If the three of you that actually read this blog have been following along…it is well known that we love Dream Yacht Charters after doing our first trip in March 2021 and our second in April 2022. If you've read the DYC or DYC - St. Martin post you knew April 2022 was going to be a boozy and beautiful sail around the BVIs. We planned, we planned and we planned - before booking, after booking - I don't think in my history of planning a vacation I had ever been more excited for some fun in the sun. Well, you know the saying "we plan, God, laughs" well to say he had a chuckle puts it mildly.
Here is the story of our last-minute pivot from the BVIs to the USVIs. A fictional writer wishes that they had the bandwidth, imagination, and creativity to make this up!
As I said before I planned and planned and planned - to Type A perfection - so I'm going to share with you a little of my hard work with you all before the dramatic finality summarizing our change in plans.
The Plan That Never Came to Fruition:
So with a trip to the BVIs ahead of me, I knew in 7 days I wanted to do some research to ensure that we hit all of the best spots. Back in 2021, when we booked the St. Martin trip…I don't know if I was just super dumb or the waterways changed but I had thought that the BVIs were a place that we could travel to. Fast forward to arriving at the marina in St. Martin and they told me the waterways were closed due to COVID so we did the trip not knowing what anything was relying on our captain for the itinerary and mine and my husband's limited knowledge of St. Martin after traveling there once before. Now if you read my DYC St. Martin blog post it is safe to say that we had plenty of fun and as such were eager to book another trip - but it was a learning point that I knew I wanted to have more control over that process. I felt that there was enough information out there that I could avoid the 'it was okay - we made the best out of it - but you could pass on this and not miss a thing kind of places'. I wanted to fill every day of our time with 'gosh you absolutely MUST GO' and so the research started. I first started with DYC's website. As I said in the 'DYC - Overall' post, they have a sample itinerary and they are a charter company that makes business by bringing people to the best of the best places. I started in a Google Sheet tab and graduated to a PowerPoint presentation that I will so graciously share - screenshotting the itineraries and adding pictures to the words. Then I went to competitor websites, let me see where they are bringing their charter guests…no surprise, a lot of overlap. Then I perused the Travelocities and Expedias of the world looking for excursions. If I were staying on island - where are companies saying I should go for a day trip - what are the popular places. If that wasn't enough I then went to the blogs. I like to think my little opinion is built from a ton of experience and I'm not getting paid for these original thoughts. I love to travel and these are my recommendations and thoughts to help someone make the most of their vacation days - so precious as they are! So I did the same thing - screenshots and pictures. Before I was done I had over a 40 place slideshow of different destinations and things to do in the BVIs - all of which - looked amazing! To my friend's demise - we had a super professional skype meeting where I then brought them through my slide deck communicating everything that I had learned with fun pictures to help set the scene of what our future would look like. Then again - me being super type A - at the end of the presentation - went back through it and had everyone vote yes or no to each destination and somehow someway it actually wasn't super difficult to narrow down the itinerary that fit all of our interests.
Even though I know nobody is interested, see below for the PowerPoint presentations containing all possibilities and then outlining what our itinerary was supposed to be:
God's Laugh
So to rewind a little bit, if you read our DYC - BVIs - Getting There Blog you know it was a bit of a pain getting to Scrub Island but we figured it out and we were set to arrive on 4/2/2022. So you can imagine our surprise when a little birdie texted us out of the blue asking us about the status of the trip because the marina on Scrub Island was closed at around 9:15PM on 3/23. We were confused. We immediately checked the BVI Government and CDC website immediately thinking that the Level 3 suggest not travel due to COVID status got escalated to a Level 4 do not go status - it didn't. And then we get a response from the little birdy. Let me enlighten you with the text that rocked our plans:
"Well…I guess you're not supposed to know that…but the police locked all the boats, for a history of new law about equipment on a boat…but maybe (and I hope that for you!!!), the base be unlocked for the April 2nd"
I'll give myself another minute to let that sink in and sting a bit more. Now we started to panic Googling. Here are some of the results:
So it was true apparently for lack of equipment and failure on the larger charter companies to obtain the right licensing after a new law that was passed in OCTOBER 2021 they were non-compliant and now the boats were seized. Did DYC come out and tell us this proactively - of course not. So the next step was what in the heigh-ho does this mean for us. Also, the first article was written 3/19 it is now 3/23 at 9:30PM - when the hell was DYC going to communicate that our trip scheduled for 4/2/2022 MIGHT ACTUALLY BE IMPACTED. So 3/24 9:30AM (I'm a gracious person so I gave DYC after sales contact 30 minutes to get in and get settled) before I came a ringing asking what in the world was going on and why am I seeing this in the news (thank God for our little birdie) versus proactive communication on them. I feel like this comes as a surprise to no one but there was little to no information. The message that was communicated was that right now (i.e. Thursday 3/24) their focus was getting the boats cleared that were scheduled to depart 3/25-3/27 and that our trip being the next week was not a priority. They further communicated that they did not anticipate but couldn't guarantee an impact on our trip. I then got a follow-up email later in the afternoon on 3/24 stating that there was a high chance that our trip would be impacted but they would have more information on Monday. Okay phew - in a better place - we were hopeful. We remained hopeful through the weekend and got back in touch with our contact at DYC Monday evening. The message went a bit like this - we don't know what happened - your boat was supposed to go through the inspection process on Friday and again today but hasn't - we don't have a lot of visibility into the process and no answers for you. We understand that you're arriving on Saturday here are your options:
