Lionheart Sailing Cruise

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Location

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We had viewed our charter sail trip through the British Virgin Islands as a once in a lifetime experience. It may have turned out to be just that but for all the wrong reasons.My son was graduating from high school and we invited 3 of his best friends to accompany us. All worked for nearly two years to raise the money for their airfare and meals. All the boys are terrific students, qualifying for over a dozen scholarships, and all participated in at least two sports, either in football, wrestling, and gymnastics. Some participated in all three.Our son is an advanced open water diver, but the other three boys got certified so they could dive on this trip.We met in advance of the trip to discuss activities, potential anchorages, dive sites we wanted to dive, food requirements, meal preparation and cleanup, etc.My wife, son, and I had rented a sailboat a few years previously and sailed the same waters. We were all excited to enjoy the British Virgin Islands. We had also spent 8-10 trips on live-aboard dive boats scuba diving in the Bahamas and the Caribbean.Prior to the trip we had exchanged numerous emails with Sarah discussing meals, provisioning, itineraries, diving spots, anchorages, and other activities, especially wake boarding. After discussion and some adjustments, she was sure our trip would be just what we wanted it to be.We chartered the Lionheart, captained by Robin Mobbs, based on recommendations, the boat layout, the ability to dive, and the expense. Our charter was for 10 days, as we really wanted to provide an adventure the boys would never forget.We flew into Beef Island’s airport connecting through San Juan, Puerto Rico. <h2>Day 1</h2>The next morning we rented dive gear and weights through a local shop, AquaVenture Scuba, who was very helpful, and prepared to board the Lionheart at the appointed time, noon.Captain Mobbs helped us stow our gear and we eventually motored out of Roadtown Harbor.Mobbsie asked us if we were drinkers and we told them with 4 underage boys on the boat, we would not be drinking at all. This seemed to stun him and he said he had never had a boat that did not have drinkers on board. We had communicated this detail to Sarah a couple of times who had requested that we at least purchase beer so Mobbsie could have a can or two a day. We eventually purchased two cases (48 cans), which were totally consumed by Mobbsie.He started the boat briefing and forgot, twice, that we were on-board for 10 days, not one week. We immediately asked Mobbsie if he had reviewed our suggested itinerary that we had emailed months earlier to Sarah. He said he had not really looked at it and that we were paying him for his experience, so we’d go where he would take us. He obviously did not have it and did not want to review it with us. That was a major disappointment as we had all spent time trying to determine what we all could do that would be the most fun and anchorages that we would enjoy. We had purchased nautical charts, knew where each tank refill station was located, and even had satellite pictures of each intended anchorage.We asked him where the electrical plugs were in the cabins. He said that there was one on every vanity, but never found them and he didn’t seem to want to spend any time showing where plugs were located. We asked if there were “noodles” to float with and he said that they were in the front hold. We never used any “noodles” during the charter and Mobbsie never offered to help find them, either.Nevertheless, a little disappointed, we set sail for Norman Island, because that’s where Mobbsie wanted to go first. The sail downwind to Norman Island was fun and we anchored south of the Caves.Since the waters were calm and shallow, Mobbsie wanted to do a check out dive to see everyone dive before trying anything more difficult. This made good sense to us. So we dove Pirate’s Cove which was shallow, had limited visibility, but was a good checkout spot. During the dive my son pointed out an arrow crab. Mobbsie grabbed it to show to the group. We didn’t like this because we have always been very careful not to physically disturb the ocean’s creatures. We were more disturbed when we noticed it was now missing a leg and then he just dropped the crab to the bottom rather than placing it back where he found it. It was now fair game for the local predators.He had noticed one of our new divers was wearing a dive knife and when we returned to the boat he went ballistic on us. He told us it was against the law to possess a dive knife in the British Virgin Islands. He went on a rant how the boat could be boarded and that the boy would be jailed and he would also have liability. He went on yelling