Dirk and Sandy have been owners and frequent captain/mate/chef aboard Catatonic 440 since we purchased her in 2007. Sadly, Catatonic was lost during Irma in Hurricane Hole, St. John. Catatonic provided too many vacations of a lifetime to count and the outpouring of support from our guests has been heartwarming (https://www.facebook.com/yachtcatatonic). Dirk returned to Hurricane Hole the day after Irma to find Catatonic inverted, high and dry in the mangroves. A day charter catamaran, Off Cay, that had sailed out of the storm, adopted Dirk and they spent the week after Irma assisting with emergency communications and helping with on site relief on St. John. Our goal is to help rebuild the cruising grounds we have come to love so much in the Virgin Islands. We established http://vistrongcharters.org which will offer captain-only humanitarian charters aboard vessels that survived Irma in coordination with http://sailorshelping.org to help local business that attract charters rebuild.

We also acted immediately to locate another owner’s version flybridge Lagoon catamaran. We looked at over a dozen catamarans in Florida only three days after returning stateside. We are happy to announce that we found the perfect catamaran to continue Catatonic’s legacy. Many of our bookings for Catatonic have agreed to re-book their charters dates with us in our temporary cruising grounds this fall, the Abacos Islands in the Bahamas. Our first charter of the season commences October 22 and many of our charters are rebooking flights to join us aboard. For their loyalty we are upgrading them from our 2005 Lagoon 440 to the 2011 Lagoon 500 at no additional charge. We have secured all of our water toys and will share our love of the Abacos (Sandy and I were married and chartered in 2002 & 2016) with our guests. Between Abacos charters, Dirk will be operating captain only humanitarian charters in the Virgin Islands. We will reposition Catatonic 500 from the Abacos to the Virgin Islands as soon as we get our first booking in VI booking in 2018. Thanks, Captain Dirk & Sandy #VIStrong