I bought a catamaran through a broker. On its delivery passage it struck an underwater rock.

What is claimed, and what backs it

• Documented €48,821.90 — recorded as the owner’s loss in Yacht-Match’s own calculation.
• My estimate €150,000 — reduction in the value of the boat following the damage. My own figure, not a surveyor’s.
• Documented €78,374.14 — equipment I ordered and paid for that Yacht-Match’s own financial overview still recorded as undelivered, four months after they invoiced the boat as paid in full. €58,814.14 of it is the solar panels.

The financial overview is not reproduced on this site. It lists people who are not party to this dispute, along with equipment serial numbers, and I would rather leave that out than publish it. Yacht-Match sent it and holds the same document.

How the purchase was arranged

Because I was not an experienced sailor, I looked for a company that could help me with selecting and buying a yacht. I was told the best option was to order the yacht in its minimum specification, and that the remaining equipment would be installed afterwards using contractors.

The agreement was signed on 5 July 2023. What I ordered was not a bare hull: it was the boat, the equipment listed in the order list, the fitting of that equipment, and delivery to the charter base. Yacht-Match issued the final invoice on 27 May 2024 for €1,679,673, and recorded on the face of it that the total had been paid in full.

One point about how it was structured, because it is a fair thing to ask. The contract was not placed in my own name. It was signed by a company in which I held 99 per cent of the shares, and it later moved to a second company that I own outright. I write in the first person throughout this account because the money was mine, the decisions were mine and the loss is mine. Nothing here turns on which of the two put its name to the agreement, and I would rather say so myself than leave it to be found.

The agreement and the invoice are not reproduced here. Both name companies and people beyond Yacht-Match and myself. Yacht-Match drew up both and holds them.

Transport to Croatia and the equipment

The yacht left the yard at Bordeaux and was taken to Croatia, where the additional equipment was to be fitted. Most of it was fitted. The solar panels, the lithium batteries and the 110V conversion were not.

That first passage, from Bordeaux to Betina Marina in Croatia, was run by a professional delivery company and invoiced to me on 27 August 2024 at €25,195.44. Yacht-Match proposed the skipper, sent me his CV and asked me to approve him, and I did. That is how it was supposed to work, and on that leg it did.

There is no handover protocol. It was to be drawn up when the boat was handed over to the charter operator, and that handover never happened.

I have asked Yacht-Match for the fit-out invoices, meaning what their contractors actually charged. I have not received them. The fit-out figures I have are the ones Yacht-Match states in its own overview, not documents from the firms that did the work.

The delivery to the charter base

The damage did not happen on the way from the yard. It happened on the next leg: from the port where the fit-out was done, to the charter operator’s base.

For this passage a skipper was engaged and I was not asked to approve him. No CV was sent and no approval was requested, as it had been for the first leg. During the passage the boat struck an underwater rock.

It happened on 8 September 2024, at about midday, off the island of Murter. The official report filed with the Croatian harbour master’s office records it as an impact with water ingress, damaging the port hull during navigation in water that was too shallow.

Two things separate this leg from the one before it. The first was invoiced to me by a delivery company, with a named skipper I had approved. For this one there is no invoice at all, and I was never told it was happening. I did not know the boat was moving.

What the contract said about skippers

The agreement that deals with skippers is the charter management agreement of 27 August 2024, between the company that owned the boat and a Yacht-Match company acting as charter manager until a charter operator was found. Under it, skippers are the charter manager’s responsibility, and skipper applications go to the owner for acceptance.

In my view the position is this. Either they should have asked me to approve the skipper, as they had done for the first leg, or they should accept responsibility for the damage, because the boat was in their hands and the passage was theirs to arrange.

There is a further point, and it is not a matter of opinion. I had not taken delivery of the boat. Equipment I had ordered and paid for had not been fitted — by Yacht-Match’s own overview, €78,374.14 of it. What I ordered was a boat, fitted out, and delivered to the charter base. That is not what had been delivered when it was damaged.

The damage

Both keels were holed. The boat took on water and was lifted out at the yard.

Yacht-Match acknowledged the damage in writing. In an email of 7 October 2024 their director wrote that a colleague was “managing the unfortunate damages because of the underwater collision”.

From an email Yacht-Match sent me on 7 October 2024. Not reproduced here: it carries the names and contact details of several people who are not party to this dispute. Yacht-Match sent it and holds the same message.

