I should be packing right now, bound for St. Petersburg, Russia, and a gorgeous, 90-foot-long, expedition-style motoryacht that I’ve spent the past six months working with to organize a charter article.

But I’m not packing. In fact, I’m not going at all–and neither is the yacht.

Russia, you see, is an example of what I call an emerging destination, a place where a yacht charter certainly has the potential to be terrific, but where the infrastructure for charter is not yet in place. Of course there are marinas in St. Petersburg, not to mention some world-class sites to see onshore, but the process of actually getting into Russia is more complicated than, say, sailing into Antigua. For instance, in the case of Russia, visas are required–and are hard to come by. So hard to come by, in fact, that both the yacht’s owner and I gave up trying to get them.

He took the yacht to Finland instead, and I put my suitcase back in the attic. I am disappointed, for sure, as I love to check out emerging destinations–places like the developing coasts of Croatia, Thailand and Costa Rica where readers like you might consider booking an exotic charter yacht vacation.

The lesson from my St. Petersburg experience is one to keep in mind if you’re considering booking a charter yacht vacation in any of the world’s emerging destinations: Be ready for the unexpected, and be prepared to be flexible.

There’s a reason these destinations are considered to be emerging. They haven’t quite fully joined the international yacht charter community yet.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 4:59 am and is filed under Destinations, charter tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.