Canadian Yachting October 2019 - 74

Mediterranean/Adriatic

TMM Charters (operating in Road Town,
Tortola BVI since 1979) talked about the
resurgence of charter organizations. For
the 2019-2020 season, it is reported that
most of the fleets and bases are operating
at or near capacity.
While talking with Barney we discussed the shift in the sailboat charter
market to catamarans from monohulls.
TMM added its first cat in 1989 - a
Privilege 39. At the time of writing, TMM
had only one monohull, but will continue
to carry one or two to meet the demand
for a more traditional boat.
Barney feels that the transition to a
sailing cat for monohull sailors is not difficult as long as you don't go too big at
first. "If you are used to sailing a 38 to 40foot monohull, then sailing a 40-foot cat
is basically the same, except that the cat
will not point as high and handling under
power - once you get used to it - is easier." To be safe, he recommends a sailor in
transition to a cat should book a captain
for a day or two to make the learning
smoother. All of the sailing cats in the
TMM fleet are twin engine, so it is a matter of getting used to handling a twin
screw boat.
In wrapping up our conversation,
Barney stated he would like to see the
BVI government put a cap on the number
of boats in charter to maintain the 'exclusivity' of the islands and to give the charterers the best experience possible.
Having sailed BVI pre- and post-Irma, I
personally could not agree more. You can
see on the map below the variety of charter companies and bases. Many offer
power cats for charter as well as sail.

Destinations
- Mediterranean
The Mediterranean's charter season coincides with North America's summer and
fall. Read in the section on Charter
Qualifications for some of the requirements to charter in Europe.

Am I Qualified to Charter?
Like many things in boating, the answer
is, "It depends."
For the most part, charter operators are
interested in your experience handling a
similar-sized boat, either power or sail. If
you own and sail a boat in the mid 30-foot
range, you are probably going to be able to
charter a boat into the low 40-foot range,
because the handling, based on weight
and size of boat, will be similar. I recently
talked with a sailor with decades of smaller boat (primarily dinghy) experience who
wanted to charter. I doubted he had sufficient big boat experience to qualify. The
challenge is that most charter companies
in the more popular locations are not as
concerned with your ability to sail as
much as they want to make sure you can
dock and anchor the size of boat you want
to charter.
The average size of boats in Canada is
still in the 30 to 40-foot range and a mid1970s C&C30 displaces 8,000 lbs. Not
small, but much smaller than a 2018 Sun
Odyssey 410 (41 feet) which weighs in at
17,416 lb - over twice the displacement.
In addition, many wishing to charter do
not own their own boat. They sail with
friends or crew at the local yacht club.
Since the mid-80s, more and more charter companies offer learn to sail/cruise
programs. This trend grew out of the
commercial sailing schools that began in
the 70s.
Less experienced sailors have a couple

Canadian Yachting CHARTER Handbook

of options - learn to sail at a charter company or learn to sail locally and grow
through the progression of levels such as
offered by Sail Canada (sailing.ca). The
US counterpart to this is the American
Sailing Association (ASA.com), founded
on the standards of the Canadian Yachting
Association (now Sail Canada). There are
other sail training organizations, but we
will concentrate on Sail Canada.
I talked with Bryant Adlam, Director of
Education for the Humber Bay Sailing
Centre (HBSailing.com) in Toronto. I
have known Bryant for many years and
consider him one of the finest and most
professional sailing instructors I have
met. In addition to Sail Canada's Basic
Cruising level (rudimentary sailing skills,
rules of the road and aids to navigation in
local waters), Humber Bay Sailing Centre
(HBSC) offers the Intermediate Cruising
level (liveaboard, boat systems and basic
navigation) on Lake Ontario in the summer and out of Antigua in association with
Sailabration Cruising (Sailabration.ca). As
Bryant told me, "If you really want to be
prepared for chartering and being a bareboat charter skipper, you need the
Intermediate Cruising level and all of the
prerequisites (Basic Navigation, first aid
and ROC(M) (VHF Radio Certificate).
During the summer, HBSC club
members take weekend flotilla cruises
across Lake Ontario to Niagara and other
locations. Sailors organize Friday evening
then sail Saturday and Sunday. They
track their cruising time online and can
create a log of their experience to add to
their resume.
In addition, HBSC hosts a series of
Club Seminars over the winter to introduce members and the general public to
many of the aspects of chartering that we
have discussed in this handbook - destinations, choosing a company, boat systems and provisioning.
Humber Bay Sailing Centre is both a
Sail Canada and International Yacht
Training (see Chartering in Europe) partner school.

OCTOBER 2019

http://www.sailing.ca http://www.ASA.com http://www.HBSailing.com http://www.Sailabration.ca

Canadian Yachting October 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Canadian Yachting October 2019