Sunsail: UK Reviews 

We enjoyed a fantastic 8 night bareboat sail around the BVI on a Sunsail 46 from the Sunsail/Moorings marina at Tortola. Having been used to the attention to detail of Sunsail Europe, this was sadly lacking at Tortola. There was no welcoming contact from the base in the weeks leading up to our charter. Our air con wasn't working, there was no gas in the canister, our Wi-Fi didn't work and multiple door handles fell off. We wasted our first morning stuck in the base while a whole host of friendly staff worked to fix the problems.
The BVI is very busy in February and on three mornings we had the 7am stress of trying to secure a Boaty Ball mooring at popular locations. These were all booked in 10 seconds! We had prebooked three marinas and all our restaurants which proved a good call.
Our boat itself was excellent with all the major features like sails, engine, generator, tender working well throughout the week. We had some great sailing in the moderate-fresh Easterly Tradewinds and also enjoyed the warm temperatures and water for swimming and snorkelling. We booked a paddleboard but didn't get to use this due to the significant swells, even at "sheltered" anchorages.
All the Sunsail staff were friendly and helpful and with more care with the preparation and presentation of the boat, this would be a five star review.

Helpful staff, attentive but not intrusive. We asked, they provided. Never needed anything once we left port in St. Lucia but it was nice to know that if we did, the ground crew was always available. Best of all, Sunsail provided excellent sailing conditions and plenty of sunshine the entire week. Boat was brand new. We were the first to sail it. Some teething issues but nothing that dampened our excellent time.

Excellent experience
Very professional
Great service
We had a problem with our boat, it was sorted out for us and we were delighted with the response and solution Sunsail implemented.
Easy check-in and Check out,
Staff couldn’t have been more friendly and helpful.
Thank you Sunsail.

A dream of sailing in French Polynesia began with Sunsail in Raiatea. Our catamaran took us on a 10 day adventure. On line chart briefings before the trip were supplemented with an in person one at the start of the charter. The additional information on snorkeling conditions and restaurants were excellent. We had a few issues that were addressed in Bora Bora, but ultimately had to have 2 successive days of repairs which forced us to change our travel itinerary. We had to use the emergency service number which was responsive. The base manager was very accommodating due to our issues. I would recommend Sunsail at this location for a great vacation!

Four of us had a great experience on the wine and food flotilla from Portorosa, Sicily. Sharon on the shore and the lead boat team Marco, Nicola and Yan did a fabulous job of booking great restaurants in places we wouldn't have found if we were bareboat sailing. They organised minibuses and taxis to take us to restaurants way up the hills on the islands. Highlights were: the walk to the volcano on Vulcani and an amazing restaurant there, Alfredo's restaurant on Salina, the Micera restaurant on Lipari and the taxi and walk to the Observatory restaurant on Stromboli - the location and exciting travel to this restaurant more than made up for the food & wine which was just ok compared to our other meal experiences. Nicola was brilliant at organising our adventures. Marco gave good advice on how to deal with a jelly fish sting. The wind gods were good to us for the first half of the week and then pretty flat calm for the second half. Our 41 ft boat Camilieri was perfect size for the four of us and the main sail went up and down very smoothly. Fab sailing holiday!

Another brilliant weeks flotilla sailing with Sunsail, blessed with some fantastic weather, fantastic location and amazing staff. Special thanks to the support boat team Lois, Matt and Lucy who worked had to make it special.

My RYA day skipper practical course our of Marina Agana in Croatia was fabulous. The boat was spacious and well maintained. Our trainer Alex was expert, and excellent at explaining and demonstrating the content of the course. He took us to some amazing locations during the week. The Dalmatian coastline is beautiful, and the weather was perfect.

Procida flotilla holiday with Sunsail (SailEatalia) package

Highlights
• The finest Italian food and wine
• Glamorous Capri and Amalfi
• Capri's Grotta Azzurra
• Boutique and foodie shopping
• Stunning Amalfi Coast scenery

The above is from the website and marketing material.

My wife and I with two friends booked the Procida flotilla holiday, with the Sailitalia food and wine experience (€385 (£335) per person - this particular flotilla cannot be done without this). There were 4 of us on our boat a 41 foot sailing yacht, and about 24 people on the flotilla in total. Our boat was great, the lead crew (Eleno and Andrea) were great, but the food and wine package was definitely not what was expected when it states finest food and wine.
The first night we had a large dough ball, a couple of slices of pizza, a rum baba (which most people left) with a glass of prosecco and advised if we wanted wine we had to pay for it - given the understanding was that this was an "Eat and drink your way around the Amalfi coast and marketed as the finest food and wine experience, it seems difficult to justify the night costing around £55 per person (£335 each for 6 meals as one night was a do your own thing night), for what was in the most canteen quality food and pretty much cheap cooking wine.
The second nights food (visiting three vineyards) was a small bowl of pasta at one wine cellar with a glass of wine, and a plate of salad for vegetarians at another or a slice of bread on a plate with a few bits of ham and cheese just laid out on a table to pick up- again, not spectacular value at £220 for 4 of us.

