Provisioning is the invisible half of a crewed week. Guests experience it as arrival: the fridge is full, the fruit bowl is serious, someone asks how you take your coffee and never asks again. Behind it sits a supply chain that starts with the preference sheet — the form your broker sends weeks out asking about allergies, dislikes, drinks, children's favourites and the anniversary dinner — and ends with a deckhand counting crates on a quay before the guests' transfer. Understanding the machinery makes you better at feeding it, and the week better-fed for it.
This is an explainer of standard crewed-charter practice; each yacht's galley runs its own system, and the preference sheet governs.
Weeks out: the sheet
The preference sheet is a genuinely important document, and the guests who treat it casually eat generically all week. It asks for more than favourites: allergies with severity, brands you actually drink, how you take breakfast, whether dinner is an event or a refuelling stop, children's portions, and the celebrations the chef should know are coming. The crew translates it into orders by the case. Be specific — 'gin, and it matters' is a usable instruction; 'a bit of everything' is not.
Days out: the orders
Professional provisioning in the charter ports runs through wholesale suppliers and specialist delivery services alongside the crew's own market runs: the fish comes from the fishmonger the chef trusts, the bread is baked for the morning it's needed, the wine follows the sheet's list. Larger yachts provision like small hotels, with deliveries staged to the embarkation port across the day before boarding; smaller crews do a single disciplined supermarket-and-market sweep that morning. Either way, the volume is planned to the day — fridge and locker space aboard is finite engineering, not an infinite cellar.
During the week: the top-ups
The run doesn't end at embarkation. Mid-week the crew restocks fresh produce, bread and dairy — a market morning on a quay town, or a delivery to the next marina — and this is where guest requests land best: tell the chef or stewardess a day ahead, not at dinner, and the local system will find the strawberries. Water, ice and fuel are bunkered on the same rhythm. The one unfixable case is the remote anchorage with no run ashore: the good crews plan the larder around those nights, which is why day three's menu sometimes has a designed shape.
What it costs, and where it sits
Food and drink live inside the APA, logged like everything else — which means the sheet's ambitions have a budget dimension the crew manages quietly: the week that drinks first-growth burgundy all week is a week the APA reconciles accordingly. If the provisioning matters to you — and on a boat, it is a third of the pleasure — say so early, both directions: what you want, and what you don't. The crew's favourite sheet is the honest one.