It’s the official start of winter wanderlust season, and I’ll confess: the imagery EYOS Expeditions has been circulating is the kind of thing that makes you reconsider your entire relationship with travel. While I’m tracking “under $250 JetBlue flight prices” to Boston for the holidays, EYOS is sending around photos of its superyachts threading through Indonesian limestone karsts, zodiacs pulling up to emperor penguin colonies, and heli-skiers carving down Antarctic couloirs. As a reporter who covers luxury brands, it’s hard not to feel like I’m on the wrong side of the lifestyle biz.
I’m not a diver. I’m barely a snorkeler. But these vessels, in these locations, have a way of making you wonder if you’ve been doing this whole “seeing the world” thing all wrong. EYOS (pronounced “EYE-ohs”) is not your typical yacht charter company, and Ben Lyons, its CEO, is not your typical yachtsman.
The Origins of EYOS and the Rise of Expedition Superyachts
When I caught up with him on Zoom between his New York and Montana homes—the family does spring and fall in the city, apparently—he was reflecting on a career path that makes perfect sense in hindsight and absolutely none from the outside.
“I’ve been interested in ships ever since I was five years old,” Lyons said, “and I have no idea why.”
That inexplicable childhood fascination led him to the Merchant Marine Academy, then to working as an officer on big cruise ships including the Queen Mary 2, which he helped take out of the shipyard. But it was a trip to the Galapagos that changed his approach to sailing. “All of a sudden it was using ships as this platform to reach places and have these amazing interactive moments of both destination and learning, where the ship is not the focus; the ship is just the way in.”
He quit the Queen Mary 2, joined Lindblad Expeditions, and spent years shuttling between the polar regions before realizing that life wasn’t exactly conducive to settling down. So he got an MBA, reconnected with friends who’d started the superyacht company EYOS, and helped grow what was then a “nascent little company” over the last dozen years. “It’s such a bizarre world to suddenly find yourself in,” he said. “And I can’t imagine having a better job.”
The EYOS Advantage: Three Core Superyachts
Superyachts can slip into places the rest of us never see because they’re built for autonomy, with ice-strengthened hulls, their own landing craft, even helicopters and subs when the destination calls for it. They don’t need ports, fuel docks, or infrastructure, which means they can nose into Antarctic pack ice, anchor off uninhabited atolls, or drop zodiacs straight into waters where there’s no sign of human life for miles. “The whole point is mobility,” Lyons said. “That freedom is the probably the truest luxury.”
The company now manages three core vessels and represents dozens more, arranging bespoke expeditions to every continent and all five oceans. There’s Lamima, a 214-foot traditional Indonesian Phinisi motor-sail yacht that’s said to be the biggest of its kind, operating year-round between Komodo and Raja Ampat. “It’s the ultimate dive journey,” Lyons said, describing a recent client who spent three weeks aboard and left in tears, asking “what are we going to do without all of you?”
At around $28,000 a day for 14 guests, it’s what Lyons calls “relatively accessible”—a term that requires some elasticity in definition, admittedly—and attracts multi-generational families and groups of couples splitting the cost.
A New Wave In Superyachts: ‘Serial Chartering’
Then there’s Solace, a 187-foot Feadship fresh from a ten-month refit, now embarking on a three-year circumnavigation with a twist: the owner wants clients to return for multiple weeks across different destinations, building relationships with the crew and avoiding the usual hassles of yacht ownership (i.e., delivery fees, regulations, permits for Antarctica or Papua New Guinea). EYOS calls it “serial chartering.”
This winter she’ll be in the Caribbean, where the owner is donating the vessel to scientists studying humpback whales at Silver Bank off the Dominican Republic, letting guests swim with the whales while learning from researchers. “It’s this elevated Caribbean experience,” Lyons explains. “We’re trying to think of ways that we can offer tried and true, but in a completely different fashion.”
The crown jewel might be Hanse Explorer, the 157-foot ice-strengthened yacht EYOS has worked with longest. She takes 12 passengers, shuttles annually between the Arctic and Antarctic, and booked 145 charter days this year, making her EYOS’s most popular expedition yacht afloat.
Inside EYOS’s Dive, Wildlife, and Cultural Immersion Journeys
Every charter includes an EYOS guide, someone who’ll take you onto the ice or into zodiacs the moment whales appear. “That’s the true flexibility of being on a smaller vessel,” Lyons said. “You see whales and you just say, ‘I want to go see those whales right now,’ the yacht just stops, the zodiacs are down, two minutes later you’re in the zodiacs.” When a polar bear materializes outside the dining room window, “the meal comes secondary. It’s ‘let’s do the wildlife first.’”
It’s here that Lyons draws the distinction between expedition cruising—think 150 or more passengers on a Lindblad ship, which he worked on for years—versus private expedition yachts. “There’s an incredible sense of privilege in the good sense that you get when you are the only people ashore somewhere in Antarctica and you are just surrounded by all this incredible beauty, and there is nobody else around,” he said. “It’s just one of these places that really, the smaller the group, the better the experience.”
How EYOS Compares to Other Expedition-Superyacht Operators
In the rarefied world of expedition superyachts, EYOS sits in a tight competitive pack that includes Pelorus, Cookson Adventures, boutique operators like Black Tomato‘s private-yacht arm, plus major brokerages such as Hill Robinson, and Y.CO. They are all capable of putting serious explorer yachts in Antarctica, the Arctic, or other far-flung corners.
Pelorus and Cookson specialize in similar one-off odyssey trips—heli-skiing from yachts, sub dives in remote archipelagos, ice-class hulls nosing into polar pack—while the major brokers field deep fleets and can assemble adventurous itineraries for ultra-high-net-worth clients seeking bragging-rights photos against blue ice.
What sets EYOS apart is its singular focus: the company isn’t a generalist travel designer dabbling in yachts or a charter house that sometimes goes polar, but a team of former expedition leaders, ice pilots, and field scientists who’ve spent decades running logistics in places with no marinas, no fuel docks, and, well, no second chances.
Looking ahead, Lyons is focused on expanding Solace’s three-year odyssey and adding more vessels to the fleet. But he’s also been rethinking his own travel wishlist. After spending his professional sailing career in the polar regions, he’s recently discovered the tropics—Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, French Polynesia. “I’ve come to realize just how extraordinary they are, which I guess is the world’s most obvious statement,” he said.
Papua New Guinea particularly captivated him. “You just walk into these villages and you’re instantly welcome and surrounded and it’s a cultural experience unlike anything else you see elsewhere in the world.”
His next dream: pushing further south through the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, continuing that exploration. There’s also Camp Dominica, a shore-based program in the Caribbean where guests can swim with one of the only resident sperm whale populations in the world, alongside scientists from Project CETI who study whale vocalizations and language.
Beyond Superyachts: Ultra-Luxury Travelers Are Pushing Into Ever-More Remote Destinations
For 2026, EYOS is plotting a month-by-month roadmap that includes heli-skiing Antarctica in January, chasing a solar eclipse in Greenland in August, and camping beside emperor penguins at Gould Bay in November.
If you think flying to the arctic is far, take a breath. September brings something else entirely—missions to Haven-1, the world’s first commercial space station, in partnership with Vast. “EYOS looks beyond Earth,” the company says, marking “the next step in humanity’s exploration of the unknown.”
Which is either the logical endpoint of expedition travel or proof that some people (even those with access to superyachts) have run out of places to go on this planet. Maybe both. Either way, I don’t think JetBlue flies there.