at us for some time how stupid we were to allow this boy to have a dive knife. He said, “If we are boarded by the police, I will declare your knife and turn you in.”The boy offered to give it to Mobbsie for the duration of the trip, but he refused. We text messaged some people back in the U.S. to see if it was indeed illegal to have and use a dive knife. It is not. We still haven’t figured that tirade out yet. He was livid!Since it was not late, the boys hopped into two ocean kayaks and paddled off toward the caves, to have fun and get away from Mobbsie.Their return caused the next problem of the day. One of the boys had broken the end of the paddle. He said it cracked off. I don’t know what really happened. This made Mobbsie upset, as it is difficult to get replacements for things in the islands. However, he was able to fix it and the tension abated.<h2>Day Two</h2>The next morning we dove the Indians, which was a fun dive and the boys greatly enjoyed it. They got surrounded a few times by schooling baitfish and thought that was really cool.We moved the boat back toward the northeast section of Norman Island and we dove Spyglass. Only the boys and myself made this dive, which was pretty straightforward along a small wall and then return to the boat. We dove much slower without Mobbsie spending time to watch a cleaning station at work and drift along with a school of tarpon.Mobbsie led our 3rd dive at Black Forest off the northwest tip of Peter Island. The visibility wasn’t too good and it was hard to figure out where we were. This might be a great dive, but it wasn’t too much fun on this day. It was hard to see Mobbsie most of the time and he swam quickly, making it an effort to keep up with him or make your way back to the boat yourself.Our 4th, and final, dive of the day was the Fearless on the north side of Peter Island. Visibility was pretty poor and we lost visual contact with each other a number of times. I don’t think Mobbsie knew we didn’t know where he was leading us because he took off and it was hard to see him. At the wreck, visibility was no better, but it was interesting to look around it. In the few more decades, the Fearless will probably just be a small pile on the ocean floor.So after the dives we cruised into Peter Island to refill at Paradise Watersports. We had a little breeze that pushed us away from the dock. The boys had not spent much if any time on a sailboat or any larger boat. They weren’t good with knots, and they didn’t know what they really needed to do. Mobbsie told them to jump off the boat to secure the lines to cleats on the dock at Peter Island. The wind was blowing the Lionheart slowly away from the dock. When the boys didn’t tighten the lines immediately, he called them “idiots”. He was so mad he asked, “How many of you guys does it take to screw in a light bulb?” All he had to do was tell them what he needed. They are all bright kids, with no sailing experience. My wife informed the Captain that they were doing a pretty good job considering it was there first time doing it and he told here they had docked once before and told my wife, “chill out momma”.Our cruise hadn’t logged much time yet, but it is apparent to all of our group we definitely are not friends with Captain Mobbsie.We had no other problems with tank unloading, tank refilling and reloading on the Lionheart was pretty quick and easy.We anchored that evening in Dead Chest Bay, which was a little crowded, but very beautiful. This is a very nice summer anchorage.<h2>Day 3</h2>The next morning we cruised over to Salt Island to dive the RMS Rhone. We had asked Mobbsie to dive the bow first and the stern after a surface interval. We moored in close and dropped down on the bow section. There was a pretty good current running south to north and we circled the bow section once to let other divers clear the wreck. We then spent our dive inside the bow and then raced over to the stern. We swam through the prop area and returned to our boat spotting a turtle along the way. No one enjoyed this dive. We spent a lot of time pumping hard against the current to see little of the wreck and zoom back. There was a reason we wanted to do the Rhone as two dives, but Mobbsie was the dive master and that’s how he wanted to do it. The boys asked me to speak with Mobbsie about spending more time seeing what there is to see rather than covering a lot of ground, which I did and he agreed to. Or so we thought.We then sailed over to Cooper Island to dive Wreck Alley - the Beata, Marie L, the Pat. This was a fun dive. On the sand flats going over to the wrecks we encountered large southern stingrays. The boats were loaded with large fish and the boys really enjoyed this dive. On the way back going past more stingrays, my son placed a fin near one of the rays to see if it would “fly” a