Hilton Head Guided Kayak Tour

Lovely kayak trip. We had beginners and experienced kayakers in our party and it was enjoyable for everyone

We’ve booked excursions every year for 20 years on the island. The vast majority (seriously 98-99%) have been outstanding. Tonight we unfortunately had one that failed to deliver and frankly was setup to fail from the start. We decided to try Island Head’s sunset kayak tour from 7:00-8:30 pm because we had not kayaked in skull creek before. Our group of 6 and another group of 3 arrived ahead of time and Reilly kindly greeted us as she was exiting the 5:00 tour group she just retuned with. It was low tide so their normal dock slip could not be used. That meant hauling all the kayaks down a lengthy boat dock to the opposite end one by one. This cut into our scheduled time on the water. My son and I jumped in to help. Honestly this seemed very stressful, time consuming, and a high risk for injury if Reilly had to do this all on her own. We were shocked she would be put in a situation to fail like this. She tried her best despite the challenges. I honestly don’t think we would have made it out on the water until at least 30-40 minutes later if we didn’t help. After we left the dock, the tour started off fairly well. Fortunately everyone was an experienced kayaker. However, it seemed Reilly quickly started rushing and jumped far out ahead. There was little explanation of the area and seemingly no patience to enjoy the evening. We were fortunate to see some dolphins as we were returning to the marina but we had to keep moving quickly because it was getting dark and the boats had no lights. Exiting the water was almost as lengthy as entering — again due to limited help. The tour did not last a full 90 minutes on the water and just did a simple loop around making us feel ripped off. Other kayaking companies have gone above and beyond to ensure a fun, entertaining, educational, and relaxing experience. Although Reilly was nice and probably tried her best given the circumstances, I can’t support this company again. We will take our business elsewhere.

Booked for Tuesday July 22. Showed up and was told that the water was getting choppy and we should cancel. Perfectly understandable. The guide told us he would tell his boss to put us on the schedule for Thursday. Awesome! We show up today, weather is great and water is calm. We are excited! Until we ware told by an employee from another company that they were told the 7pm kayaking was cancelled. So I call Island Head and confirmed. Yep! Cancelled again. No reason given. No heads up. Just cancelled. I was issued a refund, but vacation is over and there is no time to reschedule with another company. 0/10 experience. Would not recommend.

We enjoyed it! The online description was correct. No surprises. No special clothing or shoes required.

We are a fairly fit family. Our guide brought us out in poor and windy conditions . 2 of us got stuck in a riptide trying to enter a cove. She would not have known we were stuck because she was ahead of the group with her back turned toward us. My husband had to shout for her to help. It was extremely exhausting to just paddle around. She told us she usually would cancel under these conditions but “forgot” to check the wind forecast . This felt like a test of physical and mental endurance versus a fun vacation paddle! Also she had no means of communicating with the shore . There was no back up plan . It felt unsafe. While giving a guided tour she spoke away from us into the wind and unless we were right next to her we could not hear a word she was saying .