Hi there,
I chartered a sailing
boat (monohull for 8 persons for 14 days) in St. Maarten with Kiriacoulis. unfortunately a lot of things went wrong as this is my first experience with a failed
charter I’m looking for some ideas how to proceed...
what happened during our
charter was the following...
we arrived on a Saturday (morning) where we found our
boat without
sails, without
anchor and without
steering wheel. that’s what we could see from outside. We were promised to get on board at around 17:00... that didn’t
work out at all - we had to stay on another boat of Kiriacoulis.
On Sunday we were able to leave at around 13:00. We had still been inside the Simpsonbay Bridge - we noticed that the
batteries were not
charging. We anchored as we also were not allowed to leave as ~ 800€ dept were on the boat.
Monday: The debt was paid by Kiriacoulis - but we had to return to the marina. The charge controller was broken down - they fixed it untill the afternoon.
Tuesday: We made it outside into Simpsonbay - we tried again to clear out but it seems some documents (evidence that Kiriacoulis (Greece) is owner of the boat as they took it over form Kiriacoulis (France)). It was sorted out and we could leave St. Maarten on in the afternoon.
Wednesday: We stopped in ile fouche and enjoyed the time there as we had the first real experience of our holidays... we decided to start not to early the next day
Thursday: I tried to start the
engine but the panel (engine hours) was completely flat. I was really concerned that we run out of electricity... a very nice neighbor boat borrowed us a voltmeter - the
batteries were ok ~ 12.8V. I called the guys of Kiriacoulis the tried to explain me how to short-circuit the
engine. We didn’t get the engine running. Finally they came and tried to short-circuit the engine - with success. We were quite happy that we could get our fridge running again but it was way to late for leaving around 20:00
Friday: I started the engine (check also the
cooling water even I was told "don’t worry about the engine - it’s like a new one"). We started sailing between St. Baths and St. Kitts when I went into the
saloon I get the smell of burning plastic. I was quite nervous (as we had already a little cable fire of one of the fans in a cabin) so I checked the stern cabins. Next I opened the engine room - a lot of steam and smoke came out. We immediately stopped the engine and let it cool down. After a while we tried the following as it was the recommendation of Kiriacoulis. We closed the seawater valve for the
cooling water, opened a water filter, filled it up with water, started the engine and opened the valve. Without success - after another call we were told to exchange the impeller. We tried it with our super
cheap toolbox - without success as we don’t want to completely ruin the pan-head screws... We sailed to Gustavia and took a
mooring and went for a
mechanic.
Thursday (the week after):
We got the
permit for the keys of
Anguilla - we went out to prickly pear and tried to
anchor. There I recognized that we have an issue with our
gearbox / throttle - we "lost" the neutral and the rear
gear of the boat.
So we anchored there and tried to find the reason - without success.
We went back to
Anguilla for the night, there I realized that one of the engine batteries was boiling and super-hot.
When we returned the boat I made a list of all the things which happened an let that list sign by one of the Kiriacoulis employees.
I´m chartering boats now for around 8 year - only to spend some nice holidays with my friends. I never had a boat in such conditions with so many issues. I tried via
Email to request some kind of compensation from the payment of the boat and the
lost days our holidays from Kiriakulis - without success so far.
So my questions what would you do now? I´d be thankful for any recommendation.
Thank you so much in advance,
Sinsclear