My local time is EST (UTC-5)

Deployed a ESXi 3.5 host and set the hardware clock to local time. On the VI client under Time configuration it indicates the date & time is 16 hours behind my local time. When I connect to a Guest OS (Windows Server 2003/2008) it sets this time 16 hours behind as the local time, if I reset the date/time then it simply resets back after a reboot. I disabled the time sync from host in the VMware tools but this still happens.

The Guest OS does time sensitive tasks so I need it to be accurate. I'm unable to setup a NTP server at this time but will in the future. For now what can I do to correct this?

Thanks.