Pricing an Adventure
The Pricing of an Adventure
The adventure of a lifetime.
It sounds cliché but that’s how Picton Castle crew consistently describe their experience aboard our ship. By contrast, those who haven’t had the experience of living and working aboard our beautiful barque will sometimes stand mouth agape asking, “You pay how much to work?”
We recognize the cost of a major voyage like the upcoming World Voyage involves more than a little pocket change, but trainees agree our cost-shared voyages are worth every penny. And is it really that expensive? Let’s break it down a bit.
Consider the Cost of Other Hard-work Adventures of a Lifetime
To climb Mount Everest with the aid of an experienced guide and Sherpas, but with no guarantee of a summit, may cost as much as $100,000 (or more) with a guide, with your actual time on the mountain being two and a half months. To do it yourself with a logistics-only guide will still cost you $35,000 – $60,000 USD. And you will still need to travel there and back, and cover food and accommodation while not on the mountain.
If climbing Mount Kilimanjaro—the highest mountain in Africa—is a more realistic dream for you, you can expect to pay $2500 to $6000 USD to climb with a licensed guide for the six days it will take you to climb up and back. And again: you need to fly there and back, and you have all the other costs associated with travel like accommodation and meals.
To spend one semester (approximately 2.5 months) on a National Outdoor Leadership School, learning skills in sailing, climbing, trekking or paddling, costs $16,000 – $22,000 USD. Their longest available adventure lasts 135 days (about 4 1/2 months) and costs $40,950 USD.
And these adventures all take place in one geographic area; on the upcoming World Voyage Picton Castle will visit ports you cannot fly to (like Pitcairn Island – you can only get there by boat/ship) as well as exotic bucket-list stops like Galapagos Islands, French Polynesia and Easter Island.
(Not really “hard work” but arguably an adventure of a lifetime)
An around the world airline ticket with a few stops will cost you around $2500 USD; the more places you visit the more it costs and to visit all the ports on an around the world adventure such as ours, the total of plane ticket costs can be upwards of $20,000 USD. An around the world airline ticket that includes 33+ stops? Yikes! And you will still have to pay for food, lodging, customs fees and sundry items as well as sometimes having to get yourself from one place to another by bus or train which is generally not included in the airline ticket.
Everything's Included on your Voyage
What’s included in your Picton Castle trainee fees? Your accommodation & meals (on the ship), port fees and entry fees for the countries we visit, plus, all instruction and training, as well as the costs associated with running and maintaining the ship.
A one-week sailing course with an accredited school will cost you $2795USD and up. That’s nearly $400USD per day to get the basics of sailing that one boat. Over the 3 months of a single leg, or the 14 months of the full World Voyage, we will teach you square-rig sailing, sail making, rigging, navigation, small boat handling (including sailing small boats!) and a host of other skills – those that are exclusively marine and those that easily transfer ashore.
