Whitsunday Hybrid 368
Ed Hamilton & Company, which for decades has arranged yacht-charter vacations to Caribbean destinations, is expanding its services to include bareboat and crewed charters in the Mediterranean. The company’s website, particularly its bareboat section, will soon reflect this new service by posting more information on specific Mediterranean companies and recommended boats. Company staff spent the summer of 2008 in the Mediterranean attending crewed-boat shows and visiting bareboat bases. The company has also hired Susan Lengyel, formerly a broker with Sunsail Sailing Vacations in the United States, as a bareboat-vacation broker. For details, contact the company (www.ed-hamilton.com).
Company Offers Airline Staff Charters
Horizon Yacht Charters, with bases throughout the Caribbean island chain, has an offer exclusive to airline personnel: Book a charter of seven nights or longer and receive a 10-percent discount off the regular rate. Packages range from $1,600 to $9,300, depending on the yacht and the time of year. Skippers and instructional skippers are also available. To find out more about fleet and charter rates, contact Horizon (www.horizon
yachtcharters.com).
Develop Your Offshore Resume
If your cruising plans include honing bluewater skills, consider the teacher/student ratio aboard Six String, a custom 35-foot cutter rigged for heavy seas. Captain Michael Wiegand takes up to two crew with him on voyages from Australia to New Zealand and back. In 2009, plans include adding legs to Tahiti and Tonga. Cost is $1,750 per student, and you gain hands-on experience in everything from ditch bags to diesel maintenance and interpreting pilot charts. For details, contact Rosewind Corporation (970-635-0346, www.rosewindsailanddive.com).
Direct Flights Offered to Antigua and Grenada
If you like bareboat sailing out of the Caribbean islands of Antigua or Grenada but hate the lousy flight connections, there’s hope: American Airlines is adding direct flights from Miami to each of those destinations as of November 20, 2008. For more details, check with the airline (www.aa.com/content/amrcorp/pressReleases/2008_04/24_grenada.jhtml).
Lagoon Hybrid Debuts Down Under
Vacationing sailors with Whitsunday Escape, an Australian company that’s added a hybrid catamaran to its fleet, have helped the business mark a milestone by taking the Hybrid Lagoon 420 out on charter through the islands of the country’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. (See photo, left.) Craig O’Sullivan, operations manager with Whitsunday Escape, estimates that fuel usage will be between two to four times lower than a similar catamaran without the combination of two large battery banks and generator.
To learn more, read about hybrid catamarans in CW (see “What’s Going to Power Your Cat?,” July 2007) or contact the company (www.whitsundayescape.com).
Elaine Lembo
