The in And Outs of Cabin Charter: Is it good for All?
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So Captain Luca, here we are with the big question.. Is a cabin charter for everybody? Are there any risk to find onboard the wrong person who will ruin my vacation?
As a captain of a 20mt long Kanter Ketch I sailed for more than 20 years and met a great number and kinds of guests each summer, especially in the last 6 years when I sailed exclusively cabin charter cruises. It has been my personal experience in all this years that all the people coming from all the corners of the world who came on board for a week or more to enjoy a sailing vacation were all very motivated by the same feeling of wishing to enjoying the sea, the sun, the boat life and the opportunity to spend some good times with the other travelers onboard.
The resulting atmosphere on board the sailing boat was amazing, the guests were having lot of fun and enjoying chatting and getting to know each other in a easy way, especially during meals and for sure during the aperitif!
Guests were always free to stay by themselves or be more active together, both onboard and on land. A cabin charter cruise means also to land in all the spots the boat moors, the guests were free to stay onboard or be brought to land for day excursion or evening dinner in the local restaurants, or just to explore the place for some evening fun. No need to move all together, since each guest is free to decide what to do of his day, to be more social or to go around alone or as a couple, or even with some new friends made on board.
So what I can say for sure is that this type of travelers are all like minded simply because they already know that they are going to share a boat vacation with strangers and come on board already psyched to have a good time and be respectful of the others I experienced also a lot of private charters and can tell you that contrary to a group of strangers who come together for a relatively short time with the good purpose of having a good vacation often a group of friends who knew each other for a long time have more risk of sparkling a conflict onboard since questions like: where to eat tonight? what to do in the afternoon? which place do we visit first?
Do we stay here more or move on to the next stop? And many other simple choices may become harder to take if part of the group vote for one solution and the rest for a different decision. Of course this are questions that will come up also in a cabin charter cruise, but the big difference is that in this kind of sailing tours there is no big group that has to do the same thing, the guests can take their individual decisions: relatively speaking. The tour stops will all have been decided and discussed before and if there is a cook on board they will have already offered some choices about the menu, but no one will tell you that you will have to do that one thing just because all others are doing it too. There are also travelers who are not very social, but enjoy just some pills of social moments. That’s totally fine too, since each person is different! That’s also the fun part of this experience.
Cabin charter cruises are growing fast globally in the boating sector and the possibility given by the changed in the global market is influencing the way to make a sailing cruise.
People can literally be brought everywhere and go everywhere by plane, so that even if you are alone, just a couple or a small group enjoying a sailing vacation just about everywhere in the world has become an easy reality. Before it was only possible to rent a boat with a fix price and a fixed number of participants, all put together by the people renting the sailing boat or catamaran.
Nowadays cabin charter cruise are new way to sail, this type of sailing vacation is more and more in demand not only because it can be a very frustrating mission to put together a group of friends, but also expensive to pay the full price dividing the costs between just a few travelers or the same family. Also cabin charter cruises allow singles, couples, small families and groups of friends to meet other like minded travelers around the world who are joining the same cruise.
By Captain Luca Lianza