ARE THESE PEOPLE HAVING FUN?
Dinner on the Krka River
I got to thinking about one prediction I made in the conclusion to my recent book: “Surely in the near future some lad far cleverer with a computer than I ever was will write a computer program that will enable twenty or so would-be yachtsmen to share one very beautiful yacht as if it were solely their own.”
I watched the slow demise of my highly successful yacht design studio as the once too numerous to manage customers vanished over the horizon. I had put it down to the lingering effects of 9/11, but perhaps I lost sight of a far more positive reason- the advent of chartering. Why would one own a yacht, with all of the maintenance expenses involved not to mention the depreciation- when one can so easily and more cheaply charter. The happy group in the above photo, plus John the photographer, have chartered together for decades. We have enjoyed larger yachts than any of us could afford to own, have seen cruising grounds from Tahiti to Croatia, and have, at the end of one week in a climate far more amenable than the frozen wasteland of winter in Maine, simply handed back the keys at the end and told the charter company to fix anything that broke.
Another prediction: The day will come when the rapidly rising cost of liquid energy and its attendant impact upon airfares will combine with one or more terrorist attacks upon this highly vulnerable mode of human transport to put an end to civilian air travel. And that will be the end of chartering. Until that happens, though, this happy group will be posting photos like this one on this blog from some of the loveliest cruising grounds on God’s blue ocean.