It was a blizzard that created The Moorings. In the late 1960s, Charlie Cary, an avid sailor, was offered a promotion. His new job would take him from New Orleans—where he and his wife, Ginny, loved to sail their Alberg 35—to an office in the Northeast. But on an early visit to his new locale he watched a blizzard outside his hotel room. He took one look at the weather and turned down the promotion. He and Ginny sailed to the Caribbean, and when they got to the British Virgin Islands, bought six 35-foot Pearson yachts. On July 4, 1969, they started a little charter company called The Moorings.
Soon, they collaborated with yacht builders Morgan, Gulfstar and Beneteau to build custom charter boats for The Moorings. Today, The Moorings’ charter fleet includes more than 400 sailing and power yachts at more than 20 destinations around the world.
The Moorings’ latest yacht, the Moorings 5000, debuted at the 2018 United States Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, where the company announced a yearlong 50th anniversary celebration that will culminate in an event in November of 2019—in the British Virgin Islands, where it all began.
The new Moorings 5000 catamaran can accommodate up to 11 guests. It features four en-suite cabins and a “master” suite cabin that may have one of the largest showers ever installed on a 50-foot yacht. Five-cabin versions will also be built for the charter market. A far cry from those first bareboat Pearsons the Carys bought in 1969, the 5000 has a generator, solar panels, electric flush heads, an inverter for powering electronic devices, an onboard watermaker, a flat-screen TV with DVD, Bluetooth connectivity and complimentary Wi-Fi. Charlie Cary died in 2007, but he probably could have comfortably weathered one of those northeastern blizzards inside a Moorings 5000. moorings.com
This article originally appeared in the December 2018 issue.
