Cayman Aggressor: When does it become too much?

[scubadada]

I received word from on island that the CAIV will be leaving in October for a yard in Roatan and will not be welcomed back to the Cayman Islands. Something about $2million dollars in arrears in customs fees, which is why, during their pandemic trips, they did not leave for Cayman Brac or Little Cayman because they would transit outside of CI waters and wouldn’t be allowed back in.

Paul Haines and Wayne Hassan would be rolling in their graves if they knew the place it all started had booted the Aggressor Fleet out.

That's interesting. If you go to the Aggressor website, it shows Cayman resident only trips for Aug and the beginning of Sept, and then no trips for the rest of 2021. The resident only trips are advertised as going to Brac and Little. It shows trips for every month in 2022

 

[drrich2]

I received word from on island that the CAIV will be leaving in October for a yard in Roatan and will not be welcomed back to the Cayman Islands.

I assume you meant the C.A. V; speaking of the issue, 2 questions:

1.) What did Aggressor Fleet do with the old Cayman Aggressor IV?
2.) Gotta wonder what they'll do with the Cayman Aggressor V. If, for example, it becomes the 'Roatan boat,' what will be done with the current Roatan Aggressor?

Richard.

 

[Wookie]

That's interesting. If you go to the Aggressor website, it shows Cayman resident only trips for Aug and the beginning of Sept, and then no trips for the rest of 2021. The resident only trips are advertised as going to Brac and Little. It shows trips for every month in 2022

View attachment 675064

Possibly true.

however, here is the exact word I got from my contact on GC.
“With the COVID border closure in March of 2020, The Cayman Islands saw a massive decrease in revenue from not only tourists, but import duty and work permit fees. With no income or sales tax in the Cayman Islands, those who live outside of the jurisdiction don't realize how much money these 2 entities bring in for the Government. Import duty is down about 800% and work permit revenue is drastically down. A lowball estimation is the Department of Immigration brought in over $90 million CI dollars ($112 million USD) in work permit fees in 2019. The end result is there is a defect of about $150 million in the government purse now.


A well-kept secret is the Department of Immigration has been pursuing "violations" of the terms and conditions of some work permit holders to offset the reduction in work permit fees. Much like ambulance chasing attorneys in the US, there are some who have been charged by the Department of Immigration for working outside of the scope of their work permit. The charges are technically and legally ambiguous at best, however most individuals charged will plead out to a fine, as it is less expensive than hiring an attorney to fight the charge through trial. How do I know all this? I was one of these people charged. Immigration attempted to hit me with a fine of $90,000 CI dollars for a totally made up charge which was easily disproved. It took 12 trips to court and spending $20,000 on my lawyer. The charges were dropped before a single shred of evidence could be produced, simply because the statutory maximum fine was listed as $5,000 and they tried to charge me $100,000. Government overplayed their hand and lost. The judge dismissed the case, with an apology to me. The real kick is, when the Prosecutor was questioned by the judge for this egregious and BS fine amount, the DPP attorney representing Immigration actually said out loud in open court "How else is immigration supposed to make money right now?"


Anyway, back on topic. Customs and Border Control are following this same tactic. Summer of 2020, 2 years after the importation and regular operation of the Cayman Aggressor V, CBC suddenly decided there was an unpaid import duty on the vessel, and informed Aggressor of this. Knowing the scam and thinking the duty might be around $10,000-20,0000, Aggressor management said "Fine, we'll pay your silly duty. How much do we owe?" To which CBC replied "2 million of your US dollars." To which Aggressor management replied "Kindly **** in your hat," and hired a team of legal professionals. (For reference the boat cost $4 million when Aggressor bought it. Sound familiar?)


September 2020, Captain Randy is preparing to leave the Georgetown dock with a charter full of passengers, bound for Little Cayman. As the Aggressor and her guests must transit international waters to go from Grand to the sister islands, a "rotation number" is needed for the transit. This prevents Randy from having to check out of the Cayman Island waters, and then check back into customs. which at the time would require a quarantine period. It's something Randy has done hundreds of times. Only this time when Randy calls Port Security on the VHF, they tell him he will not be issued a rotation number and he must check out of Cayman waters and check back in when he arrives back in Little. Thankfully Randy is smart enough to know that this is highly unusual and checks in with the GM of the Aggressor - Jay.


Long story short - had Randy checked out, he would not have been able to check back in with his guests until the duty had been paid. A real strong-arm attempt from CIG to get them to pay this duty which should not have been levied in the first place. Astute fans will observe that after this day, the Cayman Aggressor confined all of their subsequent resident trips to Grand Cayman, which infuriated the resident market, who did not want to spend the only vacation they were allowed to take diving within sight of their own homes.


