The Little (Big) Things that Make a Difference
I attended a luncheon buffet today sponsored by the boatbuilder Hargrave, and I ended up sitting with the owners of the 97-foot charter motoryacht Gigi, which is part of the charter fleet at Merrill-Stevens. I haven’t been onboard the yacht yet personally, but its connection to both Hargrave and Merrill-Stevens tells me it’s more than likely a well-built, reputably run charter yacht.
The family was explaining to me how frustrated they have been in trying to promote all the little details that they believe make Gigi such a great charter yacht in her price range. For instance, the adult daughter of the owners said, “this boat has huge bathrooms. The kind of bathrooms you should expect on a luxury vacation.”
They went on to tell me the yacht also has well-sized and nicely outfitted crew quarters, which means crew are happy to live onboard. (Happy crew makes for good service during any charter, I agreed.) And, the family added, Gigi has super-big refrigeration for holding as much food as any charter party might ever consume in a week. “Especially for [the remote areas of] the Bahamas,” the daughter said, “you don’t have to keep going back to Nassau [to re-provision], and you don’t have to pay for a ton of shipping. We can just provision big in Nassau and hold all the food onboard.”
Big bathrooms, nice crew quarters, substantial refrigeration: These are not the kinds of details you see in most charter yacht brochures, or that most charter brokers bring up. But the real truth is that they do affect your charter vacation, and I’m happy to share them here as an example of just how in-depth you can–and perhaps should–get when deciding among charter yachts in any price range.
In the case of Gigi, that’s the $35,000-a-week base rate range for eight guests and five crew. The yacht is headed to the Bahamas after the Fort Lauderdale show ends, and will be cruising in New England in the summer of 2007.
If you’d like to learn more, go to the management company’s website, www.merrill-stevens.com.