Nautilus Yachting www.nautilus-yachting.com

We have used Nautilus on four separate occasions to book sailing holidays (three flotillas and one bareboat) and we have found them excellent in all respects. The team at Nautilus are very knowledgeable about the yachts and sailing areas, many having sailed in the areas themselves. In addition, we have found the charter companies Nautilus work with in the various locations to be of excellent standard and have never had any issues with the standard and quality of the yachts or service provided by the shore based teams. We will be using Nautilus when we book our 5th sailing holiday!

with a most perfect sailing holiday attached.

Thank you so much to all involved.



7th-14th July

Hi all at Nautilus

We have recently returned from our sailing holiday from Marina di Scarlino in Tuscany and have had a great week. we were well received by the manager at the marina. Our Bavaria 40 Cruiser was quite new and high spec. We really appreciated the solar panels which meant we could use the fridge constantly and have really good lighting in the cabins. Also electric flushing heads was a novelty and easy. The Marina is very modern and the facilities are really good. The supermarket is small but well stocked and the staff particularly helpful.

We sailed every day if not all day. The sail out to Elba was a good day's sail and the distances between the harbours and anchorages were just a few hours. There are good sheltered bays on the south side of the island and a great marina at Marciana (72€) on the north west. The Marina at Porto Azzuro (the obvious first and last port) was full both times and needs pre booking, although the anchorage is sheltered and convenient.

The train journey from Pisa to Falonica was easy and cheap.

Nautilus admin was faultless and we were reassured by the very comprehensive information pack you sent us. We will definitely consider Nautilus for a future sailing holiday.

We spent a week on flotilla in Turkey (Fethiye based) at the end of June 2014.

The cleanliness and presentation of the boat at the start was the best we have ever experienced. The lead boat crew were superb in every way. Transfers were seamless. The booking process and pre-trip service from head office was perfect.

This was our second time in this sailing area and it is one of the nicest we have been to. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Dear Nautilus team,

We had an absolutely brilliant trip.

Very well organised. Super boat. Great location.

I had been a bit worried about starting from Athens rather than from the islands... but I couldnt have been proved more wrong.

The information you provided prior to the trip was thorough, informative and extremely helpful.

Thank you so much for such brilliant service.

I can honestly say there was nothing about the service I did not like.

We are now back from our holiday in Greece and the Ionian island flotilla organized through Nautilus Yachting, and just need to say what a fantastic time we had. The week lived up to all my hopes and included a number of things I never expected, such a showering off the back of the yacht every day, stern to mooring up to other yachts and having to manoeuvre a dinghy between other yachts by hand. All great fun. Dougie, our skipper for the week, was excellent and added to the whole experience. Sally in the lead boat was encouraging and helped my confidence, paying attention to what I was able to do and taking our skipper away at a good time for me to practice by myself. Having a number of other children in the flotilla for my daughter to meet and play with worked really well. And being lucky enough to spot dolphins three times was just icing on the cake.

Nautilus were helpful and supportive throughout. Living abroad and with some difficulties over dates we wouldn't be the easiest clients to deal with. At no time did Nautilus appear fed up with my repeated emails. Instead they answered each one promptly and in a way that helped making the final decision. They provided information on how many other children were going each week so that we were able to pick a suitable week for the flotilla.

A brilliant family holiday, enjoyed by all. The only problem, I wish we had booked for two weeks.

Thank you, we had a fantastic week holiday. The boat was perfect for our requirements and all in good order, as always the staff at the Palairos base were excellent - very helpful and made sure that everything was to our expectations.

We had lovely weather for the week and had a very relaxing holiday sailing between the islands in the area.

Will definitely be booking to go there again soon!

Thank you for all your assistance in arranging this charter for us, excellent service as always.

