M.Y. Dreamworld Cowes, Isle of Wight

Not a cruise. A crew.

Live aboard, pull your weight, and see where she goes. You’re one of the crew for the trip — not a passenger on a cruise.

A family, a motor yacht, twenty-seven years — and, most trips, a spare cabin.

There’s a spare cabin
What this actually is

You’re crew, not a passenger

Come aboard Dreamworld and you get a berth in a spare cabin, a share of the watches whilst underway, and a hand in everything from the lines to the washing-up. That’s the deal, and the good bit — you don’t watch the trip happen, you help it happen.

And if you’ve never set foot on a boat before — no problem at all. Most people arrive with no experience at all… we all have to start somewhere and we will teach you everything you need to know at a comfortable pace as we cruise.

A berth in the spare cabin
No experience needed
You’re one of the crew, not a guest
Simon at Dreamworld’s wheel at sunset, his small son on his lap in a yellow lifejacket with one hand on the helm. The instruments read a heading of 085 degrees and flat sea runs to the horizon.
085°, and the smallest hand on the wheel.

This is the part that turns “could I really do that?” into “when do we leave?”

The boat · Sheet 01

Dreamworld

Motor yacht
“trawler yacht”, in the US
L O A   13 m drawn before she was built.

Thirteen metres of Brazilian mahogany, drawn by a naval architect and built by hand over five years by Simon’s father, Paul. She’s a genuine one-off — not chosen off a forecourt, but designed for the sea and still being improved every season.

The bare planked mahogany hull of Dreamworld curving away from the bow, sanded back to the wood during her refit, under a blue tarpaulin shelter.
Brazilian mahogany, laid by hand. Five years of it.
Dreamworld hauled out of the water and propped on stands in a boatyard, her name painted in script across the transom, her propeller and rudder exposed beneath.
Hauled out, and unmistakably herself.
The crew

A family, not a charter company

There are four of us aboard Dreamworld. You won’t be handed to a hired skipper and a rota of staff — you’ll be sharing a galley table with the people whose boat this is.

Simon, the skipper and chief engineer, aboard Dreamworld
Simon
Skipper & owner
Laura, keeper of order and the ship’s bookkeeper
Laura
Crew & galley
Tristan, nicknamed Bob, the chief adventurer, holding his toy tiger
Tristan “Bob”
Crew
Roxy, the newest recruit, grinning
Roxy
Crew
The galley table aboard Dreamworld after a meal: Simon asleep on the bench among the plates with a teddy bear and a stuffed tiger beside him, and the baby asleep face-down on the tray of his highchair.
This is the galley table. Nobody is performing for the camera.

Simon, Laura, Tristan and Roxy — and room to make it five.

Meet the crew
Where she’s been

Thirty-four years of passages

34
years
19
voyages
2
oceans
Our cruising grounds
Chart of Dreamworld's voyages, 1992 to 2021 A paper chart of the North Atlantic, the Caribbean, the United States Pacific seaboard, western Europe and the Mediterranean, with 19 voyages plotted by hand. Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, is the home port. A dotted line leaves Cowes heading west and runs off the edge of the chart: the next voyage, not yet decided. 1992 · UK → Gibraltar via Spain & Portugal 1995 · Gibraltar → Mallorca via Spain 1995 · Mallorca → Gibraltar 1996 · Gibraltar → Trinidad via the Canaries, Cape Verde & the Caribbean 1997 · Trinidad → St Maarten 1998 · St Maarten → Florida via BVI, USVI & Bahamas 1999 · The Great Circle: Florida → Great Lakes → Mississippi → Florida 2000 · Florida → Cuba → Florida 2001 · Florida → San Diego via Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica & El Salvador 2003 · San Diego → White Rock, Vancouver 2003 · Vancouver → San Diego 2004 · San Diego → Woodbridge, UK via El Salvador, Panama, Florida, Bermuda & the Azores 2013 · Woodbridge, UK → Studland Bay 2013/14 · Studland Bay → Cyprus via Gibraltar, Tunisia & Malta 2017 · Cyprus → Greece via Montenegro 2018 · Italy → Greece, the Ionian Islands 2018 · Greece → Italy 2020 · Italy → Isle of Wight 2021 · Cowes → Rochford via St Katharine Docks PLOTTED BY HAND · 1992–2021
Dreamworld lying at anchor in a still turquoise cove in Greece, close under a rocky hillside covered in olive trees.
At anchor, Greece. One of the nineteen.

Every track detailed since 1992 — down Biscay, through the Med, across the Atlantic, up to the great lakes, down the Mississippi, up the Pacific seaboard, the length of the Mediterranean and more… Nineteen massive trips and counting. The twentieth hasn’t been drawn yet.

See the voyages
Nobody’s making money

This is a non-profit

Crewtrips isn’t a business. Nobody draws a wage — not Simon, not anyone. Every pound that comes aboard goes straight back into keeping a 27-year-old motor yacht running, and nothing else.

Where the £75 goes the sums, done by hand
£75 a day, split four ways —
Maintenance an old boat is never quite finished
Fuel she’s a motor yacht — miles cost diesel
Food a crew eats well or not at all
Port dues every harbour wants its share
Adds up to ≈ £75 a day, each
give or take — it changes every trip

Roughly £75 a day sharing, £100 for a cabin to yourself — and it varies trip to trip. It isn’t a charter price and it isn’t profit; it’s your share of what she costs to run that week, split between the crew aboard.

Setting up expectations
And it doesn’t have to be money.

Donations and sponsorship are genuinely welcome — but so is kit. A spare bit of gear, tools, electronics, provisions: it keeps her going just as much as cash does, and it’s the thing nobody thinks to offer.

Get in touch There’s no “donate” button — we’d rather just talk it through.

There’s a spare cabin. It could be yours.

It’s an enquiry, not a checkout — tell us who you are and roughly what you’re after, and Simon comes back with a price for your dates. Nothing’s booked until you’ve both said yes.

Crewtrips
M.Y. Dreamworld · Cowes, Isle of Wight · crew@crewtrips.com
Where adventures begin.