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LATEST NEWS ... January 21, 2019 ... This year's cruise out of Newport has been canceled. This marks the end of a 50-year string of international bareboat cruises of the Francis family and friends. It's been a great run! Thanks to all you sailors who made it so.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
- T. S. Eliot


Being in a ship is being in a jail,
with the chance of being drowned.
- Samuel Johnson


The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
- Saint Augustine

Welcome ...

... to the website for the annual bareboat sailing charters of the Francis family and friends. Our destinations are worldwide, limited only by our imaginations, our budgets, and the bareboat charter industry. See the photo gallery for some images of cruises past.

[NOTE: This website is frozen in time since 2019, as a record of a lifetime of sailing. Have a look at the photo gallery. Thanks to all my shipmates, from Sam Francis.]

In August 2019 we'll go back to the mainland for the first time in 7 years, chartering out of Newport, Rhode Island in the shadow of the Newport-Jamestown bridge (at right). Our cruising grounds will include Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Block Island, Narragansett Bay, Buzzards Bay, Cuttyhunk, Hadley Harbor, Cape Cod Bay, Provincetown, Plymouth, and maybe even Boston. We've sailed these waters many times, but not often recently, since we discovered the overseas pleasures of warm clear waters, coral reefs, and parrot fish. For more details of our New England itinerary, click here.

One reason we stayed away from the mainland in recent years was the absence of large spacious boats for bareboat charter.

Remembering
Bob Fleming
Remembering
Katie

But for the 2019 cruise we discovered a brand new Jeanneau 54 in Newport, with more than enough space for the crew size we like. The Jeanneau has all the modern conveniences that we've come to expect, such as air conditioning, power winches, and power toilets. See the Boat page for details.

The cruise is one week long, from Aug. 2 to Aug. 9, Friday to Friday. No hotel stays are necessary, since the crew will spend the night before the cruise on board the boat.