21 Aug 2023
My family of 11 charted the catamaran "Liquid" out of Casa de Campo where we were staying. From the beginning this was a terrible situation. We arrived at the dock where the captain was getting dressed. He was wearing street clothes, not the Tshirts of the rest of the crew. Usually at this time the captain will introduce himself and the crew and wish us a great voyage, maybe talk up the locations to visit, etc. However none of this happened. He just asked if we were all there, that he was waiting for the food caterer (we spent $1,150 for food for the day) and that we had to pay to get going. I tried to get the information to Zelle the funds since I was short on cash and there was no cc machine. The boat pulled off the dock, however, I could not get the Zelle to work and the man held the boat in idle, off shore, until I could figure out a way to pay. I took a collection from the family to make up the $1000 final payment and we were on our way. A bad start.
We went to Palmilla beach and while it was very crowded when we go there, it was really nice and the crowd eventually subsided. The two guys in the crew were really nice. The Captain remained on the top deck the entire time and did not talk to us. We had brought our own liquor, we only got the beer/mixers from the Charter. The crew served us beer and drinks. I was disappointed that the beers were the 8 oz cans and that half of them were Coors Light rather than local beer.
The caterer prepared the lunch. While the food was on the expensive side, it was very good. This is when things went off the rails. I went to get a bottle of water and found that there was no water left. This is at 2 pm. The boat was supposed to have water and the caterer was supposed to bring water. Everyone had been drinking alcohol, where was the water? How much water did they carry for 11 people for a full day in the hot sun? There was also no ice because they brought one bag of ice which obviously melted. After complaining one of the crew swam to a neighboring boat and got us 5 bottles of water for us to share. At this time, with still 3 hours left on our tour I asked the Captain (still up in the flybridge) to take us back. No water, no ice for drinks. This Captain did not even apologize, we got back and he didn't have the decency to come down from the flybridge to say anything. To this day no word from East Coast even though we spent over $3k on a charter. It is shameful.