Yacht charter in Leucate · Jeanneau — Sun Odyssey 45.2 (2001)

On the 19th of juli we hired at your platform a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 45.2 in Leucate France the Gmail Odyssey. All the payments were done through the website of Click&Boat, also the deposit for damage was made with the site of Click&Boat. On Friday the 18th of juli , the day before the rental, the owner gave me a whatsapp message with a link for the deposit of 3000 euro that had to be made before the reservation through another site. When I said that I already arranged the deposit with Click&Boat the answer was: We don’t trust Click&Boat because we had a problem before and Click&Boat did not pay the deposit to us, that’s why we are using Stripe instead. A day before the start of the rental is in my opinion too late, and it was a struggle to get this done on my phone, but this was not the end of the problems. When we got the boat the owner showed us around. We already discovered some problems beforehand. The dirtwatertank was full, the diesel was not filled up (120 L according to owner, but indicator instrument indicated 30%), the outboard engine had no fuel and could not start. In the first week it started to rain but the windows were leaking. So we had to go out of bed to fix this with plastic bags. Also during sailing days especially the front bed got wet a lot of times. The dirtwatertank was annoying because there was a lot of smell coming from it. We tried to clean the tank in the harbour but we didn’t know how and the owner did not explain on whatsapp. It costed us 15 euro without any result. We think the tank should have been cleaned before the rental and the macerator pump should have been functional. The owner knew this but he just didn’t tell us. It is unpleasant to smell other people’s toiletwaste for 2 weeks. The outboard engine was important to us. We have 2 kids, 15 and 17, and they like to go around with the dingy. The dinghy and outboard engine were part of the equipment list. We I filled up the Mercury outboard engine with fuel, the fuel leaked out of the engine everywhere. Also the spring and rope to start the engine were broken. The owner knew already that the engine was broken before the rental. He could have told us beforehand, but he didn’t. The owner told us that he would order these parts, but since this was a long process, we just had no outboard engine for the 2 weeks rental. The Main-Engine diesel problem was the worst problem and a very dangerous one. The owner told us that a renter weeks before filled some water in the fueltank. So there were major engine problems that costed 5000,-€, the reason also he didn’t trust Click&Boat with the deposit any more. After a few days the engine stopped working a couple of times on open sea. I contacted the owner but he didn’t know why the engine could stop. I assumed that there was not 120L in the gastank as indicated by the owner but only 30L as the indicator on the instrument told. My theory was that with some swell in the sea maybe the motor sucked up some air. So I filled up the tank with 80L of diesel extra, in the hope the problem was solved. The problem wasn’t solved but got worse. Since the owner told me the fuel system and engine were completely serviced because of earlier problems I ruled out problems with a dirty gastank or clocked filter. When I told the owner again of these engine problems and I send him a video of the engine stop, his response was that he experienced this problem before and that this was caused by non-orignal fuelfilter that was installed! I told the owner that this engine stopped with a lot of wind while manoeuvring in the harbour and luckily we only had some minor damage to the ship because of that. A plastic base-mount of an antenna broke of, mounted outside on the railing. This situation with the main-engine was very dangerous and caused a lot of frightening moments for me and my family. The worst part of it was to hear that the owner knew that a wrong filter was installed. Besides that if the tank was properly cleaned after the water problem and the tank was filled up completely, this did not become such a problem. At the end of the rental the owner let me know on Friday that he would be at the port around 3pm for the transfer on saturday. I told him that we were planning to drive back home to the Netherlands around 10.00. On Saturday we waited till 11.30 for the owner to arrive. He told us we could go, because he would not arrive there till the end of that day. In the days after that the owner told me that this antenna was broken and the lock of the entry door. A week later he told us that the lock of the entry door was 79.90 euro and the rest of the repairs totalling 400,-euro. The reservation that was made as a deposit of 3000,-euro was already cashed by the owner during the rental period. In my opinion it is not usual to just cash in a deposit without any legal signed checkout document/ damage document. It took over a week after the rental period for the owner to return the deposit after the deduction of repairs. I asked the owner for his calculation but he did not react to my questions, nor did pick up the phone. The boat is in the condition you can expect of a 25 year old boat that is very used by a long rental history. There is one picture of a very nice mastercabin in front of the boat. This picture was not taken on this boat. We had some problems with the rail of the furling main sale. You have to help this rail by hand to prevent blocking in the mast.