We want you satisfied, and we want to be fair to our crew and to the guests whose spots we’d turn away. So here is every rule we apply, with the numbers, before you need them.
Last updated October 2026. This page is part of our Terms of Service and controls if the two ever disagree.
The short version
Weekday trips (Sunday to Friday, outside holiday weekends)
More than 48 hours out
Everything you’ve paid is refunded, including the tax and any online booking fee.
More than 24, up to 48 hours out
Your deposit isn’t refunded. Anything you’ve paid above the deposit comes back.
24 hours out or less
Nothing is refunded.
Saturday and holiday-weekend trips
More than 7 days out
Everything you’ve paid is refunded, including the tax and any online booking fee.
48 hours to 7 days out
Half of everything you’ve paid comes back.
Inside 48 hours
The weekday rules: 24 to 48 hours out the deposit is kept and anything above it comes back; 24 hours or less, nothing is refunded.
Any day
We cancel for unsafe weather
Full refund or a free reschedule. Your choice.
Refund turnaround
Started within 3 business days, to the card you paid with.
The hours are counted back from your scheduled departure time, in Central Time, from the moment we confirm your cancellation, not from when you decided to send the email. A “holiday weekend” is any day of the Memorial Day, 4th of July or Labor Day weekend; the booking page marks those dates.
Saturday and holiday-weekend trips: 7 days, then half
Saturdays and holiday weekends are the days the boat sells out weeks ahead and a late cancellation cannot be resold, so the window is longer. If your trip date is a Saturday, or any day of the Memorial Day, 4th of July or Labor Day weekend:
More than 7 days out: everything you’ve paid is refunded, the trip, the sales tax and any online booking fee.
7 days down to 48 hours out: half of everything you’ve paid comes back, rounded to the cent. If only the deposit has been charged, that is half the deposit; if the balance has run too, half of both.
Inside 48 hours: the weekday rules below apply, exactly as on any other day.
Weather is the exception on every day: if we cancel for unsafe conditions you get a full refund or a free reschedule, your choice, on a Saturday as on a Tuesday.
Weekday trips, cancelled more than 48 hours out: full refund
On a weekday trip (Sunday to Friday, outside holiday weekends), contact us more than 48 hours before your scheduled departure and we’ll refund everything you’ve paid: the trip, the sales tax and any online booking fee. On a Saturday or holiday-weekend trip this line sits at 7 days; see above.
Cancel 24 to 48 hours out: the deposit is forfeit
Cancel more than 24 hours but 48 hours or less before your scheduled departure and your deposit is not refunded. Anything you’ve paid above the deposit (the balance, if it has already run) comes back to you, along with the matching share of the tax.
The deposit is 50% of the trip price and the exact figure was shown to you before you paid; it’s also on your confirmation email. At this point your slot is usually unsellable, because online booking has closed or is about to, which is what the deposit covers.
Cancel 24 hours out or less: nothing is refunded
Cancellations made 24 hours or less before your scheduled departure are not refunded at all. The captain is scheduled, the boat is prepped and fueled, and the day is gone whether or not you board. This is the same window in which online booking closes, so the seat can’t be resold.
Who can cancel, and how
The cancellation has to come from the person who booked the trip. Call 512-839-4573 or email info@traviswakecharters.com with your confirmation code and the trip date.
A cancellation isn’t effective until we confirm it back to you in writing. A voicemail, an unanswered text, a message to a captain’s personal phone, or a comment on social media doesn’t stop the clock. If you haven’t heard from us, assume the trip is still on, and call us.
How refunds are issued, and how fast
Refunds go back to the original payment method, the same card you booked with. We can’t send a refund to a different card, to cash, or to a different person.
We start the refund within 3 business days of confirming your cancellation. After that it’s with your bank: most cards post the money within another 3 to 10 days, and we have no way to speed that up. If it’s been more than two weeks since we confirmed, call us and we’ll send you the processor’s refund reference.
The 8.25% sales tax added to your booking comes back in the same proportion as the trip: a full refund returns the whole trip and the whole tax, a 50% refund returns half of each. A refund more than 48 hours out also returns any online booking fee you paid. Bookings taken by phone at 512-839-4573 carry no online booking fee.
Rescheduling is not the same as cancelling
More than 48 hours before your departure you can move your trip once to another available date at no cost. Everything you’ve paid moves with it: a reschedule shifts the money, it doesn’t refund it. Availability is real: summer weekends fill months out, so the sooner you call the more dates you’ll have to choose from. Please take the new date within 12 months of the original.
Inside 48 hours, a date change is a cancellation plus a new booking. The original date loses its deposit (or everything, inside 24 hours) and the new trip is priced and paid as a fresh reservation. The one exception is a trip we cancel; see “What unsafe weather actually means” and “If we cancel your trip” below.
Reschedules can’t be done online inside 24 hours of departure, because online booking closes then. Call us instead.
What “unsafe weather” actually means
We don’t cancel on a forecast. The decision is made on the day of your trip, by the captain, based on what the lake is actually doing.
