Cuan Law - Starbord Stern.JPG

Cuan Law review

The Cuan Law is a 100 ft. sailing trimaran that docks near the Peter Island Ferry docks. It is an immaculately kept boat with an extraordinary captain, Steve, and crew mostly from England. Compared to the liveaboards we have been on and have toured, it is second to none. The cook aboard this ship is an Irish fellow, Rob, who prepared some of the most delicious and beautiful food we've ever eaten. From sashimi grade seared tuna to New Zealand rack of lamb, the meals were truly a gourmet's delight. Breakfast and lunch were plentiful and varied as well. Desserts were to die for!!! The wines chosen for our trip were perfectly pared with our meals. All in all, from the professionalism of the crew to the beautiful boat, to the wonderful food the Cuan Law is simply a dream.

I must digress for a moment. After months of research, including, frequent emails to and from previous guests on the Cuan Law, we finally booked our trip. As I was booking, the owners suggested that we purchase trip insurance for this trip just in case the dive cruise was canceled. After deliberating this, we decided not to purchase trip insurance because we didn't feel the price was worth travel risk since our air would not be included as it was purchased using frequent flyer miles. This length of this trip if from Sunday afternoon until Saturday morning and costs around $2500, about $1000 more than we generally pay for an entire week for a liveaboard dive trip that is a full Saturday to Saturday trip. But, we justified the added expense because of two things. One, we could book our air with our American Airlines frequent flyer miles and two, this would be a truly 1st class experience. I was able to book the last two frequent flyer seats for the flight to Tortola in March of '06 for our, then, January trip. In September, however, we were informed by the Cuan Law owners and office staff that our January cruise would be canceled if no other guests were booked. We tried to get others to sign up for this trip, but were unable to so we changed our cruise to a date in March that already had sufficient guests to make the cruise happen. Unfortunately, our air became a problem. After much deliberation, we finally decided to make this one week trip a two week trip since that timeframe was the only option to use our FF tickets and no air was available for purchase at a price we were willing to pay.

In the end, the trip was amazing, but the hassle of rebooking everything and having to book an extra week of lodging was unfortunate. In my opinion, the owners should have done something as a goodwill gesture for our added expenses and headaches encountered by THEM canceling our original cruise date. They didn't. In our business, a nice bouquet of flowers or a box of fabulous chocolates with a note of apology would have been awaiting our clients upon their arrival if a similar situation had occured. Unfortunately, these owners did not agree that some gesture would have been appropriate. Over the years, we have had many little gifts of gratitude left in our room such as T-shirts, windbreakers, etc. even though no problem was needing reconciliation. They were appreciated and have earned much goodwill and loyalty from us. Amazing what a small gesture can do for a business!

Bottom line...buy trip insurance if you are signing up for a Cuan Law dive cruise and for those of you who are business owners, show gestures of appreciation to your clients "early and often".

Part 2 BVI Diving...stay tuned.