little. Back on the boat, I told him not to disturb the wildlife and he agreed. It looked like the rays might be at a cleaning station in the sand flats.We sailed back to Machioneel Bay to get our tanks refilled, walk the beach, and just chill. This was not to be a good day.While we waited for the tanks to fill, the boys wandered the beach and picked up some coconuts that were lying on the ground. Mobbsie told them not to bring them back to the boat. The boys thought he was referring to something that might dirty the boat or bring onboard some type of infestation. So the guys opened a coconut, drank the milk and ate the coconut meat on shore. Mobbsie complained that we had taken away the food from a person that lived on that island. The boys said they thought a coconut on the ground was of no value, and didn’t realize it could have belonged to anyone. We don’t know that it did. One of the boys asked Mobbsie to inform us about any local custom so there could be no problems or confusion and he refused saying “That is something you have to find out for yourself”. So not only was he upset, he was also not part of a solution.We stayed overnight at Machioneel Bay.<h2>Day 4</h2>We sailed over to Salt Island again to dive the Rhone, again while we were in the neighborhood on the south side of Sir Francis Drake Channel.We got there early and had the wreck to ourselves. It was a nice easy dive of just the bow and it was a fun dive. During the dive, I released a camera in a small housing, which floated to the surface as I needed to help one of the boys with a problem. From 80’, I decided I ‘d stay with the group and when the dive was done, I’d see if was still floating on the surface. Mobbsie showed up a little later having surfaced and brought the camera down to me. That was very nice, but he made a quick ascent from 80’ to do it. To me it was a very nice, dangerous, thing to do, but I appreciated his effort.During the dive my son found a hermit crab on the bottom. He turned its shell on its side and flashed his flashlight at the legs to show his dive buddy what he had spotted. Mobbsie was sure, as he told me later, that my son was stabbing the shell with his flashlight. Mobbsie swam over, grabbed the hermit crab, and jammed it onto my son’s chest. He told me he had hoped the “crab would bite or pinch him to teach him a lesson.” First my son had not touched the crab other than to tilt the shell, second, this quote and pangs of conscious from the guy who pulled off the legs of an arrow crab on our first dive. I began to think Mobbsie was a little wacky, totally burned out, or maybe bi-polar. His behavior was very erratic.After the dive we motored over to the north side of Salt Island and anchored near the Sphinx, a rock formation. I mentioned to Mobbsie I had read on the Internet that some of the best snorkeling in the islands was at the Sphinx. He said he didn’t know where the Sphinx was and had never heard that. We were at the Sphinx! So much for that intimate knowledge of the area.Three of the boys took an ocean kayak over and went climbing on the Sphinx head. Later they climbed up the front side of Salt and then took their time making a slow and careful descent back to the kayak. Mobbsie was pretty upset about their adventure sure someone would get injured.Again, these boys were not only skilled gymnasts, 2 of the 3 were rock climbers, so they were pretty comfortable on their adventure. When they got back to the kayak it had drifted off the shore about 30’ and Mobbsie gave them a lecture on securing his property properly. He was right. The message was okay, however the manner it was delivered was quite gruff. So we motored back to Cooper Island to refill tanks.To top things off my son and I got into a shouting match on the boat while the other boys and Mobbsie had gone in to check on the tanks. It was a father and son disagreement with a teenage boy. Nothing serious. The other boys said they could hear us on the beach, but Mobbsie had not turned around to see what was going on. When he got back to the boat he said he had seen my son punched me and me grab him and throw him on the ground. This did not occur in any way shape or form. He then informed me that he was going to throw my son off the boat. I told him if he threw him off, we all were going. He said that was fine. I thought he was mad about the argument, but he was upset about the non-existent fight. Even after I told him nothing had happened, he wanted to throw some or all of us off the boat.So Mobbsie was mad at us and decided he was taking us back to Road Town to possibly terminate our charter.He left the boat when we docked and we had no idea what he was thinking. We spent the night tied up at the dock in Road Town and ate dinner in town. Later, one of our guys played steel drums with a local band and enjoyed the evening.We still had no idea what was going to happen next.