Shared boat or private charter: the crossover is nine people

Two prices, two different things being priced

Three products on this site are sold per person: US$79 on the catamaran, US$99 on the reefs tour, US$99 on the four-stop tour. Four are sold per boat: US$650 and US$765 and US$765, each for up to ten guests, and US$1,200 for up to six.

Nobody does this sum for you. The listings sit in one price column on the platform, sorted low to high, and US$650 lands at the wrong end of it. It is the wrong end only because the number is measuring a boat and the numbers above it are measuring a seat. Everything on this page is that division, done once for every group size from two to ten. The full catalogue with the unit printed on every row is on all seven tours.

The crossover table

The shared column is US$79 multiplied by the number of you. The charter columns do not move, because that is what per boat means. Bracketed figures are the charter price divided by the group.

The working, three sums

One. US$650 per boat, cap 10, against US$79 per person. Eight people on the shared boat is 8 × US$79 = US$632, which is US$18 less than the charter, so the shared boat still wins. Nine people is 9 × US$79 = US$711, which is US$61 more than the charter, so the charter wins. The turn is between eight and nine, and the charter wins from nine people. At nine that charter works out at US$72.22 each; at ten it is US$65 each, against a shared fare of US$79.

Two. US$765 per boat, cap 10, against US$79 per person. Nine people on the shared boat is US$711, still US$54 under the charter. Ten people is US$790, US$25 over it. So both US$765 charters win from ten people — which is the cap, so they only ever win on a completely full boat. One person short and the shared seat is cheaper. That is a narrow margin and you should treat it as one.

Three. US$1,200 per boat, cap 6, against US$79 per person. Six people on the shared boat is 6 × US$79 = US$474. The charter is US$1,200 and cannot take a seventh guest, so US$1,200 ÷ 6 = US$200 a head at full capacity is as low as it goes. That is more than two and a half times the shared fare, at the boat’s best. It never wins on price and there is no group size at which it starts to. If you book it, book it because you want that boat, not because you have run the numbers.

Below nine people, then, the shared catamaran is cheaper per head than every private charter on this site. That is the plain finding, and it is the opposite of what the price column looks like at a glance.

If you are comparing against the US$99 boats instead

The table above uses US$79 because that is the cheapest seat, which is the hardest test for a charter to pass. Against the two shared boats at US$99 per person the charters take over earlier. US$650 ÷ US$99 is 6.57, and 7 × US$99 = US$693, so the US$650 charter wins from seven people. US$765 ÷ US$99 is 7.73, and 8 × US$99 = US$792, so the US$765 charters win from eight. The US$1,200 boat still does not: six seats at US$99 is US$594, less than half of it.

What the money buys that the sum does not show

Price is the part I can be exact about. The rest is what people wrote afterwards, and it points the same way the arithmetic does for large groups and the other way for small ones.

On the private side, Renee, who had been on both: “My husband and I have done the group tours before and they can"t compete with this experience.” Another reviewer on the US$650 charter, on the difference you are actually paying for: “Other boats had so many people and looked like they were about to tip over.” And Lynne, on one of the US$765 boats: “Please note that this was a 4-5 hour trip which was great. We were able to customize the trip, which you can too.”

On the shared side, Lucia: “We were cruisers and the tour was perfectly fitted for our short time ashore.” And Andrew, whose review is the most useful sentence on this whole site because it is a timetable rather than an adjective: “35 mins at Stingray City, 25 mins at Coral Gardens and 25 mins at Starfish Point were ample time to take photos, explore and enjoy the area.” If your ship is in and your clock is short, that is what US$79 buys.

George Town has no cruise pier — it is a tender port, so you come ashore by tender and your time ashore is shorter than the itinerary makes it look. That squeezes both options equally, but it squeezes a four-and-a-half-hour charter harder than a two-and-a-half-hour shared trip. Work out how much time you actually have before you pick a length.

The ratings will not break the tie

Every private charter here shows 5.0. Those four scores rest on four, four, four and one review. The shared catamaran shows 4.7 from 325. That is the only number on this site with enough behind it to argue with, and it is lower than all four of the perfect ones, which tells you something about what a perfect score from four people is worth.

So the tie gets broken by the group size and by what you want the day to be, not by the stars. The verbatim reviews, including the complaints, are on the reviews page; the private charter write-up and the catamaran write-up go through them one at a time.

Book the one your group size points at

Eight or fewer: the shared catamaran at US$79 per person.

Nine or more, up to ten: the US$650 charter, per boat.

One last currency point, because it undoes all of this if you get it wrong. Every figure on this page is US dollars, and the listings quote US dollars. Ashore, a price written “$” is very often CI$, and CI$1 = US$1.20 under a peg set on 1 April 1974. A CI$100 dinner is US$120. Paying cash in US dollars, which shops take at CI$0.80, costs you about four per cent against the peg — small. Misreading a CI$ price as US$ costs twenty per cent, which is not. That is the dollar trap.

Can’t make these dates?

Browse more available grand cayman excursions and find one that fits your schedule.

Also worth reading: all seven tours with the unit attached, what the day really costs, what Stingray City actually is, and what to bring on the boat.

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