Hi, I'm looking to charter a couple of cats in the Virgin Islands and would love any suggestions for the best companies to charter through. There seems to be a ton of companies and brokers and it's hard to sift through them all. Who would you recommend? Any issues with booking through a broker? Thanks.

Are looking in the British or US Virgins?

If looking to charter in the USVI (bareboat or with a captain), you can do no better than CYOA Yacht Charters. Other charters companies are actually sending some of their boats to CYOA for much needed maintenance so they can be safely and reliably chartered.

US

Thank you!

CYOA may not have the right size cats for my weeks, but Dream Yacht might. What's their reputation?

They stopped paying the owners in their Guaranteed Income program. I spoke with several DYC charterers in Jan and Feb while I sailing for 4 werks in the USVI that complained about the sorry state of maintenance of their boats. I suspect they are cutting out ad much maintenance as possible to minimize their negative cash flow. Buyer/charterer beware.

If CYOA doesn’t have what you want, try Navigare. Several companies, including Navigare have moved boats to the USVI’s. I heard that Moorings was moving boats there too. Not sure when.

There are sooooo many DYC boats at Compass Point Marina right now and I have heard more than a few recent DYC charter horror stories. We saw several Navigare boats out around STJ last week. Moorings had half a dozen or so anchored in the Yacht Haven Grand area when we passed by on the way to the airport Friday. Personally, I'd change travel dates to charter with CYOA.

Navigare contracted with CYOA to maintain 6 or so of their boats. I understand that the Navigare maintenance had been woefully lacking when they brought them over and that CYOA had to put several tens of thousands of dollars in maintenace (per boat) into some of these boats just to make them safely charter-ready. As a charter boat owner, I feel very bad for the owners of DYC and Navigare boats.

We had a charter with Navigare in the BVI’s scheduled for April, 2020. We rescheduled several times, we ended up moving it to the USVI’s. We have used Navigare in the past we no problems, hopefully we will not have problems next month.

Charter company Boats at Sea is Not ethical.

The boat we are chartering is a 2020, so if they put tens of thousands of dollars into it, hopefully, it will be in good shape next month.

We had a good experience with Virgin Island Yacht Charters in Compass Point a couple of weeks ago. Newer fleet of FPS and Lagoons. As reported, Dream Yacht Is also at Compass Point, office and slips. Mooring now has some bare boats in the USVI now too.

Avoid Catamaran Company, at all costs. We booked a charter & paid half, after which they changed the terms of the trip but refused to refund all the payment. An unscrupulous company.

Highly recommend CYOA. I have chartered from them multiple times and have had great experience. Next charter starts this Friday on FP 40. Looking forward to exploring more of St John. Cheers.

As someone who has lurked a while, after reading this thread, I wanted to check out CYOA.

As an FYI to whoever owns the business and runs the website, my corporate firewall provider Fortinet has this website blocked without a workaround.

My brother is my IT guy, and I had him look into this for about ten minutes, and his only suggestion was to get off the corporate internet and use my cellular data on my phone to view the site or use my home internet. So using my cell data allowed me to get on the site at work.

CYOA is now owned by and called Waypoints: https://waypoints.com/destinations/us-virgin-islands/

It is a very good operation, out of the USVI at Charlotte Amalie, Frenchtown.

CYOA has always been well respected. Purchased by Waypoints recently. I don't know how this affects the local operations, but hopes the good parts of CYOA live on.

CYOA in USVI.

In BVI, TMM Charters, rocks!