We had worked with Customs, the Department of Marine & Ports and the Bermuda Department of Tourism, in advance of us arriving to Bermuda. We let them know what we wanted to do. We were trying to seek the appropriate permission for everything so we could meet every specification and we wanted to make sure that we worked with the Government departments to fulfil our obligations.

We felt the venture was something that was good for Bermuda and that our best approach was to be open and completely honest with Government beforehand, to try and work with them to achieve the goal.

Once the Department of Tourism got wind of what we were up to they essentially started to drive the ship themselves. It was great. They really worked with us and tried to assist us where they could and the Minister thought it was a fantastic idea and gave his support to it.

I think there's a number of reasons. Firstly, it takes a lot of co-ordination. It takes a lot of research to understand how a liveaboard dive boat works and then I did a lot of market research to determine whether the market was correct. It also takes an awful lot of money. It's an investment in the equipment and the vessel itself.

And from a professional point of view there's a lot of qualifications involved in order to be officially recognised as an international captain. The insurance company which insures this vessel ? which is underwritten by Lloyd's ? requires that you have your MCA rating and that you're also licensed as an RYA captain and it takes a lot of time and effort to get your captain's license to that tonnage requirement.

Time at sea, you're talking about at least six months of the year. And then there's your references and you also have to go through the RYA and MCA licensing programmes where you're examined by an examiner and you're shown to be qualified to operate a vessel at a given tonnage.

So although Bermuda requires that you have a Bermuda marine pilot's licence, the insurance company for this vessel requires you have much more than that. And because we operate outside Bermuda we have to have a whole (slew) of international requirements as well. So perhaps that's why it's never been done in Bermuda before.

I trained as an engineer with Cable & Wireless Ltd. I'm a retired British Army Officer, I served in the Royal Anglian Regiment ? and the Bermuda Regiment. I also co-founded an American company, PointMedia Consulting LLC, and held a position as a senior consultant for a Bermuda-based technology company. We have a unique product. The Cayman Islands may have walls and 200-foot visibility with huge schools of fish, but what we have is wrecks. There's nowhere else in the world that has the proliferation of wrecks we have around the island ? both modern wrecks like the , that have been sunk on purpose, to wrecks like the and the which were cruise liners that actually wrecked on Bermuda's reefs.

The right off of Elbow Beach is the perfect example. It has unexploded (munitions) on the bottom and that makes it exciting for divers. They can be swimming around with things that are full of gunpowder.

So that's our niche. That's the selling point of the boat. We don't have huge schools of fish, we don't have the deep drop-offs and walls that the Cayman Islands may have, but we do have these wrecks and for people who are interested in wrecks, PADI offers a new wreck diving programme and Bermuda's the perfect destination for it.

Airline flights. Airlines are expensive. If we had less expensive transportation to the island, we would get more divers coming to the island and staying here. Also the hotels are quite expensive as well. You have to be able to pay for the full package to be able to do it whereas people can get flights to the Cayman Islands relatively inexpensively and stay in a hotel inexpensively ? that's what puts their numbers up as far as diving is concerned. I certainly hope so. I certainly hope that with the advent of lower fares to Bermuda that it's going to be better for business for us. That makes us more competitive with the other liveaboard dive boats around the world. I think it would be better for every aspect of Bermuda. None really. I had a part-time job once at Sonesta Beach (now the Wyndham Resort), stocking the bar. When I was 13 years old I worked as a cabin boy. But that was many, many years ago. I worked with Dolphin Quest a number of years ago, so I've touched on that experience, but that's it.

I know absolutely nothing as far as hospitality is concerned I just have my personality. But I think if you're genuinely interested in the product that you're selling and you're generally interested in the happiness of people that come onboard your ship, then you can do no wrong. I'm genuinely happy to have people onboard the boat. I'll just be myself. It's the best I can do.

Six to eight. Eight is our maximum. We have the capacity to sleep ten but we find that above eight people we can't provide the level of service that we really want to provide. So we normally keep it at six to eight. There are four and we're advertising for a local stewardess. We're hoping to get a young, energetic Bermudian. We had a stewardess in the Virgin Islands but that person didn't come with us here.

Outside Bermuda we're just one of many luxury motor yachts that offer a fully-crewed luxury yacht charter experience. There are many, many vessels that are out there doing the same thing. Most of them come through Bermuda on their way to Rhode Island in the season. We've had a number of vessels here in Hamilton Harbour over the last couple of weeks that were actually with us in St. Thomas and with us in Road Town, Tortola. We offer a luxury, crewed yacht experience. It's where guests essentially rent the entire boat and the crew and we go wherever they want to go. We feed them whatever they want to have ? as far as food and wine and beverages are concerned. We do whatever they want to do. It's their boat. They pretend as if they're the owner.

We stay basically within the Virgin Islands. We have a limited range in there because as a captain it's difficult to provide the best service in a huge area. You need to know an area very, very well in order to provide the best service. So we've been sticking to the British Virgin Islands, sometimes going across to St. Maarten and Anegada. Last year in June.

This is the first time. Two weeks ago when we sailed through St. George's Town Cut was the first time this boat's been in Bermuda waters. No. This boat's 22 years old. We've put a lot of effort into cleaning it, maintaining it and so on. It was a privately-owned yacht, owned by a person who once owned a well-known store in London that's now owned by somebody else. At that time it was also available for charter and, in fact, some celebrities have actually come and stayed onboard. The one that I can mention is Tom Cruise who has stayed on the boat with Penelope Cruz. They stayed here when they were on their honeymoon a number of years ago. The boat was previously called , before .

