Negative review of Yacht Centar Baotić and Marine Project Inc
Want to share here our story chartering catamaran Mila (Zadar) in order to prevent our troubles to others. We didn’t check online reviews of Yacht Centar Baotić d.o.o. before chartering the yacht — and maybe we should have. Working with this charter left us with a really bad aftertaste. At the end of July, we came to Croatia for a week and chartered Catamaran Lagoon 50 Mila (Zadar) from Yacht Centar Baotić d.o.o. through Marine Project Inc. We’ve been chartering yachts for 12 years, including Lagoon 50, 51, and 52, so we know these boats pretty well. Issues started to pop up right away during the initial inspection. The yacht was dirty, as if after a sandstorm, and the bimini construction wasn’t factory-made but some DIY replacement, there was no original sprayhood, just a piece of something self-made — such way steering with splashes coming in was impossible, and all the cushions were non-original without the standard clips, wet and dirty. And that was only the beginning. The cherry on top was the generator behavior on Catamaran Lagoon 50 Mila (Zadar) — it was shutting off after approximately 15-20 min of work (which can’t be detected during checking unfortunately, we did 5-mins run test). The boat has 7 AC units, water heater and some standard equipment like battery charger and inverters. Generator simply couldn’t handle the load and kept shutting off. Okay, breakdowns happen. On its own, this might not have affected our review of Yacht Centar Baotić d.o.o. and Marine Project Inc. that much. We called charter and here we heard a lot of interesting thing, like: generator must never be used underway, only stationary (!!), try switching off water heater (explanation that on the way it works from engines — didn’t help), generator was never being designed to fully supply all AC units on the boat (!!!)… While we continued to insist this is not normal situation charter sent technicians. But then the mechanic came, and things got worse. First, he suggested running not 7 but only 5 AC units at a time. But even then the generator shut down after 20–30 minutes. Then he tried turning off the water heater — didn’t help either. Eventually, he even told us that the AC system and generator weren’t meant to be used at sea but only in the marina — which is absurd, since marinas have shore power for that! After 4 (!) hours of trying, we were told the Catamaran Lagoon 50 Mila (Zadar) needed major servicing… But when we asked to swap yachts, the answer was a flat no. In the end, because of the lack of working AC and uncertainty of future generator plans, we had to cancel an already booked and paid overnight trip at sea. All this things and specially attitude trying to prove absolutely absurd things made us feeling really bad and we expressed our frustration to the charter, proposing them to compensate this. Yacht Centar Baotić offered us €1,000 in compensation. That’s it. When it’s obvious that what should have been refunded is the difference in charter cost between a yacht with functioning full-AC and one without it — which Catamaran Lagoon 50 Mila (Zadar) clearly was. And that difference is way more than €1,000. The logic is simple: you pay for what you actually get! Instead, our request was basically brushed off… And that was the final straw that pushed us to write this negative review of Marine Project Inc. and Yacht Centar Baotić d.o.o. To be clear: this whole story isn’t about money. What matters to us is honest, responsible service from a company we had planned to use more than once. Now we’ll have to think twice and look elsewhere — and recommend others do the same. Because there are other charter companies out there besides Marine Project Inc. and Yacht Centar Baotić d.o.o., and their reviews are clearly much better. And be very careful about Mila catamaran, it’s full of surprises.
By Elisabeth