Photo by Zuzana Prochazka
“Grenada.” The woman, a passenger on a seven-day charter I was captaining in the British Virgin Islands, looked expectantly at me. “I’ve heard there’s a lovely spice market in Grenada. When will we be stopping there?”
I carefully adjusted my expression and explained that Grenada would not be on our itinerary, since it was about 500 nautical miles away and not quite within our grasp given our time frame, the average sailing speed of this charter catamaran, and other realities like weather. Her disappointment in my explanation was palpable.
I probably crushed her expectations more than managed them, but there’s no doubt that managing expectations is the key to a happy charter—and, for that matter, probably a happy life. Since I sometimes serve as hired charter captain, I’ve found that setting expectations with guests is critical and touches on all sorts of subjects, from the details of the itinerary to the sharing of resources like water and libations.
I’ve learned to communicate early, clearly, and often. And—to manage my own expectations—I’ve learned never to take anything like adult behavior for granted. Nevertheless, at times I’m still left wondering how some people make it to middle age and beyond given their self-awareness or lack thereof, and their approach to something as simple as vacation. Sometimes, I just have to get on a kayak and go to a beach to sort my own head out.
Water conservation is always an issue, and I advise people to take showers at night so they can get the day’s salt, sweat, and sunscreen off before bed. That didn’t sit well with a woman in the Abacos, who said she must shower in the morning, otherwise her “hair wouldn’t look right.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that over the next seven days of sailing, she had no hope of sustaining a hairstyle. We ran out of water three times that week.
One critical item to assess before each trip is swimming ability, which everyone overstates. In the BVI, one of my charterers wasn’t swimming so much as drifting with the current until she ended up on the boat anchored behind us. I had to launch the dinghy to get her. In Tonga, an older gentleman brought a full-face snorkel mask. He failed to attach the snorkel securely, and once in the water, the mask began to fill up. His eyes grew large, and he began to flail and panic, screaming into his mask. I had to jump in and pull the mask off his head, otherwise he’d have drowned on the spot.
Perhaps the toughest thing to assess is the physical and mental fitness of the people onboard. On a 10-day trip in Tahiti, it became clear that I had an older man who was not only incontinent—which presented its own set of challenges with limited fresh water in the heat of the tropics—but also suffered from some mental decline and confusion. Anchored off the reef in Bora Bora one night, I noticed flashes of light and went up to investigate. I found the gentleman stumbling around the deck wearing a headlamp and holding a baguette. When I asked him what he needed, he yelled, “Where’s my passport?” and hit me with the baguette until his wife came up to calm him down. Being beaten with bread is fairly funny, but I sat on deck the rest of that night because I was concerned that he would re-emerge and potentially fall overboard.
An always-delicate discussion centers on the consumption of alcohol. Without fail, the worst offenders are self-proclaimed teetotallers who spend the majority of their vacation nearly unconscious due to drinking from morning till night. One man kept bringing up his wife’s empties from their cabin. It was like a beer can clown car down there.
When you share details of the trip with your crew early on, you set their expectations. It can’t ensure harmony and cooperation, but it certainly does help. Of course, the hardest expectations to manage may be your own. Good luck out there.
August/September 2023