On the third night we fared no better - canteen style restaurant with mediocre plate of pasta, and very mediocre cooking wine.
Unfortunately the food did not get much better although the penultimate nights tour and buffet was probably the best with a large selection of pasta (yes again) along with chopped sausages, cheese, mozzarella and more things I would have expected as well as the final nights meal which was a great selection of nibbles on a 2m long board along with some massive platters of meat and potatoes but still not the experience its sold as. The one positive was great sunny weather and mostly calm seas although little to no sailing and I got the impression they rarely sail. When we asked about getting sails up we were told “we don’t usually sail they are like a caravan” and not surprising the first day we had a breeze and put the Jib up the sheet snapped (which was severely frayed and clearly not checked in a long time) at the top of the mast and immediately collapsed meaning my friend and I had to promptly recover it, get it back on board and secured. but the weather was great and views were spectacular.

One thing to be aware of on this flotilla, is the fees for the marinas were extortionate. It was made clear that mooring fees were not included, and we would have to pay but our 41 foot boat cost over €800 for the 5 nights we were away from the home port, the most expensive been (€180 per night which was payable in cash (or by card with a surcharge of about 20-25%). So take cash, or it can cost a lot more (and the catamarans with us paid over £400 at a couple of places, so take a lot of cash for that). I would have expected Sunsail to have given an indication of the scale of fees, and therefore been able to plan for the cash element of the mooring.

This is my first experience with Sunsail other than the RYA training I did in Southampton (Prometheus Sailing School) and while I know its SailItalia with a Sunsail badge I was not happy and felt it over sold and under delivered, we didn’t even get to go to Capri or experience those highlights in the marketing literature as the organisers kept hinting it was hard to go and expensive but we could do a “drive by” on the penultimate day.

For me I would have not bothered with the over priced flotilla with the finest food and wine experience as it just wasn't worth it. We had a great meal at a local restaurant just a short walk from a marina on the off night with starters, main, desert, beers and litre of house red win which all came to €80 for four of us and was better than most of the nights we had paid triple that for.

Nice yacht (Monica), although quite old and tatty, but sailed well and most importantly everything worked and was well maintained. Great shore crew, excellent knowledge of yacht and systems, very helpful and good humoured. Plenty of free parking by the base. Great restaurants and cafes just a short walk from the base. The only thing that results in 4 stars rather than 5 are the Cannigione shoreside facilities: the toilets and showers are absolutely disgusting & mosquito infested, easily the worst we came across in Sardinia and Bonifaccio (the best!). Come on Sunsail, you can do better than this! Other than that, really enjoyed the charter. Thanks Sunsail!

Such a shame to write this review, however, after such terrible customer service we are left with no option. An accidental booking error was made regarding fuel. The wrong information was then given at the base which didn’t allow us to amend our booking. When we have raised this with customer service on our return. They have been incredibly unsupportive and are very happy to clearly profit from this error. This is something I would expect from a cheaper charter company, not Sunsail. We will not be using Sunsail again. Be careful when booking everyone!!!

This was my first experience sailing and I am hooked. Sunsail was great. Easy to check in, boat was clean and plenty of food available for the week. Our instructor Joe was excellent. Very clear instructions, extremely knowledgeable and a very good teacher. Really good balance between learning and holidaying!

2 week Paxos/Meganissi flotilla.
Well-presented, almost fully functioning boat (usual anchor issues on Jeanneau yachts with daft bowsprit!).
Weather was better for sunbathing than sailing the first week.
Crew were excellent and understood the difference in preferences of a couple sailing compared to a large group of friends/family.
Any minor problems were resolved quickly and effectively.
The only downside for us was with the performance of the boat.
It was rather under-powered sail-wise and the sails on Sunsail boats are not the lightest on the market.
This is probably all well and good for novice sailors but it would be nice for more experienced crews to have some choice.
The Current brand of monohulls Sunsail use are geared more to accommodation rather than performance which is also something to be factored in to decision-making.
I gather Sunsail are aware of the issue and are introducing new yachts from a producer with a more balanced philosophy so maybe next year…..
Overall: 5star. Will use again.

