India has 7,500 kilometres of coastline and almost no charter industry on it. What we list is eight boats, all of them crewed motor yachts, averaging 11.6 metres and 2.8 cabins: six on the Mandovi river at Panaji in Goa and two in Mumbai harbour. These are river and harbour boats for a few hours or a day, not vessels for island-hopping the Indian Ocean. The two bases are about 600 kilometres apart and neither is an offshore cruising ground.
In Goa the boat is a way of seeing the Mandovi — a wide tidal river running down past Panaji's Portuguese-era waterfront, with Reis Magos fort on the north bank, Aguada at the mouth and the Chorão and Divar island backwaters upstream. It is a landscape of ferries, fishing craft and kingfishers rather than anchorages, and the river traffic is the reason the local rules read the way they do: overtaking is prohibited from the Mandovi bridges down to the river mouth, and vessels must keep clear of the ferry crossings.
The season is set by the monsoon, not by wind strength. During the south-west monsoon no vessels may anchor within Panaji port limits, and the navigational buoys in the Mandovi and the Zuari are withdrawn altogether. In practice that makes October to May the charter season and June to September a closed one.
Mumbai works differently again. Charters board at Jetty No. 5 at the Gateway of India, and the boats must be registered with the Maritime Board and licensed by the Port Trust; life jackets are worn on board as a condition rather than a suggestion. It is a harbour trip — the Gateway, the Taj, the city from the water, and Elephanta Island across the bay.
