Every December, the world’s leading charter brokers gather on the Caribbean island of Antigua for an industry-only boat show. Yachts display the best elements of their charter programs, and some enter the chef and tablescaping competitions, which highlight crews that are creating some of the best dining and entertainment experiences afloat.

This year, the crew from one yacht—the Oceanco Wheels—absolutely dominated, winning first prize for food and decorating alike among all the superyachts that entered.

Chef Leny Belin and chief stewardess Emily Birkett led the effort. Belin had to incorporate two secret ingredients that judges foisted on him—caviar and tamarind—in a way that worked with the carnival theme Birkett and her team organized.

“It’s not an easy theme to design a menu for, but he did it with each course,” Birkett says.

Brokers stepped on board to find themselves amid cotton-candy and popcorn stands. “We had a game that our second stewardess put together, like a darts game to burst a balloon with a prize inside,” Birkett says. “We had the toffee apples and the balloon arches, and then they sat down at the table that had Ferris wheels with appetizers on them.”

The caviar got served with the fish course (an easy pairing), while the tamarind ended up being in the stalks of the candy apples, as well as grated over the top of the dessert for a sweet-and-sour element.

Wheels, which is in the Frasser fleet, is headed to the Mediterranean this summer and can re-create the experience for charters, Birkett says, especially the smiles that helped the team win: “I think it was as much the spirit of the crew and the good vibes we have on board that really shone through.”  

Just Press Play

Wheels is a 2008 Oceanco that most recently was refitted in 2022. The yacht accommodates 12 guests in six staterooms, including a split-level master. Relaxation spaces include a cinema that seats eight people, with extra beanbag seating for children. More than 4,000 movies are available to view from the yacht’s library, with a surround-sound system that brings all the action to life.

The Yacht

There are 21 crew aboard Wheels, and the yacht is outfitted to help them create all kinds of memorable experiences. Just one example is the main salon, where retractable ceiling panels conceal disco lights, and wall units hide smoke machines. For fans of outdoor fun, half the lower deck is dedicated to watersports gear, toys and tenders.

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That feels nice, doesn’t it? Post-COVID?

Of course, nobody can be certain what’s going to happen with the pandemic this winter, but by all accounts as of press time, more than a few people were planning on heading to Antigua right about now for the charter vacations they were forced to put off in 2020 and 2021.

“This year is even better because we have a vaccine mandate,” says Sarah Sebastian of Nicholson Yacht Charters & Services on Antigua. “Everyone coming to Antigua by sea or by air has to have a vaccination unless they’re under 12 or have a reasonable doctor’s letter. They can come to Antigua and go straight to the boat and set off.”

Sebastian says that, between re-bookings from last winter’s season and new bookings from people desperate to get back to normal life, yachts that have committed to being in Antigua this winter are already mostly booked out. She’s now booking charters well into May and June, and is encouraging clients who want to charter out of Antigua for the next winter season, in 2022-23, to start calling now.

Clients wanting to book for this winter can still call, she says; if they’re willing to be flexible about the yacht, that might help. “If you have flexible dates, even better,” she adds, but “we’re short of inventory because the boats are all booked.”

It’s still up in the air as to what kind of itineraries will be possible. There are now some great seven-day itineraries that keep the charter yacht entirely in Antigua’s waters, she says, and it’s possible that this year, clients will be able to add St. Barts and St. Maarten into the mix without a lot of extra COVID-19 protocols.

“You’re still going to need to take a PCR test,” she says, “but we have doctors who can come on board. It makes that easy. You don’t have to go to a clinic or a hospital. The results can be emailed to the captain.”

Seven Days Around Antigua

Nelson’s Dockyard is named for Horatio Nelson, who was there in the 1780s to help enforce British laws in the colonies.  

Shirley Heights is an old military lookout with great views from up on high. On Sunday nights, local bands break out the steel drums and more for a party where all are welcome.  

Beaches, Beaches and More Beaches: Antigua and its sister island, Barbuda, are home to 365 beaches. (That’s one for every day of the year, as the marketing folks like to say.)

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Under the cloak of fog, the 50-foot sailing vessel Atea made a break for it. Owners John Daubeny, Kia Koropp and their children, Braca and Ayla, had been on a pandemic lockdown in a South Africa marina for two months. Their plan to island-hop from St. Helena to Ascension to Cape Verde en route to Europe had fallen apart as those ports slammed shut along with ports worldwide.

But there were signs in summer 2020 that Europe was opening to cruisers. Rather than linger in uncertainty in wintry South Africa, the foursome set sail that June on a nearly 6,000-mile direct transit to Europe, navigating pandemic restrictions while exploring destinations in both the Eastern and Western hemispheres.

