Charter Tips

In the October issue of SAIL, we take you on charter adventures in the Spanish, U.S. and British Virgin Islands. You may have sailed there a dozen times before, but there are always new gems to discover. We asked our panel of Island Experts to divulge their best Virgin Island charter secrets. Here’s what they came up with

Thanks to sites like craigslist, ebay and amazon, we are better equipped than ever to make informed decisions when it comes to what we buy. Rather than blindly purchasing items and services promoted in catchy ad campaigns, we can now make our purchases after studying reviews and information posted by those who know the products first-hand.Nowhere is this more true than in the world of

The question came up every year: “Whadya think about chartering in the Caribbean?” And every year the answer was the same: “Nah.”My wife, Jennifer, and I sail our Caliber 38, Catamount, in the northern latitudes, on the fresh waters of Georgian Bay on Lake Huron. The idea of chartering in the Caribbean raised many different questions: Isn’t everything so close you don’t really

The question came up every year: “Whadya think about chartering in the Caribbean?” And every year the answer was the same: “Nah.”My wife, Jennifer, and I sail our Caliber 38, Catamount, in the northern latitudes, on the fresh waters of Georgian Bay on Lake Huron. The idea of chartering in the Caribbean raised many different questions: Isn’t everything so close you don’t really

As adventure-seekers, we take our sailing trips seriously. We want to unfurl our sails, explore far-off locations and leave the daily grind behind. But when the pennies start to pinch, vacations tend to be the first luxury to go.This doesn’t have to be the case. With a few adjustments you can still enjoy the trip of a lifetime without breaking the bank. Stay closer to

According to received wisdom, there’s no point in going to the Caribbean in the summer. “Too hot,” the naysayers grumble. “And if it’s not too hot, it’s too wet. You’d have to be pretty dumb to go down there in hurricane season.” All of which is true, and also not true.Yes, it can be hot, yes, it rains more than in winter and yes, there is the chance a marauding

I had signed on as crew aboard a yacht sailing down to the South Pacific from the Galapagos. A young woman also came aboard for the same leg and she and I were assigned watches together. She was a difficult shipmate, with a fickle personality that veered unpredictably from chatty and social to argumentative and sullen as suddenly as a summer squall.One day, after we’d been underway for a

It was January in the BVI. From our anchorage in Great Harbour, Jost Van Dyke, we watched a parade of bareboats and crewed yachts come and go, twenty to thirty every day. Business, to our eye, seemed normally robust. Why, I wondered, were people still willing to charter while the sails of the economy were losing their wind?Curiosity and my rowboat took me to seek answers that I figured

With daily news about the increasing awfulness of the economy, this seems the wrong time to be planning an exotic charter vacation in a far-away place. But it’s not the wrong time to think about it in a recreational sort of way. I like to think about particularly successful or unusual charters of the past, hoping that at some happier moment they will turn into charters of the future. Meanwhile,

With daily news about the increasing awfulness of the economy, this seems the wrong time to be planning an exotic charter vacation in a far-away place. But it’s not the wrong time to think about it in a recreational sort of way. I like to think about particularly successful or unusual charters of the past, hoping that at some happier moment they will turn into charters of the future. Meanwhile,