The question sounds simple and is not, because a yacht is a moving address with a fence around it. This is how it works in practice, in the order you need to think about it.
Start with the port and the date, not the flowers
Every conversation about flowers for a yacht should start with two facts: which port, and what date. Not what you want in the vases. The port decides whether a permit is needed, the date decides whether there is time to get one, and together they decide whether the answer is yes.
A supplier who takes the order before asking those two things is going to disappoint you later.
Riviera and the Mediterranean: overnight
In the Med it is a road delivery and the constraint is simply the clock. With us, order up to 10pm and the flowers are on board from six the next morning, which is what you want because it puts them in the vases before guests are up. The Italian Riviera wants the order the day before; the Amalfi coast and Capri a few days ahead.
The thing to flag when you order is access. The superyacht quays at Port Vauban, Port Hercule and elsewhere are fenced and controlled. If the boat has not told the gate to expect a delivery, the delivery waits at the barrier. Say who to call.
Outside the Med: 48 hours, then one to two days in the air
For a boat in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean or Southeast Asia, the shape is this:
- Flowers are bought at the Dutch auction in Aalsmeer on the morning the order goes out, against your list.
- They are packed cold that day, into numbered boxes, and a plant health inspector signs the certificate on site. This is why it takes hours rather than days.
- They are trucked to Schiphol and flown as perishable cargo in the cold hold.
- The agent at your end has the paperwork 48 hours before the flight lands, meets the flight, and clears the consignment.
- The boxes come to the passerelle cold.
One to two days in the air, depending where you are: nine hours to Sint Maarten, fifteen to Phuket, twenty to Malé and the Seychelles, thirty-five to Antigua. With 48 hours’ notice in front of it, that is about three days from your message to your passerelle.
The one thing to plan is the import permit, which most of these countries want before your first order. It takes 5 to 7 working days in the Caribbean and one to two weeks in the Maldives, the Seychelles and Thailand, and it has to be granted before the flowers are bought. Plan it once and it covers the season: every order after it moves at the normal three days, Monday to Friday. The permit question is covered here.
Two more things worth knowing before you plan around this. Shipments start at 100 kg volumetric, which a yacht order normally clears without trying. And we ship Monday to Friday, because the flight and the paperwork both need a working day, so a request made on Saturday starts moving on Monday.
Who actually receives the box
This is the part nobody explains and it is where deliveries fail.
The consignment is addressed to the yacht as ship's stores in transit, care of an agent. That agent is a real company at the destination with a customs relationship, and it is usually the yacht's own agent, the one already handling your fuel, your clearances and your other deliveries. If you have one, we work with them. If you do not, we bring ours.
What you should never do is have a flower consignment addressed to a person, a marina, or a hotel. It stops being ship's stores and becomes an import, and somebody pays duty on a box of flowers.
When the boat is at anchor, or moving
Alongside is the easy case. The others are all workable if they are said out loud at the point of ordering rather than discovered on the day.
- At anchor. The boxes are handed to your tender at a set time and a set quay. Both sides need the same time, which sounds obvious and is the most common failure.
- Moving between islands. Land the flowers where the paperwork is easiest and carry them, rather than chasing the boat. In the eastern Caribbean that usually means Sint Maarten.
- Somewhere with no cargo airport. St Barths is the obvious one. It clears at Sint Maarten and comes across.
- Outer islands. Maldives, Seychelles and parts of Indonesia mean a seaplane or a speedboat as the last leg, with its own weight limits and its own timings. Tell your supplier where the boat actually is, not just which country.
What to tell your supplier
Everything runs better if the first message contains these. It is worth keeping as a note on your phone.
- Port, and which marina or anchorage.
- Date you want them on board.
- Vessel name, as it appears on the paperwork.
- Your agent at that port, if you have one, with a contact.
- Roughly what for. Owner arriving, charter starting, a table, a party, weekly refresh.
- Anything the owner hates. This is worth more than any brief you could write.
What arrives, and what to do with it
Flowers travelling as air freight are packed dry and cold, not in water. They arrive closed, and to an eye expecting a florist's bucket they can look disappointing for the first hour. They are not. Cut a centimetre off every stem under water, get them into clean cold water in a cool room, and leave them alone for two to four hours before you arrange anything. They open on the boat, which is the point, because it means they are still opening on day five.
Kept between plus two and plus eight the whole way, a properly shipped consignment gives you the vase life you would get at home, less the time in transit, one to two days depending on the port.
The short version
Give a real supplier the port and the date, let the paperwork and the agent be their problem, say if the boat is at anchor, and condition the flowers when they land. Everything else is somebody else's job.