Since purchasing Atea in 2011, this New Zealand-based family has embodied the yacht’s Maori name, which means “unencumbered and free.” It’s a philosophy both parents have long embraced. In 1993, at age 25, Daubeny, a British national, embarked on a four-year circumnavigation in a 27-foot sloop. Koropp, a Puerto Rico-born American expat, backpacked through Africa and the South Pacific for four years before sailing in 2006 from Seattle to New Zealand.

Braca, 9, and Ayla, 7, have grown up aboard the cutter-rigged Ganley Solution. They visited such locales as Malaysia, Madagascar and the Maldives before the age most children take their first school field trip.

In November 2018, the family sailed to South Africa and stored Atea in Saldanha Bay, around 90 miles north of Cape Town. They returned in early 2020 to repair and provision Atea before their March departure on their Atlantic itinerary—then the pandemic erupted. Koropp was visiting a wine distributorship just as news broke of an impending ban on alcohol sales. She bought 100 bottles of wine, tripling their onboard inventory. “We stowed it in the bilge, under the beds and settees, and in a few scattered lockers around the boat,” she says.

Their friends told them that being on a boat was the best place to be during the pandemic. “You can go anywhere,” they said. But to Koropp, the reality was more complicated: “If you don’t have a country that is going to let you in, you’re not going to float around in the mid-Atlantic with no purpose.”

They did have a purpose: reach Europe. And the steel-hulled Atea was capable of a direct transit. Its previous owner had outfitted it for offshore cruising, with four battery banks, as well as dual fuel filters and water pumps. It carries 225 gallons of fuel and 370 gallons of fresh water.

However, Atea’s rudder, rigging and engine had just undergone significant repairs. “None of them had been tested,” Daubeny says.

It was a risk they were willing to accept. With their traditional parting cheer of “Land go!” the family waved goodbye to the African mainland on June 4, 2020, and started their Atlantic voyage.

“We decided at the start we wouldn’t count the days,” Daubeny says. “Instead, we celebrated each thousand-mile passage.”

The kids had slime baths and a fake-snow fight. They enjoyed the sun and a swim during the doldrums. Save for four rough days in the Northeast trades, battling wind on the nose, it was great sailing.

“Some people hate passage,” Koropp says. “We feel like we finally get to relax. Our family gets into a routine. We play games together. It’s the opposite of when we’re onshore because then you’re doing as much as you can.”

They quickly switched into go mode upon reaching the Azores on day 52. “The Azores was well-set-up by the time we got there,” Koropp says. “They emailed us asking, ‘Can we do anything for you on arrival?’ They delivered french fries, shakes and hamburgers for the kids.”

After a negative COVID-19 test, the family was free to explore the archipelago. They clambered over the volcanic landscapes of Pico and Faial. On Terceira, they attended a bullfight. A month later, they moved on to Portugal. “We could just walk into the best wineries in the Duoro Valley because there were no tourists around,” Koropp says.

By October 2020, however, the situation was changing. “We could see Europe was struggling with the second wave of the pandemic,” Daubeny says. “More restrictions were being put in place. It cemented for us that it was time to move, to head south toward the Canaries.”

They’d intended to progress to the Caribbean from the Canaries, but an intriguing conversation with another cruiser sent them on a 1,000-mile detour to Gambia, West Africa. They sailed 156 miles up the Gambia River to Misang Island, through River Gambia National Park. “Hippos were around the boat,” Koropp recalls. “Crocodiles came into the water. You could hear chimpanzees howling in the trees at sunset.”

Few yachts venture into this area, so the English-speaking locals greeted Atea with great excitement. “The Gambians are incredibly warm, hospitable and inclusive,” Koropp says. The family was invited to a child’s naming ceremony, for which a local tailor made them bespoke traditional outfits.

In February, Atea rocked the trade winds across the Atlantic to Antigua, covering 2,700 miles in 19 days. “This is the best year ever for being in an island group in the Caribbean,” Daubeny says. “It is difficult and expensive to go through the pandemic regulations and move from one island group to another, but once you’re here, it’s fantastic. Everything is open. It’s really uncrowded. It’s glorious. “

On St. Martin, they reveled in the happy-hour party scene. On Barbuda, they kitesurfed by day and enjoyed beach bonfires by night.

Daubeny and Koropp credit their decade of cruising life for giving them confidence to embark on their epic voyage. “You have to be flexible and not afraid of the unknown,” Koropp says. “We’ve had a great year. We made a good decision and have been able to cruise in this very difficult year. You just need to be comfortable with not knowing what comes next.”

