CYOA Yacht Charters

Just plain RUDE! Spend your money somewhere else. Yacht chartering is the hospitality business, yet those folks don’t seem to get it.

Good reasons to choose CYOA
Close to airport, fly in get on boat
Friendly, helpful staff
Cost effective
A nice first day trip to St John, for a wonderful start
Next to Customs for the return
Restaurants close by for first and last day,
Return sailor discount.
Cab over to Megan’s Bay to continue the adventure
Reasons not to use CYOA
1.
People that should use other charters
1. Boring, uptight no fun folk

We did our fifth charter with CYOA in July 2015. Our previous four charters were on their Hunter e36 Island Angel and Jeanneau 44i Mei Nu. We love those two boats for different reasons. Island Angel is super simple and perfect for a couple or a family. Mei Nu is great for couples with generator/​ac; she really is a beautiful and striking boat with her teal hull. Service has been great with well maintained boats. The staff and reservations team is knowledgable and responsive. We love sleep aboard the night before we head out and having the restaurants in French Town right there. Great, right?
What’s even better is avoiding the high cost of flying to the BVIs or the pain of trying to negotiate the Tortola ferry; its a ten minute taxi ride from the St. Thomas airport. Our favorite part is being able to spend days in the pristine bays of the St. John national park. You don’t get that with a BVI charter. When we’re finished with St. John, it takes 30 minutes to check in at Tortola or Jost Van Dyke customs for the BVI portion of the cruise.
Our fifth charter in July 2015 was a step up for us to Glad In It, a Helia 44 catamaran. We had ten people for this trip, the full extended family. We were passing familiar with catamarans, but no experience on our own. We spent a day with Capt. Kyle working through the maneuvers before we headed out on our cruise. Kyle is awesome, he had my lady on the helm doing mooring/​docking/​anchoring and gave her a lot of confidence. I did those maneuvers too and felt quite comfortable when we dropped Kyle at the dock. He did a great job, because we had no problems docking at four stops and the anxiety level was low.
Our family had a great week on Glad In It and ten people worked nicely on this beautiful catamaran. Its a real luxury to have a two drawer refrigerator, separate drinks refrigerator, ice maker and freezer. We ate all of our breakfasts and all but one dinner on the boat and we were able to fit food for ten people without any spoilage. Their provisioning service worked nicely for us. There were four distinct common areas that let everyone spread out and ten people never felt crowded. The cabins were enormous and had more storage than we needed. Two of the kids were sleeping in the single berths forward of the cabins and they loved having their own rooms. A month later and everyone wants to do it again.
As captain, I had an easy check in and check out. No damage to the boat, no maintenance problems, no drama. We’ll be back.

I read some negative reviews regarding CYOA on several web sites AFTER we had booked our boat. It appeared that most of them where from one or two disgruntled customers with a serious vendetta against CYOA. Still, it was troublesome. Our group was delighted to find the experience with CYOA seamless, the dock staff especially helpful, cordial and truly eager to please. Our boat, the Mie NU, was very clean and ready to go upon our arrival. Overall opinion is that this is an excellent small company to deal with that goes above and beyond to take care of its customers.

I’ll admit, I don’t typically review anything on Unilocal despite using the search feature. However, when I was searching some charter companies in other parts of the world for our next trip, I was appalled to find CYOA had such a low score. We had an amazing trip with CYOA. They were very accommodating, helpful, and informative. We had a 8 day trip aboard Sarah Sue, a Fountaine Pajot Lavezzi, and absolutely loved the entire trip. Whether we were sailing hard to wind up to Virgin Gorda, motoring the dinghy from Great Harbour to White Harbour on Jost, or hanging out in an anchorage and jumping aboard a rendezvous dive boat on Cooper Island, Sarah Sue performed amazingly.
We had a captain the first day of the trip as it was our first time ever chartering (although I had owned and sailed boats across deep water passages before, it had never been a large catamaran or twin screw drive vessel). Captain Kyle was wonderful. He showed us everything that the cat could do, he gave us wonderful tips, tricks, and recommendations for the local area. He also handled everything wonderfully when we had a small item break on the first day. Something broke on the first day and I’m giving 5 stars??? Yes, I am, because things break while sailing, and I reserved an older boat because it was cheaper, but I realized the risk. And although it was a small issue, the staff repaired it quickly and perfectly while we grabbed a bite to eat at the Pie Whole (also recommended).
After our charter they let us look at some of the other vessels so I could get ideas for future chartering adventures, and they were very accommodating with helping us disembark, inspecting, cleaning everything up, and getting us to the airport on time.
CYOA is a great outfit and I plan to charter from them again if I come back to the USVI. I only hope they get some 12 person boats because we talk so positively about our trip that I now have 20+ people waiting to come on my next charter adventure.

Manager was neither friendly nor helpful. No reason to go here when there are many other options in the area.

Great Charter outfit on St. Thomas Island in the US Virgin Islands. No passport needed and big jet accessible, I nevertheless recommend you a) bring a passport and b) fly to Puerto Rico and hop to St. Thomas on a Cape Air Cessna.
CYOA has nice people and an interesting variety of boats. They manage owner’s yachts and do not require them (like some big names in the business) to be uniform. So, you might select a large Fontaine-​Pajot catamaran, or a sleek Jeanneau with teak decks and a blue hull, or a luxurious Hunter with upgraded electronics. There is real variety here.
Now, if only I had the time and money to sail them all… :)
Iguanas hang out on the docks near the marina restaurant. They look really cute and are happy to pose for pictures. Just don’t feed them people food!