We are chartering Flyer II from Alba Sailing in Oban.
Flyer II is an owners-spec yacht, and this is the first time we’ve sailed one of those.
The economics of the yacht charter market are very straightforward. Cram ’em in and charge ’em more. So your standard 35′ charter yacht will have two rather small double cabins with low headroom at the back (the lower of the two pictures on the left). It will have a settee in the main cabin that can be converted into a double bed, and a triangular cabin at the front which is very pleasant to sleep in with plenty of headroom when you stand up, although rather challenging to find bedding for. Result – sleeps 8! Of course with 8 people’s worth of luggage, food, wet gear, safety equipment etc the boat is hopelessly overcrowded but that doesn’t really matter because the charter market is mainly aimed at sunny climes where you can lounge around on the decks while underway, sprawl in the cockpit for your sundowner drinks, swim (and shh! make peepee) in the sea, and go ashore to a restaurant for dinner. All the spares are kept in the boat stores ashore, and if you are really lucky you may find that someone has munificently left you a couple of tie wraps and a roll of duct tape to patch up any problems while you wait for help to arrive.
Anyone who’s ever owned a boat knows that you end up with tons of STUFF that you have to keep aboard. Safety stuff, spares stuff, engineering parts and toolkits and repairs stuff, the list goes on and on. And in fact Alba Sailing helpfully provide a list of Stuff. Read it and, if you ever consider buying a boat, remember that you should have every single bit of it onboard if you want to do proper offshore sailing (Flyer, like the rest of the Alba fleet, is Category C offshore rated). It’s a significant investment:
https://www.alba-sailing.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sampleinventory.pdf
Whoo-whee, that is a lot of stuff. And Sid and Doris are very aware that it is a lot of stuff, because as part of the yacht handover we have had to go through the whole boat ticking it off. A strange but important ritual whose main purpose is to ensure that you know every piece of safety/engineering/repair equipment that you have on board, in the event that you might suddenly need it.
So where are you going to keep that in the eight-berth option? Not a hope, is the answer. Of course there are the usual places – anything that looks like a settee or a bed will have an odd-shaped space under it, and sailors become used to the ritual of pulling off velcro’d-on cushions, prising up plywood hatches, and trying to force too many things into a damp Tetris puzzle underneath – but the spaces in the main cabin are small, and above-decks the lockers under the cockpit seats are disappointingly shallow, because underneath them are those two cabins with low headroom.
Hence the “owners” option. It’s not so much that the owner wants a king-size master suite with his ‘n’ her bathrooms (although some boats do offer that, we’ve been told), as that the owner has got all the Stuff and needs somewhere to stowe it neatly so the boat doesn’t look like a garden shed indoors.
So if you scroll back up to the picture, you will see three very important differences in the top picture:
- The bathroom – the green bit – is actually a practical size to use (and of course you have to share it with fewer people).
- Next to it on the right is a wardrobe. This is waterproof and drained, and it’s where you hang all your wet drippy outdoor gear when you come in and you keep the lifejackets here too.
- Next to it on the left is a big white square. This is unexplained on the diagram but it is your very own onboard Aladdin’s Cave. These pictures, of the door to the Cave from the bathroom, and some of the contents, don’t even start to do it justice. It goes all the way to the back of the boat for storing sails, oars, spare but important pieces of wood, and other bulky, heavy and rarely-used items.
If you’d like to know more about Flyer herself, and see some much prettier pictures (with all the Stuff neatly packed away out of view) just click here: https://www.alba-sailing.co.uk/yachts/flyer-ii/
They finish by saying “The result is – she sails really well and ‘punches well above her weight’ against other yachts.” And that is absolutely true. We were very impressed by the speed we got today, in some tricky downwind points of sail, and by the way that she cuts through the waves. She’s clean, tidy, well-maintained, and really now it’s up to us to sail her properly.