In the British Virgin Islands, the crew aboard the 135-foot Christensen motoryacht Atlantica make clear they are an ideal choice for scuba and fishing charters—with style.

By Kim Kavin

Atop a fashionable coffee table, inside an elegant main salon, surrounded by objets d’art, a decorative bowl of trinkets, and a copy of Jacques Cousteau’s massive Ocean, sits an everyday plastic white binder. It looks like something you might find in a school locker, or on the shelf at an office-supply store. Its hand-printed title is about as understated as can be, comprised of the simple words: “Atlantica: Central America Travel Information.”
    I pick up the binder and flip it open. Within seconds, I realize that I have discovered nothing short of a diary bursting with yearning and hope.
    Inside are tabs labeled “Costa Rica,” “Mexico,” “Belize,” “Honduras,” and “Panama.” Each section is filled with hand-clipped magazine articles, countless website printouts, and keepsake photographs from a September 2008 trip to Costa Rica that Atlantica’s captain and chef, Roy and Stephanie Hodges, undertook as a combination sail fishing vacation and fact-finding mission. As I turn page after page, thinking about how interesting each destination sounds, I notice Atlantica’s bosun, Kathrin Eugen, standing nearby with a wide-as-a-hanger grin. She quickly admits that the binder is her creation, that the entire crew has been contributing eagerly to it, and that she really, really hopes I will consider writing about what it represents.
    “We’re trying to talk the owner into going to Central America,” she tells me, just as Capt. Hodges will later tell me, and First Mate Yan Kunst will later tell me, and Chief Stewardess Sarah Egan will later tell me, each more excited than the next. “The owner says that if we can line up six charters, we can go.  So far, we have four repeat clients who have said yes. We just need two more.”
    And so it is that I am now a willing abettor in their master plan.
    This beautifully maintained 135-foot Christensen, which originally launched in 2000, has a well-earned reputation for excellence in charter—always with the name Atlantica, but specifically since the Hodges took command in June 2007 under a new owner (who kept the yacht’s previous name). Atlantica is a particularly good choice for anyone interested in fishing and scuba, thanks to the Hodges’ love of angling and Kunst and Eugen’s enthusiasm for diving and pretty much all other water sports. In the galley, chef Hodges and chef/deckhand Cameron Pasciak turn the day’s finds and catches into elegant, healthy meals, including one that earned Hodges first place in Atlantica’s category at the 2007 Sint Maarten charter show.
    The crew are a fine-tuned team aboard a yacht that is superbly outfitted for the types of active charters at which they excel, which is a main reason why, even during the dreadfully slow 2008-09 Caribbean season that saw some yachts reducing their rates by 30 to 40 percent to lure clients, Atlantica’s charter calendar remained busy in the Virgin Islands with a good number of summer inquiries for the Bahamas, too.
    Atlantica’s crew are happy to be in those popular charter destinations, of course, but they also realize they are aboard the rare yacht that is uniquely organized to take its fishing and diving program into pristine territory. It’s not every charter operation that can continue to provide first-rate service more than a few days away from a well-stocked marina. And it’s certainly not every charter yacht that is so well outfitted to mesh with the best experiences that remote destinations like Central America’s have to offer.
    The crew are thus hoping that a few new charter clients will see real value in what Atlantica’s repeat guests have been requesting. As Capt. Hodges explained it to me: “We have a good group of repeat clients who have seen the Bahamas and the Virgin Islands, and we’d like to show them some place new.”
    To my thinking, Atlantica is the perfect yacht for the challenge, especially since it recently underwent a $2.3-million refit that makes it well suited for charter in more remote destinations. The yacht also recently ordered a new 37-foot Intrepid tender that is perfect for exploration afar.
    I spent one sunny morning with the crew scuba diving from the Intrepid. Eugen led another certified diver and me while Kunst did a resort course for two scuba novices, both of whom were trying hard to hide their excited nervousness about breathing underwater for the first time. They likely didn’t notice, but the other experienced diver and I certainly appreciated that all of our gear was sized and sorted—in personalized carry bags that we could use the entire week—before we got to the dive site. Eugen even offered me a Diva buoyancy compensator, which I had mentioned in passing that I liked because it is specially designed for women. That Atlantica even had a Diva onboard speaks volumes about how well outfitted the yacht is for true scuba enthusiasts, no doubt a reflection of the owner’s keen interest in diving.
    Even better than the gear is that Eugen’s personality during the dive was more bubbly than the exhales through my regulator. She was far from a typical instructor who simply leads you in circles while you try to make sense of what you’re seeing. On the bottom of one fin, Eugen had written “Follow me,” while the other read “Smile for the fishes!” These humorous touches really personalized the scuba experience, as did the slate Eugen carried to help me identify every last squirrel fish, tang, and strawberry grouper.
    Perhaps more important, though, is that by the time we resurfaced, Kunst’s beginners were practically glowing with excitement. As one told me about an hour later, over a lunch of truly satisfying smoked chicken salad, “I was thinking about people I love back home who I wish could have been there with me at that moment when I went underwater. I wanted to share that amazing experience.”
    Of course, that’s a well-earned compliment for Kunst and Eugen—who welcome beginners seeking diving experiences as young as age 12—and yet I couldn’t help but think about how much more memorable the morning might have been in a place like Belize or Panama, where the fish are even bigger, the reefs even more alive, and the dive sites even more exclusively remote. Certainly, guests who prefer to fish rather than dive from Atlantica’s Intrepid would much rather have keepsake photographs of themselves with 150-foot sportfish than tiny little jacks.
    Yes, a charter aboard Atlantica in the BVI or Bahamas is excellent, with its hilarious disco and pirate theme nights, its first-rate cabin service, and its crew who are just as happy to teach kite surfing or glass-bottom kayaking as they are to speak with you in English, Japanese, French, Spanish, German, or Seychelles Creole. But add a Central America destination where other yachts simply don’t go, and then you’re talking about a truly once-in-a-lifetime charter vacation.
    “Everybody, especially our clients, have been to the Bahamas and BVI,” as Eugen says. “We want to take people to a place where there is no McDonalds, no Avis rental cars. We want to show them different cultures, different foods, different languages—and of course all the pristine areas for diving and fishing. We are set up for everything and anything, and we can take you to places you normally wouldn’t be able to go. Please, please tell our owner that you want to come with us!”