Righting boats is tricky work.
In the maze of tipped-over vessels that is the Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbour, standing up one yacht often involves completing progress on several more, whether that entails making space in the crowded yard or clearing the broken masts of other boats kicked around by the pair of Category Five hurricanes that struck the territory in September.
“The last couple of months have been very hectic,” said Keith Thomas, the boatyard manager. “We’re still in recovery stage right now.”
Some yacht owners, however, argue that the recovery stage is taking too long: Tipped yachts are rotting, damage costs are ballooning, communication is lacking, and boaters are fleeing Virgin Gorda as a result, they claim.
“They wouldn’t respond to any of our e-mails,” said Ted Prosser, a boat owner. “None for weeks and weeks.”
Mr. Prosser, a St. John resident, owns Blue Mystic Charters and currently has a 78-foot yacht in the VGYH boatyard. At one point, after weeks of unanswered e-mails sent to harbour officials, he tried to use Google Earth to discern what happened to his boat, he said.
Insurance providers have denied numerous claims throughout the yard on various grounds, complicating the process of determining payments for righting boats.
Still, owners criticise VGYH’s slow progress and stunted communication.
“Over the months since Irma I have sent written requests for information about yard progress and when my boat will be righted,” said Sharon Buttermore, the owner of the yacht Cantamar V. “I received only one reply when I offered to forward the charges to my insurance when billed, only to be told they had no idea of when it would happen. … Until all boats surrounding mine are up and the damaged masts, booms and rigging moved, it will lay there rotting.”
Though harbour officials eventually used the boatlift to right Mr. Prosser’s 78-foot yacht, the process took months and he’s been billed nearly $8,000 — a figure he said wasn’t itemised at all.
“Give me any business in the world that would charge somebody [more than] $7,000 without giving them details on what the charges are for?” he asked.
Mr. Thomas declined to comment on the invoices.
Mr. Prosser also lamented being charged full storage fees for a space that — after the storm’s destruction — didn’t offer any of the usual amenities.
In spite of many tenants’ frustration, harbour officials maintain they’ve made the best of a tough situation that not all the boat owners — many of whom reside outside of the VI — could fully comprehend.
“A lot of our communication system — our control tower was above here — is gone,” Mr. Thomas said while standing in the surviving ground floor of his office on Friday, adding, “If you listen to the customer, you would think that we’re not doing anything, but it’s a tedious process.”
Carolina Rodriguez, who co-owns Crystal Clear Yacht Charters, said negative experiences after the storm have driven her to make plans to move her business south.
“Communication, even in its simplest form, would have gone a long way in this situation,” Ms. Rodriguez wrote in a message to the Beacon. “Instead of the weeks of radio silence, the one-sentence replies and the lack of detailed information on a plan, an honest assessment of what’s going on would have given us, the stakeholders, some confidence in what was happening.”
Some tenants, however, believe that exporting small charter businesses like Ms. Rodriguez’s is exactly what the BVI Investment Club — which owns the VGYH — wants to happen.
Geoff Cooke, the owner of The Workbench, a boat carpentry shop in VGYH, said a number of changes have happened over the last few years that seem to indicate the harbour ownership wants to drive out its current tenants in favour of bigger yachts and wealthier clientele.
Before Hurricane Irma, VGYH and the BVIIC were in the midst of preparing for a major multiphase expansion that was slated to include relocating and expanding the boatyard and constructing a 100-room luxury hotel and condominium unit in its current location.
Such developments would be designed in large part to make VG more attractive for superyachts, which could boost the local economy and deliver jobs to the island, VGYH General Manager Erik Huber told the Beacon last year.
The storm, Mr. Cooke speculates, has given VGYH a chance to accelerate that process and force out smaller tenants.
“My concern is they’ll make it like Fort Lauderdale,” he said.
BVI Investment Club officials could not be reached for comment.
Manager’s view
BVIIC was a consistent topic of the boat owners’ ire: Tenants like Mr. Prosser and Ms. Rodriguez felt the yacht harbour staff weren’t being given the resources they needed from ownership.
Mr. Thomas, however, said he disagreed with that sentiment and that he thought the BVIIC was doing all it could.
“A lot of resources have to be shared,” he said. “The islands were hard hit.”
Not all of the boat owners were as frustrated with the harbour and its ownership.
“There’s a little bit of lack of communication,” said Clark Beam, a St. John-based charter captain who was temporarily staying in a tent on top of his tipped-over boat. “I don’t think it really has anything to do with Keith [Thomas], but the parent company has obviously suffered a big loss, and who knows what other investments they have that may be losses as well or what their insurance company is telling them. … Everybody is complaining but nobody really knows the whole story.”
Moving forward
Mr. Cooke guessed about half of the boatyard’s vessels had been righted, though Mr. Thomas put the number at about 75 percent.
The boatyard manager added that he hoped all would be finished by the end of February.
This article originally appeared in the Jan. 18, 2018 print edition