LET THE SHIP TAKE THE STRAIN TO MAXIMISE YOUR CRUISING TIME. JANNEKE KUYSTERS AND HELEN FRETTER REPORT
At some point, perhaps in an anchorage far from home, every bluewater voyager is faced with a choice – do you sail on, or turn back and recross your wake?
And if neither option appeals or is practical, then is it time to consider selling up, getting a delivery crew to bring your boat home, or shipping back?
Planned in advance, shipping your yacht can help maximise your adventure time and open up new cruising areas that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible in a restricted time scale. Meanwhile, for cruisers facing an unexpected change of circumstances or shift in plans, shipping can keep the dream alive by bringing your yacht back to its home port, or moving it on to somewhere you can pick up the adventure in future.
We speak to industry experts, and sailors who’ve done it, for advice on how to use shipping routes to extend your sailing adventure.
HOW IT WORKS
Yacht owners looking to find out more about shipping their yacht are likely to contact either a yacht transport company such as Sevenstar, or a logistics specialist (known as freight forwarders) such as Peters & May or GAC Pindar. Sevenstar is a yacht carrier, in other words they operate their own ships (they are part of Spliethoff, a large Dutch shipping company), running to their own timetable. Freight forwarders charter vessels, or part of vessels, so may have a wider choice of routes and timings, and work with a chain of suppliers to move your yacht.
Sailing yachts that are shipped with their mast up are transported via a lift-on/lift-off ship, which has its own crane that can load and discharge yachts at a wide range of ports, including while at anchor, unlike container vessels which have to go into port to use the onshore cargo cranes.
There are also float-on/float-off yacht transporters, known as semi-submersible ships, such as those operated by DYT (also part of Spliethoff ).
“Typically we will charter a whole heavy-lift vessel to ship a group of boats from A to B,” explains Richard Howatt of Peters & May. “This works because we see volumes of boats all heading in the same directions at the same time of year, be it out of the Caribbean to avoid the hurricane season or into the Med for the season there. Essentially, we act as a broker and we try to book all these groups of boats together. Then, when there’s enough demand, we’ll go out onto the vessel market to charter.”
So, if you're planning to include a shipping element in your cruising plans, it’s advised to sta
