It is well established in SuperYacht circles that what a Captain wants, he gets! Armies of ships agents generally stop at nothing to make sure the Captain and therefore ultimately, the owner receives what he needs.
Seldom do we as journalists ever need to avail ourselves of the services of an agent but when half way through a Caribbean assignment, one of our cameras began to display error messages, we knew there was only one thing to do, call in the experts.
Using satellite communications we contacted Kass Johnson-Halliday of the Superyacht agency; Dockside Management in Sint Maarten. Her staff in turn contacted Boolchand the islands authorized Nikon dealer, and the wheels began to turn.
The moment we stepped ashore at the IGY marina at Isle de Sol, Dockside Management had established duty free prices and confirmed availability. In the marina Veronica Rojo the Guest Services Co Ordinator was busy arranging taxis to get us to Philipsburg.
Then the Caribbean factor kicked in. Traffic to the city was found to have backed up and a 30 minute journey was being estimated to take 90 minutes.
The problem was, we had just a few hours on the ground before our flight took off for St Lucia.
Unperturbed, Veronica set up video links to the Boolchand store and the camera was checked using FaceTime. The camera part, it’s box, accessories and the international warranty where all checked as we watched on the screen of our iPad.
Once the deal was done by video Veronica set about getting the new camera part delivered while we ate lunch. Once it arrived the credit card formalities were completed and we owned a fully operational camera.
The upshot of it all was that, thanks to Dockside Management and IGY we got to the airport on time being able to and hoping to carry on with our assignment.
If only we had not been booked to fly to St Lucia with LIAT