Island Cruising Yacht Charters & Sailing School

Thank you so much for your ongoing support and advice. Upon arriving in Canada with my sailing catamaran I have been so fortunate to find Larry at Deep Cove Marina whose local knowledge and background of experience with catamarans has been so beneficial and helpful. Thank you again! Martin WhiteCaptain of S-V Tarahumara

READ BEFORE YOU CHARTER. Nice boat. Horrible service. I skippered the Coastal Cottage for 5 days with friends on a charter. Office reception was good, but Larry the owner could not have been more unprofessional or condescending. Our experience checking out and returning the boat was horrible. At best it was was rude and at worst verges on unethical seamanship. I've been boating for 40 years, have owned 4 boats, have an ICC and have chartered all over the world. I give my background to point out that a company that teaches seamanship should have employees that know how to behave in a manner consistent with maritime ethics and tradition. Based on my experience this is not the case with Island Cruising. I will not return. UPDATE: I just read the rest of the reviews after posting this. OMG I can't believe how many people have had similar experiences with this company!

I have chartered with Island Cruising in the past, but the company is now located at Deep Cove and their fleet of available charter boats has shrunk considerably since their move from Sidney Marina.Deep Cove Marina is more isolated so you can’t easily walk into the downtown area as before, and Deep Cove has a shallow approach from Saanich Inlet. The Jeanneau 389 that friends and I chartered in 2017 requires +2 meters of tide to comfortably access the marina. This places constraints on arrival and departure times which can consume hours while waiting for the tide to come back in, and if combined with a daylight-only constraint in the charter contract these delays can drastically limit your available range on the first and last days of your charter.

Once again Larry solved a problem we had on our Catamaran. We had fuel blockage issues , under Larry’s guidance and advice we made 3 inspection ports in our baffled fuel tank and borrowed Jerry cans from Larry to get under way again . Larry’s knowledge and background solved the problem we had .Thank you Larry ( once again )In response to a negative comment posted , we are on a Catamaran and only need 3.5 ft for draft and hence had no problem at all even on low tide . Larry even gave us a ride into town to get supplies .

Let me inform you of the truth. This is Larry Meyer and I make a promise to my yacht owners that i will never let their yachts leave dock on charter without being satisfied that the skipper is competent, will not place their yacht at risk of damage. You are required to present your first day's route plan on a chart or iPad, tell me what winds you wind experience on the route and the tides and currents. I make no excuse for being direct, show me you have the skill and the orientation will be short and sweet.Kurt started by indicating that he was in Tsehum habour and not Port Sidney, so he did not take the time to know where he was, drew a straight line across to Bedwell over Dock island. That never goes down well and i told him to take his time and do a planned route and returned after an hour. This time he started by going in between to red markers and could not work out what was wrong. That's when I asked my instructor Bill Boyce to step in and evaluate if Kurt could recover. Bill took his time and eventually got Kurt to realize that he was unable to plan with lots of time and that this mandated that we could not allow him to do route planning while he was skipper. Bill planned the full week's route and I reluctantly allowed Kurt to continue his charter.Kurt, your skills are simply not up to standard to be in control of a yacht with crew that you should take care of. Try building your skills so that you know which throttle to use to rotate a catamaran. Staying at anchor because you lack the skill to handle the yacht in close quarters is not our standard. You are not welcome back to our fleet. My owners can concur.DAVID HENDERSONHere is the truth. David thought he ordered a washer dryer with his Leopard 44 in Feb 2015. Well he did not and i will attach his options sheet he approved. When he got to the yacht in Cape Town re ranted about this and I and Leopard catamarans did our best to have one fitted but there was no stock and he would not wait for a unit to arrive from Europe.i went out and shopped on my credit card for all the supplies for his yacht to do an Atlantic crossing with, that's when David refused to pay for the goods, told me i was cheating him when I charged him at cost. He priced each item on the net and i had overcharged him. I then discounted my at cost price to get resolution, still he refused to pay. That's when I logged a small claims suit and after a year, David finally paid after he never arrived to defend the case.I would let you know that David's behaviour in Cape Town was disgusting, the things he got up to are not what a President of a business should ever do. Nothing low class was out of the question.I never expected to stoop so low while entertaining clients. I never expected to be dealing with a cheat, after all i had handled close to CAD1M of his money during the purchase. Ask my boat owners if they ever felt at risk. I spent $12k on my card for his boat and it took 18 months to get refunded. Guess who the cheat isSee image of his options sheet which does not even have a washer dryer offered under plumbing. We never agreed to install it as part of his purchase.We run an organisation that respects our clients but mostly delivered on the promise to our boat owners. If you cannot respect our owners wishes, no problem, there are other charter outfits, feel free to take your business there.Take a look at our fleet, ask our owners for a reference, ask many of our clients for a reference. Ask our insurance company about our history. But don't believe all the reviews as many times its only those people that are trouble that take the effort to write a review.

