Owner of and retail charter broker for Select Yachts, and retail charter broker for The Sacks Group Yachting Professionals

Date interviewed: July 2009

You’re the first charter broker we’ve ever featured who is also a graduate gemologist.
Yes, that’s a bit of a story. I’m originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and when I graduated from college in the 1970s, the economy was slow. I moved to South Florida because I had a double major in restaurant management and dietetics and nutrition, and I figured I could get a restaurant job there right away. Instead, I fell into the jewelry industry and moved to Fort Lauderdale to manufacture fine jewelry. I eventually got my graduate gemologist diploma from the Gemological Institute of America.

Was it in Fort Lauderdale that you first got into the yacht charter industry?
Actually, no. I decided that I wanted to go to the Caribbean, and I knew that St. Thomas had a lot of jewelry stores, but I quickly learned that all you did there was sell to people from cruise ships. I was bored. A friend offered me a job as assistant manager at a store called Seafood Gourmet, and my job was to provision all the charter yachts that came into St. Thomas. I also did cooking classes for the yacht chefs, so they would know how to use the products we were selling.
    All the stewardesses and chefs would come in, and I always used to say, “Wow, I sure wish I had a job like yours!” Well, sure enough, one day one of them answered, “Come do an interview.” I ended up on an Ocean 60 Schooner called Ocean Carnival. I was hired as a chef.

Did you work on charter yachts for a long time?
I stayed aboard Ocean Carnival for a season, and then went to another Ocean 60 called Antipides. The next season I went to another schooner, a 73-footer called Rangga.
    In the mid-1980s, I left the Caribbean and started doing freelance work on bigger boats out of Fort Lauderdale, to get experience. After that, a captain I’d been dating named Jackson McHorney hired me as his chef aboard the Irwin 65 Capital Gain. We’ve been together ever since. We got married in 1997.

Jackson is still well-known as a charter industry captain, but you obviously left boats at some point. What happened?
Sometimes, people who work on boats decide they need to have their feet on the ground for a while, so in the mid-1990s, I approached Jennifer Saia, the president of The Sacks Group Yachting Professionals. She hired me as a retail broker in their Fort Lauderdale office, and I stayed for three years.
    But Jackson really missed me on the boat, so I went back to boats for five years after that, and he and I eventually decided that Sint Maarten would be our home base. He would continue working on boats in the Caribbean, and I would open Select Yachts.

Did you create Select Yachts to do retail bookings only?
I did, at first, but pretty quickly boats started asking me to serve as their charter marketing agent, so I started a fleet. That was in 2003, and since then we’ve always had about 15 boats in our fleet, in addition to booking retail charters.

    In 2007 I formed a strategic partnership with The Sacks Group, giving that company an affiliate on Sint Maarten. For me, it was a great way to return to the company that started my career as a charter broker without having to leave my adopted home in the Caribbean.

What kinds of boats do you typically book?
I do only crewed yachts, sail and power, all over the world from all different fleets. I actually just booked a large motoryacht in Greece, as an example.

What are some of the best charter destinations you’ve visited?
I’ve been to all of the New England areas, from Maine down to Manhattan. I’ve done the Intracoastal Waterway and sailed a lot out of Florida. I’ve done most all of the Bahamas, and I think I’ve been to every island in the Caribbean except for Montserrat and Barbados. I’ve been to the ABC islands [Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao] and Venezuela, and then of course I’ve done the Mediterranean. I did an Atlantic crossing where we went to the Azores, and I’ve been to the Balearics, the French Riviera, the Italian Riviera, the Aeolians, Sardinia, Corsica, the Amalfi coast, Sicily, Croatia, and Greece.
    I visited all of these places on yachts—and I spent a lot of time in some of the locations. Croatia, for instance, I was there for a whole summer. Places that are only words to some people are very real to me. I can visualize the harbors and towns when I’m helping clients to plan an itinerary.
    
What is the first thing you ask a new charter client?
I ask whether they have an idea of where they want to go. Usually, clients know where they want to charter, so it’s more up to me to find the right boat for them and then try to narrow the itinerary down.
    That’s where my local knowledge from all my years of cruising can be really helpful, if clients are trying to be too ambitious in their itineraries. I can tell them if they’re going to be running all day on the boat, or if they’re actually going to have time to enjoy what the destinations that they want to see.

Describe your ideal charter client.
I work best with people who hold up their half of a 50-50 conversation. I want them to let me give my input, and then have them tell me what they’re thinking.

Describe your nightmare charter client.
My nightmare is someone whose expectations are a little bit over the top, or someone who is really afraid of budget. It can be challenging for some clients to understand limitations and expenses.

Describe a booking where you worked “above and beyond” for a client.
I’m actually working on one of those right now. I have a booking in the Bahamas, and the boat has been disabled. They had a power surge on the dock in Nassau, and all of their navigational electronics are gone. The boat asked to reschedule the charter, but that doesn’t work for my client. Plus, my client lives in Nassau, so he’s already met the crew and loves them.
    So I just found a replacement yacht and worked with that captain to hire the original boat’s crew. I also got the new boat to agree to the original rate, which is a bit of a deal for the client.
    It’s all a very unusual situation, especially since it involves a catamaran in the Bahamas—a place where there aren’t too many catamarans available for charter. Luckily, I had the connections to get my client what he wanted.

What are your favorite charter yachts?
Is it a cliché to say that I look to the crew as opposed to the boats?
    One of the things I started early on at Select Yachts is a crew placement division. We do it because we want to know who the crew are on these boats. It gives me a real advantage as a charter broker because after all these years, I know so many crew. It helps enormously. I hear from the other crew about different crew members, so I get a really good, well-rounded view of who the crew on these boats are.

What else makes you different from other charter brokers?
I don’t think there are very many people who can say that they’ve been charter crew, owned a charter vessel that they hired crew to operate, been a charter broker, been a charter yacht manager, owned their own charter company, and worked for a Fort Lauderdale charter firm as big as The Sacks Group.
    I truly do know the industry from a lot of angles. There are so many details, and there is always more to learn, but my experiences are broad.

What else should CharterWave readers know about you?
Being based in Sint Maarten, I have the opportunity to see a lot of boats. They come through for boat shows where many brokers see them, but also when boat shows aren’t happening, so I have a lot of opportunities that other brokers might not have to inspect charter yachts and to meet the crew.

How can CharterWave readers contact you?
My direct line is (954) 376-3855. You can e-mail me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or go to www.selectyachts.net or www.sacksyachts.com