Sailing Sicily Portorosa

Totally disaster, read previous comments, nothing less nothing more!

The most disappointing charter possible. We recently endured a disastrous 21 day charter with Sailsicily out of Portorosa to the beautiful Aeolian Islands but nearly a week ruined by this opportunistic company - very disappointing to say the least. They don't maintain the boats properly and only react once the boat breaks. Which it did... 10 times! They wasted 4 days of our holiday time reacting to multiple breakages with over 10 separate items failing! including a snapped transom spectra line, a shower that wouldn't drain, 2 of 3 loos that wouldn't flush, a completely jammed toilet drain valve and a battery system that required the engine being run for 6 hours a day to keep the batteries charged. A constant smell in one of the heads was traced to a pile of poo inside the basin cupboard from a previous charter. They offered to compensate us with wine and a €300 voucher towards a future charter with them - How ridiculous, as if anyone experiencing this would use them a 2nd time. The base staff try their best but the ly are inhibited by stingy ness from their head office whose staff are pathetically evasive, but they don't care as they almost certainly would not have returnimg customers. Avoid these shonks.

Don't send clients to this company! Boats are delivered in bad conditions and , at the end of the cruise , they use to invent damages on the boat to steel the deposit. Read the other reviews for confirmation.......

Unseaworthy and dangerous boat - do not charter from them. I am a commercial Yachtmaster with tens of thousands of miles of experience across dozens of boats and this was the worst I have skippered. The boat was poorly maintained and dangerous. The engines had intermittent faults and would not start/stop. The starboard engine was extremely noisy and lacked power - barely able to make way against a F5 headwind. The anchor released itself from the windlass while at anchor and at sea. The wiring was faulty so both the engine and domestic batteries were flat within a few hours, even without use. The instruments were broken (no wind indicator or illuminated compass) or faulty - the auto helm was incorrectly calibrated - or missing there was no chart plotter as advertised. The fuel gauges and engine RPM didn't work meaning it was impossible to know how much fuel was in the boat or if the engines were functioning. The primary winch was broken. The dingy was so damaged that the fastenings tore off while in the davits and it fell in the sea. (We had to recover it in a heavy sea and strong winds.) Internally the boat was extremely tired and had mould stain on the furnishings, the refrigerators did not work and there was inadequate water pressure to have a proper shower. The photographs of the boat were evidently taken many years ago and were not a correct representation of current condition. And the checkout and check in were a shambles - evidently the checkout guy had never been on the boat before and had no knowledge of it, and we were kept waiting hours and hours and hours to the point where it was too late to leave on the Saturday evening. On the return they looked for every opportunity to try and charge spurious damages. Our plans for the holiday had to change radically because the boat was unsafe to make longer passages in. Unless you are looking for some real challenges to your sailing experience do not rent via Sailing Sicily.

Terrible experience with this company: they got us the boat 5h late, the boat wasn’t clean, beds were wet and several windows were damaged which meant some rooms where always closed. During the week more issues came up, such as bathrooms always smelling, fridge broken and a few other things due to very poor maintenance. Because of a broken window a passenger did hurt herself and had to go to the hospital. Finally when going back and checking out, they said there was a rope we picked up with the spin and that we had to pay 3000€ of damage. They hadn’t checked that part when we checked in which makes us believe the issue was there before. Ultimately we threatened of suing with a lawyer and believe it or not, every tension dropped. Avoid like the plague, these companies destroy the reputation of the wonderful Eolie and should be ashamed of themselves.

Amazing vacation, bad choice for charter company. Our experience was very similar to the other reviews i'm seeing here. Boat had issues which impacted our vacation, AND we ended up paying for them when we returned the boat. Very briefly, one day we put down our anchor in a sandy area (5m deep, 20 mts of chain down. super safe), took a bath, and two hours later the anchor and the boat had moved several dozen meters to a rocky area. The wind had picked up a bit, but not nearly enough to cause this; there was clearly an issue with the mechanism that raised/lowered/kept still the chain of the anchor. *Thankfully*, the anchor got stuck in the rocks and we didn't move further towards land and risk crashing the boat. We had a scuba come and recover the stuck anchor ($$$), then we spent two days terrified of putting down the anchor (only docking at ports, missing out on remote beaches) until they sent a mechanic to fix the issue. We didn't pay then, but surprise surprise, they made us pay for it when we returned the boat. Their reasoning was that "the boat was OK when we gave it to you and you did the check-in", but the anchor mechanism isn't really tested during the check-in (you just move it up and down 1 mt or so). (for clarity's sake, we also caused a couple minor damages such as scratches on a table, which we paid) There were some other issues, such as a nasty surprise when we found flooding of water in the engine room (thankfully it turned out to be just an issue of the shower systems. Not good, but not dangerous). When we finished arguing with the employees (not a fun way to end a vacation, they screamed and slammed doors), we exited and watched the next people in line who, for what I understood, had a similar experience to ours and would end up paying thousands for damages.

Great administrative and technical support with Nadia and Isabella in the office and with Darío, base manager, Daniele, Domenico, Fabrizio and Soulemane at the dock. Everyone worked very hard and very long hours and were very nice, friendly and competent. The boat was very nice and comfortable. Everything worked fine.

We rented a Bavaria 41 for a week in September. The boat was in good working order and we received excellent technical support from Dario and his team. The check in and out was efficient and friendly.