Jamie Brown had always nurtured a dream of sailing a transatlantic. He thought he’d have to wait until he retired, and then he’d spend ages preparing whatever boat he had chosen before actually doing the thing.
But it all happened a lot sooner than that, and in a manner he’d never expected, when he bought his second boat, a Beneteau 523, with Horizon Yacht Charters—having the new boat delivered from the factory in France to Gran Canaria, and then sailing it across to Sint Maarten.
“I had no intention of doing it when I was thinking of buying the boat. At some point I said, ‘I’ve always had a bit of a dream to sail across the Atlantic.’ And it was Andrew [Thompson, Horizon’s co-founder] who said, ‘Well, we’ll just sort this one out.’ I thought, gosh, maybe I could do that…It wasn’t a dream I expected to be realized at that point.”
The transatlantic has been one of many sailing experiences Brown didn’t expect when he and his wife, Mhairi, first made the decision to own a boat through charter. It has been far from what’s usually perceived as a typical charter-owner experience, where you might sail your boat a couple of weeks a year in a variety of locations. Instead, over the years Brown has developed a relationship with Horizon that has enabled his sailing to grow in many directions and has even influenced his daughter’s career path.
“I’ve been able to have a very interesting life around them having the boat and being managed. I’ve done the BVI back to Fort Lauderdale with another owner, I’ve done Guadeloupe to the BVI several times with new boats that have been delivered over from Europe,” he says. “It’s great, actually—you get something a little bit different, and you feel a valued customer when that happens. It does give you extra experience, as well.”
Brown grew up sailing in Scotland and the UK. His career in the insurance industry took him to the Caribbean, where in 2002 he chartered with Sunsail, fell in love with the sailing, and determined to own a boat there. But he also knew enough about boat ownership to know that trying to maintain a boat from a distance is a recipe for trouble—and by now, the family was living in Italy. Nor did he want to spend their precious vacation time maintaining and repairing.
He also wasn’t keen on what he calls “the time-share approach to sailing. I wanted to have my boat in the Caribbean so when we arrived there—I had a daughter who was 7 at the time—she would be jumping into her cabin, not a cabin someone else was in…It needed to be specced up in a way that we could actually rent out as well as what I wanted as the owner.”
He started exploring options and came upon Horizon Yacht Charters based out of the BVI—which is also where he had decided would be the best place to accomplish his sailing goals.
“Horizon at that time was a new company. I just clicked immediately when I talked to them, actually,” Brown says. “Andrew Thompson…had done transatlantics, skippered very large sailing yachts, so he really knew the business, and immediately when I talked to him, I knew he knew what he was talking about.”
Unlike a “guaranteed income” arrangement as in some charter-ownership plans, Brown has an “income share” arrangement with Horizon, in which owner and company each gets a share of the rental income. Brown picks up all of the expenses of running the boat but is not limited to only a certain number of weeks each year. He can reserve the boat for any period if there is not already a reservation.
“Sometimes it makes money, sometimes it doesn’t make money,” Brown says, but “I did not do this with the object of making money. I did it because I needed someone to give me support in all the aspects of the boat.” Picking up maintenance costs, he says, actually incentivizes the company to maintain it at a higher level and means a boat in better condition if you want to sell it.
Brown’s first boat was a Bavaria 44, which he bought in 2003. The family sailed the full six weeks of vacation that he had at the time, island hopping to Saint Barths and back. Horizon provided input on the itinerary and had support waiting down island if needed. When the family was restricted on time, Horizon delivered the boat to locations like St. Lucia, and they could sail for a couple of weeks with Horizon then delivering the boat back to its home port in the BVI for them.
Three years later the family decided they wanted something bigger and jumped to the Beneteau 523. After hatching the transatlantic plan with Brown, Thompson came to the factory in France to check out the boat and “made sure it was what he would consider fit for purpose,” Brown says. Horizon’s team also advised him on safety gear, provisioning, watch standing, and helped him prepare for the trip. “The responsibility has to be down to the skipper of the boat to do it, but they acted as a support to anything I needed to know to do…This way of owning the boat and working with them enabled that.”
He ended up crossing with four friends, one of whom, his brother-in-law, had already done a transatlantic, and one who was an excellent cook. They had a fabulous journey.
“I loved it, I absolutely loved the trip. I think it’s a trip everybody should do. It was easier than I expected because the weather conditions were easier than I thought. And we were really well prepared, that was a key to the whole thing.”
The family owned the Beneteau for 10 years until Hurricane Irma destroyed her in Nanny Cay in 2017.
“It’s when the chips are down when you know whether the person you have managing the boat is good or not,” Brown says. “Within a month of the hurricane, the insurance had paid for the boat, and I think that was down to the way Andrew handled it. He just jumped into action with his team there, both repairing some of the boats that were not wrecked and sorting out the insurance on those that were wrecked. I hate to think what would have happened if I didn’t have someone doing that on the spot.”
A hurricane-damaged-and-repaired Bavaria 46 was Brown’s next boat, and then in 2021 came the latest, a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 49. Now retired, Brown and Mhairi spend a month to six weeks at a time onboard, sailing all over the Caribbean. They benefit from rental income to offset the boat’s running costs for other periods.
“I would definitely say this way of owning a boat changed everything in my life and changed my daughter’s life as well, for that matter,” Brown says. Having grown up sailing in the Caribbean with the Horizon team always in the frame, Cara, now 30, is an American Sailing Association (ASA) instructor with Horizon Sailing School (she also earned her UK Yachtmaster certification) and in 2022 was voted in the top 20 of all ASA instructors.
“It’s made the whole thing a great adventure…when we set out to have the boat, we didn’t set out to have many of the trips that we’ve had,” Brown says. “It’s just that the whole thing naturally developed to allow us to do that. If it wasn’t for the adventures that Horizon have supported me on, I would probably be back in Scotland in my heavy weather gear sailing around the same islands because that’s what I was most familiar with. Being able to do this completely changes the horizons that you have.”
August/September 2024
