Interesting Idea
I’m in Fort Lauderdale this week, scouting new yachts and crew for CharterWave members, all as part of the city’s massive annual boat show. I found myself this afternoon in the offices of Ocean Independence, chatting with the company’s USA point person, Ray “Rags” Weldon, when the owner of an 84-foot motoryacht wandered in the front door.
Mr. Yacht Owner had chartered several yachts over the years from Rags, and eventually had gone on to buy a boat of his own. He’s spent the past couple of summers cruising around Alaska, showing his friends all the quiet nooks and coves that–as he put it– the cruise ships are too big to enter. When I introduced myself, he quickly pulled out a photograph of his beautiful yacht. “I have something I’d like to show you,” he said, like a man who’d stolen a secret file from a government agency.
Mr. Yacht Owner then spent five or ten minutes explaining all the improvements he’d made to his yacht to improve what he’d dubbed its Recreation Usability Index. “The RUI,” he explained, “is a term I came up with to define how usable any guest space is on the boat.”
For instance, he’d enclosed, heated, and air conditioned his yacht’s top deck pilothouse area, making it usable in sun or rain, heat or cold. That’s a high RUI. He’d also added a UV-resistant sunshade to the yacht’s aft deck, giving that space a medium RUI (but a rating higher than most other aft decks, where you’re not always quite as protected from skin cancer-causing rays).
What a funny thing, I thought, this yacht owner running around trying to make his yacht more friendly for recreational purposes. And the really neat thing is, his boat isn’t even available for charter. It’s just something he figured out about boats after all his own years of trying to select the most recreation-friendly charter yachts of his own.
So there you have it: When you’re comparing charter yachts, keep in mind how their guest areas rate in terms of Mr. Yacht Owner’s RUI philosophy. You just might be happier in the long run, no matter what kind of weather you encounter during your charter.