Gustavia Harbour at the Caribbean island of St. Barth's is party central for charter yachts on New Year's Eve. The marina berths are first-come, first-served, and many yacht captains arrive several days, if not several weeks, in advance of December 31 to ensure that their charter guests will have a prime location for yacht and restaurant hopping along the quay at midnight.

This year, though, Mother Nature had other ideas.

According to the harbormaster, whom I reached via telephone yesterday afternoon at La Capitainerie du Port de Gustavia, the port was closed beginning December 28 and remained closed through January 2 because the incoming surge made conditions untenable for yachts at the dock. 

"It is not unusual for this time of year," the harbormaster told me, "but the surge was bigger than I have seen in the past. Some of the yachts had damage, but none of the damage was major."

At least 30 charter yachts were affected by the port's closing, a fact I was able to determine thanks to my friend Ben Ellison, who writes the marine electronics blog at Panbo.com. He had the smarts to nab the following image from a website that tracks signals called AIS, which stands for Automatic Identification System and broadcasts a yacht's name, position, and such. That's Gustavia Harbour in the middle of the image, where buildings ring the harbor like a tan horseshoe amid the green foliage. All the purple dots outside the harbor represent the AIS signals of yachts that were anchored offshore on December 31.

Charter yachts whose names are legible to me in this image include the 143-foot Palmer Johnson motoryacht Four Wishes, 143-foot motoryacht Starship, 246-foot motoryacht Leander, 163-foot Feadship motoryacht High Chaparral, 269-foot Oceanco motoryacht Alfa Nero, 146-foot Intermarine motoryacht Balaju, 196-foot CMN motoryacht Cloud 9, 154-foot Perini Navi sailing yacht Andromeda la Dea, 147-foot Feadship motoryacht Harle, 156-foot motoryacht Va Bene, 110-foot sailing yacht Kalikobass II, 183-foot Benetti motoryacht Four Aces, 197-foot Benetti motoryacht Amnesia, 178-foot Alloy sailing yacht Tiara, Blind Date (there are two charter motoryachts by this name; presumably, this is the new 161-foot Trinity), 168-foot Oceanco motoryacht Lazy Z, 179-foot Proteskan Turquoise motoryacht Sequel P, 198-foot Feadship motoryacht Blue Moon, 147-foot Izar motoryacht Tuscan Sun, 228-foot motoryacht Sherakhan, 116-foot Holland Jachtbouw sailing yacht Whisper, 150-foot motoryacht Elle, 157-foot Christensen motoryacht Lady Joy, 257-foot motoryacht Princess Mariana, 118-foot Perini Navi sailing yacht Gitana, 163-foot Codecasa motoryacht Grace E, 161-foot Trinity motoryacht Destination Fox Harb'r Too, 311-foot Oceanco motoryacht Indian Empress, 120-foot motoryacht Touch, and 100-foot Hargrave motoryacht Cocktails.

With the help of President Jennifer Saia of The Sacks Group Yachting Professionals, I got hold of Capt. Peter Carlsson yesterday aboard the 161-foot Trinity motoryacht Lohengrin, which was docked inside Gustavia Harbour on December 28 when news came that the port was shutting down.

He said that, at first, captains were told the port would reopen in time for the New Year's Eve celebration, but that conditions were unsafe when he decided to leave the island altogether with his charter clients on December 29.

"The port is very narrow," he told me. "All the yachts are docked stern-to, and there's not enough room to put out enough anchor line off the bow. So every time a swell rolls into the harbor and hits the yacht from the side, you drag your anchor and bang into the dock.

"Every boat in there was hitting the dock," he continued. "Some had more damage than others. We hit the dock once, and then I started the engines so that I could engage them every time a swell pushed us too close to the dock. I had to do that for eight hours while we waited our turn for divers to come and help us recover our anchors. It took the divers about 10 hours to recover all the anchors, so that all the boats could get out."

Charter broker Ann E. McHorney, who works for both Select Yachts and The Sacks Group on nearby Sint Maarten, gave me permission to publish the following photograph of what the surge looked like coming over the quay after the yachts were gone.

The sky looks bright and clear to me in that photograph, but the harbormaster on St. Barth's told me that it rained much of the day on December 31, clearing up just in time for tenders to bring charter guests ashore to celebrate the arrival of the new year. And indeed, several tabloids posted photographs over the weekend of celebrities managing to get ashore by tender.

McHorney told me that she saw about 25 charter yachts coming through Sint Maarten's Simpson Bay Bridge to return to their home-base marinas on the afternoon of January 2 as well as yesterday morning, indicating that the at-sea conditions between St. Barth's and Sint Maarten remained too rough for cruising any earlier.  

With that in mind, perhaps the most interesting information I gleaned this weekend came from megayacht captains and charter brokers telling me that they no longer recommend New Year's on St. Barth's to charter clients, precisely because of seasonal weather patterns like the one that caused this year's surge.

Capt. Roy Hodges e-mailed me from the 135-foot Christensen motoryacht Atlantica to say that he had repeat clients aboard from last New Year's Eve, and that his boat and crew had "gotten beaten up pretty badly down in St. Barth's then. We decided to hang out in the Virgin Islands instead this year. A lot of boats that were in St. Barth's came up here when the weather got rough."

I also heard from charter broker June Montagne in the Fort Lauderdale office of Northrop & Johnson. She told me that she always urges her New Year's clients to charter in the Virgin Islands or the Grenadines, as opposed to St. Barth's. "That northerly swell is terrible," she said, "and there isn't anywhere to really hide."

That's serious advice, in my opinion, for anyone considering a yacht charter vacation for next New Year's Eve.

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