Coral Breeze - A question about Ladders

[Dannzzigg]

When my family and I did the Shark/Ray alley tour with Coral Breeze last year we had some difficulty getting back aboard the boat due to the rather rudimentary ladder they had at the time. It was essentialy shaped like a upside down "T". You placed one foot on a rung and were helped up the rest of the way by a crew member. Not the easiest thing to work with. In fact, two fo our party members had a terrible time trying to get back aboard- difficult nough that if the ladder situation had not been rectified, we would have elected to do something else this time around, in spite of the fact that it was otherwise the best tour we went on during our cruise.

 

I emailed Paul, the owner, and he assured me that they now ha d a much better, pool style ladder aboard the Coral Breeze. He even sent me a picture of it on the boat. Relieved, we booked, once again looking forward for the chance to experience this great tour.

 

Today, I suddenly find myself concerned about the ladder again, after reading this review: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=4406298#post4406298 . I am unsure if this person was aboard the Coral Breeze itself, or another boat that CB seems to use, but to sum things p,the boat they were on had no ladder at all, and the passengers were hoisted up and pulled aboard.

 

Anyone that has recently done this tour and who could shed some light on this situation would be appreciated. I would hate to miss out on what was easily the best experience I have had cruising due to something that is so easily correctable by the owners.

[zydecocruiser]

Well, if you are on a boat other than the Coral Breeze, all bets are off, but here is a pic of Coral Breeze from my excursion in Mar, 05.

 

[Dannzzigg]

Here is a reply a received from Paul, the owner of Coral Breeze in reply to my question to him about the ladders:

 

Hi Dan,

 

Thank you for passing this post/report on to me. I have not received the tour report yet from last week, but I will certainly find out what happened here. It is true that during the slow season, we will substitute a smaller boat because of lower participation levels because we are servicing our larger boat in preparation for the peak season. As you can imagine, everyone is doing the same thing so at times we are at the mercy of the repair shop's schedule.

Many times when folks post a review and mention something that they didn' t like, I get a lot of emails asking questions about what was posted. You may know from your past experience with us and typical posts on sites like Cruisecritics, we are all about service. We like for those service levels to be at 100%, but we also know that is an unrealistic goal and can only make adjustments when we don't satisfy everyone.

I do need to find out the story with "no ladder" as that is not acceptable at all. But as far as the ladder goes on our boat (Coral Breeze), we are using the new ladder we purchased in January. You can see pictures of it on our website's photo section.

I have made a note in our system for 9/13 that the Coral Breeze boat will be used that day, no questions. September is still our slow season, but we can plan "no repair" days if we do it this far in advance. But my guess is by September, we will be done with everything that need to get done.

I greatly appreciate you emailing and asking these questions for reassurance. Too many people take what is posted as being gospel, even if the "issue" shows up one time. I hope the information I provided is helpful.

We look forward to seeing you in September.

Regards,

Paul

 

With genuine concern and a quick response like this, I am all that much more comfortable dealing with this company.