In my mind, there’s a specific moment that belongs exclusively to charter sailing. Once you’ve experienced it, you’ll never forget it.
The hook is down in some improbable bay. The water is that color blue that makes you question every life decision that didn’t involve coming here sooner. Someone is cooking. Someone else has already popped a bottle, slightly ahead of schedule, in fact openly defying the notion of a schedule. The boat is level and quiet, and it is entirely, blissfully, not your problem.
I’ve been lucky enough to have experienced that afternoon on a Sunsail 424 in the Leeward Islands, on an Aquila 54 in the British Virgin Islands, and on a Fountaine Pajot Samana 59 off Île Fourchue, an island whose name I’d never heard before arriving there, and which I’ve enthusiastically recommended to everyone I know since.
Every time, the boat was someone else’s. Someone else’s survey anxiety. Someone else’s finicky watermaker membrane. Someone else’s pesky electrical gremlin that only manifests when the port engine is in reverse, and that three different technicians have looked at and collectively shrugged. For seven days, the boat was simply mine to enjoy. There’s a freedom in that arrangement that owners, buried somewhere beneath to-do lists and good intentions, sometimes forget is available to them.
Don’t get me wrong. Ownership is a magnificent thing. A boat that is truly yours, that you’ve fitted out and worried over and learned at a level that borders on the obsessive, gives you something no charter can touch. The intimacy is real. Unfortunately, so’s the work list. Ownership asks a lot, and most of us give it willingly because the return is worth it. Most of the time. Ask me again in January.
Charter asks almost nothing. The briefing happens, the dock lines come off, and for one week the only job is sailing. The systems either work or someone whose actual job title involves fixing them materializes at the nearest dock. What remains—passage planning, sail hosting, fun on the water—are the parts of sailing that ownership sometimes buries under logistics. You remember, with some relief, that you’re actually pretty good at this.
If you’re like most sailors, that week is also a reminder of things forgotten, like the satisfaction of nailing a waypoint on a new chart in a place you’ve never been, or threading the needle through a crowded bay in search of the perfect spot to drop a hook. (A modest suggestion: Avoid neighboring next to boats with names like Sheet Faced, Noise Ordinance, or my own personal favorite, Beastie Buoys.)
There’s also the matter of crew. A charter week has a way of assembling combinations of folks that normal life would never produce: old friends, new partners, that one random dude someone invited years ago who turned out to be a pro mixologist and has been on the guest list ever since. Put people on a boat in a beautiful place with nowhere particular to be, and something magical happens that you just don’t get at the yacht club. You’ll find yourself reminiscing over it until you’re in the moment again, tucked into a dreamy anchorage, slightly ahead of schedule on the bottle, watching the horizon soak up the last droplets of sunlight and thinking: more of this.
In this, our annual charter issue, we celebrate those moments. I hope what’s in the following pages makes you want to book your own charter escape immediately. Put down the to-do list for a week. The problematic port screw back home will be fine without you. Probably.
