Answered · 4 minute read
A charter yacht in Dubai cruises at about 10 knots, which is roughly 18 km/h. Most will do 20 knots or more, but fuel consumption climbs steeply and the ride gets uncomfortable, so routes are planned around cruising speed. A rigid inflatable on a tour runs at about 30 knots, which is why it covers the same coast in a third of the time.
Published
A knot is one nautical mile per hour, about 1.85 km/h. Ten knots is therefore around 18 km/h — slower than city traffic, and it does not feel slow on the water because there is nothing to measure yourself against.
At that speed the boat is quiet enough to talk over, stable enough to walk around on, and burning a fraction of the fuel it would at twenty. That combination is why almost every charter runs at it.
Fuel consumption on a planing motor yacht does not rise in a straight line with speed — it climbs steeply. Going from 10 to 20 knots can more than triple consumption, and on a charter priced with fuel included that is the operator's problem, which means it becomes the route's problem.
Comfort is the other half. At twenty knots a 48ft in any chop is loud, wet at the bow and hard to stand up on. On a charter where people are eating, drinking and taking photographs, that is not an improvement.
At cruising speed the Palm is about twenty minutes from a Marina berth, the Burj Al Arab about thirty, and the World Islands forty to forty-five. Those numbers are what actually determine what fits in a two, three or five-hour charter.
The Marina channel itself is a low-speed zone, so the first and last twelve minutes of every charter are slower still. That is not lost time — it is the stretch where the towers are closest and where most photographs get taken.
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