To get your copy, call 1-800-442-0556 or e-mail brochures@starclippers.com.

Here is Part 2 of Larry Haugh’s interview with Vacation Agent magazine.

Who’s your typical client?
We’ve found that 50 percent of our passengers have been involved in boating at some point in their life. Anybody who owns boats…[or belongs to] any type of sailing club or yacht club, whether they’re power or sail boats, are potential clients. Our passenger is an average age of 55 with a household income of $120,000 who takes about three weeks vacation a year.

We offer a four-star product and we [use] actual sailing ships—our ships are designated SPV, for sail passenger vessel. We have engines, but we go primarily by sails as much and as frequently as possible. Over 80 percent of our American guests have been on previous cruises, and then they come to us because they want to do something different. We’re truly experiential when it comes to travel.

What sorts of programs do you have for travel agents?
Travel agents are the primary source of our business. One exciting new program is for groups in 2010 and ‘11 that gives clients savings of up to 50 percent off the brochure rates. A group size with us is only nine paying guests, and the 10th sails free, so you earn TCs much faster. We do have a maximum of two tour conductors per group, occupying the same cabin. If agents achieve group numbers, they can earn a $500 to $1,000 bonus commission per group. We’re currently redoing our website, and in the spring we plan to have a new, improved travel agent area on it as well. We don’t have a booking engine, but we have postcards and e-mails and flyers that can be customized.

Larry Haugh is vice president of sales for Star Clippers Americas.

Larry G. Haugh, Star Clippers’ vice president of sales based in the company’s Miami office, recently sat down with “Vacation Agent” magazine to discuss programs and new itineraries. Here’s what he had to say.

Star Clippers has some interesting new itineraries planned for the upcoming year. Tell us about the new Costa Rica program by Star Flyer.
Our owner decided that it would be a good idea to have all three ships in Europe for the summer. Half of our business comes from Europe, so we have a drive-up market. Star Flyer is currently doing a pretty interesting repositioning sailing, going 34 nights from Papeete, Tahiti, to Balboa, Panama. From there, it will move on to Europe in May. We cannot move the ship back to Tahiti for the fall, so we will move it to Costa Rica for the first time. We listen to what our passengers are saying and what they like. We’re always looking for new opportunities.

We’ll visit 40 new ports of call this year, which is exciting to offer new passengers but also gives our past passengers the opportunity to sail into new wonderful ports. Over 55 percent of our passengers return. As we say to our agent friends, once you get passengers on Star Clippers, they’ll definitely come back, and they will tell their friends.

What’s on tap for the summer Mediterranean season?
Once the Star Flyer comes back from Tahiti, it will operate western Mediterranean cruises from Monaco or Cannes. During the summer, the Star Flyer also will do a series of sailings out of Rhodes along the Turquoise Coast of Turkey. The Royal Clipper sails from Barbados in April back to Rome and will do a series of seven-night Rome roundtrips visiting Sorrento, Taormina and other places. It will also do a series of 10- and 11-night sailings in July, August and September up the Dalmatian Coast to Venice and back. Star Clipper will be sailing from Athens to the Greek Isles and Turkey, which is quite popular. There are a couple of sailings that go from Athens to Venice and back along the Dalmatian Coast.

Star Clipper is not returning to the Far East. Why not?
The ship will spend next winter in the Caribbean, operating alternating itineraries from St. Maarten. We’re moving the Star Clipper out of Asia due to the rise of piracy in the Strait of Malacca, Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean and the increasing boldness of the pirates. The stability of the region is too unpredictable at this time. We hope that the piracy situation can be alleviated, and when that happens, we plan to return to Thailand and Malaysia.

The Larry Haugh interview will be continued tomorrow in another post. Stay tuned!

From left: Mikael, Anne, Marie and Eric Krafft.

To hear Star Clippers founder Mikael Krafft tell it, he never thought his entire family would work at the line, but that’s what has happened over the years. Krafft’s wife Ann looks after quality control and manages the hotel directors and shipboard entertainment, son Eric, 34, supervises finances and daughter Marie, 30, is a director of sales.

“It’s an extra benefit that I didn’t expect,” said Mikael Krafft. “It was not intentional, but has been a pleasant surprise that my family has been interested in working in the business.”

When he started the company 20 years ago, his children were young and the family lived in Brussels. When the kids completed their baccalaureate studies, they were packed off to Stockholm to attend college and get back in touch with their Swedish roots. With the children out of the house, Ann — who Mikael describes as “a very keen sailor” — could turn her attention to the cruise line.

She began by handling the bookings of several hundred Krafft family friends who sail every year with Star Clippers, then gradually got more involved in the hotel and food and beverage operations. Today, she oversees hotel management and entertainment, going on board the ships to check everything from uniforms to food and service.

An interest in rocket engines resulted in an engineering degree for Eric Krafft. Following business school in London, he worked as an investment banker in London and New York, before becoming the Managing Owner of a China-based dry bulk shipping business.

