By Bridge Kellie Gorrow D’Urso
When Christian and I met twelve years ago he informed me that if this relationship was to work in the long term I would one day be living on a sailboat. It had been his dream for decades to sail around the world.
While the idea of seeing the world this way sounded like an amazing travel adventure, I wasn’t up for living on the boats I was familiar with. I wasn’t going to spend my golden years camping on the water. You see when Christian had lived aboard before it was on a 32 foot monohull and he believed he would have been perfectly happy to return to a similar vessel for our big adventure together….
I had other ideas. When I pictured us on one of the increasingly popular sailing catamarans out there I could really see myself getting excited about the idea of cutting the land ties altogether and living aboard full time one day. The problem was that the big sailing cats are much more expensive than their smaller monohull counterparts. He was afraid that adjusting the dream to envision life aboard a comfortable cruising cat would put the whole thing out of reach for us and therefore it would remain just a dream forever. He also wasn’t sure yet how he felt about cats in terms of safety and comfort, and well, the whole feeling like a “real” sailor conundrum.
Where to start ...
In order to get the chance to spend some time sailing a cat while we were still working, we decided to set up a Catamaran business. We bought a used 2008 Lagoon 410 out of San Diego with plans to not only get to learn about cats, but also to have a viable investment which would help support our overall plan to make it to semi-retirement sooner rather than later. We operated our first Mystic yacht business for three years out of Marina Del Rey and then Orange County, California. We tried several different business models, all of which penciled out in theory, but struggled to become profitable in reality.
Mystic the first had been lovingly and painstakingly cared for by the prior owners, and we felt lucky to have found such a clean and beautiful boat in our limited price range. We put her into a shared time, membership-based sailing program and managed her from afar with the help of local staff. Imagine our surprise when our very first visit back showed damage, poorly executed repairs, spills, and that damp boat smell. We pulled the plug on that and continued to try things until ultimately we found a great partner to manage her as an AirBnB accommodation out of Newport. This was perfect: she would see less time at sea but still be able to earn her keep and then some. The math worked out, maintenance costs would come down, wear and tear would reduce, and there seemed to be demand to boot. This worked okay, but still we realized that our plan to run a viable yacht business from afar out of southern California was perhaps naive. Dockage and maintenance costs were extremely high there and while we love our boat and were pleased to enjoy time visiting, the profit part of the equation just wasn’t coming together.
Along came a brand new Lagoon 450S....
Christian did, however, become sold on catamarans and in fact thanked me for encouraging him to set his sights higher, because he absolutely loved sailing her. Having spent a few vacations with our kids on the boat, though, we knew we wanted something newer and a little bigger. So a trip to the Annapolis Boat Show was in order. We toured many boats in our price range, but the Lagoon 450 Sport top absolutely stole our hearts. After touring Balis, Helias, other Lagoon models and more, we sat in the forward cockpit of our dreamboat during the show and decided to place our order! We knew that we’d need to set up the business someplace where we could lower our overhead and where more people vacationed if we were to make this business truly viable. We also now were all too aware of how critical it is to do one’s due diligence when selecting a local partner to maintain the boat and screen the charterers who would be spending time aboard. We certainly wouldn’t be taking chances with our brand new baby!
Which Charter Company will suit us best ...
Two companies passed our rigorous testing, TMM out of Tortola and CYOA out of St. Thomas. Both of them seemed to have exceptionally high standards and the other owners we interviewed had only great things to say. For a number of reasons, we had a preference for operating our business out of the US, so we went with CYOA. Mystic has been cared for by the team there for just over a year now, arriving on the heels of hurricanes Irma and Maria. We are always pleased to find her well stocked, clean, and in excellent condition. We are welcomed and tended to by friends in the CYOA team when we visit for sure! Mystic is now available as a bare boat or for crewed charters.
Given that the Virgin Islands saw 26,000 fewer airline seats per week this past year as a result of hurricane aftermath, we still had an excellent year coming out very close to break even our first year in business and the coming season is already shaping up beautifully; I am confident that we will see a profitable business in 2019! They are so particular about vetting the charterers too. And, unlike what we experienced in California, if we point out something that isn’t working right one visit, it’s always been remedied by the very next one. If I were forced to identify room for improvement, I guess I would say that it would be great to have timelier monthly reports from them and more responsive communications when they do fall behind on the reporting, but I suspect a lot of the issues this year are really the result of the heavily increased workload resulting from “IrMaria” recovery efforts.
The bottom line ...
My husband will realize his lifelong dream of sailing around the world, I get to do it in a home I can be genuinely excited to live in, and in the meantime, we get to visit some of the best cruising grounds in the world while we get to know our boat and I get more comfortable on the water. All of that while we run a viable, profitable business to boot. It’s a win win win! Carefully structured chartering can be an excellent path to realizing your cruising dreams.
