[Emerald]

My first bareboat charter became the educational opportunity of a lifetime. Not really relevant which charter company, they all have good and bad days.

It was towards the end of covid and getting boats were a nightmare. The charter company had to cancel so many charters and to their credit they found me a boat and got it moved over to St Thomas (original plan was Martinique to Grenada). I was thrilled… 2-year old Bali 4.5, floating condo on the sea for a relaxing two week sail all around the USVI. We combed over the boat, noted issues, but nothing crazy… And right outside the marina the the starboard engine impeller went.

… After that was fixed, couple hours later the sink backed up. Turned out the head system had the paper grinder and the drain system basically had 2 year old paper mache blocking all drainage. 2 years of old waist had collected. We had water maker issues, electrical issues, cooling issues, generator issues, main halyard desheathed with the sail 1/3 up and suck, starboard sail reverse drive would not engage almost all the time (unpredictable), aft latter welds broke, dingy engine issues, power panel issues, nav issues, bilge pumps installed upside down and starboard pined, multiple seacocks were slowly leaking, … And on and on. I created a full punch list for the marina manager to work when we returned it. He was very appreciative.

Turns out this fairly new boat had sat docked for two years Anguilla where the owners from France had sailed it for about a month hard and never returned.. no maintenance, cleaning, nothing. It just was put up for charter a couple weeks before we needed it … And the charter company cleaned it up as best they could and sailed it to the USVIs for us. …

I will tell you we opened every panel, touched every line, wire, cable, hose, seacock, you name it by the time this trip was over. I had a killer first mate and he found us an app where we could use the camera to translate French to english and by the time this trip was over… There is not a manual, document, part, nook/crany on the boat we did not know.

…. And here is the most important part, we had a blast. A couple of the wives bitched a little and I asked them… Has any of these issues impacted you and did you have to work on anything… Nope… So just have a good time, we are. And from there forward everyone just had a blast.

Could not imagine a better way to learn every bloody thing on a boat that what we dealt with. By the time we rounded St John and going to St Croix, we had everything good and we were comfortable we knew the boat like we owned it.

It was only the last sail back to St Thomas where the main got stuck 1/3 up when the halyard desheathed … So we turned on the engines and rocked are way back to Christmas cove for great swimming and killer pizza. Charter company covered the fuel, gave us a big discount (I took the higher credit value than ended up making the next trip near free) and we all had a blast.

Never get trapped in a moment… momentary issues should not ruin a good time. As long as the boat is not sinking, throw up the sail and have fun.