Bavaria C42 | Atlanta

The steering was excessively stiff and squeaky which was dangerous, caused undue stress, and massively reduced the enjoyment of our holiday. It was reported at handover, last minute lubrication made no difference. It was again reported early in the week with no remedial action taken. It urgently needs a full steering service BEFORE the next charter, in order to return it to full sea worthiness. We are looking for compensation as this issue was unacceptable and massively impacted our week.

The charter company were awful to deal with. The handover involved being given a checklist, and told to take myself around the yacht and tick everything off, while the staff disappeared for nearly 2 hours. They eventually reappeared and answered a couple of my questions. I am an experienced sailor, so was able to work most things out myself, but if you were less experienced, you would definitely struggle. It was by far the least thorough handover I've ever experienced. Then the main problem, which was that they insisted the deposit was paid in cash. A large argument occurred, lasting another 2 hours, with me having to get Boataround to help reach a solution, as I wasn't going to hand over 2000 EUR in cash (not that I even had the ability to withdraw it). Eventually, I had to make a bank transfer and it took 6 weeks after returning from my trip, countless messages and phone calls to finally get my money back. The worst part was that there was some damage to the yacht which was not picked up during the handover, as the handover was so poor. The day after we returned, the charter company tried to suggest that we had caused the damage, despite already inspecting the yacht and signing the paperwork. Fortunately I had photos to prove it wasn't me that caused it, but this resulted in a lot of worry and a very bad end to our holiday - of course they still had our deposit at this time. The yacht didn't include any cleaning products, spare linen or even spare dinghy fuel, despite them attempting to charge another 600 EUR for cleaning fees. I definitely would encourage you to look elsewhere.

The payment of the last installment was unclear. It was supposed to be done in cash on site. The deposit could not be processed by credit card, but also in cash. We had to withdraw €2000 from the ATM, which cost us a fee of €140. That was actually a bit annoying. We still had a successful trip.