Loblolly trees and a lobsterman named Lowell--two things that I, CharterWave founder Kim Kavin, didn’t know existed until I visited an island called Anegada. I cruised there during my first private yacht charter, onboard the 65-foot sailing catamaran Angel Glow in the summer of 2000. I suppose I shouldn’t have been all that surprised about discovering such new things, seeing as how up until the captain dropped anchor there, I didn’t know Anegada existed, either. I’d heard only of other islands in the Virgins chain, like St. Thomas, St. John, and Tortola. You know, the spots most tourists on cruise ships visit.

Anegada, you see, is far from the international airports and sky-high resorts. The island is a dozen miles wide, has about 250 residents, and harbors a fledgling tourism seed that is unlikely ever to grow. Anegada’s small air strip is equipped to receive just sporadic hopper flights, and coral heads--part of the second-largest barrier reef in the world--block virtually every approach from the sea. More than 300 ships have been wrecked trying to get into shore, and today, few commercial captains try the trip at all. Cruise ships certainly want no part of the gauntlet. Even if they did find a route to the beach, they would leave their passengers searching hopelessly for anything more than a single T-shirt shop that sells a few pieces of handmade jewelry.

I got to visit Anegada during my private yacht charter because Angel Glow is a sailing catamaran, a beautiful 65-foot-long boat with twin pontoons that are big enough to hold sleeping cabins, but that don’t hang too far below the water’s surface like single-hulled sailing yacht keels. Instead, the catamaran’s draft (or depth below the water) is shallow enough to cross over Anegada’s reefs, which makes Angel Glow one of the few boats that can get to the island in one piece. That fact, along with Captain Greg Urlwin’s extensive knowledge of the islands, made Anegada one of his favorite places to visit with newcomers. He liked to introduce his guests to the private world that yacht charter can offer, even in places as crowded and touristy as the Virgin Islands.

And so it was that I came to learn about the loblolly trees and the lobsterman named Lowell--two things you definitely won’t find time to ponder during any cruise ship’s group tour on any other island.

The loblolly trees, which twist with knotty arms toward the sky, are made of pretty tough timber, their roots digging for water through limestone and sand. Lowell’s arms certainly weren’t knotty when I met him, but his fingertips were callused from all the effort he’s made to plant his own roots in the challenging landscape. He built and ran the island’s hotel/restaurant--an oasis of humanity in the wild that still offers a handful of rooms, a tiki-hut bar, and a few well-used barbecues for cooking the day’s catch, even though Lowell died a few years ago in a tragic welding accident. Today, his son does as Lowell used to do, taking reservations by VHF radio, a communication device that every yacht has onboard. Only when the boaters call in does the restaurant know how many lobsters they have to catch in time to serve that night.

We’d hailed Lowell using Angel Glow’s VHF radio when we were about a mile off Anegada’s coast, to place our dinner order for a half-dozen crustaceans. They were broiling by the time we made it ashore. I savored every butter-slathered bite as I cracked open the red shells with my fingers, and I loved being on Anegada, so far from civilization that it was impossible not to slow down and relax. I had no deadline for rushing back to a cruise ship or seeing a show, no crowds to battle in my search for a quiet corner of paradise, no need to even wear shoes as I stepped from our yacht’s private dinghy onto the restaurant’s beach.

If we liked it on Anegada, Captain Urlwin explained, we could stay at anchor there all week. If we wanted to spend one more night and then cruise on in search of other little-known nooks he’d found throughout the years, that was a fine option, too. He could also get us back to the tourist areas, he said, if we’d rather party with the cruise ship throngs. It was our itinerary to choose.

I couldn’t imagine, at that moment, ever going back to live among the throngs, let alone share my vacation cruise with them. And I’d never felt that way before, so solitary and special--not in a resort, on a cruise ship, or during any other type of vacation.

It was liberating and frustrating at the same time. How could I have come so far in life, spent so much money on other vacations, talked to so many travel agents and never even realized the option of private yacht charter was available to me?

Instead of staying at Anegada, we decided to set off the next day and go exploring. Yet the farther away we sailed from the island, the more I thought about the things I’d discovered there.  I realized that the loblolly trees and the lobsterman named  Lowell have a few things in common: They’re unique, they’re wonderful, and they’re fairly hard to find unless you know where to look.

I soon realized that Angel Glow, the boat that had brought me to them, was much the same. Had I not known where to look for private yacht charter, I probably never would have found it. The only cruises I’d ever been offered as vacation options were onboard big cruise ships with a thousand other people at a time. Private yacht charter was a phrase I’d never even heard.

If you’re in the same situation now that I was in back then, you might do well to think of private yacht charter as a brand-new vacation idea that somehow feels like Anegada--a quiet, little-known haven you’ve been seeking your entire life without ever knowing you were looking for it, or that it even existed.

It’s a fascinating option, really, and there are so many different ways to charter in so many different parts of the world that you could write an entire book about them, or even devote an entire website to them.

Which is exactly what we here at CharterWave have done.

To learn more about what you’ve been missing (and how you can enjoy charter yacht vacations for yourself) you can read Dream Cruises: The Insider's Guide to Private Yacht Charter Vacations, from which this story about Anegada is adapted.