I learned this morning from Larry Ebbs of International Yacht Collection that one of the new boats in his charter fleet, the 164-foot Trinity motoryacht Mine Games, is going to be cruising in the Caribbean this fall with a personal submarine onboard.

Sounds exciting to me–but also reminds me that every other charter yacht that has tried to offer this spectacular water toy has had a rough time of it. The last motoryacht I remember trying to incorporate a submarine into its charter plan was the 157-foot Christensen Barchetta, whose crew never did get the proper training to operate the sub before the yacht’s owners sold the boat and left the charter industry altogether.

Hopefully, Mine Games will make good on the advance marketing and actually have a crew trained to take guests on submarine rides when the Caribbean charter season begins in a few months. I’m trying to get onboard for a firsthand look at the operation, of course, and will keep you posted here on CharterWave as to whether the submarine idea sinks or swims.

Until then, should you see a submarine in a brochure for Mine Games or any other charter yacht, be sure to ask your reputable broker to double-check about the crew’s qualifications to actually operate it. It would be a shame for you to get all the way to the Caribbean and have to look at the submarine sitting unused on your charter yacht’s deck.

I finally have a link for you to read the excellent article about yacht charter by Glenn Ruffenach that ran this past weekend in The Wall Street Journal.

As you’ll see, the article mentions both CharterWave as well as the forthcoming second edition of my charter book, and it has an extensive interview with Elaine Stewart, one of the people we recommend working with on the CharterWave reputable brokers page.

I saw a blog posting this morning that gave me great pause: a report that “several fishing vessels chased and tried to board a yacht off Southern Sri Lanka” as the boat made its way from the increasingly popular Maldives charter area toward Malaysia.

Now, several charter brokers have told me recently that their clients are concerned about piracy during cruising vacations. Reports like the blog post I saw today about a foiled piracy attempt are undoubtedly the reason why. These stories sound quite scary.

The thing is, though, these reports are often incomplete or inaccurate–specifically in terms of the word “yacht.” This particular story, for instance, didn’t give a boat length or name, so I was immediately suspicious that the boat might not have been a yacht at all. I called the International Maritime Bureau over in Europe, where the piracy division confirmed for me that the boat, the Flying Germania II, was “a quite small and private vessel.” The bureau also confirmed that piracy attempts in that particular area east of the Maldives are extremely rare.

I checked with a few more sources, and none had evidence that the Flying Germania II was a larger vessel. So the odds are that this might not have been a yacht at all–and certainly it was not a yacht on charter, as charter yachts don’t cruise with clients in open waters like the Laccadive Sea, where this incident occurred. It’s in fact highly possible that the handful of fishing boats that approached the Flying Germania II may have known it was carrying some kind of cargo and attacked it specifically because of that, not because it was a yacht at all.

My point in relating all of this to you here on CharterWave is that when you see reports about “pirates attacking yachts,” you should question their authenticity. Much of the time, there is far more to these stories than meets the eye–and almost always, the truth is that they have absolutely nothing to do with pleasure yachts in general or charter yachts in particular.

For my money, private yacht charter remains the safest way to vacation at sea.