Boat party in Phuket: 48 yachts and catamarans licensed for 20 to 120 guests

Twenty to thirty guests fit on a 40 to 50 ft catamaran — the trampolines forward, the saloon and cockpit aft, a water slide off the stern on many of them — and that is where the cheapest boats on this page sit: Fountaine Pajot 40 Coco at ฿25,900 (≈ $775) for the whole boat. Thirty to fifty guests need a 50 to 60 ft power catamaran or a 70 to 90 ft motor yacht with two decks; the operator's published capacity for those is thirty to sixty by day. Above sixty, the list is the superyachts and the large party catamarans, up to 120 guests by day on the biggest hull, at USD 37,500 for Song of Songs.

Every boat on this page has a sound system with Bluetooth; the volume at anchor is the captain's call and the national parks have rules of their own, which is why most party charters anchor off Koh Yao, Naka or Racha Yai rather than inside Phang Nga Bay. The standard inclusions are the crew, fuel for the published route, soft drinks, water, fruit and snorkelling gear; a number of boats list a case of beer or a free-flow of local drinks in the free-of-charge column, and the boat's page names it.

A party day is a short-distance day: the group wants to be swimming within the hour, not crossing to Phi Phi for ninety minutes. From the east-coast marinas — Ao Po, Royal Phuket Marina, Boat Lagoon — Koh Yao Yai and Noi, Naka Yai and the Khai islands are twenty to forty minutes away with sheltered anchorages, sandbars at low tide and no park fee; the sunset back towards Phuket from Koh Yao is the classic end of a party charter. From Chalong the equivalent is Coral Island and Racha Yai, forty minutes to an hour out, with the clearest water and a beach bar ashore.

The large catamarans and the two-deck motor yachts are the first boats to sell out for the Christmas fortnight and the long weekends of the high season, and a group of thirty is not something the operator can move to another hull at short notice; two to four weeks of lead time between November and April is realistic, more for the Christmas and New Year window, when the peak columns in the rate tables apply. From May to October the same boats are in their low-season column and the east-coast anchorages — Koh Yao, Naka, Khai — are sheltered whatever the west coast is doing.