Catamarans have opened up the charter market due to their stability and roominess. Photo: Dean Barnes
Springtime for us is synonymous with regatta season. Since the mid 1990s, we’ve annually migrated to Puerto Rico for the Puerto Rico Heineken International Regatta, back to home base in the U.S. Virgin Islands and St. Thomas for the International Rolex Regatta, and finally east to the British Virgin Island of Tortola for the BVI Spring Regatta & Sailing Festival. This year, these must-do northern Caribbean regattas matched up in dates to create two weeks and three weekends of cruising and racing bliss in one of the best cruising grounds in the world.
The Virgin Islands lie in the easternmost Greater Antilles, a foursome of islands in the northern Caribbean sea that includes Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. The cruising grounds span about 70 miles and include the Spanish Virgin Islands of Vieques and Culebra, the U.S. Virgin Islands primarily of St. Thomas and St. John, and British Virgin Islands including Jost Van Dyke, Tortola, Virgin Gorda and Anegada. The beauty of this destination is the line-of-sight navigation. There’s also a myriad of services available from direct air service from the U.S. and Europe (through San Juan) to numerous charter companies and provisioning and the opportunity to explore three unique cultural destinations all with white sand beaches, quiet anchorages and things to do from a wide range of water sports by day and partying at beach bars into the night.
Puerto Rico now offers many bareboat or crewed yacht charters. Photo: Dean Barnes
CHARTER OPPORTUNITIES
It used to be tough to find a bareboat or crewed yacht in Puerto Rico to cruise the Spanish Virgin Islands. That’s all changing now thanks to the island’s governor signing into law last fall the Nautical Tourism Act of 2009. One of the provisions of this Act allows for tax-free purchase of vessels over 30 feet, if contracted for chartering with a Puerto Rico certified charter company for chartering at least six months of the year.
Jose Luis Rivera, Catalina and Dufour dealer for the Caribbean and Central America and owner of the new Nautifull charters and cruising club based in the new 162-slip marina at the Palmas del Mar Resort Community, on the island’s southeast coast, says, “We understand Puerto Rico to be currently the only U.S. jurisdiction offering this very attractive deal to promote “hotel rooms in the water” as we have named them. It also creates “tourist marinas” certification if they meet certain service and amenities requirements to properly serve transients and charterers effectively. Other tax and lodging-related benefits and prioritized financing are being negotiated and legislated at the moment.”
Nautifull’s fleet includes a Baltic 43, Dufour Performance 34 and Dufour Performance yachts. The company offers a mixed bag of customized sailing opportunities from learn-to-sail (U.S. Sailing Basic Keelboat, Bareboat Cruising and Coastal Passage Making and Bareboat) packages to overnight and 5- to 7-day bareboat or crewed charters with either USCG-certified captains only or captains and chefs. His company is also the exclusive operator for yacht charters out of the new plush W Retreat & Spa that opened on Vieques in April.
There are several bareboat and crewed charter companies in the U.S. and British Virgin Islands. These include operations such as CYOA, Island Yachts and Trawlers in Paradise based in St. Thomas, and the Moorings, Sunsail and Horizon Yacht Charters in Tortola. The Virgin Islands Charteryacht League and Charter Yacht Society (CYS) of the British Virgin Islands each have over 100 member yachts for crewed charters. Monohull, multihull and power yachts are all available.
A greater sophistication and number of amenities on board are what charter guests now demand and companies offer.
John Jacobs, owner of CYOA, based in St. Thomas’ Frenchtown Marina, says “That means, for example, roller furling jib and main, a full refrigerator and air conditioning, electric windlass, autopilot and chart plotters, with inflatable dinghy equipped with 15 HP engine.”
St. Thomas offers world class racing and many charter options. Photo: Dean Barnes
Charter yachts are getting bigger.
Kathy Mullen, owner of Regency Yacht Charters and a director for Northrop and Johnson Yacht Sales, based in Tortola, British Virgin Islands, says, “A two person charter use to be 40 foot; now it’s 50 to 55-feet. A 50-foot multihull is now considered medium size. Big means 70 to 100 feet.”
