Elan 444 | Moon Shadow

Poor technical condition. We rented this yacht for 2 weeks. Literally on the second day I couldn't start the engine before leaving the marina because the starting battery died. It was clear that the starting battery was about to die. I called an employee of the charter company, who came with a battery that he took from another yacht. The battery was not changed. We connected the shore power, and somehow we managed to start it. I told him about my concerns about the condition of the starting battery. I asked to give me a spare battery, which he brought, but the charter employee convinced me that everything would be fine, that the voltage in the installed battery was higher than in the one he brought. But not the capacity! I left the marina, went 10 miles under the engine, then 15 miles under sail, they wanted to remove the sails, but it was not possible to start the engine for obvious reasons. I sailed as close to the shore as I could and started to circle back and forth, I didn’t risk going into the bay, because if the wind died down, the yacht could become uncontrollable. I called the charter company and explained the problem. Manager Tolga said that they would send a boat to help and told me to wait. I thought they would just bring us a new battery. After 2 hours, a boat came to us and towed us to the anchorage with a pull-line to the shore. Soon Tolga appeared with the same charter employee and the battery that I asked to leave. They changed the battery, I breathed a sigh of relief, it was clear that the new battery was showing good results. We went to a restaurant, spent the night, and in the morning we continued along our route. In 2 days, a night crossing of 70 miles was planned. And then at midnight a new technical problem arose. The engine worked stably only at low speeds. You give it more revs, and the engine starts to float, in places it seems that it is about to stall. I decided to go to the nearest shelter, closer to the marina we anchored at 2 am. In the morning I decided that I needed to go to my home marina, fortunately the wind was favorable, I went more under sail. Another unpleasant problem of this yacht is that when there is something in the tank with gray water, it stinks terribly every time someone goes to the toilet. I wrote to Tolga about these problems, said that we will be in the marina in the evening, and that the problem with the engine and the terrible smell should be solved. Somehow we arrived at the marina in the evening at low speed. The charter staff began to fix the problem with the engine. It turned out - garbage in the fuel system. The problems with the smell were not fixed, although they said that there would be no smell. There were no more problems with the engine until the very end. But at the very end another surprise awaited me. Before leaving the yacht at 5:30 in the morning, the engine started by itself and I could not stop it. You press the engine stop button, it turns off and immediately starts again. The engine worked for 10 minutes, after which I was able to turn it off. There was no fuse for the starting battery, I was about to disconnect the terminal. I turned off everything I could, took a few photos, sent them to Tolga and we left the yacht. Tolga answered about 4 hours later, said that there were such glitches with the engine a couple of times, and advised not to dig yachts with Volvo engines. Something like that.

Service batteries going low faster than usual