<h2>Day 5</h2>We bought another case of beer for Mobbsie as a peace offering on Sunday morning. He showed up a little later with his family, as it was Father’s Day. Maybe that’s why we came into port. Who knows? He brought a case of beer with him too.We stayed the morning in port, without much discussion. Then around mid morning Mobbsie decided he wanted all of us to apologize to him for “ruining his reputation”. We still have no idea what that was all about as we spoke to no one about anything. But, he seemed pretty upset and “after talking with all his friends” saw no reason to continue the charter. He mulled around awhile and decided we would continue and set sailed for Jost Van Dyke.We arrived at White Bay at mid-day and it was pretty jammed up, as it was Father’s Day. The beach was beautiful, the guys took turned making difficult dives off the boat bow, and later we checked out the action on the beach. Nice beautiful beach, but not the day we would have liked to visit.Mobbsie was happy as one of the bars bought him free drinks all afternoon.After the sun set, everyone left, but us and a couple of other boats. Mobbsie took the boys over to Foxy’s at Great Harbour in the skiff and later picked them up.We spent the evening anchored at White Bay, which was very quiet and peaceful.<h2>Day 6</h2>We took an easy sail over to Sandy Spit and later to Sandy Cay, where we anchored in close and spent most of the afternoon. Jimmy Buffett was on the beach and he was quite a hit with everyone who wanted to talk with him.The boys played games in the sand and it was a nice afternoon.We sailed back to the south side of Little Jost Van Dyke and anchored for the evening. Mobbsie helped the boys start a bonfire on the beach, which was a nice diversion. It was a quite evening anchored all by ourselves at Little Jost.<h2>Day 7</h2>We left Little Jost Van Dyke and spent a good portion of the day tacking back and forth into the wind as we headed east. We don’t really know where Captain Mobbsie was taking us, because he wouldn’t say, but we ended anchoring at Monkey Point of the south tip of Guana Island. The boys enjoyed sitting on the front of the bow holding on as the bow crashed into the waves during our tacking. Since the journey took a couple of hours everyone had a good time, getting totally splashed sitting up at the bow.We snorkeled during the afternoon and because of the winds, Mobbsie decided to stay anchored at Monkey Point. Earlier in the week, Mobbsie had told us “there are lots better places to snorkel than Monkey Point”, so I guess that’s why we spent the entire afternoon snorkeling at Monkey Point.In fairness, the winds were not all that cooperative, so to move anywhere else would have required using some fuel.<h2>Day 8</h2>We sailed from Monkey Point over to the Dog Islands. We found out we were going to be allowed to dive again. My wife, my son and I have over 1,000 ocean dives, so it was nice of him to let us back in the pool.As we sailed past Trellis Bay we asked him if it would be possible to let us depart from the dock there as we could just walked the few hundred yards to the airport. He became kind of agitated and said absolutely no, that every charter ends where it starts. Our last charter yacht dropped us off many bays from where we started making our departure very convenient. So we figured out this was another Mobbsie rule making sure the charter group has no options.We proceeded to our first dive site, which was at The Flintstones on the west side of West Dog. Mobbsie didn’t dive with us, so all of us took our time and explored the giant rock formations that dominate this dive. Visibility was okay, and we really didn’t see a great deal of fish live, but the unusual rock formations made it a fun dive. It did look like Fred and Barney's home of Bedrock!The only problem with this dive is you start at 70 or so feet, get to about 20 feet at the turnaround point, and end up back at 60 to 70 feet if you stay on the bottom. So you have to stay off the bottom at the end of the dive. It would make more sense if they had the marker buoy at the shallow end so divers did not develop a reverse profile.We then motored over to Great Dog so we could dive The Chimney, one of the really fun dives in the British Virgin Islands. The dive took us from the anchorage around the point and into the Chimney itself which was covered with beautiful little sponges and life. We encountered a couple of lobsters in the Chimney and then we made our way out to explore the anchorage bottom.The guys loved this dive.At that point Mobbsie told us we were done diving and we headed the boat east toward Virgin Gorda. I asked Mobbsie where we were headed and he said, “You wouldn’t know.” I waited a few minutes and