Tortola Yachting

North South Vacations

On your charter, you'll have gourmet meals cooked everyday to your liking, and with the knowledge of the Captain, they can take you to some of the most spectacular places in the Virgin Islands.

Details

   800 387 4964
   North South Vacations Web Site

Reviews

Rated by Kevin Stehlin on 02/26/09
On February 7th we left on a North South Vacations 35' Chin Hwa for a great week right ? WRONG !! Day 2 of our cruise we noticed that our dingy had a leak in it. So called the charter company and they sent out a pump. Of course that was mid morning arrival which put us late in leaving our mooring which in conjunction with bad weather later meant that we could not get to Yost van Dyke as planned. Bummer. The next problem on Day 3 was that the power steering was leaking hydraulic fluid. As the weather was pretty iffy we decided the better plan was to get into a slip and affect repairs. North South sent someone out and they looked it over and said they knew about it and were going to replace something when we were done with our trip anyway but it was not a big deal. Which they would have told us that earlier but that cost us slip fees and meant that we missed another planned stop on our cruise. Getting the picture, yeah, missing days and additional costs. Well, it gets better. We went up to Virgin Gorda leaking fluid and all and wanted to finally get some snorkling in which we had not been able to do to date because well, you know, we were either waiting on parts/repairs or something and missed the snorkling spots. Well, we tried to drop the anchor and the windlass did not work, so much for snorkling and of course now we had to pay mooring costs again. If you think this is enough, well, it gets even better. When we tried to head back home we were in the channel east of Beef Island in some moderate swells and the motor starts shutting down. We were able to get it started the first 6-7 times but it finally gave up the ghost. And we were being blown into the rocks off of Beef Island. We were finally able to disengage the windlass to drop the anchor before running ashore but you can rest assured my wife and my co-captains significant other were pretty shook up about the experience. And once the tow boat got to us that damn anchor took awhile to get pulled up by muscle power only. My co-captain hurt his back and mine is still pretty stiff from that effort.

Net, net I think we lost about 1/2 of our time due to the fact that basic maintenance was not done to the North South equipment. We attempted to work out some kind of a settlement with the manager but to date, we've only been offered a discount on future trips which is not going to cut it.

If anyone wants to follow-up to validate this trip I can be reached as follows:

Kevin Stehlin
314.397.1880 Cell
kevin@stehlinfamily.com

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