Yacht Week is Sodom and Gomorrah at sea news

You will watch someone almost fall off a boat, drunk, into the sea, but recover at the last minute. You will watch someone not recover at the last minute and fall off a boat, drunk, into the sea. You will see rich men throwing themselves into the water, before realising their money is still in their pockets, and hurriedly doggy-paddling after hundreds of dollars slowly escaping in the tide.

You'll see drinking games, champagne showers, stripping, island rampages, selfie sticks held up like glow sticks, spirit bottles worth hundreds of dollars delivered on silver service with fireworks strapped to the necks, and people spending the average year's salary just by slurring the word "again!" You may see - as I did - more than 40 people scramble onto a yacht meant for six for an impromptu all-night boat party, which, after a certain amount of vodka, feels more like a real-life game of Screwball Scramble.

You may see - as I did - an Australian girl so drunk she keeps kissing two men on the same night under the impression they are the same person, and not understanding why this person is getting so upset, and in different voices.

Nearly everyone is beautiful, single, uninhibited, and bottle-service wealthy. Several have been on reality-TV shows. It is the only holiday you can go on, I discover, that includes two staff photographers taking pictures of everything you, the hard-partying customer, get up to at all times.

I joined the Yacht Week for its "black route" - one that sails around the exclusive islands of Croatia, on the Adriatic - to see just why it's become such a phenomenon. The idea, after all, is fairly straightforward. You join an armada of yachts - up to 50 on any one route - after selecting your yacht-mates, booking a skipper, and even arranging an on-board chef if your budget will stretch that far (nearly all do).

While on board, you drink and eat and sunbathe, and then party at every island you dock at, mostly at special Yacht Week events. It's Club 18-30, essentially, for people far too rich and glamorous to go on Club 18-30 holidays. The bigger Yacht Week has become (it started in 2008, and now has 45 routes across six countries, mostly in Europe, with plans to expand into South America and beyond) the more controversial it has been. The island of Hvar on this week's route, for instance, has increasingly become known as the new Saint-Tropez, with the mega-yachts lining its harbour belonging to everyone from Roman Abramovich and Bill Gates to Beyoncé and Tom Cruise.

Perhaps understandably, residents and guests haven't been too keen on "Hvarday", when the Yacht Week horde descends for perhaps the most raucous parties of the week (the notorious afternoon party scheduled at Carpe Diem bar sees champagne bottles worth hundreds of dollars sprayed like fire extinguishers). Just a few hours of "Hvarday" are said to be worth around £40,000 for the owners. The Hvar town council has repeatedly voted for Yacht Week's banishment, citing noise and drunken abuse; some claimed people were vomiting into the water and passing out drunk on the boardwalk. The diners next door at Gariful, Hvar's most exclusive fish restaurant, one of

Giorgio Armani's favourite haunts, were said to be less than impressed. Yet, each time, Hvar's mayor has reached a compromise with Yacht Week's founders. And so, as with every year since it began in 2008, Yacht Week sails again.

At the marina, a short drive from Split airport, I meet our skipper for the week, Sebastian, a fastidious Spaniard almost certainly given to us to show how serious about safety they are, and who chides every error (you're required to help out when docking) like a father telling his son not to murder any more prostitutes ("It can never happen again"). The other members of HMS GQ are Charlotte, an easygoing Dane who will be our chef for the week, and the GQ photographer Rebecca. We are not the typical crew. Even the smallest yachts, like ours, sleep six - making ours the only boat not at capacity.

Part of Yacht Week's appeal, it turns out, comes with selecting your boat mates. Each yacht is required to be a strict 50-50 split in gender. The majority of people I spoke to found their remaining shipmates via the "CrewFinder" section on the website, which is essentially Yacht Week's version of Tinder, and which mostly sees men advertising the remaining female spaces on a yacht they've reserved.

"We are calling our boat Noah's Ark cause it is going to be filled with Animals!!!" reads a typical ad. "Looking for 4 more beer-chugging, shot-taking, pirate-costume-wearing, no fess about what anybody is caring girls to join in the mayhem!"

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/yacht-week-instagram-william-wenkel