FEW pics of celebs make me green with envy like their holiday snaps.
The likes of Beyonce, Victoria Beckham and Kate Moss lounging on a cool boat in the Med while I sweat off my suncream on a sandy beach towel onshore, really make me question my career choices in life.
But it turns out, you don’t need to be an A-Lister to get a taste of the high-life.
On my recent trip to the South of France I discovered Samboat, a website that’s essentially the AirBnB of boats, which lets you hire people’s personal luxury speedboats and yachts for the day.
What it means in practice is that rich people can lease out their boats when they’re not using them, for some extra cash.
Samboat does have locations in the UK with boats on offer, but it really comes into its own in places like the French Riviera, where there are loads of millionaires with boats lying idle in the marina.
Read More On Boat Holidays
After scouring the website for the best boat for my mum friend and I, plus our three seven-year-old boys, I decided upon a Jeanneau Merry Fisher 900 Cruiser motorboat – massive at 9m long – that could fit up to 12 people.
It was HUGE. With a large shaded area for lunches, an enormous bow that was bigger than my living room at home, and even an indoor living room downstairs.
Because they have so many boats in the region, we were able to pick one that was just 10 minutes drive from our campsite, in Port Grimaud.
The plan had originally been to moor somewhere around midday and grab lunch at a beachfront restaurant, much like Kate Moss and co. do when they disembark their yachts for magnums or rose and seafood towers at Club 55.
But our skipper suggested our time would be much better spent picnicking on the water in a secluded bay, so we stocked up on supplies at the marina supermarket (turns out marina supermarkets that service posh boat owners are LOVELY – we got freshly-baked pastries, perfectly ripe brie, some very nice rose wine and plenty more goodies before setting out).
And thank goodness he had put his foot down, because there was no way we would have got our boys off that boat with the promise of a boring restaurant meal.
Instead, they loaded up on madeleine cakes and cheetos, while intermittently jumping off the side to ‘wash their hands’ of the cheesy crisps.
There was one hair-raising moment where we discovered there wasn’t a bottle opener onboard for our wine, which meant a swim to one of the other posh boats in the bay to beg for a bottle opener – but hey, it’s all part of the fun, right?
And our amenable neighbours had been curious who the people on the big boat blasting ‘Crazy Frog’ three times in a row were anyway.
I’ve always considered boat day to be the best day on holiday – seeing the shoreline from the sea, getting some proper breeze and jumping into crystal-clear, deep water is always the perfect way to spend several hours.
But when you join a group boat trip, that inevitably means a lot of waiting around and limited space to kick back and relax.
With our own boat, we could set the pace. Which meant snail’s pace.
We spent six hours in that cute little bay, floating on inflatables, practising our diving and snorkeling over the marine forests.
Then on the way back, our skipper took us into St Tropez’s marina, to ogle the enormous billionaire’s yachts and grab an ice cream from the famous Barbarac on the marina promenade.
Watching my son take in the beauty of the famous seaside town as we cruised into the port on the bow of the boat was a perfect holiday moment.
Then we were dropped back to our local port, in time for a fish and chip supper.
Hiring your own boat isn’t cheap.
The prices for our particular boat start at 913 euros (£776) for the day, including the skipper, plus you have to pay for fuel, which worked out around 300 euros (£255).
But if you filled the boat, that would work out at around 100 euros (£85) per person for the whole day, and there are plenty of boats on the website that work out much cheaper.
And when we arrived back in the UK after our holiday, the one memory we’ve not stopped talking about was boat day.
I’d swap out several pricey attractions on land for eight hours of bliss at sea, where I can pretend I’m VB on her summer break (minus the designer holiday wardrobe) .