EDITED BY CAROL HILL TO ADD THE FOLLOWING--Please check the response in this thread by Horizon Yacht Charters and if anyone has any additional questions for Horizon Yacht Charters or the original poster, please send them a private message. Carol Hill

We chartered a bareboat through Horizon Yacht Charters for July 25th - Aug 5th.
Please do not use them if you want to have an enjoyable trip.

Started off with them not having our up to date paperwork on file so I had to go back and give them more information that I had already entered online if they would have just pulled the most current information.
Then they charged me more than I was originally quoted.

We showed up at 9:30am to see if we could board a little early, get provisions stored etc. They told us no, your charter starts at noon. So I wen't to look at the boat to see if it was ready and realized they had just started cleaning it and getting it ready for charter. It was not used the day before as all the cushions were stored. Why would they wait till the morning of to have a boat ready for charter? I had asked for a stand up paddle board to rent for the boat and saw that they had put an inflatable stand up paddle board on the boat. (It was a $200 rental). So I went to the office and asked why I had an inflatable board and that I could have bought one for $200. They assured me they are great and that I wouldnt have any issues with it. Wrong.

At about 12:30pm they told us we could go ahead and start boarding, so we tried to load our bags while there were still two guys actually working on the boat on some kind of mechanical issue. They had the whole navigation screen pulled out and were running a new wire for something. I thought to myself, this is not a good omen.

I asked about a chart briefing and they said they would do that with the boat briefing.

Boat briefing finally starts about 1pm. As he was showing my everything he went to try and start the dinghy and the engine was actually seized and you could not even pull the cord at all. So then they had to go and trade out the dinghy engine. A chart briefing never happened. As he is doing the briefing, I asked how to turn the head's plumbing off into the fresh water so while we are at anchor and national parks, we would not be emitting black water. He just pointed at the sinks and said they are in the cabinet there under the sink. Wrong, I'll explain more later.

After everything we were finally able to leave about 2:30pm. Granted you aren't allowed to sail after 5:30pm so we better get somewhere quickly and lose our first day of sailing since we now have to motor.

Day 2 we realize that our AC is not working but we don't find this out until 9pm when we turn on the genset. I looked in every spot on the boat trying every breaker imaginable and more things that I care to list. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. So I call the (24 hour) emergency manager number they gave us to see if they could help. It went straight to voicemail three times in a row. I tried several other times and same thing. WOW emergency number's phone is actually off. Thank God it wasnt a real emergency.

Later that evening we go to get in the dinghy and the latch on the back of the engine comes off when I was trying to raise it and the engine revs to full throttle because the throttle engaged fully. So I had to kill it immediately and then we had to paddle back to the boat so I could find out what happened. I was able to fix the throttle issue but not the broken latch. So I used a bungee cord to hold the cover on until it could be fixed.

Then we went to turn on the anchor light for the mooring field and it didnt work. Called it in the next day and they said "well BVI doesn't actually require boats to have an anchor light, so just leave your cockpit lights on". So i cant sleep outside now even though our AC doesnt work. Ummmm ok.

We leave the next morning to sail to the Baths and one of the lazy jack lines to the stack pack actually broke under sail and when we dropped the main it was a mess. I noticed the same line on the opposite side of the stack pack had been replaced leading me ot believe this has happened before but they didnt replace both lines. (Maintenance 101). We also realized by this time our freezer is not working either.

So they send out a couple of techs and they spend about 4 hours trying to fix these three things. The fix the stack pack, and then realize the reason that the AC is not working is because we turned off the exhaust handles for the units which were under the sinks in each bathroom!!!! Remember during the boat briefing, he said under the sinks for the heads, WRONG, that was for the AC. The valves for the heads were actually underneath the floorboards in the hallways.. Not even close. Thanks boat briefing guy.

They were not able to fix the freezer so we had to go the rest of the trip without one. Awesome.

They supposedly fixed the AC but yet none of the cabins ever dropped below 77f. So, pointless. We left hatches open every night going forward.

They were also not able to fix the broken latch on the engine, which made it fun whenever I had to lift the engine in shallow water.

Next day I got to use the VHF to call into a marina to dock and the VHF doesnt work. It was about 4:30pm. Spend the next 45 minutes trying to get it to work, tried calling the phone numbers listed online for the marina and nothing. By the time we gave up and just went ahead to dock it, the marina staff was off and we were out of luck for our docking slip reservation at Leverick Bay. Thanks Horizon. Of course I tried the emergency number again for them because no VHF is an actual emergency and again straight to voicemail.

I was planning on going to Anegada the next day but cancelled those plans because I have no idea what is going to break next on this boat.

Next night it rains, I close the hatches in our cabin (AC still sucks) and the our top hatch continued to drip water for an hour even though it was completely sealed and closed. Thanks Horizon.

The following night, guests in another one of our cabins was awaken quickly because their ceiling in their room actually fell on them. Are you kidding me?

Other notable issues,
Remote for Windlass on the helm didn't work
Under water lights did not work
Table latches in salon did not work
Port stern button on lazerette broke
Inverter did not work

At the end of the day, I know this boat probably survived a hurricane, but most of the issues listed here were simply because of proper maintenance not being done on this boat. It's obvious that this was a charter company owned boat with no "owner' and it was in my mind a terrible boat experience because of this.

Horizon, a little advice.

Make sure your boat is 100% ready for guests when they arrive. There should not be maintenance work being done on a boat when guests arrive. This should have been caught beforehand. When I pay $6500 for a week on a boat, I expect the boat to be in perfect shape. Please use our rental fee and fix all of the issues on this boat.
if you are going to give Charter guests an emergency phone number to use, make sure someone answers the damn phone!