Captain’s Log

Cape Town to Azores: 52 days, 5,888 nautical miles; Azores to Portugal: 7 days, 969 nm; Portugal to Canaries: 6 days, 557 nm; Canaries to Gambia: 9 days, 993 nm; Gambia to Antigua: 19 days, 2,734 nm; Total from March 2020 to March 2021: 12,428 nm

What Came Next

The tranquility of the family’s Caribbean anchorage at Bequia was shattered with the eruption of the La Soufrière volcano on the neighboring island of St. Vincent on April 9. “The next morning, it was obvious we had to move [because] the air was thick with ash. So we sailed as far as we could to get clear air,” Koropp says. They joined a convoy of about a dozen boats that sheltered in the Tobago Cays. After three days, the wind shifted, the air cleared, and the cruisers emerged to toast with sundowners on the beach.

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The work of painter and textile artist Heather Doram is interwoven with the culture of Antigua. Her vibrant mural of a village market welcomes visitors to the baggage area of V.C. Bird International Airport. She designed the national dress, its crisp white pinafore contrasting with the madras plaid beneath. Her prize-winning Carnival Queen costumes dazzled crowds and judges for years with their sculptural dimension and movement. “They were a performance in themselves,” she says.

A performer herself, Doram has appeared in Antiguan films and as one of the hosts of Keepin’ It Real, the island’s version of the American talk show The View. But the greatest pleasure for this seamstress’s daughter comes from her textile works, which have appeared at the La Biennale di Venezia in Italy and have been showcased in the US State Department’s Art in Embassies program.

“I have something to say, as have the women in my line who handed down these skills to me but perhaps did not have the canvas that I do,” she says. “My art speaks for them.”

For her numerous cultural contributions—including serving as the government’s culture director—Antigua awarded Doram its Grand Cross of the Most Illustrious Order of Merit.

What inspired the national dress? We had to design it based on the post-emancipation period of 1834. Women would have only had one dress, and they wore a pinafore to protect it, which they made by bleaching the bags that held flour. I chose the madras plaid of red, gold and green to reflect our connectivity to Africa.

Please describe your artwork. I like to make my surfaces three-dimensional. People wonder, “What is that?” and move in closer to see what’s happening. I like to include found objects—a piece of silk, coconut fibers—and paint over them to create texture and interesting surfaces.

Heather Doram’s Antigua A-List

Valley Church Beach (Jolly Harbor): It’s crystal-clear. The view of that side of the island is beautiful.

Garden Grill at the Tides (St. John’s): Everything is so fresh. I like their salads and sweet potato fries.

Le Bistro (Hodges Bay): The French chef has been there forever, so you know everything is just the way you want it. Their steaks are done to perfection.

Salt Plage (Dickenson Bay): It’s a delightful place to have lunch right on the sea.

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Sarah Sebastian usually knows, by about midsummer, how the winter charter season is going to turn out on Antigua. As a director of Nicholson Yacht Charters & Services, which is based on the Caribbean island, she has a laser-focus on how many clients are booking vacations; and as coordinator of the Antigua Charter Yacht Show, she knows how many yachts are reserving slips for December.

“We’re looking at a great winter,” Sebastian told Yachting in early August. “Because the BVI were really wiped out three years ago, a lot of people did relocate to here and further south to St. Lucia, and they saw how beautiful Antigua was.”

Also on her radar is the island’s V.C. Bird International Airport, where American Airlines just announced daily nonstop flights from New York City to Antigua beginning in November. Those are in addition to regular flights between the island and Miami, giving U.S. residents more scheduling options than in the past.

“It’s making it easier for people to get here,” Sebastian says. “We’re seeing more and more charter pickups here ­because we have so many international flights coming in now.”

Catamarans and mega-yachts are dominating the charter scene, she says, with a number of superyachts that used to base at Sint Maarten now staying at Antigua, as hurricane repairs on Sint Maarten continue.

“We do have quite a few mega-yachts that base here when they’re not on charter, with the jets landing here and then cruising to St. Barth’s,” she says.

And this winter, those yachts will be more connected than ever, thanks to infrastructure improvements for Wi-Fi.

“They’re all going to have fiber-optic cable this winter,” Sebastian says of the charter-focused marinas. “They’re outside my office right now laying the cable. It’s going to mean super-fast internet for everybody.”

Must-See Antigua Spots

Jacqui O’s Beach House is south of Half Hyde Bay on Antigua’s southwest shore. Yachts can anchor right off the beach, so guests eating lunch have a view of their ride.

Shirley Heights is a restored military lookout with great views of the yachts in English and Falmouth harbors, and some truly rockin’ steel-drum bands. Nelson’s

Dockyard is a national park with buildings from the days when Admiral Horatio Nelson was there for the British navy.

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