To be fair, our situation was in the “gray area” of a charter, and I’ll let everyone who’s reading this make their own decisions.
We booked the Full day $1,000 charter, I put $150 down for the booking. Communication was low but we ended up chatting the day prior ( I messaged him because of the weather concerns and he called ). We decided to “play it by ear” for the next day and hopefully the thunderstorms wouldn’t show up. It looked okay outside in the morning so we went to the dock. Got aboard and headed out (after taking 30min to get back which we were told to pitch in for $20 of $40), then we got out on the water and there was mild to severe storms all around us. So we had decent (6-8 ft) swells and 3 of the 4 of us ended up getting sea sick within the first 1.5 hours on the water ( which doesn’t normally happen ).
Capt Sig said he’d cut us a deal and only charge for a half day and we could head in. We were trolling a few miles out ( I could still easily see land ) and caught a couple small fish ( so at least we had something in the icebox ). Everything thus far was acceptable at that moment, looking back I think if there’s known thunderstorms on the water we should call off the charter but lesson learned.
So we took the Cpt up on his offer and when we got back to the dock, I asked him how much the half day was, he said 600$ which I was okay with, I handed him $450 + $120 tip for his son ( crew in training, I could tell he wasn’t a pro only because the Cpt kept correcting him, but he worked hard and deserved his cut ). He then tells me, no , the down payment was for the site and not included in his price. Which I know for a fact is not the case, I actually am really hoping he’s not doing this to more people.
So all told, I paid 150$ down payment, 20$ for live bait ( which we never even used ), 600$ for the half day? 1.5 hours of rolling storm swells and getting us all sick. The rest of the time was travel and bait.
He said he’d try to get me some refund on this site, but given the nature of his ethical decisions on the boat, I’d say that’s highly unlikely.
if I was you, I’d go with someone else.
Before you respond with “I can’t control the weather”, I know that, but you can make the right judgement call knowing there’s storms over the water. Even just saying hey let’s let that storm pass and meet back at noon would have been better than taking us out in rough water. Your son told us you hadn’t been out in quiet a while, which tells me your short on $, which explains you nickel and diming me and my friends.
To be fair, our situation was in the “gray area” of a charter, and I’ll let everyone who’s reading this make their...
