A captain's company
Founded in 2011 by someone who had already spent nineteen years learning what guests actually remember.
From the wheelhouse to the quay
Petra Lindqvist went to sea at nineteen, out of Gothenburg, and worked her way from deckhand to captain across two oceans and nineteen years. By the end she was running fifty-metre yachts for owners she liked, on charters she often didn't: routes sold by brochure, crews rotated like shift workers, guests processed rather than known.
Ondine, founded in a one-room office on the Nice quayside in 2011, is her correction. The fleet stays small enough that she has sailed every boat herself. Crews are permanent, paid to stay, and known to guests by name years later. Quotes come with every cost in them, because surprises belong in anchorages, not invoices.
Fourteen summers on, more than half of each season's guests have sailed with us before. We take that as the only review that matters.
What we hold to
Crews who stay
Every yacht keeps her crew across seasons. A chef who knows the boat knows the good market in every port; a captain who knows her guests reads the room before breakfast.
Boats we know
We charter nothing we have not sailed ourselves. When a yacht joins the fleet, Petra takes her out for a fortnight first. Two have failed that fortnight and were returned.
Whole numbers
Base rate, APA, VAT: quoted together, before you commit. Guests should ration their surprises for what is around the headland, not what is in the invoice.
"Petra remembered our daughter's name a year later. So did the chef. That, more than the boat, is why we rebooked."Anneke van der BergChartered Lira in the Balearics, 2024 and 2025
Come and find us
On the quay in Nice, in Bruton Place in London, or at the end of a phone. The kettle works in all three places.