St John.... Dinghy

[golfer1966]

I saw a few of the dinghys as we took the ferry to St John from St Thomas and I have found websites that I can rent one, and I swore the next time we went to St Thomas, I would rent one and explore as much as I could given the time allowed. My question is, has anyone done this and did you feel you had enough time. I know it takes about an hour to and from via taxi and ferry. That leaves about 6 hrs. Given travel time and signing the rental agreements and all the BS I wonder if I will have enough time to do this. Even if I have a solid 3 hrs, I am happy. Did you do this and what did you think...any pix???

 

We will be there in Oct on Allure and I am leaning towards doing this. :rolleyes:

[kcparrothead]

We were going to do this a few years back, but the wave action was so bad (there were hurricanes out at sea, they said) they wouldn't allow us to take the dinghys past Caneel Bay. We declined and went to Trunk Bay. I now wish we would've taken them anyway - I think it would've been a blast - it's still on my bucket list! I think you'd have plenty of time!

[fbe2228]

I know this is a little late for the OP, but maybe someone else can learn from our mistake...

 

We called Noah’s Little Arks in the morning and reserved a dinghy for the afternoon. We were told that it would be ready for us when we got there. We arrived about 20 mins early, and as we were filling out paperwork, there was another couple there that had just walked in and was also filling out their paperwork. I do not believe that they had a reservation. We walked down to the dinghies and the employee put the other couple into the dinghy that was tied near the shore. Off they went, and the employee went to retrieve another dinghy that was tied just offshore. He towed it in, spent about 20 mins pumping water out of it and then had to fill the gas tank with fuel. I asked what time we needed to be back since we were now 20 mins late leaving, and he replied that we still needed to be back at the same time. We tried to depart in the dinghy, but the dinghy wouldn’t accelerate. Back to the shore we went. I located the employee; he came back down and retrieved another dinghy. More water pumping, more re-fueling. We tried to leave again. This one wouldn’t accelerate either. I have been a boater for nearly 35 years and have operated all kinds of boats including dinghies with similar engines. I knew that something wasn’t right with these dinghies. We went back to the shore. At that point, it was about 45mins into our 4 hour rental. There were a couple of the upgraded dinghies tied offshore that we could have used. We asked if we could just take one of those, and he replied that we could not. The employee drug the dinghy onto the beach and pulled out the drain plug. The plastic hull was full of water. We were not interested in renting a dinghy that has a structural problem, so we asked for our money back. He refunded our money, however it was now too late to rent with another company, so our day and our ferry tickets from St Thomas were a waste. This really was poorly handled since we had a reservation and were told that our dinghy would be ready. To not allow us to take another dinghy just because it is an upgraded one and risk the loss of business is a poor business decision. We should have listened to the reviews and booked with Calypso. Our mistake.