Who Says Catamarans in the BVIs don’t Sail?
North swells and 25 knots of wind makes the perfect shot.
Because of the wonderful Yacht Shots, we now own the best picture of Monty ever taken. Monty’s crew was reefed down, riding comfortably and enjoying the thrill of the Christmas winds. But watching Guy Clothier and his dog Mix-up snap pictures from a dingy in high wind and rough seas was a even a bigger treat. Montyvideo can’t thank Guy and everyone at Yacht Shots enough for this magnificent photograph!
The best bareboat charter in the BVIs
OK. We might be a little bias…
Granted, Montyvideo is not a big sailboat. She’s not luxurious. She’s not a classic monohull, with a sleek lines and a warm, inviting wood interior. She’s not the fastest, the prettiest or the cheapest boat to charter. So yeah, saying that she’s the best charter boat in the BVIs might be a little overblown. But hey, we believe it to be true and this is the internet aren’t you suppose to exaggerate?
After years of chartering a variety of monohulls and multihulls in the BVIs. We could never find the right boat for us. So we started to identify features we wanted in a charter boat. Here are the top 5.
- Shallow draft: For us sailing in the Caribbean is about enjoying the best water wherever it is, being able to go anywhere and anchor close to shore is very important to us.
- A small two cabin layout that we could charter by ourselves, with our children or another couple. Let’s face it, we just don’t have that many friends to fill up a four cabin four head yacht. I guess, we need to work on our social skills but that’s another issue.
- Nimble and fast with a simple sail plan. Our goal is to get to our destination early in the day to enjoy other activities like snorkeling, kayaking or hiking. Also we hate to run the engine. We want to host the mainsail immediately to experience that exhilarating moment you shut off the engines and hear the sweet sound of sailing.
- Plenty of solar power and amp hours . Did we mention how much we hate to run engines. We like to enjoy our sundowners to the faint rumble of other boat’s generators and engines in a peaceful anchorage.
- And finally, we prefer a catamaran. This is where our dilemma began, we’d chartered a few monohulls that met most of the criteria but if you want to charter a cat you were out of luck. Most cats are too large, with massive mainsails. (that’s why you see many of them motoring to their destinations) They are too expensive for a single couple and are dependent on generators or diesel engines for their power needs.
On the belief that there might be other sailing couples like us out in the world we decided to purchase a catamaran that met the above criteria and put it in a charter fleet. And that led to the birth of Montyvideo the best charter boat in the BVIs. At least for us and anyone else that’s interested.