We had a disastrous holiday last summer from Skiathos. The operation is run from Skiathos by a Greek outfit, and when they are busy they ship in yachts from Athens that they are not familiar with. These arrive at the last minute so no time for over stretched shore based engineer to check anything. Our yacht had lots of faults including a dinghy too small for our party and broke down three times, ruining our peace of mind for the holiday. . We were originally given a replacement yacht when this first happened - on the first day - and told we would be keeping her for the rest of the 2 week holiday. On the changeover day which should have been free sailing, we were then told to take the boat back to Skiathos, and the flotilla skipper denied having told us we could keep the replacement yacht. The original yacht broke down twice more.The engineer quit while we were there saying he had had enough of problems that he couldnt fix due to lack of time or funds to buy parts needed.

We did negotiate a refund with Nautilus, which was done with very little grace and they effectively suggested that we were lying about incidents that happened. A very shortsighted customer service approach, which ensures bad press and no chance of repeat busness. We had met other people who had also had problems and had received refunds or discounts so there are obviously ongoing problems.

To be fair, I must also say that we had previously had a great experience in 2012 of the Ionian flotilla, run on the ground by Odysseus. But it seems that Nautilus crew are completely at the mercy of the local operation and if that is badly run, as in Skiathos, you can be very vulnerable. All this experience has done is push us back to the big operations where you can have confidence In the yacht maintenance and have the support of an engineer as part of the lead crew.

"The holiday was really great. Weather and winds good. However, what made it successful were the staff at Odysseus. I can only characterize them as having a great knowledge, skill and competence with regard to sailing and the Ionian sea area. More than that, they really took great care to make sure we all had an enjoyable holiday. I can say that on two specific occasions, the team went above and beyond what we expected and their care and consideration made the difference between us having a nice holiday and a really great one. Tim and Nikki on our lead boat were just a model of knowledge, kindness and consideration. So, we will definitely be back. I spoke with several people who have sailed before, with Nielson and Sailing Holidays, and all said without doubt they would prefer Nautilus/Odysseus by far. It was the difference between being a number to tick off on a list and a person who you had care for."

We booked 2 flotilla holidays with Nautilus at the London Boat Show, Jan 2013, the first from Split, Croatia, the second from Skiathos, Greece.

The Croatian one was organisationally very poor, with nobody to meet us at the marina, and the lead crew who were nice people but didn't know much about what we were all doing. Early on we were told we had to take our boat back to a different marina at the end of the week, miles out of town. In the end we had to stick to our guns and we returned it to Skiathos as per our rental contract. Nautilus weren't helpful about this and also never apologised.

Other boats had problems and many of the people said they wouldn't book with Nautilus again.

In Skiathos it was much worse. The boat was an old Bavaria 38 which hadn't been well maintained at all. The auto-pilot didn't work, and the steering was very stiff but also with some play in it, so the boat didn't steer well.

On our fourth sailing day we were winding out the foresail and a huge rip appeared in it, in line with a number of earlier repairs. A replacement wasn't available, and the mainsail was so old, repaired and baggy it was virtually useless, so we had the last three days just motoring.

One of the two burners on the cooker didn't work, although we were shown how we could make it work by wedging a teaspoon against the control. We declined to use this method, and gave up on our cooking plans.

The shower drain pump stopped working but I got it working again. Yuk!

There were a number of missing parts and codges around the hinge-down rear transom, one of which was nasty and left me with a badly cut finger.

The telescopic swimming ladder was in poor shape and mostly unusable, as were the clips for holding it to the transom.

Guard cables - a necessary safety feature - were in poor condition with one of them codged up and another with the clevis pin just about to drop out as we were sailing along on day 1.

The anchor winch control wiring was in extremely poor condition with bare wires and loose sticky tape around a bad repair.

The fire extinguishers were lying randomly in the bottom of the starboard deck locker instead of properly bracketed in places where they could be used.

We 'phoned and left a message on Nautilus's answering machine. They never responded.

There were only 4 boats in our flotilla including the lead boat. We all had boat problems and all the other people said they wouldn't book with Nautilus again.

Would we book with Nautilus again? When hell freezes over. They are so unprofessional.