Jeff W.

Worst charter experience we have ever had (over 20 previous bareboat charters). Unsafe, uncaring, unresponsive, unwilling to try and make it right. We chartered for 2 weeks out of Nassau in July. Reserved a 1.5 year old Lagoon 40 in hopes of getting a nice boat in good condition.
This is not a vendetta against DYC. I'd love to help them improve and make things right not just for myself but for others as well. The avenues I have tried to accomplish this so far have not worked.
The largest problem was that when issues were found, DYC just said that's the way it is and did nothing to make it better on our charter or after. After months of negotiating, they offered $300 compensation on a 2 week charter without AC, without a safe boat, without a safe dinghy, and with many other issues.
We had no reliable contact information for the base while on the boat. The number on our booking confirmation email did not work, and the number on Google did not work. The boat is a 15 min walk from the base and we were left to fend for ourselves or make the walk multiple times. We were given a semi responsive phone number at the end of day two.
The boats AC in the port hull had been disassembled / removed from the port hull at checkout, and they have known about that for a long time, said it would take a week sitting at the marina to have it fixed. Although it was July in the Bahamas and we paid for AC, we were out of luck. After returning they offered $300 compensation.
The boat ran on 220V European voltage, but had 110 appliances onboard DYC put a 110v toaster and blender on the boat. We found out that the appliances were 110V when the toaster caught fire. I had my entire family on a boat that caught fire because I trusted DYC!?
Broken vessel rudder: The Port rudder had the bottom 1-2" missing, shaft was noticeably bent, delamination in the rudder showed significant algae growth indicating that the damage has been there for a long time. We did not dive the bottom of the boat in the marina, so we discovered this after the 7 hour passage from Nassau to the Exumas. Compromised steering on a boat should be a non-starter!
Dinghy failures: Upon leaving the charter marina, the dingy davit eyelets on the dinghy ripped out of the rigid hull. The wood behind the fiberglass was rotten, black, and soft indicating that the dingy was old and neglected. This happened in the middle of the tight exit channel with coral / shoals on either side in seas much too large to safely recover a half hanging dinghy off the back of our boat. With no reliable contact number we brought the boat into the marina and backed into a slip. The workers lamented… "our dingy's are so bad" and then took off trying to find a replacement. They brought by different options that were completely unacceptable. Leaking dinghys that required constant bailing, dinghy's that did not even run well enough for the dock hands to get them to us, etc. We landed on a dinghy with two leaking tubes, an unremovable wooden plug JB welded in to drain plug, and a smoky engine with a damaged prop and questionable reliability. We asked for a better dinghy and were told that was it, otherwise we could wait a week for a different one. This dinghy almost sank while motoring back to our boat in a squall and put my family in danger.
Mis-calibrated vessel depth gauge: During "checkout" I was told that the depth reading on the boat was absolutely the depth below the keel, not the depth below the waterline. Using a lead line and measuring tape, the actual water depth was 2 feet SHALLOWER than the reading below the keel. If we trusted the DYC base (I advise not trusting DYC) we would have been in danger of running aground.
At checkout we were told the starboard refrigeration unit was a freezer and the port was a refrigerator. We provisioned for two weeks accordingly and bought a ton of meat and perishables to be frozen in the starboard "freezer" With food costs in the Bahamas, and accounting for people for 2 weeks this was a large sum of money. The starboard unit was always meant to be a refrigerator and would not reach freezing temps. Most of our meat spoiled and was wasted.
We have worked over the last 3 months to give DYC the opportunity to make this right and they have come back with a $300 refund which is insulting. I write this review in hopes of saving others from going what we went through. We spoke with other DYC guests at the base who went through similar issues. We toured the Moorings base at the same location and it looked very impressive and was a stark contrast to what was going on at the DYC side.