Spokey Doke
New member
My wife and I would like to take our first cruise in the Caribbean in January of 2023 and are looking for some guidance in terms of where to base/charter a boat and basic logistics/itinerary.
Length of trip: 7-10 days
People: 2
Boat: smaller single hull
General Priorities: Solitude, scenery/nature, sailing (over motoring), snorkeling.
More background: DW grew up sailing north of Boston and regularly cruised NE in the summers on her families’ Erickson 27. I learned to sail mostly in dinghy’s (and windsurfing) in the upper midwest and have only cruised on the ocean a handful of times. After many years landlocked in Idaho, we are looking to start getting back on the water.
Our current primary vacations are backpacking in high and remote wilderness areas of the Northern Rockies, so we are used to roughing it, and really value getting away from people and human development…so for cruising, we’d ideally spend as little time in marinas as possible; don’t care about shopping or going to restaurants or shore power; would like to minimize the travel time/logistics to/from the home port; smaller single-hulls that obviously can be short-handed, and have better than average sailing performance are what we would most like to charter (I don’t see much in the way of smaller boats, say <35ft in the charter fleets I’ve looked at so far). We love to snorkel as well.
Neither of us have been to the Caribbean before. To jump start our future sailing ambitions (and build some docking confidence) we just did the ASA charter certification program in the San Juans, and would now like to start chartering. Our best window to do so is when I close my business here in Idaho for the month of January, and we’d fly out of Salt Lake City.
Given all that (thanks for reading this far)…what are your recommendations/considerations for a first cruise in the Caribbean chartering a smallish single hull?
Length of trip: 7-10 days
People: 2
Boat: smaller single hull
General Priorities: Solitude, scenery/nature, sailing (over motoring), snorkeling.
More background: DW grew up sailing north of Boston and regularly cruised NE in the summers on her families’ Erickson 27. I learned to sail mostly in dinghy’s (and windsurfing) in the upper midwest and have only cruised on the ocean a handful of times. After many years landlocked in Idaho, we are looking to start getting back on the water.
Our current primary vacations are backpacking in high and remote wilderness areas of the Northern Rockies, so we are used to roughing it, and really value getting away from people and human development…so for cruising, we’d ideally spend as little time in marinas as possible; don’t care about shopping or going to restaurants or shore power; would like to minimize the travel time/logistics to/from the home port; smaller single-hulls that obviously can be short-handed, and have better than average sailing performance are what we would most like to charter (I don’t see much in the way of smaller boats, say <35ft in the charter fleets I’ve looked at so far). We love to snorkel as well.
Neither of us have been to the Caribbean before. To jump start our future sailing ambitions (and build some docking confidence) we just did the ASA charter certification program in the San Juans, and would now like to start chartering. Our best window to do so is when I close my business here in Idaho for the month of January, and we’d fly out of Salt Lake City.
Given all that (thanks for reading this far)…what are your recommendations/considerations for a first cruise in the Caribbean chartering a smallish single hull?