I’d like to thank Larry and Ken for a great sailing course trip. We will be booking again. Larry has a great fleet and very knowledgeable instructors. Covid throwing a wrench into plans Larry was still accommodating and flexible. (Thanks for that!). Larry tells it like it is and if you listen and treat the boat like your own you won’t have any problems.Thanks again,Justin

I would highly recommend trying another company first. The owner is very difficult to deal with and has negative reviews from many customers and employees. I purchased a boat from this company and had many issues. Love Leopard boats but I would recommend going directly with their USA office.

Update: The issue of the car rental fee is resolved. After a couple of emails, Larry kept his word and reimbursed us for renting the car from Comox to Sidney and back. Considering how busy he is, I would suggest calling or texting him instead of trying to resolve any issues via email or Google reviews. I’m changing my rating to 4 stars. After all, it was a good experience: we had a working boat, instructions and help with geting in and out of marina (this takes skills and local knowledge - be careful), and totally enjoyed our vacation. Manage your expectations, pay attention to details and keep communication lines with Larry open for a good experience.Our chartering experience with Island Cruising in 2019 had some challenges. We still managed to have a great trip, but looking back, I think we could enjoy it more by paying more attention to details and managing communication with Larry better. We could tell that Larry was a very knowledgeable sailor and a hard-working person, but, in our opinion, communication requires more attention and effort from customers than normal.Here is our story. We’ve chartered with a few companies on the West Coast in the past, chartering older boats, but we decided to charter with Island Cruising because they had that almost new Jeanneau 37 Mybo boat with 2 helms. Despite mixed reviews we’ve read about Larry we decided to give it a try as we wanted to have a “new boat experience” so badly. We left a deposit, discussed a few details with Larry and Sharon, and booked our flight to Comox, from where we were supposed to take Mybo to Desolation Sound. A month before the charter start date, Larry called us and told us that the boat was, actually, not in Comox, but in Sydney (!). We had a number of emails where we discussed what marina in Comox the boat would be, where can we get the provisioning, etc., but Larry said there was a miscommunication and left it up to us to sort this out. Obviously, that close to the charter start date there was no available boats at Comox and there was no time to transfer Mybo to Comox from Sidney without losing precious charter days. Finally, we agreed that we will fly to Comox, rent a car and drive to Sydney, and then from Sydney to Comox at the end of the charter. Obviously, we had to say good-buy to our Desolation Sound plans and travel to San Juan islands instead. Larry agreed in writing to pay for the car rental. It took us 2 years to be reimbursed for the car rental, but we could do better job following up with Larry.Bottom line, if you decide to charter with Larry, make sure that every single detail (for example, the boat location) is clearly reflected in your contract, not just in an email. The boat check-out and orientation on the departure day was very hectic and rushed. Larry was juggling multiple departing teams. Stay collected, manage your trip excitement, and take your time to check everything on the inventory list. Open the lockers and make sure the stuff is there.Finally, a few words about our “new” boat, Mybo 3. It was new, but it had some maintenance issues. Many small things were falling apart. For example, the folding table in the main cabin opened at, like, 150 degrees, so everything was sliding from it to the deck. Barbeque valve didn’t stay in the engaged position, so we had to use my wife’s hair band to keep it depressed. Many other small things like that. We could say that the boat needed some love. Probably we overestimated the “new boat experience”.

For us Floridians, going to the Pacific NW is – aside from a very long flight – it’s a crazy proposition.Why go to the 'cold' temperatures, without being able to jump in the water, if we have the Caribbean so close to us?WRONG!This past June we spent a week sailing around Victoria Island. It was one of the most beautiful sailing trips in my 40 years of sailing. “Magically scenic” doesn’t even start to describe it and the sailing conditions were outstanding.Special mention goes to the team at Island Cruising, led by Captain Larry. All very professional and our boat was in truly outstanding shape. She was not your standard run-of-the mill sailboat, but a very well taken care of vessel, by people that know what sailors want to feel ‘at home’. We can’t wait to go back…we HIGHLY recommend them.Thanks,Carlos.

This review is specific to their boat maintenance side and was not charter specific. We were out on a boat that Island Cruising looks after in our absence and as we were getting ready to put up the sails one of the crew reported the smell of exhaust in the cabin getting quite strong. Further investigation revealed an area on the engine that had corroded and was leaking water and fumes. We're a sailboat, so we figured might as well go for a sail and see what we could work out.We were pressed to get the issue fixed sooner than later- not only because we still had to figure out how to get into dock but also because we had a trip planned the next day and the boat was a big part of it.In the interim we were able to take some photos of the equipment that was affected and sent them via mms message to Larry, who then went to the local suppliers and found the parts we needed. He then met us on the dock when we limped back into the marina. We'd managed to rig up a rather jank patch that worked long enough to get us from the end of the first breakwater (we'd come halfway in under sail) around to our slip. He'd offered to come out and tow is in, but we found that wasn't necessary.Once we were secured, Larry walked us through the steps to install the piece and we were able to get it installed... with the exception of one hose that was particularly stubborn. He followed up with me the next day and asked how the install went and I explained we'd had some trouble with the hose- so he came down and with some technique derived from many years experience was able to wrestle the hose into position.It was a fantastic level of assistance and I've been excited to write about it. Keep up the great work!