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British Virgin Islands: Tour Paradise with a Blue-Water Legend

Record-setting circumnavigator Tania Aebi will lead this CW Adventure Charter taking place December 5-13, 2008.

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Record-setting circumnavigator Tania Aebi will guest star on CW‘s Adventure Charter to the British Virgin Islands this December. Bernadette Bernon

Circumnavigator Tania Aebi has just signed on as the special host of CW’s 2008 catamaran flotilla in the British Virgin Islands. This is one of the magazine’s most popular flotilla voyages–it almost always sells out–and this is first time that Aebi, who became the youngest female solo sailor to circle the globe, will lead the trip.

In May 1985, when she was only 18 years old, Tania cast off from the docks of South Street Seaport in lower Manhattan and sailed 27,000 miles around the world alone on her 26-foot sloop, Varuna. Her inspirational book about this epic adventure, Maiden Voyage, became an award-winning bestseller, published in eight countries, and Tania has gone on to become a successful, sought-after-and very amusing-motivational speaker, as well as author.

Tania is no stranger to CW readers. The magazine followed her circumnavigation closely by carrying an intimate series of stories by the teenager from 1985 through the two and a half years of her circumnavigation. The series, in which Tania shared the ups and downs, the terrors and triumphs of the trip, including the death of her mother, was the most closely followed series in the history of the magazine. In fact, as Tania sailed her final passage across the Atlantic Ocean toward New York and home, telephone calls began coming in to the magazine at a rate of 300 a day–all from caring readers desperate to know if she’d made it back safely. She did, and the rest was sailing history.

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Tania has reprised her role as a top CW feature writer during the past year, more than two decades after the voyage that made her famous. These days, she’s mother to two teenage boys, and has just returned to her home in Vermont from skippering Shangri La, her own 36-foot aluminum cruising boat, with her (sometimes reluctant) kids as crew. They started off from the Caribbean, transited the Panama Canal, and then cruised the paradisiacal islands of the Pacific Ocean–Tania hoping to give her boys a little taste of the experience that had shaped her own young life. In Tahiti, she handed the helm over to her ex-husband, who’s now carrying on the voyage with the boys to New Zealand. Tania’s series for CW on this interesting arrangement-interesting, to say the least!-has been one of the magazine’s most popular this year.

Join Tania, along with longtime CW charter leaders Carol and Peter King. Hear her extraordinary tales while sailing with her through the fabled velvety-green islands and turquoise waters of the British Virgins aboard catamarans. It’s no-worries sailing, as getting from one island to another involves easy eyeball navigation. Visit Jost Van Dyke, Cooper and Norman Islands, and the famous Baths at Virgin Gorda. Sail to remote and spectacular Anegada, a low-lying reef-fringed destination normally off limits to charterers, and tuck in at famous watering holes and swimming hideaways.

The timing of this vacation–nestled between Thanksgiving and Christmas–is perfect, and gives charterers the gift of steady tradewinds, warm sunshine, dinner under the stars, leisurely snorkeling, and great parties, all cooled by the tropical breezes of sailing’s world-class paradise. What a great way to try out catamaran sailing.

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The trip costs 1,600 to $1,900 per person (depending on boat; double occupancy). It includes a professional skipper on each boat for the first day to teach crewmembers about cat sailing. The lead boat includes a professional flotilla skipper, as well as the Kings, who handle all trip logistics. Special cocktail parties and dinners are featured. The galley of each roomy Catamaran Company yacht is supplied with partial provisions to last the seven-night stay. Choose among Lagoon 42s, 440s, and 500s. Skipper your own, or take a full-time captain; couples and individuals are welcome to consult with the Kings to assemble a full crew. Singles are welcome.

To read more about Tania, her history, and her unorthodox family cruising arrangement, check out these stories:

The Year of Momentous Decisions

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A Canal Transit, A Ticking Clock

www.BoatUS.com/cruising/shangrila

For more information about all of our charters, contact Cruising World’s exclusive charter brokers Carol and Peter King (800-521-7552, 860-536-9217; www.sailingcharters.com)

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For more information on this, and all CW charters, contact Cruising World’s exclusive charter brokers Carol and Peter King (800-521-7552, 860-536-9217; www.sailingcharters.com)

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