TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Trip report 07/06 - 07/16 Part 1

To start with, given the problems we had I know that everyone has their favorite charter company and will chime in about how I should try xyzCharter next trip. I keep pretty much abreast of what's out there and despite the issues I list in the various parts of this trip report, there is close to a 100% chance that our next charter will be with The Moorings. Still, there were issues this year that I hope were an Irma-related anomaly and not indicative of an overall decline in their service.

Last August, while watching Harvey dump 32+ inches of rain on our house in Houston, I decided that pulling the trigger on another BVI sailboat charter was just what we needed to get out of the gloom of the constant rain. Of course a month later Irma devastated the BVI, but since our charter was planned for July of this year, there was ample time for recovery and we figured the BVI economy could use the little boost our charter would provide.

This was our 13th charter, but the first since 2004 as we busied ourselves raising children and getting our youngest through college. Since it had been so long, we decided to do this first class. There are 4 of us so we booked a Moorings Exclusive Plus 45.3 monohull. I had a lot of American Express points and was able to get 4 first class seats to St. Thomas. There was a post-Irma change in Delta’s flights to St. Thomas which prevented us from making it from Houston (San Antonio for our youngest) in a single day, so we booked a night at Renaissance Concourse Atlanta Airport Hotel.

For $90 each, we booked the ferry/shuttle package offered by The Moorings which included all transfers to and from the ferry as well as a roundtrip ticket on the Road Town Fast Ferry. Given the limited supply of ferry options, I feel this is a good deal. At every spot there was a Moorings representative waiting for us, who other than groaning over the amount of luggage we had (we always pack way too heavy), was helpful.

Lots of people were involved in handling the bags, getting them on and off the taxis. We had decided from the beginning, that folks in these types of jobs had probably taken the biggest hit from Irma with the fewest options for recovery, so throughout the trip we consistently tipped heavily.

The trip from Houston to St. Thomas was pretty uneventful. The night at the Renaissance was fine though, probably because of the July 4th holiday, the place was deserted. Even though we’ve done many charters, including a couple through St. Thomas, we had never stopped at the Petite Pump Room which we did this time and enjoyed in immensely.

The ferry trip to Road Town was a bit of a ride. The waves were running 4-6 feet, something we saw throughout the trip, and even though it is a catamaran, the RTFF trip was a rough ride. We hadn’t considered the need for Bonine before this stage which was a mistake as my wife (and others on the ferry) got ill as we crashed through the waves.

In past trips, the customs / immigration people on Tortola were at times unpleasant to deal with, but not this trip. One young man, seeing us at the end of the line with my wife barely hanging on, moved us to the head of the line to get through immigration and outside into the breezes as quickly as possible.

We always put an extra day on the front end of the charter to give us some travel decompress time and to take a trip to Riteway for provisions to add-on to what we had purchased through The Moorings. After the rough trip from St. Thomas, the downtime was much appreciated by my wife.

Our first night we had dinner at the Mariner Inn which was uncrowded and very relaxing. The staff there, as was the case with everyone we dealt with at The Moorings, was friendly and accommodating to our requests..

Our “spare day” was spent at Riteway and trying to fix a problem with my son’s cellphone. In his attempt to swap the SIM card for the FLOW card we’d gotten from mrsimcard.com (highly recommended), he managed to jam the SIM card slot. A nearby cellphone repair shop was able to unjam the card slot. We asked if they had a tool we could use to pop open the SIM slot since we’d destroyed the one we brought. Their solution was great: Use one of your wife’s earrings since that is the right size for the small SIM card ejection hole.

We checked with the Moorings charter desk to see if our paperwork was available but was told to check back later. She did suggest we attend the 4pm chart briefing to get that out of the way.

After I’d done 2-3 charters, I’ve began to feel that the chart briefings left a lot to be desired. However not having been there in 14 years, I was looking forward to a good refresher course. I’m not sure why, perhaps over the years The Moorings has just changed the emphasis of the briefing, but I found it close to useless this time around. Given the destruction that had occurred 10 months earlier, I would have expected more information about the status of various anchorages, either during the presentation or in some sort of handouts (nothing was handed out).

I checked again for our paperwork but was told it wasn’t available and to check back in the morning (day of our charter).

to be continued....

Interested in reading your reports to come......,we just chartered with Moorings in June and had some issues as well

I'm looking forward to the next installment! Only 116 days until our BVI catamaran adventure...we are going through Owner'sTime this time around and really can't wait !

Yeah, I'm still contemplating how to deal with The Moorings issues. On the one hand, the folks there were working their butts off to make everything right under trying circumstances. But somewhere up the ladder there are some management issues. I asked the reservation folks for an email address of someone to send my complaints (and kudos) and was given a customer service email address for the parent company. I need someone in the BVI, or maybe Clearwater, to send my notes to, not just a corporate address which no doubt has a collection of canned responses.

Maybe they check social media and will read my thrilling tales of survival in the BVI!

Is this the one you used? http://ownertimecharters.com/
I'm considering them for a 2019 trip. I'm not finding much info about them. I want to thoroughly check them out before booking.

Edit: I just noticed that they're a TTOL sponsor. That may help my hesitancy a bit.

Getting ready to post part 2 but don't let anything I say dampen your enthusiasm. I've been back a week and already am trying to figure out a way to get back down in 2019! Not to spoil the ending, but my bottom line is that despite some incompetence on my part (probably too strong a word) and sloppiness on the part of The Moorings, it was a great trip.

FYI--I booked through Owner Time Charters.

I've been in touch with Jenny throughout the planning process, and she's been really responsive. I had complicated travel requirements, and she's been both patient and helpful the whole time. She's knowledgable, experienced and cracks jokes all the time, so planning has been relatively easy through her.

Also- Owner Time seems like the key to chartering, as far as I can tell. It's cheaper. I'll be back with a full report on the boat!

Part 2???

Someone posted a reply last month to my July report which bumped it up. The other parts are out there and can be found if you search my user name (louismcc) for the past year.

louis, thank you!