Well, here’s some exciting news: My new book about yacht charter has just been named a finalist in the Best Travel Guidebook of the Year category of the ForeWord Independent Press Awards competition!

There were about 1,400 entries in the contest, and they’ve been whittled down to about a dozen finalists in my category. We’ll find out who wins at a June 1 ceremony in New York City. I’m up against books about traveling on hiking trails in the Pacific Northwest and to restaurants in London. (Like THAT’S never been done before!!!)

You can’t vote for Have the Whole Boat: The Insider’s Guide to Private Yacht Charter Vacations (only the librarians and booksellers who serve as judges get a vote), but you can support the cause by clicking here to get your own copy today.

Let’s hope we’ll be able to call it an “award-winning” copy in the near future!

If you’re a fan of my crewed yachts blog here on CharterWave, then you’ll be interested to know that we just added a new bareboats blog to the site. That’s right: You now have two CharterWave experts offering advice and ideas about chartering of all kinds.

Our bareboats blogger is Heather Freckmann, a well-respected marine journalist whom you can learn more about in the Ask Our Experts section of the site. She just got started, and I encourage you to check out her first post–as well as the many more great posts she’ll be offering in the weeks and months ahead.

To get to the new bareboats blog, click here.

I can’t tell you all how happy I am to be back from the Miami boat show in one piece. Valentine’s Day was a harrowing morning of travel from up here in the New York area, followed by a couple of downright cold days on the usually sunny southern tip of Florida. Many of my colleagues weren’t able to fly down to the boat show at all, which left me scrambling for days to cover press conferences. There simply wasn’t a spare minute to blog!

But hopefully, you’ve all noticed by now that our new home page design is up–and already receiving kudos from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. We’re working on taking all of the links live by next week, including our forthcoming online media kit with new advertising options.

I’ll be traveling again this Tuesday and Wednesday to visit a new motoryacht down in Mexico, so will be back online with you later this week to talk about some of the more interesting news I found at the Miami show.

Here’s hoping tomorrow morning’s plane ride is far better than last week’s!