Who was on the boat during the passage

It was not agreed that the boat would be used for personal purposes during the transport.

What happened after the damage

I was told they were not responsible, and that it was the charter operator who had caused the damage. When I pushed for answers and checked that account against the charter operator’s, I was told I was looking for a scapegoat. I wanted to know who was responsible.

One part of this is not a matter of impression. I asked for a financial overview of what had been ordered, paid for and delivered. It arrived on 7 October 2024, close to three months after I asked for it. The covering email opened by acknowledging my frustration and closed with an apology.

There is one more thing the record settles. The incident happened on 8 September 2024. It was reported to the harbour master’s office at Pula on 13 September. On the face of that report the office recorded that it would carry out no investigation, because the notification had arrived outside the legal deadline. Whatever an official examination of the cause would have found, it never took place.

The charter operator had asked Yacht-Match on the day of the damage to inform the owner and the port authority, and asked again three days later whether that had been done. The report reached the harbour master five days after the event.

From the official incident report, stamped by the Croatian Ministry of the Sea, Transport and Infrastructure, and from the two emails shown above as Exhibits 8 and 9. The report is not reproduced here: it names the skipper and carries his identity document number and address.

On 15 April 2025 I sent Yacht-Match a formal demand for compensation, copied to four other people involved. It set out what I was claiming for the damage, asked them either to fit the equipment that was still outstanding or to return the balance, and gave a week for an answer. No answer came.

The amounts in that demand are not the amounts on this page, and I would rather say so than have it noticed. My arithmetic in it was wrong in places, and it left the loss in the boat’s value expressly still to be calculated. The figures set out further down are the corrected ones, each with its own basis shown. If the earlier letter is ever put beside this page, that is the difference and that is the reason for it.

From an email I sent on 15 April 2025. Not reproduced here: it is copied to people who are not party to this dispute, and it contains personal circumstances of mine that are nobody else’s business. Yacht-Match received it and holds it.

Beyond that, in my view they did not communicate well after the damage, and I had the feeling something was being kept from me. That part is my impression, not a statement of fact.

The cost to me

There were already bookings for the boat, so replacement charters had to be found. Four weeks were bought in from two other charter companies between 11 September and 12 October 2024, invoiced at €33,277.49 including Croatian VAT.

Insurance paid €29,246.75 for loss of income, and that money went straight back out on those replacement charters. That much I am not counting as a loss: it came in and it went out, and it would be wrong to put it in a total as though I had carried it myself. The invoice was €33,277.49; the difference of €4,030.74 is Croatian VAT, which the insurer did not pay.

The repair itself was reconciled by my insurance broker in January 2025. The yard’s final invoice came to €39,060.42 before VAT and the marina’s to €4,134.72, €43,195.14 in all. The insurer paid €34,796.77. The difference of €8,398.37 is the excess under the policy, and I carried it.

The 2024 season closed with a balance owed to the charter manager of €6,599.56, invoiced in March 2025. In my view the season would have closed in profit had the boat not been out of service.

Two of these the insurer did not pay: the €8,398.37 excess under the policy, and €2,800.94 of marina charges. The reason for the second is worth stating plainly, because a reader would otherwise have to guess at it. The policy covers the boat’s berth for the time a repair is expected to take. This repair took longer than that, and the marina charges for the overrun fell outside the cover and to me. I am not asserting here whose delay it was. What I am saying is that the boat sat unrepaired long enough to run past what the insurer would pay for, and that I paid the difference.

The VAT on the charter invoices is not in my figures at all, because it is recoverable and it would be wrong to count it.

From the charter company’s invoices of 22 November 2024 and 4 March 2025, and from my insurance broker’s reconciliation of 29 January 2025. None of them is reproduced here: they carry bank details and the names of people at four other firms. The two replacement operators appear by name in Exhibit 11, the spreadsheet, in the rows left unmasked.

The figures, and where each one comes from

The company’s response

On 18 August 2026 I wrote to Yacht-Match to say this account had been published and to invite them to respond to it. I offered to publish whatever they send, in full and unedited, and to correct anything shown to be wrong. The offer was not conditional on anything.

Nothing has come back so far. The letter I sent, and anything they reply with, are on the right of reply page.

Get in touch

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