Since then, (about March 2021) the Aggressor legal team has negotiated a private deal with the CBC, which allows them to transit back and forth to the sister islands for their resident charters. My understanding is the custom duty is still owed. Now the Department of Environment is harassing the Aggressor, and refusing to let them sleep overnight on Little Cayman moorings. Instead they must transit to the western point of Little, and sleep on anchor in their anchorage there. Anyone familiar with Little Cayman knows the anchorage is not sheltered from the predominant waves, and it makes for a long ****** night.


To be fair, the Cayman Aggressor listed themselves as a 105' vessel, the maximum size allowed for those double pin moorings in Little Cayman. The boat is closer to 130'. The Cayman Aggressor does regularly break moorings in Little, which is a problem for the DOE. But the harassment they are now getting simply didn't exist when Wayne was alive and living in the Cayman Islands.


Grand Cayman is small. There are no secrets here. From what I have been told, the Cayman Aggressor will depart for Honduras in October for a refit. Once out of the yard, I have been told it is highly unlikely they will return to Cayman waters. I don’t blame them. “

 

[Wookie]

I assume you meant the C.A. V; speaking of the issue, 2 questions:

1.) What did Aggressor Fleet do with the old Cayman Aggressor IV?
2.) Gotta wonder what they'll do with the Cayman Aggressor V. If, for example, it becomes the 'Roatan boat,' what will be done with the current Roatan Aggressor?

Richard.

Didn’t realize they were up to 5. I was on 1 well before and after it was CA1.

 

[mcohen1021]

The resident only trips are advertised as going to Brac and Little. It shows trips for every month in 2022

View attachment 675064

Our Roatan Aggressor trip last yr advertised Utila and we got screwed. That was the #2 reason we booked it.

 

[scubadada]

All very interesting, we'll see.

For what it's worth, Aggressor website lists the CA V as 110 feet long.

I went on the CA V in 2018 when it was very new. I had an extra week when my wife had a business trip and I got 35% off the price on Aggressor's 35th anniversary. Trip Report - Cayman Aggressor V, November 24-December 1, 2018

The boat was generally very nice, however, I had one of the Balcony Suites. The loud clunking of the auto pilot mechanism made it impossible to sleep on the trip over to Little Cayman. The diving was, overall, pretty disappointing. I had been to Grand Cayman 10 times, Little Cayman twice and Cayman Brac once, I knew how good the diving could be. The CA V is limited to the moorings it is allowed to use. The boat would often stay at a mooring for 2 or even 3 dives. This was not always bad, but it sure cut down on the diversity of dive sites you get from a land-based operator. The option of diving from RIBs would have largely alleviated this problem, but all dives were from the CA V. Seven of the 12 dives off Grand Cayman, I would never have chosen to do from a land-based operator. Dives at Babylon and the Kittiwake/Sand Chute were fine, no other dives were at the many excellent West side, North wall, or East end sites. My general advice would be to to a good land-based visit to any of the three islands. Of course, the rapid march of stony coral tissue loss disease off Grand Cayman is very depressing.

 

[Wookie]

For what it's worth, Aggressor website lists the CA V as 110 feet long.

The actual length of a vessel is always used to the advantage of whoever is using the measurement. Aggressor Fleet of course wants to have the longest bestest vessels. But they don't really want to pay a fortune in dock fees, so they may use and advertise a different length based on who is reading their site. Spree was 71 feet from the turn of the keel to the stern, 74 feet length of waterline, and 95 feet length overall, and 100.2 feet if you got a tape measure out and measured from the tippy tip of the anchor to the backey back of the swim platform. All of those measurements meant something to different people.

Early Aggressors and most aluminum head boats have a really ugly bow pulpit that sticks out as much as 10 feet from the stem, which is useful for head boats as it adds more deck rail to fish from. If you're anchoring, it makes for a rough night in any type of seas as it adds working moment to the vessel. It also allowed them to say that their vessels were XX feet long, even if 10 of the feet were worthless bow pulpit.

But marinas caught on and started charging for that extra 10 feet (dock rentals are often calculated by how many feet of dock the boat actually uses) and I notice that the current Aggressors have mostly done away with that ugly appendage.

I remember a story from the Juliet where the previous owner had told the dock in Miami that his boat was 88 feet long (Length, waterline) and she really is 117 feet overall because of a very prominent bowsprit. I don't remember all of the nuances of the story, but the dock wanted to come after the current owner for many years of back dock fees and new docks had to be found.

 

[tridacna]

Damned autocorrect. Yes, Roatan.

Bowing to your immense knowledge of ports and the like, I actually looked it up and found a Rostand near Antarctica. That would be a fine place to harbor those boats.

 

[Wookie]

Bowing to your immense knowledge of ports and the like, I actually looked it up and found a Rostand near Antarctica. That would be a fine place to harbor those boats.

Also one near Montevideo. Which is where Spree actually disappeared from my tracker. She actually was last seen near Asunción, Paraguay.

 

[lowwall]

Also one near Montevideo. Which is where Spree actually disappeared from my tracker. She actually was last seen near Asunción, Paraguay.

That's Spee, not Spree.