asked if we were headed for Long Bay on Virgin Gorda and he just ignored me. We were headed for Long Bay on Virgin Gorda! It was one of the places we had indicated on our ignored list of places we’d like to anchor and snorkel, so we were familiar with it and its charms.We spent the afternoon snorkeling and wake boarding. The snorkeling was great. I spent a long time watching cuttlefish watch me. This is a really nice place to snorkel. Since the wake board equipment was not designed for adults, only the two lightest weight boys could participate. Even though all the boys couldn’t join in, they had a good time in the tow boat or on the wake board.We spent the evening with just a few boats anchored at Long Bay. Mobbsie decided to teach the boys some knot tying and over about an hour showed them a number of knots include the bowline. As he started to explain how to tie it, I remembered a scene from the movie Jaws when Richard Dreyfuss was tying the same knot and mimicked his lines in the movie. Mobbsie got upset, threw the line at me and said, “If you’re so smart, you show them how to tie it.” I gave him the line back explaining I was just repeating a line form the movie Jaws. He was not amused. Bipolar?However, Long Bay is a very nice spot to relax on the beach, snorkel, and play in the water.<h2>Day 9</h2>Time for our last dive at Seal Dog at Seal Dog Island. Mobbsie led the dive from a sheltered cove down to about 90 feet where it is a good spot to look for pelagic fish. From that depth he hustled up a ridge to about a depth of 30 feet where there are lots of rocky alcoves to explore. He took off fast and I signaled to my guys to make their ascent slowly so we had no problems with decompression sickness. We caught up to him and he signaled for us to explore the nooks and crannies of the site. Shortly thereafter, I saw him head around the end of a rock outcrop and disappear. When our guys realized Mobbsie was gone they looked and me and I signaled to them to enjoy themselves and that the boat was just around the rock outcrop. A few minutes later we caught up to Mobbsie and shortly thereafter surfaced right at the Lionheart. When we got back on the boat Mobbsie asked us how we got lost. They better question would have been how did I swim off and not notice I was by myself?We then set sail for Spanish Town to get our dive tanks filled, our fuel filled and our water refilled. While we waited we all took turns entering the Dive BVI dive shop asking if we could buy a dive knife and if they were illegal. We were told, “you can strap on as many dive knives as you like!”He motored the Lionheart down to The Baths and the guys spent the afternoon climbing all over the rocks and snorkeling. As the crowd started to thin out and the sun started to set, The Baths became a really magical place.That night the boys used the tanks to drop down below the boat and do a “night dive” moving nowhere along the bottom. They truly enjoyed watching the bioluminescence when they turned their dive lights off.We stayed anchored overnight at The Baths.<h2>Day 9</h2>We sailed from The Baths to Norman Island and anchored in The Bight on the northeast side.We spent the afternoon snorkeling looking for a wreck Mobbsie said was there somewhere. We didn’t find it, but the snorkeling along the east side of The Bight was very nice, loaded with all types of fish.We packed up that night to prepare for our quick dash across St. Francis Drake Channel the next morning.<h2>Day 10</h2>We set sail about 6:00 am to beat it across the channel, get a cab to the airport and catch our flight.Mobbsie arranged to catch us a cab.I went to him, wished he and his family well, shook his hand, and gave him an envelope with a normal tip, even though the boys said we should give him nothing, and our group went to the airport and departed the British Virgin Islands.<h2>Special Mobbsie Moments</h2><h3>The Trip Journals</h3>Each one of the boys kept a journal of the trip. They did this so they could remember what happened and so they could describe the trip to their respective parents upon their return. Mobbsie said they were wasting their time.Mobbsie commented that the boys were taking too much time writing in their journals. He said “They are up at 12:30 am writing.” The boys were up at 12:30 am anyway, talking, watching movies, listening to music, etc. I told him they are not forced to write, it is something that they are enjoyingEarly in the trip he read some of the boys’ journal entries after they went to sleep, without their permission. They thought this was an invasion of their privacy. Mobbsie had no right to read their personal journals without asking.