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NEVER RISK KEEPING YOUR BOAT HERE.
NO PUMP OUT FACILITIES
I am not one to write reviews but I could not help myself after seeing this disaster of a marina.
Having recently relocated from South Florida and the keys I was looking for a place to keep my sailboat.
I picked out 6-7 marinas in the Tampa Bay area to visit to find a new home. I attended a wedding here at the club about five years ago and so decided to check out this marina as a possible option.
Of all the marinas I’ve visited this was by far the worst experience I’ve had. I would never keep my sail boat even if it was for free.
First of all the most disturbing thing was that there are no pump out in 140+ boat marina. Apparently the pump outs have been removed so that the marina can lease that slip space where the pump out once were. I cannot believe that the EPA or some local authority has not shut down this marina yet. I was told they have a pump out cart but it doesn’t always work and sometimes you need to wait up to three hours to pump out if they are pumping out another boat.
A couple of the people I spoke to told me they were just discharging overboard because they could not wait for a pump out cart and it was not available all hours.
Those desperate enough would go to St Petersburg city marina to pump out.
This it is an ecological disaster waiting to happen in Tampa Bay.
I visited the marina on a busy weekend and spoke to you 6 to 8 people on the docks in front of the clubhouse. I have never been to a marina where there was not one person that was happy with the marina and it’s management. There were complaints ranging from having no pump outs, complaints of broken docks, rotten wood so cleats don’t hold, bad electrical, broken plumbing, and poor management. I was told that slip fees have over doubled recently and that a new management company came in two years ago and has done nothing to improve the quality of the marina except raise the rates, while trying and nickel and dime every boat owner as much as possible.
I was also told there is a new dockmaster and she has zero knowledge about boats and she’s merely a corporate puppet to enforce corporate policies.
I was horrified at the rates they charge for a marina in such bad condition. They are insane with their rates and was told by the folks that the marina management says that if you don’t like it move.
Another thing I did not like is that after asking around it appears if 95% or more of the owners in the marina do not live in the community. The only explanation is that the Westshore Yacht Club community HOA must be having serious financial problems because all I got was complains about slip fees being raised and nothing being done to fix the marina.
I wondered why a marina that’s been around for 10 or 12 years only has two reviews and it appears is that this is why the last guy left. It looks like things have got worse since then.
It became clear that the HOA must be trying to overcharge the boat owners using the marina to subsidize their HOA. To me this is a house of cards waiting to collapse and therefore I would never buy in that community because it is clear that theMarina is being used to subsidize the HOA.
I walked down to the docks towards hula bay and was horrified how twisted and falling apart and split the slips are, yet they are charging a premium for the slips. They keep the larger boats on these broken slips and with strengthening rods popping out. There must be zero strength in these slips and I would not keep a boat there. The wind was blowing about 10-12 out the west and there is zero protection from the west and it was almost impossible to walk down the walkway. The slips were worse.
I am glad I found the marina I did, it’s about $10 a foot less than this place, people are happy and everything works.
Trust me, do your homework and you will not keep your boat at Westshore Yacht Club