1. Continue to wait and hope that your boat gets cleared.
2. Pivot and change destinations. If you were to go to a different DYC destination, DYC would also issue a full credit for the trip paid that could be used within 1 year of the original date and the new destination would be free.
3. Full refund.
We asked our contact how long we could pursue option #1 before avoiding the risk of not having a vacation at all as we were not the only group in this situation and knew that others were facing the same option and the availability of option #2 would diminish as the week went on. We were told Thursday was the latest we would have to make a decision to switch to give the new base time to find a skipper. So we waited and crossed all 10-fingers and all 10-toes that our boat, Chill Nation - the same boat we had in St. Martin would be free from the holds on the BVI Customs. Tuesday came around and we called asking for our daily update. Surprise, surprise - Chill Nation did not go up for review today. They added one additional option for the three presented above - a smaller boat that would be available and could hold our sized group in the BVIs but that it couldn't depart until 4/3- but that we would need to make a decision by 12PM tomorrow. DYC also sent us the other destinations we could go to if decided to select Option #2 which were the USVIs, Grenada, and Anguilla. So we queued an emergency group meeting. As employee of the year over here - I spent the rest of the day trying to scramble together some research on the 3 different options to help us make the best choice if we as a collective unit decided to go with Option #2.
You guessed it, here is my beautiful last-minute scrambled PowerPoint of screenshots and pictures trying to help educate myself on the options. This one is not as annotated, not as pretty but the information I got is here.
So after much deliberation, we decided that BVIs smaller boat was going to be our first choice with the USVIs/St. Thomas was going to be our second. If you scrolled through the 'Our Itinerary' PowerPoint, you know that Cane Garden, Tortola was intended to be the last day of our trip. To accommodate not leaving until 4/3, we decided that we would get an Airbnb on 4/2 in Cane Garden, Tortola, and just flip around the days prior to going to Scrub Island. This would allow us not to lose the money that we had already spent on the Water Taxi or have to work with them to reschedule and really not sacrifice what we wanted to do in the BVIs. All was calm for a moment and we felt that there was a way out of the dark that ended in the BVIs.
Wednesday 4/30 at around 10AM just as I was about to call DYC and let them know we wanted the smaller BVI boat, we get an email from our contact saying that despite her efforts in trying to reserve the smaller BVI boat, the local base just booked a different group on it. UMM SAY WHAT!? You had just promised us at like 4PM on 4/29 that option and then it was taken away from us in seconds. I wasn't ready to pull the trigger on the USVIs, my heart was set on the places I had spent months putting my time and attention to and looking forward to. There HAD TO BE ANOTHER OPTION. We called and tried not to release our inner Karen. I called the local base in the BVIs and begged them to prioritize Chill Nation - but Wednesday late after came around and Chill Nation still did not clear. Our contact told us that she held a boat at the USVI but in order to guarantee we had some trip, we had to book the boat, before the end of the day. I couldn't let go. In those hours, we called around to other charter companies (have no idea why the hell we didn't think to do this sooner) and see if they had boats and skippers available for charter with 2 days' notice but to no avail. And so with much disappointment, we booked the USVI trip and rushed to submit our provision order.
In the days that followed I tried to get myself excited and add to the 'Other Destinations' USVI section but I couldn't get myself there. I would read words but wouldn’t' digest them. I just submitted to going with the itinerary our captain suggested yet another time and admitted defeat. Yes, I know that we were still super lucky to be going on vacation and the USVI was still an amazing destination that we were going to let alone on a catamaran but the vibe was just totally different. The BVIs there is so much to do - restaurants, Virgin Gorda National Park - drinking and dancing, and beautiful sandy beaches pivoting to St. John which was a national park where the island shut down at 10PM, and St. Thomas. And so that's it - that's the saga on how we ended up in the USVIs over the BVIs. To date, I have yet to have a vacation be so stressful yet so disappointing - but I knew we were with great friends and anything was better than Pennsylvania - and so off we went!
Want to read all about the USVIs, what we would up doing and how it compared to the limited research attached above?! You're in luck - here's a very lengthy and thorough guide, just for you!:
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