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We had the worst experience at Safe Harbor Sunset Bay that I can imagine. Far from professional, Safe Harbor is the TGI-Fridays of Marinas. When I radioed the dock on approach around 5pm they made us wait 10 minutes and then said they didn’t have a dock for us “because of the dinner rush.” They asked if we would mind coming back later as it would probably clear up.” Seriously?!
Anyway, the dock master offered a mooring ball for us to wait. I re-stated our draft and asked if the mooring field was deep enough and they said: “probably, why don’t you try one of the balls furthest out?” Again, seriously? At this point it was too late to find an alternative. So, I found a ball with my deep sounder and tide charts.
At 7:30 pm they said they had dock space opening up, but it was only 5.5 deep right now and we would have to wait for the tide to rise further before we could get in. Think about that for a minute – they obviously didn’t. I asked what they planned for me to do at 2am when the tide is falling again and our boat is resting on the bottom and starting to list. They said “oh”. After another 10-minute wait, a staffer called back to say they would not be able to honor our reservation after all. We could stay on the mooring ball, but they close the launch in 10 minutes. (we didn’t bring our dinghy for this one night trip,… to a dock!) They then said they would try to get our money refunded. Try?
I had confirmed the dock reservation via email and then again on the phone direct to the dock master to make doubly sure they read our spec’s on Dockwa and had enough depth (7’ 3”) for our boat. He said there would be no problem. But they obviously lack planning skills and were unwilling to rearrange the docked boats to make good on our reservation. They are really there just to push product, not to look out for their clients.
As I said before, Safe Harbor is the TGI-Friday’s of Marinas. Staffed by summer vacation high-school students without boating experience, their eagerness does not substitute for professionalism when there is a problem to be solved. I question whether many of the reviews here are actually legitimate.
There should be a boater’s bill of rights. I understand the need for their cancellation policy of keeping a dock fee for a last-minute cancellation. They need to sell the dock space to stay in business. But the reverse is also true. If we have a contract and they renege, it shouldn’t be that they get off free. We’re stuck in strange waters after dark with nowhere to go. It’s like an airline overbooking a flight and then stranding people in an airport and saying “Sorry, no flight home, go work it out yourself”. What if it was storming at 8pm? Their mooring ball would not have been deep enough with any wave action. I know because I had to keep watch through the night to be sure.