Conditions that do qualify as unsafe include lightning in the area, sustained high wind, severe thunderstorms or an active storm warning, dangerously low lake levels, and hazardous debris in the water after a storm or flood release.
Light rain, cloud cover, wind chop, a cool day, or a forecast that looks bad do not qualify as unsafe weather and are not grounds for a free cancellation. This is the single most common disagreement we have, so it’s written down plainly: a grey sky is not a cancellation. Central Texas summer storms usually pass in under an hour, and a captain who can wait one out will. If you cancel on your own because you don’t like the forecast, the normal three tiers at the top of this page apply.
If we cancel your trip
If we cancel because of unsafe weather, you get a 100% refund or a free reschedule to any available date. Your choice, not ours. Tell us which you’d prefer and we’ll set it up.
The same applies if we can’t run your trip for any other reason on our end: a mechanical problem, a captain out sick, or a closure of the ramp or the lake. You never absorb the cost of a trip we couldn’t deliver.
Late arrivals and no-shows
The boat leaves at your scheduled time. Your charter clock starts then, whether or not everyone in your party is standing on the dock, and a late arrival shortens your trip without changing the price. We can’t run past your scheduled end time to make it up: the next charter is waiting, and every trip is off the water by 8:00 PM.
Please arrive 15 minutes early so the crew can get waivers, vests and gear sorted before departure. If you’re running behind, call 512-839-4573. If the schedule allows it, the captain will do what he can.
No-shows are charged 100% of the total. If nobody in your party has arrived 30 minutes after your scheduled departure time and we haven’t heard from you, we treat the booking as a no-show and release the boat.
Trips that end early once you’re underway
Weather. If the captain brings the boat in early because conditions turned unsafe, we’ll make it right: either a prorated credit toward a future trip or a partial refund for the time you lost. The captain decides when it’s time to come in; that call is about safety and isn’t up for debate on the water. Which remedy you get, and how much it’s worth, is decided afterward by the owner, and we’ll come back to you within 3 business days of your trip.
Conduct. If a trip ends early because a guest is unsafe, unruly, dangerously intoxicated, or won’t follow the captain’s instructions, there is no refund and no credit. The trip is over and the full amount stands. Same for illegal drugs on board. See guest policies for what we expect on board.
Your call. If you simply decide you’ve had enough and want to head in early, that’s completely fine. Just tell the captain. But the trip is priced as booked, and there’s no refund for time you chose not to use.
Guest count changes
You’re chartering the whole boat privately, not buying per-person seats. Bringing fewer guests than you booked for does not reduce the price. A 6-person group pays the same as a 12-person group on the same boat for the same hours, and a friend dropping out the night before isn’t a partial cancellation.
Adding guests, up to the boat’s 12-guest capacity, doesn’t change the charter price either, but tell us in advance so the captain has vests, gear and waivers ready for everyone. We can’t exceed capacity for any reason, and a guest who shows up over the limit stays ashore.
What you’ve paid, and when
A deposit (50% of the total) is charged when you book, and the exact amount is shown before you pay. The balance is charged automatically to the card on file the day before your trip. So what a cancellation actually means in practice:
Cancel more than 48 hours out (more than 7 days out for a Saturday or holiday-weekend trip) and your deposit comes back in full. If the balance has already run, that comes back too.
On a Saturday or holiday-weekend trip, cancel 7 days to 48 hours out and half of what has been charged comes back, half the deposit, or half of deposit and balance if both have run.
Cancel 24 to 48 hours out and you keep nothing of the deposit, but nothing further is taken either. If the balance had already been charged, the balance is refunded.
Cancel inside 24 hours, or no-show, and nothing comes back. Deposit and balance both stand.
Because the balance runs the day before your trip, and the 24-hour line falls in roughly the same place, most cancellations in the 24-to-48 hour window are settled by simply keeping the deposit and charging nothing more.
The card on file is also authorized for guest-caused damage and excessive cleaning. That’s separate from anything on this page, and the full terms are in the waiver and in our Terms of Service.
Gift certificates, deals and third-party bookings
If you booked through a third party (a deals site, a concierge, or a reseller) their cancellation terms and their refund timing apply to whatever you paid them, and you’ll need to cancel through them. We can only refund money we collected. If you’re not sure which applies to your booking, call us and we’ll tell you straight.
Packages, bundles and passes
A package is prepaid credit for one or more trips, sold on /packages and redeemed by code at checkout. Each package is valid for the number of months printed on it, counted from the day you buy it.
Refunds. Unused sessions are refunded on request within the package’s validity, at the per-session price you paid, less any sessions you have already used charged at the normal rate. Ask by phone or email and the owner does it by hand, back to the card you bought with, within the same 3 business days. Once the validity has passed, unused credit is not refunded.
Each trip you book on a package follows the tiers at the top of this page for its day. Cancel more than 48 hours out (7 days on a Saturday or holiday weekend) and the credit goes back on your code; inside that the credit for that trip may be treated as used, the way a deposit would be. If we cancel for unsafe weather the credit goes back on your code, or you reschedule.
Transfer. The code is the ticket: anyone holding it can redeem it, so share it with your household and not the internet. One package covers one household. We cannot reissue a code that was shared and used by someone else.
