An item came across the newswire yesterday from a blog on a well-known travel website saying, “One of the often overlooked ways to enjoy a trip to Hawaii is to charter a luxury yacht for a private cruise. There are a number of yachts on Oahu…”

Sounds great, right?

Unfortunately, it’s a load of baloney, yet another case of people giving advice about charter who know absolutely nothing about it.

While there are several cruise ships that offer vacations in the Hawaiian islands, hardly any proper crewed yachts are based there. The truth is that weather patterns, a dearth of nearby refit and repair facilities, and a lack of larger-size marinas make it quite difficult for proper crewed yachts to call Hawaii home, even for a single season.

I know of exactly one proper crewed yacht, a 120-foot motoryacht called Kakela (which means “castle” in Hawaiian), that calls the Hawaiian islands home. She’s been the only proper crewed yacht based in Hawaii for a couple of years now, the only yacht that reputable charter brokers suggest whenever I ask about charter in Hawaii. I spent a few days off the coast of Maui onboard her owner’s previous yacht a few years ago, and even then, he admitted his was likely to be one of the only proper charter yachts in the area for many years to come.

Once again, this newswire item reminds me just how important it is that you get advice about charter vacations from a trustworthy source like CharterWave. I’m sure there are many boats in Hawaii that want to be known as luxury yachts and take your hard-earned vacation money, but they’re certainly not the real deal.

You should get what you pay for, no matter where in the world you choose to charter.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 8:56 am and is filed under Destinations, Charter Yachts, 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.