Charter Catamaran "Viking Dream" - A couple risks going
it alone in the Caribbean catamaran vacation business - Sitting in
the salon of Viking Dream, their impeccably groomed Leopard 4700 catamaran,
Mark and Sally Duncan are the very picture of contentment. Well, they
might be a little pressured by the deadlines of an upcoming catamaran
charter on board, but they've been doing this work for so long now
that there's no doubt all will be in place by the time the guests
arrive. Having only recently bought Viking Dream and having supervised
her refit, Mark and Sally are as happy as two kids at Christmas, purring
over their new toy. “It was a purchase of the heart,”
Sally says. “It felt really right when we bought her because
of our previous history with Viking Dream. Besides, if we didn't try,”
she continued, “we'd always say 'Why didn't we?'. We're just
so pleased to enter the Caribbean catamaran vacation industry."
When Mark and Sally first considered the life in the Caribbean catamaran
vacation industry, they were on a year's leave from their corporate
jobs in the UK, trying to find some balance in their until-then crazy
lives. Sally had been Training and HR manager with a major British
retail group, sorting out employees' problems, whilst Mark had been
on the other side of retail, setting up high-end malls in airports.
He had 250 staff and 25 managers reporting to him and, when he wasn't
traveling for business, he was dealing with the inevitable headaches
of management.
“One day in early 2001, Sally sent me a text,” Mark
told us recently, “and asked me how my day was going. I answered
in four letters, and when I asked her the same question, she gave
me the same answer. We decided that evening to take a year out and
within a week we’d resigned from our jobs and planned a world
tour.” They bought round-the-world air tickets, rented out
the house and took off for some rest and recreation. Six years later,
they're still traveling.
Their way to the BVI led them through a seven-month “Zero-to
Hero” RYA Professional Skipper and Crew course, although they
both were already experienced sailors. With that in hand, Mark and
Sally applied to the Moorings crewed yacht charter division but
nothing was immediately available, so they spent a season in Greece
and Croatia running flotillas. “It was the worst-paid job
we've ever had,” said Mark, “but the best fun. It was
awesome.”
Eventually, in November 2003, the call came from Moorings in Tortola
that there was a yacht awaiting them. “We arrived in the Bahamas,”
Sally recalls, “and we had a week to get her ready and sail
her down to Canouan.” After a couple of seasons, however,
a family emergency forced them to take an unpaid leave and return
to the UK.
Upon their return, they were assigned Viking Dream in the BVI, which
they ran until February 2006. After some months of thinking about
their future, Sally and Mark went to their financial advisor in
the UK and asked some hard questions. “Always, year after
year, in the back of our minds,” says Sally, “we'd been
thinking, 'should we be doing this for ourselves?'” They asked
their advisor to let them know if they could manage to buy their
own boat. “I actually told him,” says Mark, “to
tell me how I couldn't do it. What I wanted him to say was 'Don't
be silly, there's no way you can do this'. But he came back and
said, 'Actually, we can do this'.” Now a life of a catamaran
yacht rental Captain and Chef team may become reality
On their way back to BVI for another season with Moorings, they
checked the brokerage listings and saw, to their surprise, that
Viking Dream was up for sale. “There comes a point,”
Mark says, “when becoming your own boss is the only answer
to some of the questions you might have. With no disrespect to
the Moorings or to the private owners we'd met, we felt we could
run a catamaran charter yacht better or more efficiently than
we had seen them run. If you don't do it, you'll always regret
it.” Yahoo.
The niche that Mark and Sally on Viking Dream occupy is a competitive
one, so setting themselves apart from the pack is a big challenge.
“We knew there were other (Leopard) 4700s going into the
BVI fleet at the same time as us,” Mark says. “And
there were several already in the fleet, so we felt we had to
make ourselves look significantly different from the rest. We
spent a long time deciding on the colors we were going to use.
We thought about bright pink or electric purple to try and make
ourselves stand out but we decided it just wasn't us, so we stayed
with navy canvas work and introduced the yellow on the Viking
helmet and on the cushions.” Those Viking helmets make all
the difference and seem to be a hit with Virgin Island charter
yacht brokers.
The challenge was to create a brand. “We come from a retailing
background,” said Mark, “and that is all about creating
a strong brand image which we've tried to do with this boat. There's
been a little bit of history with the Viking helmets, so when
we bought her we decided to build the helmets into the logo.”
“In fact,” says Sally, “we didn't actually buy
a boat, we bought the eight Viking helmets. The boat just came
with them.”
“One thing we were trying to get across to the charter
yacht brokers at the Caribbean Charter Yacht Society show,”
Mark says, “was that Viking Dream isn't just another boat,
she's a very smart looking charter yacht with a bit of character.”
The Leopard wasn't the only catamaran Mark and Sally were looking
at. “We particularly like the look, and by all reports the
performance, of Catanas,” said Mark, “but they were
prohibitively expensive.” Cost wasn't the only consideration,
according to Sally. “One of the business decisions we did
make, and why we chose the 4700, was that, starting a new business
in a new country, we wanted to minimize all the news,” she
says. “We would have to re-learn all the systems, source
new parts, whereas this boat we know inside and out. Plus, there's
a whole warehouse full of Robertson and Caine parts here if we
need something.”
“Somebody did tell us,” Sally says, “that it
was really nice to meet some owner-operators who had bought the
boat as a business to charter, not who were chartering to cover
the cost of the boat. We have bought this as our yacht charter
business.”
Electric Toilets:
Having added electric toilets and installed a new generator, Mark
and Sally are holding off on their next round of improvements
until the end of the season. The list is a long one, starting
with a water maker and including new anchors, a new RIB with beefed-up
davits and a new DVD system. We
Sitting in their salon with laptop humming as Mark answers e-mails
and Sally prepares a provisioning order, life aboard seems quiet
and relaxed--a marked contrast to life on charter when the working
day can be 16 to 18 hours long. “‘Viking’ means
Sea Traveler in the Norse language,” says Mark. “We
both love the sea and we love to travel, so there's nowhere else
we'd rather be.”
“When I'm on charter, I never stop,” Mark continues.
“I don't understand those crews who say they get bored on
charter? There's always something to be done for the guests.”
And whether it's slicing fresh-baked bread, finessing a marketing
e-mail, or introducing guests to the joys of the Bubbly Pool,
its all part of life aboard Viking Dream.
