TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums US VI and Puerto Rico Chartering w/a Watermaker Onboard

CYOA seems like an attractive charter option over flying/ferrying to the BVI's from the US. You guys n gals definitely seem to give them glowing reviews and I note many of their Cats have watermakers.

My question is, have you chartered a CYOA yacht with a watermaker and was that a discriminator for you? My 2nd charter is this coming July, but I'm thinking down the road, with a bigger boat, bigger crew, a watermaker would sure come in handy.

Anyone care to share experiences?

Thanks.

We started putting water makers in the cats three years ago. Cuvee hull number 2 of the Saba 50 was the first. Baard insisted on it as the owner because he wanted to reduce the number of times that people banged his brand new cat into docks. The feedback was immediate and decisive. Our long term guests started seeking out the boats with water makers after the first trip with one.

Every single cat in our fleet now has a water maker. The feed back has been terrific. It is literally like the first time you rented a boat with Air Conditioning. No one wants to go back. We also have three mono hulls with water makers.

No more waiting in line or taking time out to go to the dock for water. No more stress and cussing docking every two or three days. This makes it easier to get your damage deposit back as the ocean is only dangerous around the edges. Also no more fighting with your wives and daughters over showers.

In addition we have a larger cruising ground, St Thomas, St John, Culebra, Vieques, St Croix and all of the BVI's. Some places have no access to water this also was a deciding factor for us in installing them.

Our last trip, July 2019, our boat from CYOA, S/V Dream Machine, had a water maker. Loved it. No issues about working, no issues about not enough water, no issues with having to find water to fill tanks. Is it necessary to charter, No, but makes for a much nicer charter.

Love the water maker, and if you have an ice-maker too you're freed from the chore of finding and hauling ice aboard every two days.

Just have to gather the crew, get their commitment ($$) and book the boat! I did talk to a charter company in RT, and they were not sold on the idea and were not including them on future boats. Considered them too fussy, which is the exact same impression I had. My understanding now is, with a close eye, it's worth the effort.

The charter boats morphed into having generators running full time to power AC units. So the addition of a water maker is easy with the power available from the generator. Some water makers tend to be maintenance hogs so that will be a challenge for a charter company to keep them running. Yet the convenience of having so much water can be a positive game changer for many short term charter boats. What will they think of next!?!

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We are currently working with the US and British governments to develop self sailing boats that will steer around rocks and navigate. In addition the next generation will have dynamic positioning capabilities to avoid the race for moorings and the need to wake up in the wee hours of the morning just to reserve a ball. :-)

Uber has also reached out about designated drivers to tender folks back and forth to their yachts thus eliminating the need for tenders on board. This takes care of all kinds of problems. No pesky water in the fuel, no stolen dinghies, no lost dinghies, no one gets divorced for staying at the Willy T to long because they can't remember which tender is theirs etc. Uber eats delivered to the boat would be the next logical step. Then you would never need to leave the mother ship. :-) We will then install drones that can visit the beach of your choice and stream video back to the boats live to eliminate that pesky sand in the boat. You can watch the beach live on the big screen in the salon while running the AC units.