The virtual chart brief and safety brief are genius, save so much time when all you want to do is get on the water. The boat check-in with Ian was the best I have ever experienced. Just the right amount of time and information with all my questions answered. Keith (the Base Manager) and all his Team are first class, their service and attention to detail is incredible. The 38ft monohull was very well presented and everything worked perfectly. The sailing area is beautiful and I would like to think we will return in the future. Polace was a highlight and the trip round the National Park on ebikes is a must. Sunsail should be very proud of their Dubrovnik crew.

The boat was amazing and the service was very good.

SailItalia is not Sunsail

Our crew has experience of about eight Sunsail weeks of bareboating. Regrettably we will not return to Italy as we did not think that SailItalia matches Sunsail's levels of performance.

Firstly our pick-up from the airport failed to materialise. This may have been the fault of Sunsail in the UK or SailItalia. However although we had to hang around Naples airport for several hours the transfer done by ourselves proved to be much cheaper than the Sunsail offer.

Our boat was new and generally in good condition. It was therefore disappointing to find that most of the sheets on the bunks smelled as if they had already been slept on. The significant cost of berthing overnight also came as an unexpected surprise.We were also surprised by the fragility of the glassware provided on board.

We preferred the sheet and halliard layout used on older Sunsail boats we have sailed and the failure to use ropes other than black and white was potentially confusing.

The staff in Procida were friendly and spoke good English. The skipper briefing was lacklustre and like most Sunsail briefings gave more information than could be possibly memorised, particularly as we were told it was "skipper only".The briefing on the QR link was moderately helpful but only covered the main points.

Happily we had good weather (with more wind than usual giving some really good sailing and we found some very nice restaurants, so we still managed to enjoy ourselves.

We recently holidayed with Sunsail on their Eat Italia Extravaganza around the Amalfi Coast.
The sailing and scenery were spectacular and the Lead Crew were friendly, informative and helpful.
The whole holiday was let down by the Food and Wine Extravaganza which was sold as experiencing the best of Italian Food and wine but could only be described as appalling for the amount of money we paid for the package. I would certainly not recommend this experience to anyone

Our Flotilla trip with Sunsail from Dubrovnik in Sept was amazing. The flotilla gives you the opportunity to sail with freedom during the day but in the knowledge that you are part of a bigger group and have dedicated help if you require it.
For our trip we not only had the reassurance of a very competent Lead Boat, but they also made the trip so much fun. The week was full of fun activities that we would ado with the other boats once docked or moored somewhere. The locations were great, the recommendations were plentiful. Lucy, Heather, and AJ were great support and made our week incredibly fun. This is a great way to sail.

Booked the Procida flotilla holiday, with the mandatory SailEatalia food package (£330 person - this particular flotilla cannot be done without this). Their were 3 of us on our boat, and 36 people on the flotilla in total. Our boat was great, the lead crew (Luca and Andrea) were great, but the food package was appalling.
The first night we had a large dough ball, a couple of slices of pizza, a rum baba and a couple of glasses of wine - given the understanding was that this was an "Eat and drink like an Italian" food package, it seems difficult to justify the night costing £55 per person (£330 each for 6 meals), for what was canteen quality food.
The second nights food was a salad at one wine cellar with a glass of wine, and a plate of pasta at another - again, not spectacular value at £150 for 3 of us.
On the third night we fared no better - canteen style restaurant with mediocre plate of pasta, and very mediocre cooking wine.
Unfortunately the food got no better, but the weather was great!
One thing to be aware of on this flotilla, is the fees for the marinas. It was clear that these were not included, and we would have to pay - but - our 2 cabin boat was between £80 and £140 per night which was payable in cash (or by card with a surcharge of about 20%). So take cash, or it can cost a lot more (and the catamarans with us paid over £400 at a couple of places, so take a lot of cash for that). I would have expected Sunsail to have given an indication of the scale of fees, and therefore been able to plan for the cash element of the mooring.

The Dubrovnik - Korcula flotilla was a great experience. Good destinations, good food, good sailing, good company (on the other boats) and a great Sunsail team.

We had an amazing flotilla sailing holiday with Sunsail, sailing from Dubrovnik for one week. The crew, Lucy, Heather and AJ were very efficient, friendly and there to offer help and advice when needed. Their recommendations for restaurants and making some of the bookings were invaluable. They also helped with suggestions for the free sailing day, which for us involved hiring e bikes and visiting a national park on one of the islands. The boat was well equipped and cleaned to a high standard.
The route for the week could not have been better planned and again the options given for anchorages for lunch and a swim were great.
The coastline and islands were amazing and we were very lucky with the weather as it was warm and sunny but we also had a couple of mornings with some good wind and sailing. We enjoyed a wonderful and memorable sailing holiday with Sunsail.