TRIALS AND TRIVULATIONS OF A CHARTER SKIPPER

My wife Kati and I had built up a small but very profitable business in Nottingham England. The business was doing well enough for us to decide to take well-earned six-week vacation to Greece, during our two young daughter’s school holidays. We rented a small RV and drove there because this enabled us to travel at our own pace and stop wherever we wanted without having to pre-plan and book hotels. When we arrived at Athens we charted a Coranado 35 ketch for a week, and sailed round the beautiful Peloponnese Islands, crewed by two American lads, since we had never sailed a boat in our lives.

As a result of this experience we eventually sold our business and our house and furniture and bought a 40-foot Endurance ketch which we named “Tranquility Base,” in honor of the first American moon landing. With our children aboard we sailed to the Mediterranean for what was planned as a two-year sabbatical – and we stayed for seven. After the first year, we needed to start to earn a living again if we were to continue with this idyllic but nomadic lifestyle, and what better than to use our nice boat to charter to paying guests.

Sailboat chartering was in its infancy in the Mediterranean, and I signed on with a British charter agency aiming at a niche market of people who had never sailed before and wanted to learn in the sun, with a captain and cook. This was where things started to get interesting…

OUR FIRST GUESTS.

Our first guests were an American couple who were traveling in Europe and wanted to see if they liked sailing. While at anchor one day, the wife foolishly went swimming with a wool poncho over her costume because she was shy of her obesity. It didn't take but a few minutes for the poncho to become waterlogged and the lady was in trouble. She managed to jettison the waterlogged cloak and clung a rope while I considered the best way to get her back aboard. She was much too big to physically pull up the side, so I rigged the main boom with a snatch-block and a line with a loop big enough to pass around her back and under her arms and the other end around the windlass warping drum. As I set this up Kati released the pelican hooks on both lifelines to lower them between two stanchions. The hapless lady was then hoisted over both lines to plop on the deck like a landed fish.

THE ONE-ARMED SAILOR.

Another time a couple arrived and I was astonished to see the husband had only one arm. He wanted to find out if he could handle a sailboat, and because our literature said that I had rigged “TB” for short-handed easy sailing, we became his experimental base. The secret of course - at least for sail handling - are self-tailing electric winches - the present portable winch winders had yet to be invented. He wanted to learn for himself, and it was an interesting experiment, but eventually he bought a power boat, which was perhaps the wisest way for him to enjoy the water. To this day I can’t say if a person with such a handicap could handle a sailboat, especially in bad weather, or without an able-bodied crew on hand in an emergency.

THE DRUNKS.

One time while in Gibraltar I accepted a group of five men from our town of Nottingham. Kati decided to abandon ship for this one and rented a chalet for the week with our girls - and I wished I had gone with her. I was on my own with a bunch of drunks who were only interested in going to different ports each day to pick up women. Sleeping arrangements were what might best be described as “hot bunks.” They wanted to go to Tangiers in Morocco, forty miles down the straits of Gibraltar  which meant dodging very large ships passing in and out of the Mediterranean. I advised them that Morocco was a different culture and they should be careful how they approached women, but they quickly latched on to three sisters who invited them back to their apartment. What they didn’t know was that they still lived with their parents and all they got was tea, along with a very stern warning from their father that if these infidels laid but a finger on any of his daughters, their heads would roll. Judging by the size of the scimitar hanging above the fireplace they had every reason to believe he meant it literally. One of the group bought a Kandura, (The white flowing dress Muslim men traditionally wear). On the way back to Gib’ he was wearing his “nightgown” as the others called it, when we had to tack and it became entangled in the sheet winch, and to howls of laughter from his pals he was dragged down to his knees, where he had to stay while I rigged another line and was able to unwind the sheet off the winch and free him. It took quite a while…

SOME PEOPLE  ACTUALLY DID IT.

