Yacht charter in Achillio · Bavaria — 37 Cruiser (2016)

We booked a two week charter with Kostas in October and we were looking forward to it. Kostas was very nice and helpful on the phone and showed a lot of flexibility. When we arrived, we did a quick walk-through of the boat. The inside looked good except for a window holder that was broken, but overall it was clean. The engine bay was clean and everything seemed in good order. Our only initial apprehension was looking at the exterior of the boat. The side of the boat was very dirty (assuming the boat hasn’t been cleaned or taken out of the water for a long time - i.e. it was not just dirt accumulating from the summer months). The cockpit had rust stains, etc. Generally it did not look well kept. We paid the deposit, and decided to leave the harbour. After about 30 mins of motoring we wanted to take the main sail out and it was stuck. It had been furled in incorrectly meaning that we had to return to the harbour so that the maintenance person could fix it (as we didn’t want to risk damaging or ripping anything). We were very disappointed as we believed these things would have been checked prior to our arrival. 

The morning after we did an oil check and noticed that the engine had more oil than it needed but we didn’t think more about it, and decided to finally take off to our first spot where we anchored for the night. We did about 3 hours of motoring this day. The next day we did a morning engine check and noticed a considerable amount of oil in the engine bilge. We noticed at least two points where the engine was seriously leaking. We communicated this to Kostas who told us that he was aware of this issue one week prior to our charter. This naturally frustrated us a lot as they knew, and omitted to communicate this issue at our check-in and it now meant that we had to continuously worry about an engine leaking oil. The more we used the engine, the more oil we lost - we cleaned the engine bay every morning and monitored the oil levels. We called click and boat about the issue who spoke to Kostas and the answer was always “don’t worry about it, just continue your trip and always check the oil”. Seeing as we had no other choice but to continue the trip, we did, but with a constant worry of the engine. We noticed along the way that the fuel indicator wasn’t functioning properly as it always read 100% - although we did sail as much as we could, we determined that the gauge wasn’t working (meaning that we never truly knew how much fuel was there when we started our charter). So to summarise: - We had multiple oil leaks which was known but we were NOT informed - The wind indicator display did not work accurately due to poor calibration and we could not see the values due to damaged pixelated areas. - The autopilot wouldn’t engage - i.e. it was inexistent, but it was advertised that there was an autopilot onboard. - The chain connecting to the rudder was poorly lubricated - I.e. squeaking and created resistance when turning the helm. - We had a windlass built on a makeshift wooden board at the bow (the previous windlass was replaced and the new one was placed above deck level which made it a hazard when dropping and raising anchor) - The fuel indicator did not work - it was at 100% when we returned to the harbour after our trip, but yet we had to fill up 100 EUR worth of fuel We haven’t received any compensation whatsoever for any of these issues, and overall we’re disappointed because the state of the boat was NOT what we paid for.

All good