I have been using Dolphin Water Taxi for several trips with excellent service. On the last trip we had a 10 AM pickup at the Moorings reserved. During the charter we were contacted mid-week and asked to depart at 9. The reason given was a larger boat would be used because of forecast bad weather and they had guests with 1:30 departures. I did not understand the weather issue since I check the weather several times a day and really wanted to do some dives on Thursday and Friday that required lighter winds. It had been 15 to 20 all week. Thursday and Friday were however forecast to be very nice 10-15 knots so no weather issue. I was reluctant to pickup early because our last night was planned at CGB. The option offered was to cab to WestEnd for pickup. After thinking it over decided to go early at 9 and moved our flight to 1:30 with a last night at Peter.
Friday at pickup there were 20 or so passengers and a small 49 passenger ferry arrived to pick us up. We departed a few minutes late and the ferry was slow. On arrival in Cruz Bay there was no room on the dock for the ferry as a scheduled ferry was there. We sat for a extended period of time waiting for room. As we waited at least a dozen water taxi’s of the normal size showed up and the customs line got longer and longer since they had room to dock and did not wait. We eventually docked and cleared customs. The ferry was hot and the AC inop during the 90 minute wait. The final result was getting to the airport at 12:35 after a scheduled 9am departure. Passengers on the 11 am ferry arrived at the airport only a few minutes after us. Passengers who booked water taxi’s at 10AM with other companies all beat us in.
I contacted the company to discuss the issues and found the owner quite hostile. I would love to reprint the text exchange but won’t do that without permission. The real lesson is that if you want prompt service don’t accept a swap to a ferry unless your flight is after 2:30. Stick with a private or semi private fast boat. The owner did inform me that despite our 12:35 airport arrival his clients made a 12:50 flight and we should have made our 1:30. I am a bit dubious on that claim as the customs line was a mile long and even global entry backed up!
G