Important Reminder about Yacht Charter Safety
href="http://compyachtassrnc.blogspot.com/2010/04/running-charter-yacht-will-someone.html" target="_blank">his most recent blog post
I've been reading with great interest the blog written by Gary Carroll of Comprehensive Yacht Assurance, an insurance company that specializes in the boating industry. Carroll just finished a few months working as crew aboard a charter motoryacht, a job he took, he tells me, because he wanted to see the industry from the inside. His hope was to gain insights that he could use to aid his insurance business, by having information for yacht owners and charter clients that other insurance agents don't know.
What he found (and what he details in his blog) was far more insight than he ever imagined. He says that he witnessed, among other things, a chef too drunk to cook for guests, drunken crew driving tenders, an engineer whose memory lapse left guests unable to shower or flush their toilets, a captain who took days to clear in and out of customs offices, garbage being illegally thrown overboard, and more.
Now, Carroll says that he doesn't mean to imply that all other, or even most other, charter yachts are run like the one he was aboard. (I can personally assure you, they are not.) But Carroll really caught my attention in his most recent blog post when he wrote, "The most important thing I learned in the past few months is this: If I owned a yacht that was in a charter fleet without effective and active management I would be scared stiff at the prospect of handing over the keys without me, the owner, being onboard."
Now, my readers regularly ask why I only feature certain charter yachts in my reviews, generally yachts that are part of fleets overseen by long-recognized management companies. And self-described charter brokers who want to advertise next to my articles often ask why I refuse to take their money until they gain membership in a recognized professional organization.
The answers to both these questions are the flip sides of the same coin to which Carroll is referring. Anybody who has been covering the yacht charter industry for a decade, as I have, would have to be blind not to see scam artists who come and go with the wind, advertising yachts that are sub-par or pocketing charter fees that clients think are going toward their vacation budget. One also would have to be ignorant not to recognize substandard crew who, thankfully, tend to vanish from serious charter yachts thanks to diligent management companies and reputable retail brokers.
Carroll's blog reminds me that a vigilant watch over the yacht charter industry remains important, and that lousy yachts are still out there seeking charter clients who simply don't know any better. I congratulate him for having the guts to publicly acknowledge what he saw in private. Believe me, I've been at it for quite a while now, and it never is easy.
