A Fun Night at Sea, Versus a Nightmare at Sea
In this month’s World of Chartering we hear from Tom Luneau on chartering in Tampa Bay, FL, and how marine safety is what makes a fun night at sea, versus a nightmare at sea.
I am writing this to help educate sailors who are planning to charter a vessel. Despite being an experienced sailor and captain, I learned many lessons from my experience chartering a 50-ft Beneteau named Apollo in Tampa Bay, Florida. I’m going to tell you what I did right and what I did wrong, to hopefully help you navigate around the “what I did wrong” part on your own adventures.
I have been sailing for 30-plus years. I have owned or co-owned an 18-ft Hunter starter sailboat, a 27-ft Catalina, a 33-ft Morgan, a 37-ft Beneteau, and now a 44-ft Jeanneau. We logged over 5,000 miles on our last boat, Todo Bueno,* including sailing from California to the tip of Baja and then north into the Sea of Cortez. I have also chartered vessels in Miami, Tampa Bay, Australia, Italy, and Mexico. And yet, no matter how much experience I thought I had, I really was unprepared for what happened during the charter in Florida.
There are some things all charter trips have in common.
Lesson 1: The boat you saw on the website may not be the boat you are going to sail on your trip.
“Why is that?” you ask. There are many possibilities. In Australia, Tropical Storm Debbie sank the vessel we were supposed to rent, one week before we got there. On our arrival in Tampa Bay, we found the Catalina 445 we’d rented had no lifelines and was not seaworthy. Likewise, the 50-ft catamaran we chartered in Sardinia was brand new and the electronics had not been installed, so, also not seaworthy.
To prepare for our bareboat charter in Tampa Bay, I read and researched quite a bit. The plan was for me to be the captain. We were scheduled for a morning sail across Tampa Bay south into the Gulf of Mexico, and then, after a short, three-hour sail south in the Gulf of Mexico, to tuck back into very relaxing and protected keys and marinas. The destinations were aptly named Siesta Key and Longboat Key; the nearby marinas were Safe Harbor and Siesta Key Marina. Slips were available if needed. The plan was to snorkel, swim, and dine at restaurants around the marinas.
We (my wife Lynn and I) were joined by high school friends Bobby and Lisa, who are not sailors, but have been with us on other charters. The deal we have is they allow Lynn and me to do the sailing and they do the cooking. And that’s a good deal, since let’s just say I’m not submitting any articles to cooking magazines.
The vessel we rented was a 2020 Catalina 445. But, as I mentioned before, it didn’t have lifelines. And I’m not going to charter a boat without those. The rental company manager said the lifelines were supposed to have been repaired by the week prior, but we both knew they were not going to magically appear the next day. So the manager asked me, “Tom, can you handle a 50-ft Beneteau?” Despite being in over my head, my instant answer was, “Yes.” Sure, I had sailed and crewed on bigger sailboats, but never operated one as captain. The huge mast and mainsail were, in my mind, too much for me and Lynn to handle. We had sailed hundreds, maybe thousands of miles together, but Apollo was a big boat with a towering mast and electric winches. I had never used electric winches before. So my plan was to motor, and use the jib as the only sail.
*In the July issue, we referred to Tom and Lyn’s 44-ft Jeanneau as Good Times! Todo Bueno is the boat’s correct name. To read more, please go to this month’s World of Charter.
Having chartered a few times, I learned that:
Lesson #1 by a wide margin is to do my homework on the charter company and pay extra for a relatively new and well maintained boat to minimize breakdown related disruptions. Charter boats can see a lifetime of use in 5 years when compared to privately owned non-chartered boat. A 5 year old charter boat in the tropics may have sunrotted sails, a tired motor, corroded electrics, and all kinds of things that may be in need of attention. Add to that my lack of knowledge about how a new to me boat is wired and works and lack of tools on board, I may not be able to fix something and instead have to rely on the charter mechanics (or people masquerading as mechanics) to fix something mid charter … meaning I wait, sometimes a lot.
Lesson #2 Do my navigation homework. Get the latest charts downloaded to my mobile app and/or computer and get familiar with the channels, ports, anchorages, bridges and nav aids. I usually plan a couple routes that are favorable to different weather conditions and I always plan in additional slack time because of on the water changes either because we like where we are or because something happened that forces us to delay.
Lesson #3 have the boat provisioned in advance. This I’ve found is well worth the effort so I don’t have to schlep a ton of stuff to the boat on my arrival day. I’ll probably need to grab some things: beverages, special food items etc but it’s not a huge volume of stuff.