boat hire in Saint George's · Nautitech — 40 Open (2020)

This was an awful experience all around. I would not recommend this boat or service to anyone. We were told multiple times that this boat had 6 cabins + 2 crew cabins. When we arrived, we saw that it was 4 cabins + 2 crew cabins which made 2 of our group have to sleep on the outside boat benches. Upon arrival, we were NOT given any instruction about the boat, which was terrible because our group are not experienced with sailing. Upon arrival, we were told that our captain had bailed on us and they were scrambling to find a new captain. The original captain was finally convinced to rejoin our group. Because the boat does not have AC, the captain stayed on his own boat for 2 out of the 4 nights, which crippled us when any issue arose. The boat was given to us with FULL septic tanks, which is completely unacceptable. There was overflow of human feces after 1 day which made the whole living area smell awful. This is not Covid safe and our whole group was living with it for the whole trip. The human feces started to overflow and dump out into the water and the side of the boat. Since the captain was not on board, we had to take a hose and continuously wash off the feces from the side of the boat and inside of the bathroom where it leaked through the open port holes. This was not a vacation or a luxury trip, it was a survival experience. When we complained, the local management company simply offered us 2 free nights on a future booking. This was an insult to say the least as we would never dream of booking with this company again. Be aware!

The boat had a manual in French only. The skipper needs to work on his customer service skills and he was not good with his time management (we arrived at a couple of destinations at night and were struggling with anchoring/mooring. We arrived on our last day (Friday) back to the base too late and had to clear in the boat on a weekend which cost me $100 EC dollars. The sailing was great though and the skipper was very experienced and had excellent local knowledge.