Avoid Sailways at all costs! I’ve been sailing in Greece for several years now, usually 1-2 trips a year. I’ve often heard “be careful with Greeks, they can try to cheat you”, but I had never experienced anything like that myself. Quite the opposite - just a week before my charter with Sailways, I had an excellent experience renting a yacht from George, easily the best so far. What happened with Sailways was by far the worst experience I’ve had. Looking back, you can see their business model is unfortunately designed to work exactly like this: They put up the oldest, cheapest, heavily worn-out yachts for charter. They do not allow you to reduce the security deposit by purchasing deposit insurance. After you’ve already reserved (and paid for) the yacht, you suddenly get a message: “sorry, but we need to increase the security deposit”. When you arrive, you wait as long as possible for check-in. Forget any chances of getting the yacht before 17:00. Even if the yacht is literally sitting there ready, you still won’t be allowed to take it earlier. Check-in takes the standard 15 minutes. Anything you don’t notice and don’t mark in the handover form becomes “your problem”. So if you plan to leave the marina the same day (and cannot check things like a potential oil leak in the engine) - you’re in trouble. In theory, you have 24 hours to report issues. Sounds great, except you already signed “I accept the yacht in good condition”, so this changes nothing. They will not acknowledge anything that wasn’t listed in the protocol. If you refuse to sign it? They’ll tell you “we don’t need your money, you can go home”. My adventure with Sailways cost me a 2,600 EUR deposit for damages I don’t believe I was responsible for. I recovered the money from my insurer, but honestly, this is not how a charter should work. I strongly advise against chartering with Sailways.

It would have been important to know in advance which jetty the boat was at and which jetty the charter base was at. We could then have unloaded our luggage on the boat beforehand. So we had to walk across the large harbor with all our luggage to the boat in 38 degree heat with no shade. We also chose and paid for early check-in, but it didn't benefit us at all. The boat was cleaned in the evening, so although we were able to board the boat early, we weren't able to have it to ourselves or set off early. Actually, that's a reason to demand our money back, but that's certainly not fun with the charter company. So we let it go.

Marina: very bad toilets and showers. The smell in the marina. Boat (we had the Veronika II boat): engine problem, above 1400 rpm the whole boat vibrates. The handles don't work. The wiring pissed us off. Torn lazy bag and bimini, sprayhood has torn center zipper.