Date toured: December 2006

I must admit, I almost passed Alexis by.
At just 38 feet long, she was perhaps the smallest crewed sailing catamaran on the docks at the Tortola charter yacht show. She looked to be in good shape, though having been launched in 2002, she wasn’t as shiny as the brand-new cats all around her. At first blush, she was the kind of yacht that makes me think, “Okay, good enough. But what else is down the dock?”
What a surprise I had in store. I stepped onboard and shook hands with owner-operators Bambi and Geoff Alexander, a lovely couple who casually told me that they had just booked a six-week charter for an Australian couple who wanted to cruise from Grenada to the Virgin Islands.
They said this with the kind of nonchalance you might employ if you were explaining how you’d just run down the street to pick up some groceries.
Hold the phone! That’s not the kind of thing you hear about too often from a yacht in Alexis’s size range. And when the Alexanders continued by telling me that the broker who coordinated the trip was none other than CharterWave favorite Ed Hamilton, well, I realized just how special this little crewed yacht must be.
“We make a huge fuss over people and try to send them home happy,” is how Bambi put it, adding that Alexis can only take two to four guests at a time, so anniversary and honeymoon charters are among their specialties.
The price is right, too, with an inclusive rate of $5,500 for two guests or $7,500 for four guests, according to management company Regency Yacht Charters. That’s just $2,250 per person for the week--including ship's bar--if you and your spouse want a nice little getaway with your own private captain and chef.
November 2006 through June 2007 will be Alexis’s third season in the British Virgin Islands, which tells me the Alexanders know their way around and will be able to show guests a good time in their local waters. I look forward to hearing from Hamilton how the down-island, six-week charter goes, too.
And I’ll never pass by the littlest boat in the show again. I’ve learned my lesson with Alexis: Good things really can come in small packages.—Kim Kavin