Yoga on a Catamaran in San Blas, Panama

What practising yoga aboard is really like

You live aboard Ikigai, our Catana 47. The day opens with yoga and breathwork on the foredeck — and the boat is the reason it works. A catamaran sits flat. Two hulls, no heel, a wide trampoline that doesn’t tip you out of warrior pose every time a wake rolls through. Try the same flow on a monohull and you’ll spend half of it bracing. After practice you’re in the water: swimming, freediving, or doing nothing at all. The day bends around the light and the wind, not a spa’s appointment book.

What’s included aboard

You book one berth, by the cabin — no group to assemble, no whole boat to fill. The week gives you a bed aboard a Catana 47, yoga and breathwork every morning, every meal cooked onboard from fresh-caught fish and what the islands grow, snorkel and freediving gear, and slow sailing between San Blas anchorages with a crew that holds RYA Yachtmaster and AIDA / Apnea Total certifications. What you pay is a member contribution to Ikigai Sailing ASD, a CONI-recognised, MSP Italia–affiliated non-profit — not a commercial fee. That’s the whole reason a week here costs a fraction of an agency cruise: your money covers the experience and the boat’s running, not a broker’s cut.

Why here, and not Bali or Croatia

The famous yoga-sailing routes are the Med and Southeast Asia. Booked out, busy, built for the photo. San Blas runs the other way — an autonomous Guna territory where concrete building is banned, the lagoons stay flat and warm all year, and most days you won’t see another charter on the water. Fewer people. Warmer sea. A place that still belongs to itself.

Who comes aboard

First-timers and twenty-year practitioners. Solo travellers, couples, a few people closer to burnout than they’d say out loud. We keep the group small on purpose — practice you can feel, not a class of thirty crammed onto a pontoon.