TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Sunsail/Moorings Owners

Looking for advice from Sunsail/Moorings owners.

If you read my earlier post you saw that we are looking into charter boat ownership. Thanks all for your advice about different companies. I think we are going to go with Sunsail/Moorings for 2 major reasons...one the flexibility of being able to sail in different parts of the world and two the guaranteed income and the fact we don’t have to pay for maintenance.

My question is where would it be best to have it charter out of. Our choices are BVI, St. Lucia, Grenada. Anyone have experiences with these bases as owners? Do you feel like one place would get less wear and tear on the boat? I was thinking Grenada or St. Lucia over BVI just due to the fact that I feel like more inexperienced people charter in the BVI over the windward islands. If you have your boat at any of the above places do you have feedback on how you feel they take care of your boat?

Thanks for you help

We have gone with Sunsail/Moorings for much the same reasons. We got a Sunsail (Jenneau) 36' mono in 2008 which was based in St. Vincent. It was an unsold and heavily promoted boat that had already started charter service. We had not been to the southern Caribbean, and we actually didn't see or use our actual boat until about 2 years into the program. When the St. Vincent base closed our boat was moved to Grenada then St. Lucia.

We sailed all over with reciprocal use, and were overall happy with the arrangement until phase-out neared and with soft demand for smaller monos, Sunsail didn't even want to offer to take it in trade and when I pressed them they offered something rather on the insulting side.

With a 1-year extension on our contract, we phased out after six years and moved the boat to the BVI (Conch), where we got some experience with the more typical charter arrangement (no reciprocal use, portion of actual revenue, payment of all expenses).

Although I was present at phase-out and did my best to get Sunsail to attend to all the contractual maintenance items, there were multiple issues that went undetected by myself and the surveyor and ended up taking months to track down (electrical mostly). At the time, Peter Twist at Conch lamented that the experience gave him pause to ever take over another boat from down island. The perception in BVI is that the service facilities and standards are better than in the southern Caribbean.

After two years with Conch, we sold the boat (which was subsequently lost to Irma).

Another two years, and we got the itch again and decided to get a Leopard 40 through Moorings and start the process again (and are leaving in two days for our first cruise on our actual new boat). Since the BVI had become our favorite destination, I would not have considered another base ( I could have saved $25k to take the same boat in Belize). Although we enjoy reciprocal use ( and have already re-booked some previous places like Tahiti and Australia ), I do want to see and use my own boat more often and keep better track of it's upkeep.

Hope this is of some use.

And your new boat is named what? We board our Sea Tiger Sunday ;-)

This is great information, thank you! We are also looking at the Leopard 404.

It’s nice to see that you are finally going to use your boat.

Of the three bases you name I'd say Grenada. It will get less wear and tear than the BVI and it has the advantage of being ALMOST out of the hurricane belt. I say almost because it did have a very bad storm a while back but normally it goes through a season without any named storms.

New boat is called LIO KAI

Thanks Warren. We were already booked in April but snagged a short notice booking two weeks ago. From the statements I've received, LIO KAI will only have been out maybe 3 times.

You can do short notice in high season? I thought you could only do it in low season?

Yes you can. There have to be available boats of course. I think it's selling owner time that you can't do in high season.

You can use short notice in high season but it’s 2 points per day. Boats are usually available Mid Jan to March.
G

Wow, this is really good to know. We have always thought that short notice was only in off season and for this reason we never use all the short notice points on my brother's boat.