Charter Recommendations

[Kahuna]

We are in the prelim stage of planning a bareboat charter in the Carribean area for the Winter/ Spring of 2008. We will charter a powerboat. There will be 2 couples on board.
Would like advice on boats, charter cos.,ease of air and ground transportation to charter site, best places to cruise to, security and weather concerns to be aware of etc.
This will be the first time for both couples. We are both experienced boaters with 32 and 42 foot boats that we spend every weekend on during 6 month season on the Ohio River. Any info or advice is appreciated.

 

[MikeeH]

There have been several recent threads on this subject so you may wish do a search. Regardless, here's my input.

We booked our charter through a private charter broker in St. Thomas, Ellen Stewart Charters (google her and you'll get her website and 800 number). Ellen was great, arranged all transportation to and from the airport and even set us up in a nice home overlooking Saffire Bay for the night before we boarded our charter. She represents a large number of privately owned vessels of all shapes, sizes and costs, bareboat and crewed, which makes picking the boat almost as much fun as the charter. You'll likely keep your cruising to the Sir Francis Drake Channel through the BVI. Stop-overs include Yost Van Dyke (The Soggy Dollar and Foxy's are the popular watering holes), Sopers Hole and Road Town on Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Beef Island and Marina Cay. The Willie T in the cut on Norman Island is not to be missed.(ask how you can get a free drink ). Many others here have cruised those waters so you'll get lots of input beyond mine.

Enjoy! Its an incredible vacation!

 

[LtBrett]

I second Mike's recommendation. I just returned from a 7 day sailing adventure in the BVI. Absolutely my best vacation ever (and I've had some good ones). The nicest powerboats I saw were at Virgin Traders http://www.virgintraders.com/default.asp. Don't worry about speed--if you go too fast, you won't have time to mix a drink before arriving at your next anchorage. I do suggest flying into EIS, as customs can be a pain coming from STT. Just get a nice trawler or cat with tons of partying space.

Brett

 

[fountain27]

Kahuna you beat me to the question. I was going to post the same question, however I plan to go in 2007.

While I realize costs will vary greatly depending on food, drink, entertainment but any ballparks on total trip costs excluding flights?

 

[MikeeH]

The range is wide open but figure somewhere around $3,500 as a starting point for the boat.

 

[JohnC]

When we went we had 3 couples on a 47' sailboat, and total cost (including flights from NY) ended up around $3600 for my girlfriend and I for a 10 day trip. I forget the exact numbers, but I think the boat was $4500 (so $1500 for our share), and our share of the food/drink/moorings/water/etc expenses for the trip was another $1500. That was 2 years ago. We were planning to go again in 2007 on a powerboat, and the boat expenses would have definitely been higher than what we paid for the sailboat (which included a good discount as our friends who booked the trip were repeat customers and also got a boat show discount).