Antarctica, Anyone?
It’s funny how I had to fly from New York to Italy so that I could learn from a California-based charter broker about the boat in the above photograph, which is managed by a German company that is sending it to Antarctica.
Such was my experience at the Genoa charter show earlier this month, where broker Liz Howard from the San Diego office of Fraser Yachts Worldwide introduced me to a woman named Beate Hillwig, who was at the show to promote the Hanse Explorer. It’s a year-and-a-half-old, 157-foot-long, ice-class vessel that was originally built to take by-the-cabin bookings, but that now is functioning solely as a private charter yacht, taking 12 guests with 16 crew at a lowest weekly base rate of 85,000 euro.
Now, I don’t typically buy into sales pitches like this one from people I don’t know. When I get handed a brochure at a boat show and hear the phrase “by-the-cabin-bookings” right before “but now we’re a yacht,” I’m often skeptical that a vessel is offering a true charter yacht experience.
In this case, though, I have the recommendation of Howard, a broker I have known for years and come to trust. She has a client who is interested in charters beyond the typical Caribbean and Mediterranean, so she went to see Hanse Explorer for herself–and she tells me the boat is absolutely, positively operating at yacht-level quality.
That’s exciting stuff, given what Hillwig told me is the upcoming itinerary for Hanse Explorer. It will be heading to Antarctica from November through March of 2009, with the summer before that spent in Canada, the Northwest Passage, Greenland, and the Arctic. In between visiting the Earth’s poles, Hans Explorer is expected to offer some charters in the Amazon and the South Pacific.
“We all come from the expedition market,” Hillwig told me of marketing company Oceanstar, “so we know the areas. For instance, when we visit the South Pacific, we go to the island where Christian Fletcher hid out after the mutiny on the Bounty. It’s an amazing place where other boats don’t go. All the people on the island are descendants of the Bounty’s crew.”
Neat-o. The boat sounds pretty groovy, too, having been built by the owner of a freighter shipping company who wanted to travel the world, but couldn’t get everywhere he wanted to go onboard his private sailing yacht. Sounds like a guy who knows a thing or two about vessel safety in off-the-beaten-course places, as well as a guy who actually plans to follow through on making his boat available for charters in the destinations being promoted.
Typically, I would tell you to contact any reputable charter broker for more information about Hanse Explorer, but in this case, I think it’s fair that I direct you straight to Liz Howard at Fraser Yachts, since Howard is, according to Hillwig, the only international broker who has actually been onboard the boat. She also booked the first proper charter onboard (which is upcoming), so she will be in a position to discuss how the company operates with an actual client, as well as how the crew performs.