Running a Sailing Charter Business in British Columbia: One Captain’s Adventures

A veteran liveaboard recounts how she turned her custom steel cutter into a working charter boat—and the seamanship, guest management, and grit that made it succeed.

By
Pamela Bendall
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Driving my dinghy up a scenic channel in the Great Bear Rainforest. (Photo/ Pamela Bendall)

After nearly three years of sailing the Pacific in the 1980s with my family, land life in British Columbia became a placeholder—by 1999, the ocean was calling again. I decided to custom-build my dream boat on my own—I’d since separated from my husband. The boat could have been named Wish List; every amenity I wanted had been recorded in the back of my Pacific logbook under that heading. She was steel, and precious metals mattered in my business world, so I gave her a name that joined both lives: Precious Metal.

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Pamela Bendall
Pamela Bendall
https://www.pamelabendall.com/
Pamela Bendall has an extensive nautical background with over 200,000 miles of ocean adventures since she began sailing in 1980. In 1986, Pamela and her former husband and two young boys ages 4,10 circumnavigated the Pacific to New Zealand and Japan and most of the islands in between using only a sextant and mathematical reduction tables. She began sailing offshore solo in 2008, taking her boat Precious Metal from Victoria, Canada to Mexico, Peru, Galapagos and throughout Central America. Pamela has her Masters 60 ton Captains license, CYA Seamanship and Navigation Certification, and owned and operated her own sailing charter business Precious Yacht Charters in northern British Columbia and Alaska. She has extensive ocean racing experience including the Victoria-Maui Race and Marblehead and was Chairperson of the Vic-Maui from 2002-2008. She has authored two sailing-related books: Kids for Sail, and What Was I Thinking: Adventures of a Woman Sailing Solo. Pamela and her partner Henry Robinson are currently living aboard their Fountaine Pajot 43-ft. catamaran in Central America and Mexico for Canadian winters and aboard their 40-ft. Ocean Alexander Quetzal in British Columbia, during Canadian summers.

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