Charter

Steady breezes, clear blue water and plentiful bays where you can grab both a mooring and a good rum punch—the U.S. Virgin Islands are heaven on Earth for sailors of all stripes. They’re also the perfect place to get kids hooked on cruising, as our family recently discovered on ...read more

Never chartered? No worries. A vacation under sail can be the most memorable time of your life. That said, it also pays to be prepared by doing some reading, building your skills and listening to what the experts say. First and foremost, not all charter grounds are created ...read more

A charter isn’t like most other vacations. It takes a good deal of pre-arrival strategizing and loads of onsite tactical execution if it’s to be a success. Because so much happens before you even untie the dock lines, the first day, in particular, can not only seem like barely ...read more

The following story is part of SAIL magazine’s recent 50th-anniversary coverage. For more, click here. Watching a tropical sunset from the deck of a sailboat that’s yours for the week may be a common pastime today, but the bareboat charter industry wasn’t always a thing. Only ...read more

In my experience, every charter has a kind of a theme to it, often encapsulated in a single moment. For me, during a recent weeklong charter off the coast of Belize that moment came toward the end of our first day out. We’d left the Sunsail base (sunsail.com), located part way ...read more