TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Thank You Horizon Yacht Charters

I wanted to share my experience we just had with Horizon Yacht Charters. Let me start off by saying I'm not one for posting online reviews, though I do take advantage of the reviews of others when planing my Holiday's, so I thought it was time I give back. When we finished our charter (August 12th -18th) I began to do a little research on the best forum to post on and landed here.

My party of 8 chartered the "Double Expresso" from Horizon Yacht Charters for 6 nights with a sleep aboard the night before. Throughout the entire planning process I could not keep up with the amount of communication coming from the company. From past charters we have done we knew the sleep aboard was the easiest way to make sure we had smooth sailing on the trip. Our group would not arrive until after the Horizon office had closed, the ladies in the office left us with detail instructions where to locate the boat and had sent a driver to pick us up from the ferry terminal (fancy!) When we arrived at Nanny Cay Marina the boat was exactly where we were told it would be with the lights on and air running. The bottle of rum on the table was a very nice touch, thank you! After a long day of travel our group went to bed early in anticipation of the adventure we would begin in the morning.

We ate breakfast at the restaurant literally 30 feet from the door to the Horizon office while we waited for them to open at 8:00. Our charter was scheduled for 12:00 and so we had plenty of time to do what we needed and get out on the water. When we settled up in the office and signed the last of the paper work, we were greeted by Jolan who asked our preference of when we would like to begin our briefing. After having a couple more cups of coffee at the Marina coffee shop we separated the group, half went to take care of provisioning at the store (literally directly below the Horizon office and maybe 100' from the boat) while my mate and I met with Jolan for the beefing. By the time we got back our SUP's, Kayak, and Dive Gear were already on the boat. Jolan was extremely through with his briefing, we covered all the ships systems and he was a great resource of information regarding the chart and what was still open after the hurricanes and the end of the season After going through our checklist and theirs we signed off on the boat and were finished before the group was done with provisioning thanks Jolan!

We left before our scheduled 12:00 departure and set sail, the Open 40 is an awesome little cat with little effort we were able to get her almost to double digits on a broad reach. We had a blast with perfect weather and smooth sailing. We made the sail to Anegada and back freezing out butts off at night with the AC at full blast. We had a little trouble getting the stove not getting as hot as we wanted, we felt bad making a late night call to the Manager duty (thanks John... sorry!) but his tricks got us cooking just right. We came back to the Marina at 5:30 on Friday the 17th so we could all make our connections the following morning Jolan was at the gas dock to greet us and kept them open just long enough for us to hustle to top off all the tanks on the boat (we should have gotten back a little sooner....woops).

All in all this was probably one of the easiest charters I have done, thank you Horizon! We will defiantly we back with you soon. With the condition of their boats being what it is I would happily let them manage mine. Cant wait to talk about purchasing a boat through you all.

Yeah, I'm not buying this one.

What do you reckon Warren? Surely zero credibility?!!!

Wow, Horizon could not have written it better themselves.

Actually, my last charter was almost exactly like the OP posted, with some differences of course.

We didn't have AC on our little 35'
The fridge err, should I say chiller meant daily ice runs. NOT Horizons fault, design issue.
It was a newly delivered boat, so it was fun finding some comical manufacturing issues. Diesel cap on forward water tank, Bimini/Dodger was from a 42', NEMA source selections wrong...etc
No taxi pickup, just because WE didn't know when we were arriving.

Enough of you know me, I'm not one to be easy on failures. But this trip was easy peasy

I was part of this party of 8 and this was not written by Horizon, we had an amazing trip! I'm sorry if someone else did not have a great experience with this company, you can't please everyone, but I would definitely recommend them!

I’m not really sure what to say here... I do not work for Horizon I’m a Landscape architect in Kentucky. I just wanted to share my experience with everyone. I don’t have a ton of sailing experience but it’s good to know I know enough to sound like I could own a charter company!

This one looks OK to me. Looking at the OP profile, he runs a landscaping service in Lexington, KY, so I doubt he's affiliated with Horizon.

