The File
Ocean Independence
Charter, sales, management and aviation · Fifteen offices including Athens — headquartered near Zürich
The only house on this list that publishes real charter numbers: eighty-plus yachts in the fleet and more than seven hundred and fifty charter contracts a year.
Commercial relationship
LivingTheta earns referral fees from brokers in this category where an introduction leads to a booking. That is a standing commercial interest in you chartering, and it is disclosed on every page of this site that touches the category. There is no agreement with Ocean Independence specifically, nothing has been received from it, and it has not paid for this page.
- Athens office
- Yes — sales, charter and management
- Founded
- 2005 When Ocean Cruise AG, itself founded 1991, acquired the Greek broker Velonà Yachting and merged with SEA Independence. Founders Peter Hürzeler and Nicholas Dean.
- Headquarters
- Küsnacht, Zürich, since 2015
- Offices
- 15 120+ team members across 26 nationalities.
- Charter fleet
- 80+ yachts, and 750+ charter contracts a year Figures from their own site as displayed on 7 September 2026. These are the only real charter numbers any house on this list publishes. Note the tension with their separate claim to the world’s largest crewed charter fleet, which cannot be squared with 80+ and describes retail access instead.
- Ownership
- Privately held No parent group found.
- Unusual
- Private aviation alongside yachting The only firm here offering both.
- Further reading
- Yacht Charter Compass — yachtchartercompass.com Destination guides, itineraries and weekly rates for the megayacht market. It is published by the same group as LivingTheta, which is why it is labelled here rather than presented as an independent source. The link is in the sources below.
Ocean Independence was formed in 2005 when Ocean Cruise AG bought the Greek broker Velonà Yachting and merged with SEA Independence. It runs fifteen offices including Athens, with more than 120 people, and covers sales, charter, management, new build, refit and private aviation.
The numbers nobody else gives
Eighty-plus yachts in the charter fleet and more than 750 charter contracts a year. On a page where seven of nine houses publish nothing at all, that is the most useful thing about them.
It is not perfectly consistent — the same page also claims the world’s largest crewed charter fleet, which the eighty-plus figure contradicts. The reasonable reading is that one describes what they manage and the other what they can sell, and that is precisely the distinction to insist on with any broker.