<h3>Beer Consumption</h3>We bought 48 cans for Mobbsie. He picked up another 24 cans when he hauled us back to Tortola midway through the trip. He had, by his count, 4-5 drinks at White Bay because they were “on the house”. So for a guy piloting a boat and lading dives over the course of about 9.5 days, he averaged about 8 beers a day. That seems like a lot too me. When we dive and have drinks, the rule is your first drink is your last dive for safety purposes.One of the boys now studying law enforcement and criminology in college said, “he drank a lot, he scared me.”Mobbsie told us one of his favorite stories occurred while sailing back from Anegada with a group that really liked to drink. One of the charters, fell over the side and grabbed one of the safety lines with one had, because he wouldn’t let go of his beer in the other hand. He did let go eventually and since the rest of the charter group was equally inebriated failed to notify him immediately that one of the group was drifting over the horizon. Mobbsie turned the Lionheart around and said they eventually found the guy floating still clutching his beer bottle. And he spent our whole charter giving us a hard time, because we shouted at each other once. Go figure.<h5>Coffee</h5>It turned out that none of our group drank coffee. We didn’t know who drank what, but it turned out the boys drank a lot of juice and weren’t needing a caffeine buzz for any reason.The first breakfast Mobbsie asked where the coffee was and we said we wouldn’t be making any for the duration of the charter as none of our group drank coffee. He was so amazed he made a number of comments about what a strange group we were.Every morning during the rest of the trip, he’d make himself a cup of coffee. About every other day he made sure we new how weird he thought we were. Tolerance in all things, my son!<h2>Dive Bootie Storage</h2>Early in the week he said he wanted us to leave the dive booties on the mats on either side of the cockpit so they would dry out and not smell. A few days into the trip he decided we needed to put our booties in a bin with our fins and snorkels. So we did. Then he decided we couldn’t put the booties in the bin. Everyday was a different decision and if you did it wrong he yelled and you or challenged your ability to remember what he had said. I still have no idea what that was all about.<h2>Food</h2>Mobbsie had many comments about the amount of luncheon meat the boys put on their sandwiches. He said you could feed many households with the amount they ate. First of all it must be stated that most of the boys are very lean, well defined young men, who all just finished cutting weight for a few months to wrestle. They were probably making up for some lost meals, but no food ever went to waste. They ate what they asked for. He made a negative comment at nearly every meal, but he ate plenty of food himself. I couldn’t understand where he was coming from.<h2>Water Usage</h2>The way they were doing the dishes. Said he could clean the dishes using less than a gallon of water. He said, “Little girls don’t use this much water.” We used 200-300 over 10 days with 6 people plus Mobbsie. So worst case less than 5 gallons each day per person, most used to clean up after all our meals. We do pay for the water, but he sure had a problem with anyone turning the water on.He told us we were washing our hair too often. We washed on the dive deck and were talking about shampooing our hair. He said you do not need to wash your hair every day or even every few days. So, he was telling us how hygienic we needed to be. We paid for the water and the fuel. He said he only washes his hair once a week (which looked like it), so that is what everyone should do.He said we used too much water to wash dishes. We did have three meals a day for 7 people and we thought we were pretty conservative. He said he could wash all the dishes every day with a gallon. Maybe he was right, but we were paying for the water!<h4>Generator Usage</h4>He told us a recent charter had drained all hi batteries because they didn’t use the generator. Then he complained how much it cost to run the generator - ~$6 per hour. We only turned the generator on once to make rice in a microwave during dinner and he said the rice cost too much. Pick a direction and go with it!We tried to not have any reason to use the generator. If he turned it on fine, but we didn’t want to get the “Generator Lecture”, so we quit using anything that required the generator to be turned on if it was off.<h2>Dive Photos</h2>I brought two cameras on the trip, one a small housed point and shoot camera and another digital SLR with a housing. Since we did the majority of our diving the first two days, I didn’t get the housed DSLR set up until much of our diving was completed, as we were still unpacking. When Mobbsie spotted the housed DSLT with a strobe attached (flash) he said, “I hope you are going to take pictures of fish with that. The flash hurts them.”Frankly I had no idea what to respond. Divers have been taking underwater photos of fish for decades with no studies showing ill effects. People have been taking pictures of humans with a flash for over a century with no ill effects. I had no idea what Mobbsie was getting worked up about, but it made me nervous to take the camera in the water.