His website:

https://wemowky.com/

Thanks for the advertisement!

I look forward to seeing some pictures of the trip. Thanks for the post.

I know Adam and his family personally. (Hi Adam, happy to hear you and your crew had a good time in the islands. I'll be headed down during December with a crew aboard a Voyage catamaran.) Although Adam might have been encouraged by the staff at Horizon to post a review (I have no idea), he would not do so unless his comments reflect his true experience. It doesn't mean a unsatisfactory experience by another charter did not happen, it just means this charter customer had a good experience.

Thanks Noel! Hope the trip goes well, still waiting to get the details from Africa!

I'm not sure if I'm shooting myself in the foot by posting a link to photos of the trip here... but here goes... internet privacy is dead anyways:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10160730541120542&type=1&l=76eb6ed50b

I was also a part of the crew on "Double Expresso" this past week. The folks at Horizon (Courtney, Jolan, and John) were really nice, and super helpful. Yeah, we never reached them on the radio, but they always answered the phone during business hours, and with a phone provided by them through our charter... it was pretty dang easy to get in touch. The after hours availability was not super consistent, but we never had a problem that went unsolved. Heck, they did the work ahead of time, and we didn't really have any problems... That's what's important to me, the boat was well cared for and ready to go for us when we got there... barring an anchor safety line, Jolan saw that it was missing during our thorough walkthrough and brought a few extra pieces of line to us for the trip... in addition to an older chart that we requested because I get a kick out of drawing lines and doing the good old fashioned hand navigation.

Perhaps it helps to understand our previous chartering experience.. cptkidd and I have done this before, out of Miami, with little support from the boat owner and no comprehensive chart or boat briefing, on a much older vessel that had not been well cared for. This experience with Horizon was practically heavenly by comparison. I'm here to corroborate everything that cptkidd stated, and also note that this particular boat was FAST!!! Performance is not what I expect out of a cruising cat, but this puppy was hitting the double digits under sail and I was impressed.

Looks like you guys had a great time! And again, thanks for the post.

Demetrius! Hey dude. Its been a while. I bet you guys had fun ….. maybe too much fun :-)

Thank You for the pics! Lovely.

CptKidd and Demetrius,
Thank you for taking the time to write the report and post the pics. We're not sailors, but we love the BVI and are avid snorkelers. We've had many land-based trips there in past years, so we are happy to hear about others' trips. It was so nice to see the pics of the familiar sights, and that gorgeous blue/turquoise water. It looks like you had a great time.
It looks like you went diving and snorkeling. Did you visit the Indians? Its always been one of our favorite. If so, how did you find the condition of the coral there?
Thanks again!
AquaGirl

AguaGirl , the only difference between you and a sailor is that you wake up up in a hotel and sailors wake up at anchor in a turquoise lagoon.

Wake up at our place the water is so close its just like being on a boat that's not rocking!

We did visit the Indians it is such a beautiful spot, so fun to snorkel or make an easy dive out of. I would say all in all the coral is still pretty healthy and very intact. I expected things to be a lot worse after the storms last year but the reef is doing fine!

I used to own a boat with Horizon and I would bitch at their expenses, but the boat was always perfect. We had few chase calls, which as an owner is BIG MONEY. This was pre Irma, but the staff is still the same. Having run charters for 25 years in BVI I have found that there are people you can never make happy and you just have to move on. The issue we had were people with expectations of a Million dolllar yacht on a $300k yacht, you cannot make them happy.

Our experiences with Horizon have been uniformly good. Jalon is great - knowledgeable and helpful and not the least bit snooty. Courtney and Christalen are professional and organized and take care of 'the little details' that make chartering with Horizon easy. HYC has given us no reason to go anywhere else, and we are looking forward to 2019!

My final thoughts on Horizon. I scoured the internet for reviews on Horizon and I honestly can say I found nothiing negative of significance. I actually found other charter companies with some significant charter issues but not Horizon. Anyway who am I to judge with only two, yes two charters under my belt. I would have no reservations chartering from them in the future. Forward we go.