A Study in Contrasts
There’s an interesting dichotomy brewing down in the Western Hemisphere’s tropics. In one tourist location, locals are struggling to get bigger boats into their ports. In another, the locals are raging to keep them away.
The folks aiming to bring bigger boats to the docks are in St. Thomas, where a commercial marine designation known as “the six-pack law” makes it impossible for many charter yachts that take more than six guests to begin a cruise in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The result of this law is that all such charters typically begin in the neighboring British Virgin Islands–thus sending tons of charter tourism dollars literally 20 minutes away.
As the Virgin Islands Charter League has pointed out, this law needs to be changed so that the new megayacht marina on St. Thomas can be used to its fullest extent for private yacht charter onboard all yachts that take more than six guests. The locals are working hard to help the U.S. Virgin Islands government take action, saying that yacht charter is the kind of tourism these islands want.
By contrast, across the Caribbean in the Mexican town of Zihuatanejo, the locals are celebrating the fact that construction of a new mega-cruise ship pier has been canceled. For months, rallies have been held and petitions have been circulated urging the government to forgo accommodating larger cruise ships, for fear that they will destroy the character that makes the small town so tourist-worthy in the first place.
It’s encouraging to me to see what’s happening in these two tourism-dependent communities. Neither is saying that cruising is bad–only that smaller-scale cruising is better for the local environment and people.
And the smallest-scale cruising you can do, of course, is private yacht charter. Here’s hoping these attitudes continue to expand all across the Caribbean and Western Mexico in the future.