Sustainability

• Lithium-ion battery upgrades
• 1825W solar panels
• Watt & Sea hydro-generator
• High-output 360Ah alternators
• All LED interior & exterior lighting
• Modern, high-efficiency appliances
• Victron Energy smart chargers / battery isolators
• 12V / 110V / 220V inverter capacity (w/ USB) in all cabins

 We kindly encourage guests to be mindful about their habits when it comes to single-use plastics during your trip. Don’t worry, there’s no room for shaming on our yacht. Instead, we believe in kindness and positive encouragement for people to take their journey toward reducing single-use plastics at their own pace. Every step in the right direction is toward a positive goal in our eyes. We’re truly proud to see guests routinely following up and sharing stories about how our positivity and examples during their trip helped pave the way for a more considerate approach to reducing single-use in their daily lives.

Why waste fresh water, when the Earth provides more than we need! We’re proud to reduce our dependency on running the onboard desalinator watermaker, thus minimizing our energy needs simply by catching what falls from the sky! Don’t worry, we don’t use the rainwater for drinking – only for keeping our SCUBA gear, water toys, and onboard equipment freshly rinsed to avoid early corrosion from sea water exposure. Ask your Captain to show how we’ve turned simple overboard drain scuppers into an overflow-protected rain catch & collection system, complete with deck wash pump & pressurized spray hose. No sailor ever said, “we have too much fresh water.” 

• Bed sheets, linens, and towels sustainably made from organic cotton, bamboo, and other materials.
• Cleaners, detergents, soaps, shampoos, and body scrubs made from earth & ocean-friendly ingredients.
• Reef-safe sunscreens containing positively no oxybenzone.
• Sponges, washcloths, and rags from recycled, repurposed, or natural sources.
• Cast-iron or stainless cookware with zero chemical treatment, like Teflon.
• Wooden & bamboo cooking utensils, cutting boards, and serving platters.
• Completely compostable trash can liners and bags.
• Apparel made with socially- and environmentally-sustainable practices.
• Eco-friendly copper-free antifouling paint on the yacht’s hull below the waterline.

Our sail inventory includes a square-top mainsail for improved shape and increased sail area, robust reefing features for control in all conditions, headsail foil optimization with draft stripes and tapered leech to improve lift, a custom ‘screacher’ headsail on bowsprit for boosting reaching power through a wide window of apparent wind angles, and an easy-to-handle voluminous, and high-draft asymmetric spinnaker in a sock for sailing deeper downwind.

We’re also thrilled to bring onboard a truly innovative device called the ReDeTech Protocycler+. With the Protocyler+, we can grind up, melt, extrude, and spool our collected ocean plastic pollution into a monofilament for our onboard 3D Printer to create usable items for you to take home! Since each of our trips includes volunteer opportunities for guests to help cleanup beaches and coastlines plagued by ocean plastic pollution, we’ll always have a supply of plastic polymers to feed the Protocycler+. As our guests, we encourage you to take home and showcase the creative way you cleaned a beach and turned the post-consumer waste into a usable product.

Through certified carbon sequestration techniques, we calculate the CO2 emissions for your travel and pay to offset that impact. Yep, you heard correctly. We pay for your emissions. We believe corporate sustainability practices should provide for consumers, not the other way around. Our business revolves around your participation in our trips, and this is just one way we like to show that we care.

Of course, as a sailing vessel first & foremost, we utilize the wind’s power to the fullest when we cruise the Caribbean’s splendid islands. While it might take slightly longer to reach a destination on a low-wind day, we have a feeling you won’t mind the slight “inconvenience” of a comfortable, relaxing, silent journey under sail. We reserve the use of our engines to exiting harbors, anchorages, and marinas where it would be unsafe to do so otherwise.

Even if it comes at a greater financial cost to us, we recognize that the further an item travels to reach us, the exponentially greater its total carbon emission. We’re actively taking steps to ensure our operations have an even lower emission profile in the long run by consciously purchasing products which don’t have to travel around the world to reach us.

Luckily in the Caribbean, we’re blessed with plentiful fresh tropical fruits, vegetables, spices, herbs, and protein-sources from local markets and vendors on island. Ever had starfruit, soursop, mango, guineps, or guava almost straight from the tree? Don’t worry, you certainly won’t miss your favorite chewy or crunchy delectables because we’re certain to keep your bellies full with a plethora of delicious and healthy meals and snacks during your vacation.

 The world is full of volunteer orgs showing up with their own plans to save the planet, but we take a slightly different approach – asking & listening to local communities and offering our hands to do the work. Our volunteer efforts focus on sustainable, culturally-sensitive, and community-based practices, which we’ve refined over several years of cruising the Caribbean. Hurricane Irma redefined the landscape of the Caribbean, both above and below the sea, and we’ve been working to help restore the health of the coastlines, ecosystems, and communities recovering from this immense natural disaster. During your trip you’ll meet with local non-profit leaders and other volunteers, learn about evidence-based and carefully structured volunteering, and become an integral contributor to ensuring the long-term health of each destination.

 

To be sustainable is to be wholly invested in a model of economic growth that doesn’t occur at the expense of others – flora, fauna, people, or resources. It takes a passion for creative solutions to build an enterprise with economic sustainability at it’s forefront, and we aim to show the travel & tourism industry that positive impact vacations are only possible with a shift toward circular resource utilization and fairness of labor. Hard, honest work deserves to be compensated at a fair wage, which is why you won’t find us skimping on staff or contractor pay or benefits. We believe that when our people are well cared for, they’ll be better equipped to offer the world-class service upon which we’ve built our name. Let’s welcome in a world of sustainable growth which factors all aspects of environmental, cultural/social, and economic sustainability.