Catamarans have opened up the charter market due to their stability and roominess.
Dick Schoonover, who manages the clearinghouse, CharterPort BVI, in Tortola, says, “It’s still all about catamarans for us, except that what you are seeing now is the advent of the cat-with-flybridge. I think the popularity of our 10 passenger Silhouette 76 cats has much to do with their flybridges – an amenity found on motoryachts – and is reflected in yachts as small as Lagoon 44s. The other thing that is new in cats is the master suite concept, taking up an entire hull rather than the typical catamaran layout – a cabin in each corner.”
The downturn in the economy has created other opportunities.
Janet Oliver, administrator at the CYS of the BVI, says, “half board charters are being offered. This means breakfast and lunch are included with dinner at guests’ expense ashore.”
More requests are coming in, says Erik Ackerson, executive director of the Virgin Islands Charteryacht League (VICL), based at Yacht Haven Grande, on St. Thomas, “for captain-only charters.”
The business costs of chartering have not gone down in this recessionary economy, thus lowered rates are not the norm. However, many crewed operators have started to add more value.
This has taken the form, says the VICL’s Ackerson, “of offering spa or beauty treatments, massage, tai chi, yoga, dive certification and sailing instruction.”
WHERE & WHEN TO GO
Weekend or week-long sailing itineraries are definitely more customized than cookie-cutter considering the sheer number of islands, islets and cays in the Virgin Islands.
Nautifull’s Rivera says about Puerto Rico, “You can sail northeast from Palmas to Cayo Santiago (Monkey Island) in about an hour and a half. It’s a nice anchorage and good for swimming, although you can’t go ashore because it is a sanctuary.”
The island is home to over 1200 free-roaming Rhesus monkeys.
Vieques is two to three hours east by sail.
St. John's natural beauty creates a beautiful background for cruising. Photo: Dean Barnes
There are a steadily increasing number of charterers who want to cruise to Vieques and Culebra, says CYOA’s Jacobs. “We restrict these destinations to our newer vessels because these island’s don’t have the support services the U.S. and British Virgin Islands so. Both are spectacular for an entire week’s cruise or to combine with a sail to St. John and Tortola depending on time.”
The bioluminescent bay on Vieques is a big draw. Single celled organisms called dinoflagelates in the water produce the bioluminescence or ‘glow in the dark’ feature here.
Capt. Camille Vickers, who leads captain-only charters for CYOA, says, “There’s a good anchorage in the town of Esperanza and a tour company there that leads trips to Mosquito or the bioluminescent bay at night.”
North and east of Culebra, the 1-mile long island of Culebrita is rimmed with beaches. “There are to large tidal pools on the east side that are just like natural Jacuzzis. The water is very warm,” says Vickers.
In the U.S. Virgin Islands, the VICL’s Ackerson says, “Many people like to circumnavigate St. John. Mooring balls are available on a first-come, first-serve basis and the waters are pristine because two third of the island is national park.”
Further east in the BVI, CharterPort’s Schoonover adds, “There are several new projects out there. Scrub Island is now on-line, and there is a new resort planned for Anegada’s north shore, replacing the existing Sands hotel. White Bay on Jost van Dyke continues to grow with a wide range of beach bars and restaurants. It used to be Sandcastles, and that was it.”
Finally, anytime of year is great for chartering except the prime hurricane months of September and October.
High season, when charter companies are busiest, anchorages most crowded and regatta season is in full swing, spans from December through May. However, says the VICL’s Ackerson, “June, July and the beginning of August are very nice because this is usually when the weather is nicest and the sea is calm.”
Editor’s Note: For more information and charter listings in the area, visit the Yachtworldcharters.com Caribbean page.
Carol Bareuther has lived in St. Thomas since 1986 and has written about a wide range of marine topics in the Virgin Islands. She and photographer Dean Barnes have two children who grew up in the VI and have seawater in their blood.
