Gone Sailing Adventures

It pains me to write this, I really wanted to enjoy this excursion. There’s been so many positive reviews about this company that my negative experience is made all the more disappointing. But alas, my outing was undeniably lacking. To set the stage, I purchased some coupon vouchers for an Introductory Sail Trip for a bachelor party in August I was planning (yes, belated review… I’ve been busy!) The invitees had no experience with any sort of sailing, save for one late-​comer with mostly novice-​level experience, so no expectations were initially set (other than the trip description). It led to discussions before, during and after the trip. Sadly, it didn’t improve the outcome of this experience. Here are the main issues:
1. Booking
— Online booking is on an individual basis. So if you’re booking for a large group, you end up signing everybody up one by one. It took me about an hour to get a party of 5 signed up.
— They don’t seem to keep track of your online waivers. So when we actually got to the boat, we still got asked if we had signed. So if I were to ever do this again — which I definitely won’t — I’l be skipping the online waiver.
2. Sailing Experience
— Firstly, ship was clean. Nobody tripped, nothing stunk. However…
— Set sail late, docked early. I don’t think we even got 3 hours out of this 3.5 hr trip
— Poor trip planning. Three individuals did not get to steer, all three came from our party of five. You would think that unless anyone stated any apathy towards the steering/​hands-​on component of the trip (which no one did), a competent (or unbiased) planner would divide the time at the wheel evenly amongst the nine guests. He did walk from stern to bow to ask one of the other parties to try the steering, so it’s not clear why the other three weren’t asked in a similar way.
— Not funny/​entertaining? I know, completely subjective, shouldn’t belong here. But it was really weird:
a. the captain ended up grabbing my leg through the cabin window, I think with the intent to make it seem like a shark bite. There was no other answer when I had asked him about it afterwards.
b. Around the midway point, he had asked if everybody was having fun, and invited those who weren’t to approach him; followed by a reminder of the 250 ft. waters surrounding the boat. That would’ve been funny, IMHO, if everybody was actually having fun, instead of waiting for their turn to steer…
c. After we had docked, i.e. when the sailing was over, he had provided a pirate hat and plastic sword for the groom to pose in. Ignoring the question of why this wasn’t provided before or during the sail, why it was thought that this would have looked fitting (especially when there was a captain’s hat) on a modern, motorized sailboat goes towards that odd sense of humour.
3. Customer Service
— Response time is fast, when he wants to be. Sent pre-​sailing emails quickly, the post-​sail feedback request was sent shortly afterwards by the end of the weekend. Never did get a response for my detailed review I sent, though.
— Adequate correspondence was something much left to be desired. Harmless questions around possible ideas to make the bachelor party more memorable were interpreted as ways we wanted to clown around with disregard for everyone’s fun and/​or safety; followed by an ultimatum to sail by his rules (which we always intended) or «spend time at a playground». I don’t know why he didn’t raise further ideas, like the pirate hat/​sword he later introduced on his own, but it’s moot with respect to the conclusion of poor communication.
In short, great potential (considering the overall proposition), poor execution, very disappointing. Skip over for the other intro sailing outfits along the Toronto harbourfront.