Offering skippered charters

[fins]

I am buying a boat and plan to spend a couple of years cruising in the Caribbean. I would like to offer skippered charters of - wherever I am - to help subsidise myself along the way (ie: with me skippering and paying guests... paying) Does anyone have any experience of doing this they could share and - would I need any special insurance for it or would normal insurance cover this?

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[Dave99]

I beleive you need special insurance whish I would have thought was simply an endorsement on your current insurance and a bigger premium no doubt.

Are you a yachtmaster - you may need to be and the boat will need to be licensed in which ever country you are in for charter. That means safety equipment and so forth must be up to the required standard.

Alternatively you could do it on the quiet and risk having your boat confiscated or face fines. If an accident occurred and you werent properly insured your insurer may refuse to pay anything (even if you lost your vessel)


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[Sunnyseeker]

As a British registered yacht you need MCA coding (to be fully legal and have valid insurance) we found this could only be achieved in the UK before we left, as there is only one MCA guy in the Carib, I think he was in puerto rico?
Then when you operate locally you need to conform to local regs as well, we looked at this between Grenada and Carriacou. There are people who live locally who would willingly shop you if they spot you doing it more than once from the same place...The reason is there are a lot of local boats in most areas looking for some charter work, and they've paid their dues to the local authorities so feel a bit miffed when you turn up, we looked at doing it from Grenada with full permission and it was just too much running around, OK if your based in one island for a season.
You will pick up occassional work if you base youreslf in some of the marinas, as people do wlk around the boats looking for day charter, but you wont if your at anchor..
You do need insurance/permision from insurers
You do need MCA coding
You do need local approval and possible payment of licence
You do need part 1 registry.
Or as the other post says, do it cassualy and risk the boat

What upset us was that the Sunsail boats (british flagged) didn't conform to the same MCA requirements as I had to!

Good luck

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[Melody]

You definitely need to be registered as a commercial vessel, which means MCA coding if you are UK-flagged. (but maybe you can buy a local boat which already has a licence?) and you will need insurance that covers you for charter.
In this day and age to risk illegal chartering is crazy, and not really fair to your paying customers who have a right to expect that your boat is safe and insured.

I think you should ask around for MCA surveyors - I'm sure there must be people nearer than the UK.

<hr width=100% size=1>Melody McKay Burton
Yacht Valentine, Greece