I’m a little sad to tell you today that the second edition of my how-to-charter book, Dream Cruises, failed to win the grand prize in the 2008 Indie Book Awards. However, I’m pretty excited to say that Dream Cruises made it onto the honored list of finalists–making this the third year in a row that the first and second editions of the book have been cited as among the best travel guides of the year.

This time around, it seems I lost out in the travel category to “the true story of a veterinarian, a Renaissance man, and Stewart the cat.” It’s hard to compete with that when you’re discussing charter yacht contracts and berth configurations, I suppose. Dream Cruises does have a section about bringing your pet on charter, but alas, not enough for the judges!

C’est la vie. (And le chat.) I’m truly happy just to be recognized, and of course to receive the continuing praise of reputable charter brokers worldwide who call Dream Cruises “the bible” of the charter industry.

If you’re thinking about chartering and haven’t ordered your copy yet, please click here to check out the book’s reviews and links to online booksellers. You also can read excerpts for free in the FAQ content here on CharterWave.

I was chatting earlier this week with a charter motoryacht captain who was kind enough to be a source in a story I’m writing for a crew magazine. When we finished the interview, he surprised me by blurting out, “By the way, I really love CharterWave. Some of the brokers say not to let you on my boat, because you’re so tough, but I find your reviews to be right on the money.”

He then went on to quote, almost verbatim, from a couple of First Impression reviews in which I urged readers to ask a few tough questions before booking, as I’d seen serious problems with the crew or the yachts themselves. “I know those guys,” he said about one crew that had left me particularly leery. “You know, they just got fired. There are real problems on that boat. The readers would’ve been smart to listen to you.”

Now, it obviously doesn’t thrill me that there are some brokers out there urging yacht captains to steer clear of me for the simple reason that I know what to look for, and I tell the truth to readers about what I find onboard crewed yachts of all sizes. Certainly, these brokers read reviews before they so much as buy a ticket for a movie. If they don’t want to waste their own $10 on a bad two hours’ entertainment, they shouldn’t want you to waste $100,000 on a bad week’s vacation.

On the upside, though, I take it as a real compliment that a longtime charter yacht captain respects the reviews we publish here on CharterWave. If you’re a regular reader, then you know our site takes a lot of pride in offering truthful information as opposed to the airbrushed marketing copy you read in so many magazines. I know we do upset people from time to time with our honest opinions, but I have yet to be told that we got something dead wrong. Typically, the complaints I hear from the management companies are, “The yacht’s owner will be upset that you revealed that,” versus “That’s inaccurate.”

I’ll take those complaints (rare as they are) as a sign that we here at CharterWave are doing a good job for you readers. Editorial integrity may not be a high priority in print these days, as magazines scramble to hold onto their advertising budgets, but here on the Web, where publishing costs are far lower, honesty really is still an option for the journalists who are willing to stand up for their readers.

And as for any other captains who might be afraid to have me onboard to do a review, I can only say this: If you are doing a good job, you have nothing to fear. Our goal here at CharterWave is to help readers find the right charter yacht for the vacation of their dreams. In that sense, we all should be on the exact same page.

It was with a fairly intense sense of shock (and great sadness for the journalistic profession as a whole) that I learned this weekend about the editors of the vaunted Wine Spectator magazine giving a restaurant award to a restaurant that doesn’t even exist.

If you want to read the whole sordid story, you can click here to view the editors’ post on the Wine Spectator forums. Long story short, a book author named Robin Goldstein invented the restaurant, along with its wine list, and submitted it for the awards just to see what the magazine’s standards were for doling them out (here’s the scam in his own words). Obviously, based on what happened, those standards do not include actually visiting restaurants before telling readers how great they are.

I take this lack of editorial integrity quite personally, as one of the things I try to do here on CharterWave is ensure that the quality of the content we publish online is just as sound as anything you would read in a major, printed magazine. When brands as well-respected as Wine Spectator get caught in this kind of nonsense, it just plain brings skepticism upon all of us who write reviews for a living.

Rest assured, I really do get onboard all the yachts that you see reviewed in CharterWave’s First Impression and Crewed Yacht Vacation sections. I walk around with camera in hand, so that the photos you see on this website are original–and thus proof that I was actually there.

I can’t imagine recommending a yacht based on a sheet of paper that somebody sends me to describe it, as the Wine Spectator editors did with the fake restaurant. I’m proud to say that, to my knowledge, CharterWave is the only editorial resource, online or in print, that actually does make a point of having an editor get onboard to review all the charter yachts that are featured. I could name a dozen websites that do the exact opposite, and that, thus, are ripe for passing along to you the same kind of fake recommendations that the Wine Spectator printed for its readers.

Trust is the thing that keeps readers coming back, and I fully intend to continue doing everything I can to maintain the trust that CharterWave has earned among its nearly 50,000 annual readers. You have my word that you will never, ever, see a review on this website of a yacht that doesn’t exist.

How very sad it is, in today’s media world, that I even have to make that promise.