Gulet
Cruise Sept 2026
M S Atlantis
Participants: Kev & Tam
This is probably not going to be the most upbeat part of the trip report as I'm mostly going to moan about the things that were wrong with the boat. There were also plenty of wonderful things about the holiday as well and I'll get around to those in the next parts.
We booked through Travelodeal but our
preferred date wasn't available. Instead they offered us the 19th
September sailing, but told us that the only cabins left were
Standard Plus. When we looked into this it meant that the shower
was in a separate cubicle to the toilet. Fine, we agreed to pay
more for that. They then sent us details of flights they could
book for us. Unfortunately they didn't arrive until 9.00 pm and
we could board the ship from 5.00 pm. The details also mentioned
that if everyone was onboard the boat might sail away from Corfu
that night. As it turned out that didn't happen, but it seemed a
bit silly to offer flights that would arrive after the boat might
have sailed. Anyway we booked without flights and arranged our
own to arrive the day before and enjoy more time on Corfu.
The cruise cost was £1,616 for the 2 of us. Now we certainly
were not expecting luxury for this price, but we read loads of
reviews about Sail In Greece and they were overwhelmingly
positive. What could possibly go wrong?
We arrived at the meeting point at the dock around 2.30 pm as it was mentioned that we could drop off our luggage on the boat and enjoy some time in the town. This we did and returned at 5.00 pm to board. This was a bit disorganised. We were asked to sit at the front of the boat while they finished getting the cabins ready. The rest of the passengers slowly filtered in and we sat around talking and introducing ourselves. Eventually we were invited to the seating area in the back of the ship and were given a drink - wine, beer or tea and coffee along with cake and biscuits. Here things got a little confused as there was a larger sister boat to ours moored just along the jetty and some passengers who were meant to be on that had got on the wrong boat. Why they couldn't check names off as they came aboard I don't know.
Looks lovely doesn't it?
The view through out porthole.
To be fair Sail in Greece had set up a Whatsapp group to share information but this hit its first problem as were all sat around having our welcome drink. A message came through telling everbody that the cruise was to finish on Tuesday after just 3 days due to potential bad weather but not to worry as they would arrange excursions for us instead. That went down like a lead balloon and there was a general air of disappointment as we really didn't want to spend most of the cruise in Corfu port. This actually didn't happen in the end as they managed to move ports around and spend 2 night in Paxos to shelter from the storm. The trouble really wasn't with the weather - nobody can do anything about that - it was just how it was communicated. The captain spoke fairly broken English and didn't really interact with passengers unless asked a direct question. We had to ask day to day what was happening and where we were going.
The thing that really had a detrimental impact on our holiday was the cabin. As expected it was incredibly small, but we were prepared for that. When we went in we looked in the bathroom to find no separate shower cubicle. Tam talked to the captain as best she could and he looked and said it's a standard plus cabin as there's a curtain between the shower and the basin. It turns out that all the cabins were exactly the same in this respect. Oh well, not much to be done about that, we weren't really bothered other than we had been forced to pay extra for it.
We stayed in port that night after all and
were given a welcome dinner. Breakfast and lunch were included
every day and there was also a welcome dinner and a captain's
dinner. Eventually it was time for bed and we went down to our
cabin. Now the air conditioning only worked some of the time and
you had to pay 150 Euro for the week if you wanted it on between
midnight and 7.00 am. We paid this as it still stayed hot all
night and was almost essential. The downside of this is that if
they were moored in a port where the electricity supply was not
stable enough to power the boat they had to run the engines and
generators. Fine, except our cabin was right next to the engine
room. It was ridiculously loud and we could even feel vibrations
through the bed. We both used wax earplugs, but couldn't sleep
even with these. Adding to the general racket was the air
conditioning unit. Basically they had bought floor standing air
conditioning units and strapped them to the side of the small
wardrobe.
On top of this whenever the engines were running there was a
really strong smell caused by the exhaust fumes generated. The
advice from the crew - shut the portholes as the fumes were
coming in from outside. This was total rubbish as the smell was
coming from inside the boat.
You were allowed to sleep on deck if you wanted and we resorted to this on several nights. This wasn't too bad except when you wanted the loo. You had to return to your cabin for that. It was still quite loud up there too, but nowhere near as bad as our cabin and at least the air was fresh.
You can see the air conditioning unit strapped to the wardrobe.
This is the whole cabin minus the bathroom. There was room under the bed to put our small suitcases.
The bathroom. I suppose it was handy if you wanted to use the loo and shower at the same time.
Talking to the other passengers they had similar problems (minus the fumes) but the cabins further to the front were not so bad. This proved to be a mixed blessing for them as later in the cruise we had some rain when in Paxos and their cabins let in water and soaked their bedding! As I said there was a sister ship and we sort of followed them from place to place. In Paxos they had much more of a problem with water ingress to the point that they were using pumps to get rid of it. Some of the cabins were soaked to such of an extent that 12 of the passengers got off and never returned.
Tam and I booked an Airbnb in Paxos for a night (along with a lovely lady from Australia that had the cabin close to us and wanted to get a good nights sleep as well) and also in Corfu on our last night when we were supposed to have our last night on board. We weren't the only people to do so. Several others booked hotels in various ports. Don't get me wrong we absolutely knew it was going to be cramped, but we didn't expect it to be uninhabitable at night.
Obviously we complained on our return home. Eventually after much toing and froing between Travelodeal and Sail In Greece we were given a 300 Euro refund. Maybe not enough, but at least it was something and covered the cost of the alternative accommodation.
Ok. Enough moaning from me. There were
many positives about the holiday as well. As Tam put it - if you
could remove the time you were in your cabin to sleep it would
have been a wonderful trip. There were 19 of us on the boat in 10
cabins and it was great to have people from all over the world.
We were the only English couple. There were 2 Scots, an
Australian lady travelling on her own, 2 Americans, 2 Brazilians,
6 Germans, 2 Canadians and a young couple from Thailand. I felt a
bit sorry for them at times as they were on their honeymoon and
the rest of us were all at least 60.
Anyway we all got on really well. It was really nice to talk to
people about where they were from and what their lives are like.
The places we went to were beautiful and
it was lovely to walk off the back of the boat and be in the
centre of the small ports. The food on board was incredible
considering that it was all made fresh by one man, a young
Egyptian guy called Moussa. He did just about everything on the
boat aided by Mika. I really couldn't fault them at all, boy did
they work hard.
So enough doom and gloom the next parts of the report will very
focus on the positive aspects of the cruise and the beautiful
places we saw.