Advice for Caribbean Flotilla?

[dwareham]

Family of four here, looking to join a flotilla somewhere in the Caribbean, BVI, Belize, etc. (basically anywhere that is a short flight from the US). Looking for advice on which companies offer great service. I have read some so-so reviews of Sunsail. Does anyone have any advice for us?

(Husband has 100 hours of sailing; wife has basic keelboat certificate but is not a confident sailor; kids are 6 and 7.)

Thanks!

[DRFerron]

Hello.

Just learned that perfect strangers can join up in flotillas through charter companies. Huh. Interesting.

As for the charter companies, if you look through the posts in the Chartering section of this forum, you'll see that just about every charter company has good and bad reviews. You just have to choose which bad parts you are willing to live with and know your expectations.

We're doing a BVI charter through Sunsail.

[ftldiver]

I would think sunsail. but no 1st hand experience.

[gtod25]

Moorings and Sunsail are owned by the same company. Just pitched at different price points. Sunsail is cheaper and fine. Other companies cater for different niche markets (e. g. Older boats etc.). BVI is the best for newbies, if u cant see it you can't hit it (mostly). Do a rigorous boat check on arrival and demand "perks" if not up to scratch.

[bobnpaula]

For our first chartering experience, we chose a Sunsail Flotilla in the BVI, one week. (2008) It was the perfect choice! BVI is easy, line-of-sight sailing, with short distances between stops, and the relative protection of the Sir Francis Drake Channel.
We were with our college-aged son, and loved meeting the other folks in the flotilla. We had Americans, Germans, English, Irish, as I recall. You could spend as much or as little time socializing with the others as you wanted. There were couples, families with younger children, and luckily for us, a couple families with other college-aged young adults in tow.
We found the Flotilla Captain, who was a local, to be helpful, knowledgeable and fun. The "hostess", a young English woman who was also a sailor, was really great at setting a "vacation" mood.
There were daily chart briefings with good advice and local knowledge on where we were sailing that day. We would then sail on our own, making our way to that night's rendezvous point. (generally, you have to be moored by 5 pm) You can then either eat on your own boat, or you can go and join the others at the restaurant for that night, which they have chosen, and which was usually the best choice in a given place.
We have lived overseas, so we loved the comraderie and meeting people from different places and cultures. Everyone is on vacation and in a good mood, so the evenings are a lot of fun. We did spend a couple of nights on our boat, just for some quiet time, and that was nice too.
Having the support of the leaders of the Flotilla was invaluable to us. It made us feel more confident as we sailed and navigated in a totally new environment, and took away most of the anxiety that a new charterer will normally feel.
Also, having the lead boat waiting for us as we reached a mooring field was helpful, because sometimes in the BVI there is a bit of a 'musical chairs' element.... being afraid you will be the one left without a chair (mooring)..we were not worried, because we knew that our leaders would help us figure it out if that happened, and it never did.
Since then, we have chartered again in the BVI (no flotilla) and in the Grenadines, Antigua and are headed to Sint Maarten this year. We highly recommend Sunsail Flotilla for your first time.