Look at one of the papers waiting for a signature on a charter office desk and you'll see a small abbreviation in the top corner: MYBA. Most guests skip past it, hunting for the line to sign. Yet those four letters are the name of a text that has already worked out the most annoying moment of a holiday — who pays what when something breaks.
The abbreviation looks dull. The idea behind it isn't.
A Common Language for a Harbour
MYBA stands for the Mediterranean Yacht Brokers Association — founded in Cannes in 1984 by a handful of charter brokers who needed to learn to trust one another. Back then every agency wrote its own contract; when a French broker and an Italian owner struck a deal, it was unclear whose language, whose law, would apply. MYBA's solution was simple: one standard contract everyone could agree to. Today the large majority of gulets and motor yachts chartered across the Mediterranean set sail under the same basic MYBA contract — the signing parties change, the text stays the same.
Why the Deposit Sits in a Separate Account
The part of the contract that matters most to a guest is the deposit — usually a percentage of the charter fee, held in a separate escrow account (often called an APA) and repaid at the end of the season once fuel, harbour fees and other costs are settled. The MYBA standard spells out in advance how that money is held, whose signature is needed to spend it, and where to turn if a dispute arises. When something breaks, a delay happens, or a booking is cancelled, the parties don't argue — they read the contract.
For a guest, what this means is simple: if you see "MYBA" on a contract, you're looking at a text tested for more than forty years, matured by an industry learning from its own disputes. A good broker won't dwell on this at length — because the greatest success of a working system is that no one notices it.
The signature goes down, the pen is set on the desk. From that moment on, the only thing left to talk about is the route.
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