Wanna Swap?

[knot anchored]

Ok so here's the deal, my husband and I are looking to experience catamaran living. However...we do not need to be waited on hand and foot and do not share a social group that is even remotely interested in doing something like this.
We have looked everywhere for a cabin rental. Shared responsibilities, helping out sailing etc.
We might as well be hunting for unicorns...
Thought we were onto something when a cruiser member posted an opportunity to share their experience but we don't want to just sit and wait hoping we will get selected from the 24,000 responses they received.
And we don't want to spend $14,000 for a boat for the 2 of us for the week.

Do catamaran cabin rentals exist or are we just chasing leprechauns?

We would even be interested in swapping an experience in our waterfront home 45 minutes from Toronto for a cat experience. Great place to hide from summer hurricane season.

There MUST be something out there.
Make a suggestion, we're listening!
Who are we?
We are in our mid forties and looking to make a catamaran our home in the VERY near future.
We've hit the Miami and Annapolis shows and at this point are just putting together a timeline to make it happen.

Any information on cabin rentals or catamaran shared experience would be appreciated.

[smaarch]

Don't know your time frame, but maybe joining a yacht club as a non-boat owning associate member will put you in a social circle where it is more likely to happen.
It definitely happens ... and without unicorns. At least once a year I get an email from a good friend about sharing a charter somewhere in the world and usually several other offers to just go sailing.

[pathlesschosen]

A couple charter companies offer cabin rental. Dream Yacht Charter is one.

The wife and I were in the same situation a couple years ago. We finally just chartered our own cat offering invitations to friends. We have yet to go alone. Amazing how nobody was interested. Now we charter larger and larger cats just to hold the group, with people sleeping on the couches.

Enjoy!

[Rubikoop]

Knot Anchored, If you are considering moving on to a cat then I'm not sure why you would want to have others onboard during a "test run". The prices you quote seem really high. I work for CYOA on St Thomas, feel free to hit the website. There are 36' and 40' cats available for less then half of the $14k you mentioned and you will have the whole boat. That's for a week. If you're not comfortable initially doing everything on the boat, you can request a skipper for about $200/day to come along to do as little, or as much of the sailing as you want. There is a vast difference between a crewed charter and a bareboat skipper. If you really want the live aboard experience then you would be anchoring out and eating aboard most meals, be frugal with fresh water, learn the care and feeding of boat systems etc. I've taken people out and done that. Some have loved the self reliance and independence of the experience and gone forward to buy their own boat to cruise on. Others have hated the work!!! Doing dishes, cooking, monitoring battery levels etc. Some come down and want to grab a mooring or get a slip every night and eat ashore, which is fun but incredibly expensive when you spread those costs out over months... You might look at traveltalkonline dot com and see about cabin sharing. Sometimes there's people who've chartered a cat and then had some of the group not be able to go leaving space available. My impression from being in the charter business for the past few years is that the typical charter guest is here to party buying $7 drinks at the beach bars with some sailing in between. I know a lot of liveaboards and that isn't their lifestyle.

[Sailmonkey]

Trade winds charters offers cabins

[IslanderWannaBe]

i found these as well. Have thought about my wife and I checking into next year:

Home

[knot anchored]

Thanks for the info everyone. After hitting trade wind and cyoa we figured that the terminology we were googling was the problem.
When you punch in catamaran cabin charters or shared cabin charters more of what we're looking for comes up.

We enjoy meeting other boaters so sharing a boat with strangers is not necessarily a bad thing just new friends we haven't met yet!

Even going with a low season charter company all the fees add up to no less then $10,000 and that's fine but we would rather save that money and put it towards OUR boat. It's the experience we're interested in.

We enjoy a good $7 drink with an umbrella as much as anyone but our focus is the live aboard lifestyle. I guess we have a unique perspective setting out in search of this getaway.

The learning never stops, the more we explore, the more we learn. Now we're looking forward to some cat time..

[Hoofsmit]

Hi
We are on the same road, we bare boated in BVI in February this year for4 weeks to get the feel, took a friend but still had a cabin free which we didn't fill but was ideal for storage.
Our idea, was to do a month on the water to loose a bit of the rose tinted glasses of a holiday. It did confirm our dreams, but also gave some reality to living on a cat.
It was a 2006 Lagoon 380 3 cabin from Bvi yacht charter which was in good condition well maintained, but we had 3 cars replaced on the main track, think it had motored for the last few charters as they went on day two in 20 knots to wind close hauled.
I would recommend chartering a cat that you fancy owning as your choices become more apparent .
Money well spent when you consider the investment of your own boat, also an eye opener to costs and maintance of an older craft.
Good luck with finding a cabin, but having the responsibility of being in charge would be a good experience