Different waters, a Wharram and pimpage...

As the old curse goes, "May you live in interesting times..." life is way more interesting than a lot of people would like at the moment especially for those folk who want to charter a boat. Higher airfares, less available seats and the simple fact that flying is more akin to a Fraternity hazing with attitude than the relaxed picture of travel we used to see in the airline ads...

Not to be outdone, a lot of the destinations have decided to make decisions that are, shall we say... less than welcoming as well. It's getting harder and harder for the charter fleet to get by as they have to pay more for fuel and food. Now various fees are also going up. Interesting times indeed! I do give the Caribbean charter fleet a lot of credit for keeping their prices as low as they have but you can only do that so long and there will be some serious raising of prices over the next few months.

Of course all of this is pretty up close and personal to us. We have a charter yacht brokerage business (Paradise Connections) and unlike most people doing what we do we live and work on our boat (no land based office/cubicle for us!) and most of the people we know and talk to are the owners and crews of the various charter boats we market. We also feel the same pain when we go shopping or fuel up the dinghy and a lot of the new fees hit us in the pocket book as well. In fact, stuff has become so expensive that sailing back to the Med which has traditionally been a very expensive place to hang out on a boat for awhile looks to actually be something of a budget saver as opposed to a strain on the budget... Things change!

Then again, change is not always a bad thing... the same old same old sometimes needs a serious kick in the butt! The coming crunch in the Caribbean will get rid of a lot of the "not so great" boats and some bad attitudes. Those that stay and survive may have some scars but just may be better for the experience. Some of the better boats will relocate and find new places to charter or begin looking outside the box and find maybe better ways to charter in the process... so it goes.

And speaking of different areas... I've always wanted to sail in Thailand and South East Asia! I spent a couple of years in the area some years back (in fact a lot of males in my age bracket had that dubious pleasure) and have been keeping my eye open for some charter boats to get the urge and relocate there. Up till recently unless you were looking for the McD's sort of mega-bareboat operation, the pickings were pretty slim...

Luckily we now do have an excellent boat in the area. An interesting Wharram design that is actually on the infamous short list for the next Loose Moose in point of fact... The Islander 55 Tiare chartering in the South Thailand and Langkawi Archipelago area... Very cool boat, excellent crew and at a price that you won't find in the Caribbean ever again...