For over a decade a husband and wife team have managed a fleet of sailing yachts in the Mediterranean offering them for charter.
Calling their company Dream Sailing, Michelle and Alan began with just one yacht and built up a fleet by working honestly with the yachts owners and chartering them out to guests who knew exactly what they would find when they got to go on board.
The professional way Dream Sailing ran the boats, sought just and fair returns for the owners they represented, and still managed to make sure the charter guests had the most wonderful of times, is a lesson that could be learned by many of the larger brokerage houses in business today.
But the doors at Dream Sailing are closing after ten years of hard work not because they have failed, but because regulation has pushed its bully boy approaches just too far.
Yachts of the size operated commercially by the likes of Dream Sailing simply cannot comply with regulations designed to stop tyrannical ship owners cramming a 30 man Pilipino crew into a single cabin on a freighter. The MLC and the Labour Convention simply has taken no notice of the good guy and has, in this case, swept them away from the industry it claims to protect.
Michelle and Alan know there is no greater reward than knowing people have had wonderful experiences aboard the yachts they managed and that that they will remember those experiences for the rest of their days.
Children have learnt to wake board, marriage proposals have been made, whales and dolphins sighted, birthday’s celebrated and blazing sunsets enjoyed in abundance.
To celebrate that, they have put together this book of memories, which they hope will remind guests of the special times shared aboard DreamCatcher, Kallista, Kishti, Dark Star and Blue Titan – days and nights of Dream Sailing.
You can look through the whole book here