If your group split the bill
The person who booked is the organiser. Each friend pays their share by their own link, and every paid share comes straight off the organiser’s balance. Share links close 48 hours before the trip; whatever is still unpaid then goes on the organiser’s saved card with the balance, as it would have anyway. Nothing is ever collected twice.
Refunds are proportional, to each card. If the trip is refunded, in full or in part, each friend who paid gets the same share of the refund back to the card they paid with, and the organiser gets the rest to theirs. We cannot send a friend’s money to the organiser, or the other way round. A friend who drops out before paying is simply removed and the others’ shares are redrawn; a friend who drops out after paying is refunded on request and that share goes back on the organiser’s balance.
Weather on a split booking. If we cancel for unsafe weather, every friend who paid is refunded on their own payment first, then the organiser’s deposit and balance; or the organiser picks a new date and everyone’s shares carry over to it. Cancellations by the group follow the three tiers above, applied to the whole trip and then shared out in the same proportions.
Getting in line before the season opens
Before 2027 dates open, the booking page lets you pick a date and get in line for it. That is a place in a queue, not a booking: no card, no deposit, no money and no obligation on either side. The first person in line for a date gets a private booking link for 72 hours before the date goes public; if it is not used, the link moves to the next person. The price you see while you wait is today’s rate and may change for the new season. You can leave the line at any time from the email we sent you, and nothing is charged. A place that is withdrawn is not renumbered: if you were third, you stay third.
Summer camp and events
Camp registration is paid once at registration and the seat is held for the week. Camp refunds and week changes are handled by phone with the owner; call 512-839-4573 as early as you can. Event seats (for example a demo day) are paid in full when you reserve. Call at least 48 hours before the event and we move you or refund you; inside 48 hours the seat is yours to fill. If we cancel an event, every seat is refunded in full to the card it was paid with.
Quick answers
What is Travis Wake Charters' cancellation policy?
It depends on the day of your trip. For a weekday trip (Sunday to Friday, outside holiday weekends): cancel more than 48 hours before your trip and you get a full refund of everything you have paid; cancel more than 24 but 48 hours or less before your trip and your deposit is not refundable, anything you have paid above the deposit comes back; cancel 24 hours or less before your trip and nothing is refundable. For a Saturday or holiday-weekend trip (Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day weekends): cancel more than 7 days before your trip for a full refund; cancel 7 days to 48 hours before and half of everything you have paid comes back; inside 48 hours the weekday rules apply. If Travis Wake Charters cancels your trip for unsafe weather, you choose between a full refund and a free reschedule, whatever the day.
How long does a Travis Wake Charters refund take?
We start the refund within 3 business days of confirming your cancellation, back to the card you paid with. Your bank or card issuer then takes its own time to post it, usually another 3 to 10 days. The 8.25% sales tax added to your booking is refunded in the same proportion as the trip. A full refund includes any online booking fee you paid.
Do I get a refund if it rains on Lake Travis?
Not automatically. Light rain, cloud cover, wind chop, a cool day, or a forecast that looks bad do not qualify as unsafe weather and are not grounds for a free cancellation. We cancel for genuinely unsafe conditions: lightning in the area, sustained high wind, severe thunderstorms or storm warnings, dangerously low lake levels, or hazardous debris in the water. That call is made on the day of your trip by the captain, not off a forecast days out.
What happens if I am late for my charter?
The boat leaves at your scheduled time. Arriving late shortens your trip and does not change the price, and every trip is off the water by 8:00 PM. If nobody in your party has arrived 30 minutes after your scheduled departure time and we have not heard from you, it is a no-show and you are charged 100% of the total.
Can I reschedule my trip instead of cancelling it?
Yes. More than 48 hours before your trip you can move it once to another available date at no cost, and everything you have paid moves with it (a Saturday or holiday-weekend date has its own minimum trip length, so a shorter weekday trip may need hours added to move there). Inside 48 hours a date change is treated as a cancellation and a new booking, so the original date loses its deposit, or everything inside 24 hours.
How do I cancel a Travis Wake Charters booking?
Call 512-839-4573 or email info@traviswakecharters.com with your confirmation code. The request has to come from the person who booked. A cancellation is not effective until we confirm it back to you in writing, so if you have not heard from us, assume the trip is still on and call.
What if fewer guests show up than I booked for?
The price does not change. You are chartering the whole boat privately, not buying per-person seats, so the charter price is the same whether 4 people or 12 people board.
What happens if the captain ends my trip early?
If the captain brings the boat in early because conditions turned unsafe, Travis Wake Charters issues a prorated credit toward a future trip or a partial refund for the time you lost. The owner decides which and how much, and we come back to you within 3 business days. If a trip ends early because of unsafe, unruly or dangerously intoxicated behaviour, there is no refund and no credit.
Our FAQ covers the practical questions: what to bring, what’s included, how the day runs. Our guest policies cover conduct, alcohol, kids and safety on board. The Terms of Service and the liability waiver are the full legal picture.
We would rather sort a question out now than argue about it later
