I just spent a few hours interviewing Victoria Allman, one of the most articulate and thoughtful charter yacht chefs I’ve met in quite some time. She’s here in Fort Lauderdale while her ride, the 118-foot motoryacht True North, has some improvements done at a local shipyard. You can check out my full interview with her soon in the CharterWave Crew Interviews section, but today, I want to share a bit of the interview with you because it includes a valuable lesson for anyone trying to choose a charter yacht.

We were talking about how Victoria got started in the charter business, and she told me about going to a now-defunct crew agency back in the late 1990s. They asked her to go meet the captain onboard a 130-foot motoryacht whose owners kept only the captain as permanent staff, but hired new crew onboard for every trip they took or charter they booked. The boat had gone through 13 chefs in a single year and had developed a horrible reputation among everyone with experience in the charter industry. The owners simply didn’t want to have the expense of paying for professional crew year-round. They went the catch-as-catch can route, and thus subjected their charter clients to the same level of service.

Being brand new and eager, Victoria went onboard, landed the job, and began to learn the business of yachting. She, or somebody else just as new as her, was really the yacht’s only option for crew, as all the veterans in the industry knew to stay clear of the yacht. It was running through crew faster than the charters could be booked–a serious clue that something is wrong with the boat, the captain, its owners, or all three.

Victoria has since gone on to be a terrific success as a charter yacht chef, but the lesson for you in her story is that when it comes time to choose a charter yacht, ask your reputable broker how long the crew have been onboard. You especially want to know about the core crew, people like the captain, chef and chief stewardess.

If one or two crew members are new, that’s probably okay–and is likely more than okay if they’ve come from onboard other charter yachts with good reputations. However, if the entire staff has been brought in within the past week, just in time for your vacation, and none of them have any experience in the industry, that’s a red flag you must heed.

Book a different boat, one that has the key ingredient of great crew.

FLIBS is such a funny-sounding acronym. It stands for Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, which is where I’m headed this morning.

I have appointments scheduled all week onboard the newest and most interesting charter yachts at the boat show, and of course will be blogging here every day to share what I find as I walk the docks, tour the yachts, and interview crew and brokers.

Look for my blog posts around dinnertime each night, beginning tomorrow, right here on the CharterWave Editor’s Blog.

The folks at Regency Yacht Vacations made a great point on their CharterWave sponsored blog this week: While it may already be too late to get a bigger yacht for the upcoming Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s holidays, there is still availability onboard smaller boats that cater to individual couples and small groups.

This point is important not only if you’re thinking about a last-minute romantic holiday getaway, but also if you’re thinking about booking a large family holiday charter in the future. It’s only mid-October, and already pretty much all the bigger charter yachts are booked solid for the 2007 holiday season.

If you want to ensure a spot for next Christmas, let alone this one, then the time to call a reputable charter broker is now. The same goes for mid-summer charters during the busy July Fourth and late August peak weeks. Many yachts in the Mediterranean are already booked for next summer, even though this summer feels like it just ended.