Northrop & Johnson, a yachting company based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, went live online this week with a swanky new website.

There’s a nifty new charter section on the site that’s worth seeing. It includes a link called “destinations” that leads you to an interactive map with photos of charter hot spots from around the world.

You’ll also find links to Northrop & Johnson’s lead charter broker, June Montagne (rhymes with “champagne”), whom we proudly mention on the CharterWave Reputable Brokers page. She’s at your service if you’re ready to book a crewed yacht charter anywhere in the world.

I taped an hour-long interview yesterday with a radio station out in California for a program called “The Good Life” that will air in about three weeks. The show’s host spent nearly the entire hour asking me questions about yacht charter vacations until he got to the ultimate question, the one so many people ask me after finding CharterWave or reading my book Have the Whole Boat for the first time:

Why in the world haven’t I ever heard of this vacation option before?

As I told him, the answer is simple. There is no lobbying group organized to promote the idea of charter yacht vacations. CharterWave is the first mass-market attempt to bring the option of chartering to the general public’s attention.

He was a bit incredulous, so I explained this in comparison with the cruise ship industry. Its main corporations sponsor a group called CLIA– the Cruise Lines International Association–that spends millions upon millions of dollars a year in advertising and lobbying to ensure that potential customers think about cruise ships first when it comes to seagoing vacations.

The charter industry doesn’t have such a champion. It’s composed of individual people who own private boats. The main companies in the charter industry simply haven’t yet begun working together to promote the idea of charter in general. Heck, they’re just now coming onboard with the idea of supporting an editorial product like CharterWave.

I hope this will change in the future, of course, but until then, CharterWave remains the only place dedicated to reporting on and supporting the worldwide charter yacht industry. That’s why you haven’t heard of charter before. And why we’re so happy to make your acquaintance now.

I spoke with management company Camper & Nicholsons International again yesterday about the fire that sank the 97-foot motoryacht Lady Candida last month while she was on charter in the Mediterranean. The folks in CNI’s Monaco office are still being tight-lipped, saying there is no new information about the cause.

But there is new information, being reported in the new issue of Dockwalk, a yacht crew magazine. Their French-speaking reporters apparently got hold of the Corsican coast guard, which says the fire broke out in the yacht’s laundry area.

According to the article, the yacht sank well after the crew and all 12 charter guests were safely off, probably as a result of water being pumped onboard to subdue the flames while the yacht was being towed. It must have been quite a scene, what with the coast guard, a helicopter, two rescue boats, a police patrol boat, a French navy tug, and two additional yachts standing by to offer assistance.

It would be nice if Camper & Nicholsons would release contact information for the yacht’s captain, so we could learn how the rescue went moment by moment. I’d like to know how many exits were available from the yacht’s guest cabins, for instance, since they were probably near the laundry room. I’d also like to know whether the crew’s international emergency training was up to date.

The location of exits and the level of crew training are things you can ask any reputable charter broker about when booking any yacht for a vacation. Learning from the Lady Candida experience may help you ask better questions about your own yacht charter in the future. Who knows what other details of the rescue might be important in a similar situation?

I’ll continue to press Camper & Nicholsons for answers. But given their silence thus far, and the likely insurance questions they are helping the yacht owner face, I don’t anticipate much. It’s a real shame for those of us who want to learn from this rare and dreadful charter yacht fire.