Back at work during some quite weeks in the summer of 2009 I started investigating to possibilities to invest in a bareboat in Greece. During the trip in 2008 to eastern Greece we were at one point moored next to a Swedish ex Bare-boat. It had just finalized 5 years as a charter boat. My more knowledgeable friends took a closer look on board and came back with a very positive verdict of the boat’s condition. That was when buying a boat for charter became a real option for me.

That summer I checked out 3 companies, Moorings, a big Greek company and finally decided for the Swedish company Navigare-Yachting AB. The main reason was that the company is stressing its high quality boat maintenance – which we had experienced during 4 sailing trips to Greece and Croatia and also the fact that it was Swedish and any serious problem would be settled in a Swedish court of law would it ever have to come to that.

We chose a 40feet Bavaria which was the smallest available to minimize the step up in size from our normal boats (28feet) and also due to the money aspect. This we have so far not regretted.

The decision lead to a hectic period with arrange the loan in the bank (mainly in euro) and taking the necessary navigational and VHF radio courses during evening classes. The first sailing trip was booked for week 16 in 2012 when Navigare was arranging a new boat owner training course during 3-4 days, something we thought was absolutely necessary for us when making this big step from 28 to 40 feet.

Then 2-3 days before the trip the volcano ashes from Island grounded all flights and we were stuck at home. I think you can easily imagine our disappointment!

We would now have to wait another 5 months to do our maiden voyage on Freja and by then she would already have sailed some 20 weeks or so with strangers.

I have since learnt that the strangers are our very important customers and you should be happy with all you can get but in the spring of 2010 my feelings were more basic and selfcentred.