TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Skippers of White Bay

Saw this on FB this am.

From Yacht Catatonic 500: "They were attempting to anchor, realized that they were in the channel, weighed anchor and subsequently fouled themselves on the channel marker. And if you zoom in you can see that their tender is on the davits… in the water… underway…. And they are also dragging a kayak."

Another view posted by someone else which looks to show the monohull grounded on the reef.

Appropriate background music, "Let the good times roll".

And a powercat grounded on the reef at Mosquito today. Geez.

Is this par for the course, or does it seem like this is happening more frequently? Maybe just hearing about these incidents more frequently because of social media, etc.

Not great!

IMO no, lately there have been a lot more groundings. Way too many people thinking they know more than they do, Now, Sunsail classes the BVI as a "Level 1" destination, most forgiving sailing, ideal for novices and less-experienced sailors - you won't get "out of your comfort zone". There are some folks who apparently don't even meet this level?

To be fair to the first boat they probably thought it was a boaty ball...

the 2nd is my boat of choice...too bad. Wonder if they had engine trouble because that area is pretty visible as shallow especially on from fly bridge of the 514PC

One thing on the Moorings boats, many have old chart style chart plotters. I just helped a friend and gave him all my gear to include an ipad with Navionics on it. when he came back he turned the boats chart plotter on once and then used Navionics on my Ipad.

The boats need a reef proximity warning like and airplane I guess

Apparently the one on the reef off Moskito happened yesterday evening. Much harder to see that reef at sunset/dusk but still a really dumb mistake when the entrance to Gorda Sound is well marked and well known.

If I had to guess it looks like they were shooting straight for Leverick and didn't realize there was a reef in the way.....

Update - just saw a Sunsail ad on Facebook - apparently you only need 5 days or 100 miles experience on an "equivalent size boat" to charter in the BVI..............just wow.............

No stub keels on the power cats I imagine :-(

There is a real disconnect between the marketing and legal department... the charter agreement that customers sign (but probably don't read) will contain some very different language where you will attest that you are fully qualified to operate said boat in all conditions, etc. etc. etc.

When I recently alerted Moorings management to the M5000 "Crispy" where clearly nobody on board had the first idea how to hook up to a mooring ball, the (only) response (excuse) I got was that they have been focusing on covid protocols and bio security (SMH).

We have forward scan on our boats. Love it when we are going in to anchor in certain spots but do worry that it might give a false sense of security to charter groups.

Wow. I can’t even with that. If I was an owner I would be outa that program asap.

Umm, those 5 days or 100 miles are actually more experience than you need to get your ASA licenses so that's not a problem in my mind. If the charter rules are too strict then your pool of candidates would shrink so much as to make you have empty boats during high season and that isn't a way to run a business long-term. The problem is when people with less experience than the minimum lie on their applications.

Good point Arnd - I'm thinking of the ones who think spending a couple hours drinking wine while a friend sails as of their days. The quality of the experience is a big deal.

The root problem of most of the bad situations I have seen is alcohol. For some reason many do not feel any degree of sobriety is required to drive a boat.

Should have been in by dusk...I have been on that boat before. Sea Ranch. Good boat.

There is a photo of Sea Ranch the day prior anchored on top of a mooring ball……..

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There is a photo of Sea Ranch the day prior anchored on top of a mooring ball……..
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Same boat (and Crew) 2 days in a row.....

[TRIED TO INSERT A FOTO OF THE POWERCAT]

A friend posted this pic on facebook, time stamped 5:01pm. Plenty of light, esp with the flybridge. Sunset was about 6:47pm that day.

It seems to me charter companies who market themselves as a great way for sailors to buy a boat, put it in charter and make money off it should do a better job vetting potential skippers else that revenue stream will dry up on them.

D

Like so many other things in this world, until it dries up, they don't worry about it. Then they call it a crisis! lmao

It's similar with house rentals. VRBO used to encourage communication between the owner and prospective renter: water conservation, driving a manual shift Rover (aka tractor). And the big one, boating experience, as a boat comes with the house. Neither Airbnb nor VRBO allows any meaningful communication now.

You incur liability for someone using your powerboat without any ability to vet them. You see renters skip the stern anchor, let the boat float away because their kid tied it up improperly, or come in drunk after a night partying. Eventually you say no thanks.

I'm going to start collecting info on these incidents. Curious which charter companies frequent the list...

Good or bad idea? There's a form so you can submit your own too.

https://yachtwarriors.com/groundings-of-bvi/

Matt--I probably should keep my mouth shut, since I'm not a boater, but what is your motivation for doing this? I guess ideally, you think that a charter company would refuse to rent to someone who had previously done something stupid? Ok, and then the "stupid" person sues you because they could no longer charter, and they sue you for ruining their perfect vacation-to-be?

