Marcus RichardsHaving a yacht can mean having a little slice of heaven to enjoy whenever life gets too hectic on land. It can provide a place for you to settle and let the sight of water and light calm you; it can host good friends and family members, fostering quality time and building beautiful memories. It can also be a major pain if you need to move it. Yachts are huge, and while they can move across water, sometimes you don’t have the spare time to travel around the continent when you move across states. Or perhaps you’re taking an extended vacation, and while you don’t quite feel confident sailing your yacht across the ocean, you’d love to have it with you at your destination. The following will explore a few things you might want to know regarding yacht transportation. The goal is to make the process as speedy and headache-free as possible.
What Is Yacht Transport?
While yachts are vehicles in a sense, transporting them refers to shipping a yacht to a location instead of sailing it there or motoring it. People turn to yacht transport for a myriad of reasons, but often it is considered chapter, safer, and faster than sailing a yacht somewhere yourself. Crossing the ocean can be a dangerous undertaking, and even if you’re capable of handling that, you might not feel like such a serious voyage. For some people, yachting is supposed to be relaxing. Others can’t commit to the time it would take to move a yacht across a long distance for work or family reasons.
There Are Yacht Transport Services
That’s right; you don’t have to deal with the massive task of moving your yacht all by yourself. There are companies that offer solutions to the logistical problems surrounding yachts. While it can be nerve-wracking to hand over your yacht to someone else for transportation, many of these providers have years of yacht shipping experience using yacht carriers, so they know how to keep your yacht safe throughout the move.
Yachts are not like other cargo. They require special care, technical knowledge, and are often expensive enough that damaging them is a serious concern. As pointed out at crosschartering.com, technicians need to know how to perform inspections, plan routes, and test the stability of the deck if they want to transport yachts safely. Beyond this, yachts come in a variety of shapes and sizes, so nearly every single one requires elements of customization.
Scheduled Voyages Do Exist
To help keep costs low, some yacht transportation companies offer regularly scheduled sailings. These routes tend to exist between major yachting destinations around the world. This allows rates to be more competitive as multiple yacht owners are contributing to the cost of transportation. If your destination is less commonly traversed, there still might be a scheduled voyage that gets your yacht much closer to your destination from which you can organize the last leg of the journey.
Yacht Transport Is A Growing Industry
In recent years the need to move yachts has grown. This means a lot of things for the yachting industry, but when it comes to yacht transport, it means that you can expect regular and reliable services to be available. Because so many people are moving their yachts around, there is more likely to be a carrier leaving from somewhere near your yacht, going somewhere near where you want your yacht to be.
Transportation Options
There are four main ways to transport a yacht. There are overland transport options which work for shorter distances. These involve the use of a private or commercial trailer. Insurance coverage, transport permits, and trailer safety are all big components of this process.
Semi-submersible ships are designed to move big cargoes. They submerge their cargo holds using blasting. Typically yachts motor into position, and hull supports are then welded into place by divers. When the semi-submersible ship arrives, the process is reversed.
Yachts can also be shipped as deck cargo. This tends to be one of the more economical options and involves loading yachts by cranes either on the ship or shore. The rigging is left intact.
Depending on the size of a given yacht, sometimes container shipping is also an option. Typically this means being able to fit into a 39ft by 7.5 ft by 9.3 ft shipping container.
The above information should have explained the different elements involved in yacht transportation. Of course, yachts are extremely varied; speak to a transportation provider near you to get a better idea of what this information means for you and your yacht.
