About five or six years ago we did our first charter. It was in the BVIs and we were a bit concerned on whether we'd like sailing for our annual vacation. So, instead of putting out a lot of money, we decided to find the cheapest boat with AC. Naturally, this was an older boat (2005 I think). In general, everything worked well. But there were no water or fuel gauges working and one of the two AC units didn't work - which obviously defeated the purpose of getting a boat with AC. In any case, the charter company tried three times to get the unit working (meeting us in three different locations) and in the end we went back to the base and they changed out the unit (on our second to last day). I won't mention the company because they were very accommodating and adjust our charter fee to make up for our lost days of sailing and not having AC for most of the trip.

It did nearly cause us to decide that we didn't want to sail for our vacation anymore. But when we thought about it, we realized we had put the whole affair on us because we had gone with the least expensive boat. We decided to continue to charter every other year for our annual vacation and to not get the cheapest boat, and it's worked out fine ever since. (although we didn't get to charter in 2017 after Irma)