I booked a charter and invited three friends to come to Florida and join me for a long fishing weekend, Thursday through Sunday. My guests arrived on Wednesday and we showed up on Thursday morning to launch our great adventure. Unfortunately, there is a course in seamanship that you must complete prior to departing on your vacation.
While this is not a bad idea it is very time consuming. The course is scheduled to take 3 to 4 hours. I became a certified captain twenty two years ago and it still took three and a half hours to demonstrate that I was competent to pilot the vessel and make basic maneuvers. The reason for this is the vessel is very, very slow.By the time I was ready to leave the marina to start our vacation I barely had time to get the boat to the anchorage for the night.
At this point Dave informs me that we must be back by 10:00 A.M. On Sunday. This presented a problem because none of my guests wanted to get up at 4:00 A.M. On Sunday to make the 4 to 5 hour journey back. Dave suggested that we bring the vessel back or at least closer to the marina on Saturday. The problem with this plan is that we wanted to relax and fish on Saturday not wrap up early and spend hours traveling and hoping to find a spot to set up somewhere near the marina. The Charter Rules are very restrictive as to where you can anchor and the spot he recommended to us is small and known to be very crowded on the weekends. We may have traveled all the way there and not been able to find anchorage. This would have put us back at the marina with only Friday and half of Saturday to enjoy our vacation.
We asked Dave what would happen if we ran late on Sunday and he said It's no problem, just call and let me know. As he requested, I called at 8:00 on Sunday morning to let him know that we were under and would arrive around noon. He said that that was fine and asked if we would call him as we approached the last bridge en route to the marina.
We met Dave at the marina around noon, unloaded our gear and inspected the boat for damage. At this point he told me that the boat appeared to be in good condition and that he would return my deposit after they had prepared the vessel for the next charter. Presumably, this gives them an opportunity to check the boat more thoroughly before releasing the funds. I thanked him for a nice experience and returned home.
Nearly a month later I received a check for the balance of my deposit and I was surprised to find that he had deducted in excess of $700.00 for various items including $400.00 for an extra day rental. I was shocked, the very least he could have done is to inform us that we were paying for the extra day so that we could have taken it easy instead of getting up early and rushing back.
The bottom line is Dave led us to believe that it wasn't a problem to be back at noon. So he either cheated us out of the $400.00 or another day on the water. Either way he cheated us.
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