Editor’s Note: Kim Kavin is an award-winning writer, editor and photographer who specializes in marine travel. She is the author of six books including Dream Cruises: The Insider’s Guide to Private Yacht Vacations, is editor of the online yacht vacation magazine 
One of the things I heard a lot of talk about at last week’s Antigua charter yacht show was discounts. And not in the way I’ve been hearing about them during the past few months. As you know if you follow my blog, deals and discounted rates have been flooding the crewed charter market for a little more than a year now, as yacht owners try to adapt to the financial pressures of the continuing global recession. Brokers have been pushing for deeper and deeper discounts on behalf of charter clients, and though not all yacht owners have obliged, a good number have. The talk on the docks last week was different because, instead of all the brokers saying they wanted to negotiate the biggest discounts possible, I began to hear some brokers saying that if they saw a yacht offering more than a 15-percent discount, they would think twice before trying to book it for their client at all. One broker from
SmartMoney Article Misleads Readers on Yacht Charter
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010Heck, it’s an exciting thing to have a periodical as prominent as SmartMoney compare yacht charter against cruise ships. The magazine is part of the Wall Street Journal organization, has won three National Magazine Awards, and claims a circulation rate base of 800,000 people. That’s about 650,000 more people a month than read the largest-circulation U.S. boating magazines. It’s a major potential business boost to the great charter yachts available all over the world.
I was thrilled when I saw the headline “Ships: Out, Yachts: In” on Page 70 of the July issue. The subhead is: “More cruise vacationers are bypassing big-ship buffets and waterslides [sic] in favor of more intimate yacht-style sea trips. We look at the trade-offs.”
Yes, let’s finally see the benefits of yacht charter in black-and-white in a major magazine, I thought as I began reading. And then I turned the pages, growing more depressed by the word, until I threw the article into the trash with disgust.
Author Kristen Bellstrom not only fails to interview a single person involved in the actual crewed yacht charter industry, but also does a thorough job of proving that she doesn’t even know the difference between a mini-cruise ship and a charter yacht. She falls into lockstep with the clever lingo of companies that use phrases like “yacht-style” in their marketing materials, all the while simply moving the cruise-ship business model of by-the-cabin bookings onto smaller ships to make them seem more personalized. As her industry expert, Bellstrom quotes a travel agent who refuses to book “small operations” because they lack consistency, with both the author and the travel agent apparently oblivious to the fact that there is an entire global industry of reputable charter brokers whose job is to inspect yachts, interview crew, and ensure standards higher than any cruise ship could ever hope to offer. One might imagine that an author writing a story of this nature might contact, oh, I don’t know, a company like Camper and Nicholsons International or Ocean Independence, each of which controls a fleet of more than 100 crewed charter yachts and strives for consistency and brand excellence. But no.
Most egregious to me, though, is that this SmartMoney article paints a portrait of charter yachts as boats where you book a cabin and then get stuck with a bunch of fellow passengers that you might hate. The very last sentence–the one left lingering in readers’ minds–is a quotation from a passenger who went on a 16-person boat full of strangers who ended up hostile toward one another. “You’re on a small boat,” the passenger says. “There’s just no way to get away from these people.”
Of course, on an actual crewed charter yacht, you cannot book just a single cabin. You book the whole boat, and you invite only the guests of your choosing. This fact, too, appears to be lost on the author and, most unfortunately, the reader.
This type of incomplete, misleading, and irresponsible publishing has serious consequences for the yacht charter industry. I learned of this article from my father, who is a SmartMoney subscriber. (The article does not appear to be viewable on the magazine’s website; all I can find is this series of links to mini-cruise ship companies under the headline “Benefits of Yacht Cruising.”) My father, after reading the article, told me that he thought it made a good point about people not wanting to get stuck on a little boat with passengers they dislike.
“Dad,” I reminded him, “don’t you remember when I arranged for our family to go on that 60-foot charter yacht? It was just us. Strangers aren’t invited when you charter a real yacht.”
“Oh yeah,” he replied. “That was a great trip. I wonder why the author of this article didn’t mention how that is possible.”
Exactly.
Tags: charter, cruise ships, SmartMoney
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