Carribean Bareboat for Honeymoon

[Julie]

Some ideas please, on sailing in the Caribbean for a Honeymoon.

My partner & I are thinking about honeymooning in the Caribbean in May, and would like to sail for a week whilst we are there.

We both have Coastal Skipper tickets... so could charter the boat between the two of us - but when we have done this in the past, have found it quite hard work & in fact don't seem to spend any time together during the day, because one of us is always 'working'.

The answer would seem to be to get a skipper on board as well... but if we go through someone like Sunsail, we'd also have the skipper trailing around with us in the evening ! (Not something that would make for a romantic evening out).

Can anyone recommend a charter company in the Caribbean, that will give us a boat with a skipper, who will then be able to go and happily amuse themselves in the evening... or are we being totally unreasonable ??

 

[BarryD]

Can't you just give him a £10 and tell 'em to bog off?

 

[davel]

Charter a bareboat in the BVIs. You can choose how much you want to work and how much you want to "play". It's easy to put together a varied itinary that would involve as much or as little sailing as you want - sail all day or just half an hour to the next delightful bay/ island.

No skipper on board to inhibit honeymoon type activities at whatever time of day of night!

 

[bedouin]

Go for Bareboat!

As mentioned above - the BVIs are hardly taxing sailing; it wouldn't tax a day skipper - let alone a couple of Costals.

The BVIs are very compact - so you don't tend to make long passages (we covered 200NM in a fortnight). Many people only sail in the morning and then spend the afternoon lazying arround.

I think a skipper would be in the way at the best of times, let alone on a honeymoon.

 

[Twister_Ken]

Bareboat. Just make sure it\'s got curtains!! nm

§

 

[sleepy_2]

BVI with skipper

We chartered a Hylas 46 from CYC (http://64.70.166.18/cyc/04c.htm).

We are quite experienced sailors and the BVI is not challenging. But we were tired. So we took a skipper for the first two days intending only to keep the skipper until we had some energy. But the skipper was great. He did all the paperwork, pointed out the best bars, took us to the best places to swim, could identify all the marine life, fixed the water pump when it broke and best of all, disappeared ashore as soon as the boat was anchored and then crept in past midnight without waking us. The two evenings he did spend on the boat he set up the bar-b-q, cooked for us and dashed ashore for more rum when we ran out! Oh, and he did all the washing up before I even got out of my bunk. We saw much more of the BVI with the skipper than we would have done without him.

This was American service at its best. We kept the skipper the whole week and left him a very generous tip. The skipper’s name was Jeff Oliva.

 

[sleepy_2]

oh, there is just one thing...

it cost a fortune to hire the Hylas for a week for just two people, and the skipper was $75 a day extra, but if you are lucky, you will only have one honeymoon...

 

[Julie]

Re: oh, there is just one thing...

Thankyou so much -- sounds exactly like what we are looking for - I will look into it...

Julie

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Julie on Fri Dec 14 15:24:50 2001 (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[georgeb]

Re: BVI with skipper

For just the two of you a 46 Hylas might be a bit of overkill (and hard work). There are smaller boats, 30' and up, available which would be more practical.