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Charter Merger Adds More Destinations

Carolina Winds

Courtesy of Carolina Winds

Annapolis Bay Charters has merged with Dream Yacht Charter to help North American sailors book trips in cruising grounds worldwide.
Dream Yacht, with bases in destinations as far-flung as the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific and Indian oceans, and Annapolis Bay, which has served Chesapeake Bay clientele for more than 30 years, now offer clients trips from 26 bases aboard a fleet that includes more than 240 bareboat, crewed, and by-the-cabin sail and power yachts. Scott Farquharson heads up the North American offices of Annapolis Bay Charters (www.annapolisbaycharters.net) and Dream Yacht Charter (www.dreamyachtna.com).

“Each of our bases is intimate and service focused, and from the moment our clients pick up the telephone to book with us until our base manager says good-bye at the end of their charter, all clients are taken care of as if every one is the only client we have,” says Loic Bonnet, president of Dream Yacht Charter.

Charter Chatter
The 65-foot crewed Privilège cat True North, which can entertain eight guests in four cabins, has reduced its rates through the winter of 2011 for trips in the British Virgin Islands. Contact Nicholson Yachts (www.nicholsonyachts.com) for additional details. . . . Carolina Wind Yachting Center, whose fleet puts sailors within reach of the Pamlico River, Pamlico Sound, and the Outer Banks of North Carolina, is expanding its fleet. The company has added a 2007 Saga 409 (pictured) outfitted with a chart plotter, radar, a television, a DVD player, and air-conditioning. Other boats include a Catalina 320 and a Catalina 36. For more information, contact the company (www.carolinawind.com).
Elaine Lembo

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Charter Industry Loses Pioneer

Rodney Nicholson, 83, a co-founder of Nicholson Yachts, died November 7, 2010, in Blue Hill, Maine. In 1948, Nicholson sailed transatlantic from Cork, Ireland, with his parents, brother, and the family cat aboard their 72-foot schooner, Mollyhawk. Their destination: English Harbour, Antigua, then the rundown former naval site of Admiral Nelson’s Dockyard. In 1949, the family set about restoring it to grandeur. A chance request from a visiting tourist—who asked the Nicholsons to take him sailing through the islands on Mollyhawk, with one of the family as captain and guide—eventually blossomed into V.E.B. Nicholson & Sons Antigua Limited—the first yacht-charter business in the Caribbean, based in English Harbour. The Nicholson-family enterprise, sometimes called “the original charter company” and now doing business as Nicholson Yacht Charters, opened the doors for Antigua and the rest of the Caribbean to become the bustling charter hub that it is today.
“He was a man of many talents,” said longtime colleague Sylvia Weston. “His legacy lives on in the yachting industry. We will miss him tremendously.”
Lynda Morris Childress

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