Gutted
Bimini’s Compleat Angler lost in fire.
A8
Vol. 2, No. 11
Grounded
Read the heat
Second yacht hits Lyford Cay reef.
Thermal imaging can make you safer.
A7
A32
www.the-triton.com
February 2006
Brokers, vendors prepare for strong Miami show By Lucy Chabot Reed Brace yourselves. If the word from brokers around Ft. Lauderdale is any indication, the Miami Yacht and Brokerage Show and the Miami International Boat Show are shaping up to be one massive release valve. “We’re expecting Miami to bring the international traffic that Ft. Lauderdale didn’t,” said Nick Bischoff, executive vice president for sales and marketing
at Allied Richard Bertram in Ft. Lauderdale. “The pent-up demand has reached an all-time high. Interest rates have stopped climbing, fuel is down since Wilma, and with seven hurricanes in 18 months, people want to get out and use their boats. We expect it to be a really good sales environment for us.” Several other brokers used that phrase – pent-up demand – to express how some of their largest clients were feeling. They also mentioned eager,
excited and ready. “I expect to see a lot more people coming with their checkbooks in hand ready to do deals,” said Whit Kirtland, president of Merrill Stevens Yacht Sales in Miami. The difference in this year’s Miami show, to be held Feb. 16-20, will be felt on the docks and in the aisles. The in-water part of the show itself won’t change much. While it will include more than 1.2 million square feet of
Can You Marry Me? Being married at sea has all the romance any lovers could want on Valentine’s Day. For yacht captains, it’s not a matter of desire but of ability and regulations. Of course. By Lucy Chabot Reed It seems a completely normal thing to do: The captain of a ship – given the power to do just about anything while at sea – stands proudly before the betrothed, recites a relevant story from Ecclesiastes, asks those fateful questions and pronounces the couple husband and wife. But a captain’s power to officiate marriages is a nautical myth, deeply steeped in the psyches of sailors the world over. There is no express power given to captains in any of the major licensing governments of the globe. Yet, like true love, it’s not impossible. To begin, there is no easy yes or no answer to the question “can a
See MARRY ME, page A26
space and hold more than 550 new and used luxury yachts, it is limited in that it can only handle so many yachts of a certain size because of space and draft issues. Most brokers interviewed for this story expect to see the difference on the docks, with more and better-qualified attendees. Merrill-Stevens has 16 slips to
See MIAMI SHOW, page A18
Yacht captains, too, can have a personal life FT. LAUDERDALE – In the heat of the winter cruising season with Valentine’s Day looming, we turn our thoughts to cupid. Is there such a thing as romance for busy yacht captains, or does being a megayacht captain mean giving up thoughts of white picket fences and From the Bridge the pitter-patter of Lucy Chabot Reed little feet? Introducing this topic is in no way meant to imply that everyone should marry and have children. But just as couples who work together have figured out how to make it work, couples who don’t work together have just as many compromises to make. Maybe more. As always, individual comments are not attributed to any one person in particular so as to encourage frank and open discussion. The attending captains are identified in a group photograph on page A24. We invited captains without any knowledge of their marital status. As it turned out, all Bridge attendees were married or in committed relationships. And all employed. So how do they do it? How do they keep their relationships together when the time apart is long? “My wife married a sailor,” one captain said. “Everybody thinks it’s an unusual situation, but men have been doing this for thousands of years.”
See THE BRIDGE, page A24