After I spent five days in Puerto Rico making sure the Guiding Light was ready after her four month stay on the hard in Puerto Del Rey, I had it splashed on Novermber 15th. I then had 5 days to make sure it was a clean and looking good for my Thanksgiving charter, which I was lucky to have a great family who wanted to travel from Puerto Rico to St Thomas.
I love using Puerto Del Rey as my haul out marina, because the price is good, traveling from here is great, and most important they are totally professional. Every time I go here they know exactly where my boat is going to sit, when I am being moved, ect. I can not tell you enough good things about PDR.
I also love coming here because of the vendors I use. Ken at Island Marine always takes good care of my boat and has each of my work orders completed on schedule and budget without me having to waste my off season keeping on top of it. The same is true of Jorge my rigger and Carol at Atlantic Sails who does my canvas work.
Hector, who seems to be the only certified Yanmar tech on the entire island, is very good……when you can get him to actually show up. this is the second year in a row 3-4 months notice is almost not enough for him. Last year he showed up two hours before my splash and did not have time to do anything. This year he serviced the saildrives the day before my launch date.
The person I will never use again is Morales Marine Service. He works on outboards and has a trailer as a shop right on the property of PDR. They did not start my outboard tune up until two days before my charter started, because they were waiting for parts. Of course if they ordered them four months ago this would not be an issue. In fact one week before my charter they said they would order them on Monday to which I said why don’t you order them now and have them overnighted so we can get the job done. The sad thing is the dinghy engine was in worse shape after he worked on it then before and I had to have it re-serviced in St Thomas during a break last week. Arrrgggg.
There she goes to start swimming again
Shane,
Great article. Like you, I love PDR, and made good friends with the Marina folks, and with Bobby Lemire, who did my bottom job, sail drives and all the other minor to do on the list. It was so much more a positive experience than other marinas I have been in elsewhere.
Hope you hare having a great season so far. I am sure you are.