Yard Reviews

It would be nice to see this forum use its unique position among the yachting community to catalog and maintain a listing of yards (nationwide), with capabilities, travel lift size, pricing and most importantly customer reviews as a resource to all of us. We as a group would have a great impact on the bread and butter of these yards with our collective voice. We can reward those who offer good work for a fair price as well as illuminate those that gouge and perform substandard service.

In that light i am looking for a yard in the south east USA with lift capability of 120 ton and good work at a fair price.....

I have no doubt yards have good and bad times. I think that would be addressed easily by when the reviews were written i.e. a good review recently = a good sign, and a bad review from several years ago may not be condemnation. The point being many of us feel at the mercy of various yards when we (as the customer) through this forum can wield a strong voice collectively. This is an opportunity for us to shunt work to the yards that deserve it and avoid yards that do substandard work. Those of us that experience good service at a good price should post positively and those that don't should also post.

There you have it! exactly what i am talking about.....a fair assessment of work done at Schooner Creek. Maybe the next yachtsman will read this and say.....uhm...sounds reasonable, i think i will give them a call, and see what they can do for me. Rather than debate the economics of running a yard, the current labor force etc, etc, lets (as a group) share our yard experiences with our fellow yachtsman.

Well now that you mention it, i will happily contribute. I should preface that I think we need to keep negative posts respectful and accurate, not infused with spite, but geared toward what you would tell a fellow boater to save them from an unpleasant experience. In that light, quite simply i will not ever go back to thunderbolt after my pre buy inspection experience there that should have cost around 5-7k and ended up costing near 26k. This is a shame, since i have about 50k worth of upcoming yard work and Thunderbolt is not even on my list of yards to be considered after being mishandled previously. I will give the cliff note version and leave the rest to the reader to judge the validity.

When i was doing the pre buy of the boat u see in my avatar, i hired a crew to take the boat down to thunderbolt for haul out and inspection. It should have been a 3 day affair . 1500 for a captain mate + fuel. Survey about 3000, haul out ~ 2k = 6.5k. reasonable and expected expense in the boat buying process. Thunderbolt's travel lift broke, when we got there (add two days), fixed then found they couldn't lift my boat because the straps were two old (add two more days), said they could do the synchro lift instead (add 7k to haul out fee for use of synchro lift), captain & mate needed to get home for another commitment. air fare etc. boat stays ~ 2wks (add overnite dock fees), survey has to be re-coordinated to another day (more fees), then eventually the survey and travel back all told 26k. To add spite to the misery, got a call from thunderbolt a few weeks later saying the forgot to charge me 50 dollars for some silly incidental fee and i said go jump in the lake. What i believe they should have done, was to eat the cost of the synchro lift since it was they who could not use their travel lift to do the job not once but twice. This caused massive delays and of course drove the cost of the pre buy to 26k all told. It was a good thing that i had my heart set on that boat, or I would likely decided that yachts were not for me.

There are many arguments that could be made, such that it was out of their hands when equipment breaks etc etc etc. But if you give a little Customer Service and maybe even eat a little cost now, you will likely get double that cost back in later work from that same "now satisfied" customer.

I have a more positive review of Jarrat Bay (safe harbor, I know bad word) and could post some valuable tricks i learned the hard way at Jarrat Bay if anyone cares to listen.

Thanks Judy, I think the point here is not too slam and bad mouth yards, but report yard experiences indifferently and let the readers make the judgement for themselves as to whether they would consider yard "A" over yard "B"

My experience in Jarrett Bay (safe harbor), was completely different. They have a 100ton, 200ton and 300ton travel lift that can accomodate most everyone. Their haul out crew the best i have ever seen, professional, courteous, and most importanlty experienced. They made it looked easy, hauled you when they said they would and set you down like you were on your mommas lap with a clean bottom. The interesting thing about Jarrat Bay, is that the "yard" (safe harbor = expensive but good work) is that Jarrett Bay is several yards combined into one. Also many independent contractors have their own shop and contract out to safe harbor. The point here, is that one can do a little research (google maps etc) and find the yards next to Jarrett Bay, that may be less expensive and have travel lift support from Jarrett Bay. Same with the contractors that you may need to do specialized work. I am told this is an ongoing conflict as safe harbor wants to put a lock on the work conducted out of jarrett bay, but as of yet still an option. Or, you can use the Jarrett Bay Safe Harbor project managers (mine was Donnie Lee) who are both knowledgable and professional. But if you want to save some money by doing the general contracting yourself with your own relationships with the contractors co-located at jarrett bay that is an option as well. I found this to be a big savings and ended up doing a little of both (letting my project manager coordinate some work and contracting some of the work myself). All in all I have to give two thumbs up to Jarrett Bay with this recommendation alone: "they came in under budget (not by much), but still under budget!" I give Donnie Lee the credit for that and therefore would put my vote as recommending Jarrett Bay as a yard i would return too. Sadly, they could not accommodate me for several months and i have to look elsewhere.

well said!