Since 2006, Eric, a vice president in the Monaco headquarters, splits his time between Star Clippers and a real estate business.

Marie Krafft came to the company by way of the ships. She started working on board in the sports department and as a dive instructor, then worked her way up to purser, on to cruise director and finally as hotel manager.

“Marie was always sailing with me,” said Mikael Krafft. “When she started working on board, I never presumed that she would end up working with me.

“When she was 15, Marie told me that I was old and senile,” he continued with a laugh. “When she was 19 she told me, ‘You are still a little bit senile, but you’re improving.’ ”

Marie got an economics degree in Stockholm and then went to work for hotel chains Accor and Rocco Forte in Germany, before asking to return to the ships as cruise director.

“Somehow I had always had in my mind that I wanted to be a cruise director,” said Marie. “I like languages and working with many people — it’s good for your personality to stand in front of 170 people and speak to them in three different languages.”

In June 2008, an internal restructuring of the line’s sales and marketing department created an opportunity for Marie to translate her work on board into a sales position at the line’s Monaco headquarters. Her ability to speak English, Swedish, French and German comes in handy, as she is in charge of sales in the Benelux region, France, Spain, Italy and Scandinavia.

The Krafft family not only works together, they live together, sort of. Star Clippers’ headquarters is in a remodeled old hotel. Mikael and Ann have a penthouse on the top floors, while Eric and Marie each have an apartment in the building.

Asked whether there are challenges to working and living so closely, Mikael Krafft waxes philosophically.

“When I started Star Clippers, it was not the only company I had,” he said. “But over the years, Star Clippers became not so much a company as a lifestyle for us. It’s not just a company, it’s something we like to do; we’re all interested in sailing and shipping.

“I really think about it more as a hobby than a business, which is why it’s hard to separate the business from the lifestyle,” said Mikael Krafft.

The rest of the family agrees.

“We enjoy the work and especially sharing our passion for sailing,” said Ann Krafft.

Marie echoes that sentiment: “It always comes back to the point where you love this product. I grew up sailing and even taught it in Sweden,” she said. “I have sailing in my blood, and I’m used to working together with my father on sailboats. It’s actually quite fun.”

Welcome to Star Clippers’ new blog. The Star Clippers Blog Web site will serve as the portal for news and information, images and video, gossip and discussion about Star Clippers and its fleet of three tall ships. We’re happy to have you browse through our pages and read all of the latest news about Star Clippers.

While a large number of posts will come from the ships’ staff, we encourage guests to send in posts as well. If you sailed on a Star Clippers ship and took some photos you’d like to share, please send them to us with your name, who is in the photo, what ship you sailed on and where you are if in port. You can send these to info@starclippersblog.com. Don’t worry about sizing, we’ll take care of that.

We also invite you to send in questions or post comments on the different entries. To post a comment, you’ll need to register, but your information will not be shared with anyone. Our goal is to make this the most interactive blog possible and to create an online community of folks who are fans of Star Clippers.

We’re very excited about this new adventure, and we hope you enjoy reading the blog as much as we enjoy producing it. Again, welcome!

When you operate the world’s largest sailing ships that really sail, you reap some benefits from using wind power to supplement your engines. For Star Clippers, that means burning less fuel and emitting less exhaust.

“At Star Clippers, we always try to maximize the amount of time we are under wind power so that our guests can experience a true tall ship sailing experience,” said Captain Farhat Shamim, vice president of operations for Star Clippers. “Of course, this also reduces the amount of fuel we consume and therefore is much easier on the environment.”

Shamim said that in the Caribbean where the wind is most predictable, the ships operate under wind power up to 60 percent of the time. But even when sailing before the wind, the ships run their engines to power the air-conditioning and provide electricity to the vessels for refrigeration, etc.

“In other destinations, it really depends on weather conditions, but we also use our sails whenever possible to motor-sail, which reduces fuel consumption,” he added.

But when they do burn fuel, Shamim says it’s a less-polluting grade.

“All our vessels are supplied with high-quality low-sulphur fuel and were awarded the International Air Pollution Prevention Certificate,” he said. “Star Flyer was the first ship in the world to receive this certificate. Later, Star Clipper and Royal Clipper received the same certification.”

Since it has been deployed to Tahiti — a particularly environmentally fragile region of reefs — Star Flyer had a new water-treatment system installed to treat both gray (water from sinks and showers) and black (sewage) water.

“After treatment from this Membrane Bio Reactor system, the water plant is so clear that you can use it for deck wash, but we simply pump it overboard,” said Shamim.

But that’s the only thing that goes overboard at Star Clippers. Shamim says oily bilge water from the engine room is offloaded to a shoreside facility and all waste materials and garbage also are put ashore for disposal.

“We dump nothing in the water — not even a cigarette butt,” said Shamim.