Out of curiosity really. If I was planning to put a boat into a charter program, I might want to look through this. Indicator of which companies might be doing a better job protecting my investment through better vetting of skippers. Maybe the charter companies will take notice someday and fix their processes.

Not collecting info on any of the skippers - just boat names and charter companies.

I can definitely see where someone who has a boat in charter would be very concerned, but like I said, I worry what someone who gets turned down might do. IF the charter companies cared to look at it, even though you aren't collecting names of skippers, the only way the information is even helpful is if it is date specific. People sue over the stupidest things these days.

The good news is that it’s almost impossible to sue someone in a US court for a event that occurred in the BVI even if that company or individual has a US presence. It was a consideration for charter boat placement when I was looking.

No need for anyone to be turned down: just require a professional skipper.

If you say so, George. I don't have any idea.

I seriously doubt if KKR the private equity company that owns Travelopia who in turn owns Moorings cares about this. They are just concerned about return on investment on an investment they bought just before Irma. The pandemic was worse as it wasnt covered business interruption insurance. They would rather pawn any damage off on the insurers and get as much revenue as they can from anyone to improve mutliples and then dump this investment

A second but related disconnect are the employees at base camp and even in Florida. They haven't been treated very well by Moorings so really don't have the loyalty to Moorings. The processes and service before, during and after at base where much more extensive 10 years ago then they are today. They were laid off without pay during the pandemic...

Finally there is the disconnect between owners and charterers. i bet if you asked over 1/2 the people chartering the boats they would say Moorings own the boats as opposed to others.

But here loyalty is a fleeting thing of the past unfortunately....

My perspective is that of a decades long sailor but a first time charterer and visitor to the BVI. Everyone has to start somewhere right? And it seems near universally accepted that there is no better place for that than the BVI. I know that, after years of talking about it, we (my wife and kids and I) never would have considered this cruise if we would have had to hire a pro skipper for the duration. Just not our style (or budget).

The checkout sail seems like a reasonable way to vet first timers for who is stretching the truth on their experience. I was embarrassingly honest on my resume. In addition to my history of sailing skiffs, beach cats, and then pocket-cruiser trimarans, but no large boats, I put down that I had a marine claim last year. Bonehead mistake, one made out of being overly-familiar with a place and situation, eventually s*** happens sometimes. Well it did to me. Unfortunately it was the year before my first bareboat charter and I had to put it on my sailing resume! But there is a paper trail and these documents have legal force right? I.e. when charterers lie and something happens, the charter and/or insurance company have some recourse? Anyway, that probably sealed the deal on "it's a checkout cruise for you!" lol, but I have no problem with, and am actually looking forward to picking up a few pointers and proving we are up to it.

So "there but for the grace of god go I", but I can't imagine making some of these mistakes you hear about where bareboats end up on the reefs or tied to channel buoys. That sounds like total incompetence, or arrogance/disrespect for the situation, operating someone else's boat drunk being just one example of that. Seems like a charter company ought to be able to identify those types after a couple of hours on the water together. I know I'm paying an extra $225 plus gratuity to prove that I'm not in over my head AND I'm taking this very seriously.

No way anyone would get sued for compiling the info, but I wonder how helpful it would really be. The info of "which charter outfits had documented issues on social media" isn't super helpful without knowing how many issues go unreported on social media and how many charters each outfit turns over per year. To use Moorings as an example, they will almost certainly have more issues than most even if they happen to them at a lower frequency just due to the huge number of charters they put out there every year.



And yeah-I'd wager that it's far fewer than even a quarter of all Moorings customers who are aware or care that Moorings doesn't own the boat and I'm not sure it matters at all. To consumers Moorings is no different than Marriott or Disney or whatever. That is who they deal with from reservation to check-out. I say this as someone who owns a live aboard boat and is considering putting it into charter for next season.

Don't sue me fellow TTOLers!

Good feedback. I'm doubtful it will be helpful, but it isn't much effort to collect with some of the tools available now. Maybe more will get reported - the form is pretty easy to use. If I get enough data, maybe I'll find something useful to do with it.

Not really sure about the relevance of this comment, but shortly pre Irma we rented a cat from Moorings for the first time (our second time in the BVI having previously chartered a monohull). They assigned a skipper to check us out and it was one of the best lessons we have ever had. The crew doesn’t sail together usually and so we didn’t perform well as a team at first, but after sailing over to Peter Island, picking up a mooring, dropping anchor and sailing back to drop him off, we were so much more confident and had our best ever charter. Of course we had done all these things plus navigation on our little tub at home, but on a big new boat it was great to work out the details with a skilled teacher.