weather app and said we'd probably head towards Jost Van Dyke.

There wasn't really a schedule. No rushing to beat another yacht to a mooring ball. We just floated around.

The Reality of Fiberglass

The cabins on the cat were... fine. It's literally just a mattress taking up the entire width of the fiberglass hull. You sleep about two feet above the actual ocean, so every single ripple echoes right under your pillow. You hear everything at night.

Also, it’s slow. You move at like 8 knots. It works, but obviously, if you want to blast down the coast, it's going to drive you crazy. We hit some rough weather one night and the whole boat just shuddered every time a wave hit the flat bottom.

But honestly, it solves the biggest problem with chartering boats with friends: the bedrooms.

On the Benetti, there was one huge master suite. The other rooms were tiny boxes below deck. Trying to figure out who gets the master suite when everyone paid the same amount of money is awful. On the catamaran, the rooms were just four identical queens. Nobody cared.

The other thing people care about are the water toys. The motor yacht had a garage full of them. Jet skis, seabobs, a massive inflatable slide. But again, you couldn't just use them. A deckhand had to spend an hour inflating the slide and tethering it to the side of the boat. If you wanted to ride the jet ski, they had to drop it with the crane.

The catamaran just had some paddleboards lashed to the railing and a bin of cloudy snorkel masks. You just grab one and jump off the back. Nobody preps anything for you.

Dropping the Anchor

The draft makes up for everything else.

We pulled into Anegada and the captain just drove right over a reef. He dropped the anchor in maybe six feet of water.

No crane. No tender ride. We just walked down the back stairs and swam to the beach.

Next morning, I just walked into the galley. It’s basically an open kitchen. I poured my own coffee from the espresso machine and went to lay on the trampolines at the front of the boat.

I killed the entire afternoon out there. The bay was totally empty. It was completely quiet.

We actually used the sails a few times, too. On a motor yacht, you just hear the low rumble of the diesel engines the entire time you're moving. You kind of get used to the vibration.

When the captain actually pulled the sails up, the engines stopped and it got weirdly quiet. Just the sound of water. The boat doesn't even tilt. I left a full beer on the table going 6 knots and it didn't move.

Dinner was just out on the back deck. No formal dining room. No menus.

Booking the Benetti involved filling out a ridiculous preference sheet months in advance so they could stock our specific brand of sparkling water. The chef cooks down in the galley and a stew brings it up to the dining room.

On the cat, the chef just walked out and said she bought Mahi Mahi from a local guy on a skiff that morning and was making it with mango salsa. She cooked it right there in the open galley while we were sitting at the counter drinking rum. If you didn't want fish that night, your other option was making yourself toast.

Nights on the motor yacht meant putting on a linen shirt, waiting for the tender, and going into town for a €300 dinner. You spend half the night just getting on and off the boat.

In the BVIs, going out just meant taking the dinghy to a beach bar. I spent most evenings drinking rum in boardshorts.

When we checked out, the final fuel bill for the catamaran was €280. I'm still annoyed at the Benetti's fuel bill. We spent thousands of euros just bouncing between Naples and Capri.

It just depends on the kind of trip you actually want to have. If you want to pull into St. Tropez, wear a linen suit, and have tourists take pictures of your boat from the dock, you rent the motor yacht. It’s a status symbol.

But if you just want to vanish for a week, not wear shoes, and actually swim in the ocean instead of just looking at it from a three-story deck, the catamaran is the only way to do it. I just don't care about the big motor yachts anymore.