Tony’s Virgin territory
“It really started over some cocktails after a race one night,” says Tony Rainold. So many stories originate in a pub, the birthplace of countless dreams – and this was exactly how everything began in the late-1960s for Tony and Charlie Cary.
Over those cocktails, ordered to celebrate winning a sailing race, the pair came up with a rough plan to start a yacht charter business. The close pals had met sailing, when Tony did foredeck crew to Charlie’s skipper, and had gone on to work for the same oil and gas company in the Southern States of the US. They didn’t really have a lot of money; it was mainly a hunch, and the potential to turn a passion project – sailing – into a business opportunity.
They had one thing above all in their favour, though – they’d heard the British Virgin Islands were due to get their first air service in August 1969. Most charters in the area at the time were based out of St Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands,