In London. We fly a red duster, a red ensign. Previously she was a US Coast Guard-documented vessel. I'm a bit of a 'foodie' so I like to make sure we have top-of-the-line-food. Our chef, Aaron Ball, is exceptional. He's very much into whole foods and holistic medicine and stuff like that so he tries to prepare, depending on the guests that are onboard, foods using organic ingredients, for example.

He's into French foods. We pair wines with food. Basically, we try and make food a big deal on the boat. When you're relaxed and you're on the ocean, you tend to eat more so we make food quite an experience. We take a lot of time with meals on the boat.

We have suppliers and you get to know to go to different places for different things. You may have a list of ten suppliers that you go to and only get one thing from each and that's how we provision when we're in the Virgin Islands. Here in Bermuda it's quite similar. We have three or four different distributors. Butterfield & Vallis we're hoping is going to come on board and help us out but right now we're working with Miles and Lindo's and Harrington Hundreds and MarketPlace for different things. Not really. I knew that the concept was good. I had sort of banked on that really. I mean if you're starting a business you want the business to be successful. I did a lot of research into it and I really thought that this was something that Bermuda needed ? it hadn't been done before.

No one had previous experience in running a liveaboard or, for that matter, a luxury charter yacht in Bermuda. It's a totally new thing for Bermuda and I think that it's kind of a vanguard in that the Government didn't really know how to apply the legislation to regulate the vessel. But they helped us. They did the best they could, piecing together different parts of legislation, tying it all together and determining how a luxury yacht would work with this situation.

I have a house in Paget. But we're required by the insurance and also by the international maritime organisation to keep a watch on the vessel at all times. So there's always one crew member on the vessel at all times, particularly when we're at anchor. When we're working and we're on charter, yes, I live onboard the boat.

We all do in order to provide the level of service. We're up late looking after their needs, as soon as they go to bed we clean everything up and prepare for the next day. We get a couple hours sleep and then we're up early the next morning setting up for breakfast, vacuuming, tidying, cleaning, making sure everything's ready to go.

We provide all the things you would expect to have in a top-notch hotel experience ? while the guests are out on the aft deck eating their dinner, there's a stewardess downstairs turning their beds down, putting chocolates on their pillows, making sure the towels that they've used to shower before dinner are washed, dried and replaced.

The beds have to be clean ? there's a lot of things that happen in the background, just the same as any fine service hotel and that's what people expect on a luxury motor yacht.

When you come to Bermuda and you want to dive the wrecks and you stay in a hotel, you have to pay for your hotel, you have to pay for transportation to the dive store and you have to pay the dive store to go out diving. The maximum they can do is a two-tank dive in the morning and then they run out of tanks and have to bring the boat back in and refill their tanks. You have to wait, have lunch and then you can go out and do another two-tank dive in the afternoon.

So you can only get four dives out of that a day. And then there's the cost of transportation back to the hotel, your lunch, all your meals. The benefit of the liveaboard dive boat is that you are living on board your base of operations.

All your meals are provided for you. It's all-inclusive. You get up in the morning, you have your breakfast. You go down and put your tank on, you put your PC on, you jump off the back of the boat, swim around, have a great dive and get back up. Sit back down, your tank is filled exactly where you're sitting. You never have to carry your tank and gear anywhere. You have an in-between dive snack. You have lunch and dinner.

It's all provided for you. And throughout the day you can just continuously dive. It's all inclusive. And no matter where we go, we're always on-station. We don't have to come back in to shore to fill our tanks. We have a compressor onboard. We can go from one wreck to the next without ever having to come back in. It gives them at least five to six dives a day plus, they can jump over the back as often as they want.

The itinerary involves places like the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI), the Maritime Museum at Dockyard, the Aquarium. We want them to get off the boat and see things on the island, not just stay on the boat the whole time. I've been on a lot of live-aboard dive boats around the world where, all I've ever done is sit on the boat for seven days.

I wanted this to be different. We start our charters on Saturday. On Wednesday, they get to go to Harbour Nights. They get to go the Frog and Onion Pub, to Caf? Gio in St. George's. The cool part is they can go to the BUEI and see all the artefacts that have been taken off the wrecks, and then the next day they get to go and dive the same wreck. It adds a little extra something to their dive.

They're now more alert because they've seen the BUEI presentation of that wreck and they know the potential of the wreck. It's not just a pile of rubble in the middle of the ocean anymore, it actually makes it something.

Absolutely. One of our last charters had two boys ? aged ten and 11. I think the bottom line for kids is aged seven. We've had younger, but they have to be supervised. We'll do our best to do anything to entertain them. There are three scenarios: The fully-crewed luxury motor yacht experience is where you pay one price to rent the entire boat and we do whatever you tell us to do. Then we have the itinerised luxury liveaboard scenario, which is booked by the stateroom.

We normally prefer couples to do it. It's also all-inclusive and has a set price. The third option that we offer here in Bermuda is something we call the pyjama party. It's a little weekend sleepover where you join the boat on a Friday. On Saturday, you snorkel and scuba dive, have breakfast dinner and lunch. On Sunday morning you have brunch and then you leave that afternoon. It's a sort of local promotion we're doing.

The promotional price for the pyjama party is $500 per person. The set price for the liveaboard diving experience is $2,750 per person ? that's for five days and it's all-inclusive. And then there is the luxury motor yacht experience. If you want to hire the entire boat for a week or as long as you want, I suggest you call the office.