<h2>Scuba Diving</h2>Our diving group consisted of myself with over 500 dives, my wife with over 300 dives, and my son with over 100 dives all advanced open water divers for many years. In addition, we had three new open water certified divers who were new to the sport, but all who are very smart and excellent athletes.Mobbsie led most of the dives we were “allowed” to do. On those dives he moved very quickly through the water and all of us had a hard time keeping up as we were working very hard. It is great that he is an accomplished diver, and I think his very good, but our group wanted to proceed slowly to see what was around us, not just trying to keep up with the dive leader.We asked him multiple times to slow down so we could enjoy the dives the way we wanted to. He’s say okay, but never did.He got upset and said he would never take us to any of the good sites because we didn’t deserve to dive them. What a pompous guy. We all have excellent buoyancy control and respect what’s in the ocean. He was very judgmental.So net, net, we didn’t dive many of the sites we had hoped to and when we did dive, it was only on his terms.On one of our first dives, one of the newly certified boys didn’t check to see if he had turned his air on. It happens and you find out pretty quickly there is a problem. At one point my wife asked one of the other boys to check one divers air (to see if it was on). Mobbsie snapped, “If he doesn’t know how to do that himself, he shouldn’t be diving”. So much for safety checks!My wife decided she wanted to snorkel above the divers on one site. She asked Mobbsie what the dive plan was (so she could plan her snorkeling). When he was done, he said “I guess I will have to go all through that again for the others”. It didn’t seem like a difficult imposition to repeat three sentences again, but apparently it was.<h3>Deck Cleanliness</h3>One time there was a little bit of chocolate on the outside cockpit deck. He made a big issue out of it. We were scared to eat chocolate after that. If the boys ate any, they leaned over the side!<h3>Cockroaches</h3>Most boats end up with bugs and vermin on board at some point. The Lionheart was no exception. We encountered quite a few cockroaches. That wasn’t too bad or unexpected, except the two that inhabited the flatware and utensil drawer. We had two cockroaches scrambling over the forks, spoons, knives, and utensils all the time - so we washed them often. Then we got criticized for using water.<h2>Summary</h2>The British Virgin Islands are beautiful. The water is spectacular, the people are friendly, the weather (for us) was wonderful. Chartering a sailboat is a marvelous way to see the islands and enjoy the waters that surround them.We’ll go back to the British Virgin Islands again - many times. The boys loved the sun, the water, and the people. We are already thinking about another boat to charter. Would we ever charter with Mobbsie again? Never. He is a complex man, a very capable sailor, a good diver, and has great knowledge of the islands and the dive sites.Having said that, I’m not so sure he likes Americans, and I’m sure he really didn’t like us. He doesn’t like to be told anything and he doesn’t like to be questioned. He enjoys drinking, he likes a charter that drinks, better heavily, and he loves being the guy in charge.My overall feeling is that Mobbsie was tired of what he is doing and has lost his perspective on treating customers with courtesy. It was also the end of the season and maybe he just didn’t want to deal with paying customers anymore. He might have been burnt out. I feel we were an inconvenience to him. His actions did bond our group together as a family because we all thought he was bi-polar, not friendly or fun, and not very tolerant. We were glad to get on land and make our flight home. We would visit the beautiful British Virgin Islands again, but we would not ever want to have any contact with Mobbsie or the Lionheart yacht. Except for the cockroaches, I thought the Lionheart was a nice, well-kept sailing yacht.For the right group, maybe Mobbsie would do a great job for you. For divers who know the British Virgin Islands, anchorages, and dive sites reasonably well, who don’t drink and keep their clothes on, he may not be your best bet! 2008-11-14T03:40:37-08:00

459276292

2008-06-19T17:00:00-07:00

0 18 200408

7905283

372119

0.0

2008-06-09T17:00:00-07:00

Published

0.0 Lionheart Sailing Cruise

2008-11-14T03:40:37-08:00

114893