Some of our charterers became long-time friends and some actually bought sailboats. A family with two young daughters arrived when we were in Port Grimaud near St Tropez in the South of France. We had a week of idyllic sailing around the Īle de Pasquirolo’s until I was suddenly told we needed to make an urgent return back to Grimaud because his wife was afraid she was having a miscarriage - and I didn’t even know she was pregnant. Luckily they had insurance and were flown back to England in an air ambulance. We didn’t hear from them for a few years, when suddenly they arrived in Gibraltar in an old motor boat, having traversed the European canals. Since then they have become superb yachtsman, owning a fine sailboat and also making deliveries all over the place.

GROG

When we were based in Gibraltar the British Admiralty stopped the daily run ration, issued since 1740. This turned out to be a boom for the good ship “Tranquility Base,” because the surplus rum was sold off in Gibraltar for £10 pounds Sterling per gallon! Still in the original pot demijohns. I always bought a couple of gallons before sailing into the Mediterranean to charter for the summer. Both grog, (rum diluted with water), and neat rum was offered to guests at dinner, thereby maintaining a British Naval tradition on a British yacht. In its raw form it was a powerful drink that left a very warm feeling in the stomach, but there were few who could handle more than a few “neaters”, and none who ever managed half a pint twice a day which used to be the navy “tot.” It was also a certain way to ensure guests took a nap for most of the afternoon

THE HEAD.

Our single “Baby Blake” toilet needed precise instructions on how to use it. Baby Blake. Pumping waste out meant opening valves and pumping the lever, and if you got it wrong the result could be “interesting.” Many times I was required to empty the “loo” because a guest couldn’t handle it, and sometimes a shriek from the bathroom meant someone had done it the wrong way round. When someone accidentally dropped something into the bowl I had to don large rubber gloves and fish it out. Sometimes a valve would clog up, which meant dismantling the toilet – which I actually became quite good at, but it wasn’t much fun. A single toilet is not a good idea for a charter boat, and on our present boat we have two electric heads that discharge at the press of a button.

SEA SICKNESS.

Mal de mar was a frequent malady with people who had never been on a small boat. We always advised guests to take a tablet or two, even before they arrived – just in case. But they didn’t work for some people and the best we could do was to provide a bucket, then chuck it. Most people overcame the sickness after a day or two, but occasionally we were restricted to a marina for days. At least people were able to enjoy the sunshine, visit quaint towns, and learn what living on a small boat was like – which was quite enough for some people who couldn’t jump off quickly enough!

HOT WATER.

Maintaining enough hot water for daily showers for four or five people was a constant problem. It was easy enough when in a port because we connected the hot water immersion heater to the marina shore power. But when at anchor for days in some secluded cove, the engine or our portable Honda generator was the only way we had to heat 10 gallons of hot water, but both were noisy. I would hang a plastic bag from the main mast with a shower head on a pipe, that actually worked quite well after the sun had heated the water, except that after showering a guest had to jump into the sea to wash themselves down. Children thought it was wonderful – their parents, not so much.

THE IDYLIC CHARTER.

The best type of chartering we did was in the idyllic Balearic Islands, (Ibiza and Mallorca), where we did day chartering to groups of young people on vacation. We picked them up from a beach near their hotel – sometimes ten or twelve. We would sail to a nearby island or sandy cove where they would swim, snorkel and have a liquid lunch in a nearby bar, then fall asleep on deck for the trip back. We sometimes did this for days at a time and made a nice addition to our boat fund during the summer.

TODAY.

All that was all in the early days of sailboat chartering, with few restrictions on chartering or anchoring - anywhere. The charter business has now changed. Now you can hire a skipper for a few days while you get used to a boat, or even just for the day to sail the boat and cook the evening meal, then clear-off until the next day. Equipment is also much improved, and on our present 50’ foot schooner we have a washing machine/dryer, a deep freeze, twin air conditioners, and a full-size bathtub with jets like a Jacuzzi. Bathtub spa. two heads with showers, and two full-size electric toilets. You might think that nothing can possibly go wrong – think again.