All,

Here are some lessons learned this trip. Overall we had a great trip. We did run into some issues around our charter that I would love people's feedback on. I am hesitant to put the charters name.

We chartered a Lagoon 2019 450F for 10 days 12/19-12-29. I will share the trip & positives first, challenges last, would love your feedback.

We took someone's advice on the forum and left ST Thomas for St Croix our first day. We spent two days in St. Croix, one anchored of Christensted and one at Green Cay Marina. The folks at Green Cay Marina are class act - showers were incredible. Great place. The sail down - we were seasick but recovered quickly. The sail back, we took one dramamine and 8 of us on board were fine on the way back.

We spent one night an Great Lamshur & one night at Salt Pond. Both great days with lots of fun and the hike of ramshead was fantastic (I think it was our 6th time)

The next day we swung in Coral Bay for provisions and LimeOut Taco Bar - just awesome. Highly recommend. Great experience and great tacos. We then headed to Waterlemon Cay for a couple of nights. We love that bay. Had a great time having fun in the sun.

We went to Lavango for an overnight mooring ball and a great meal. We felt the price for the a pool in the afternoon was steep. The evening meal was great. Staff was great to us.

We then spent two nights in Honeymoon. We had brunch at the restaurant Zozos - great food. Incredible service. Ran one of our folks back to Cruz Bay, we tagged a long for ice cream. All for free. Just great people running Zozos.

Checked back in..

So here are my questions / concerns

When we arrived at the boat, the motor cover was off the dinghy. I immediately said - I am very concerned about this and I want a working dinghy. They assured me that it will work before I leave. I think they tested it and it idled fine. Since we left for St Croix the next morning - the first time was at St Croix. The dingly motor was terrible - had to pull it 100 times to get us to the boat and tweak the choke just perfect to stay alive. It also had a physical hole in the bottom of the dinghy - the thing was 1/4 full of water each morning. We didn't get the motor fixed until 6 days into the trip because it was Christmas time when we got back to St John. They knew it was an issue and replaced the carb - then the motor worked great.

Item #2 - which many of you may have been aware of - we were not. We have rented 6 boats in the past. This boat was 220V 50Hz so you could not plug in anything into the boat except your computer. No 115V was on the boat. What was worse is you couldn't hook up to shore power, so we had to run the generator the entire time. This was crazy to us..

Item #3 - No freezer. 3rd freezer was supposed to be a freezer, but was a fridge. We brought down a lot of vacuumed sealed smoked meats and steaks, had to throw half of it.

Item #4 - When it rained, the boat literally had a waterfall coming through the sealing.. We have videos of it. Luckily I had my trusty 5 gallon pale that i purchased at home depot. Crazy..

The folks we rented the boat from were very kind BUT I feel like I was taken advantage of. They had no other dinghy. I got the bad dinghy and they knew they gave me a lemon when I left the dock. I paid ~$17k for 10 day CAT prime time and I feel like they should offer me a discount. They offered me 1 day credit to be used in the future - approx. $1700. I would love your thoughts on if people think this is fair. We don't want to be big complainers and it seems like every boat has some issues, but this was a little over the top.

I want everyone to be aware of 220V 50Hz boats and no shore power, not plugging in 115V appliances, hairdryers, etc.. I looked at our contract and it does say that it was 220V 50Hz, but has inverters for 115V. I am an electrical engineer by training so I get it. The way it was worded was it has 115V through inverters NOT adapters.

I would love to hear peoples thoughts.

I don't think we would do St. Croix trip again - it was fun to do it once. Loved St. John - everywhere. Thanks to all of you for all your advice. You made the trip better by all your wisdom over the years. If we would have had a freezer - it would have been incredible for meals. We vacuumed sealed meals - just heat water, drop in your meat, cut bag and it is done. I also brought my innova sous vide to make things when we were on the dock. Super handy. Spend time having fun and less time cooking.

Thanks everyone!