Beached trimaran: can you believe what happened?

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tony_lavelle

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When the new owner of a Telstar 8M trimaran found his starboard float was taking on water off Harwich, on his way home to Holland two weeks ago, he turned back across the Thames Estuary and beached the boat safely at Joss Bay under the cliffs of North Foreland. He and his nephew calmly made a meal and while they were considering what to do next, the police made him abandon the boat, the coastguard removed the engine and halyards, and the local council said they would break up the boat if it was not removed forthwith! The MCA then slapped a detention order preventing the boat from going back to sea without a survey, further complicating and delaying the salvage operation which was successfully carried out a week later by friends from Hoo Ness YC on the Medway.

The skipper did not call for help and did not get any, though it seems an onlooker called the lifeboats. What he got from three sets of bureaucrats was one hindrance after another!

Can you believe it? The full story is at http://www.hooness.org.uk/article_detail.php?ArticleID=56
 
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Sounds about right for our h and s insensed officials, its bound to scare the foreigners away when they hear about this, maybe that's the objective....

where has the common sense gone in these modern times, and we say we are a free country, starting to sound like a police state.
 
I bought a boat to sail in the Uk to avoid this sort of thing,although even the Spanish who love filling in paperwork would not have been so unhelpful..
 
RYA response

Gus Lewis, Legal Manager at the RYA, kindly phoned the HNYC salvage team very promptly with advice. He confirmed that the MCA does in fact have the right to detain any vessel, though perhaps not under these circumstances (boat having been brought ashore safely and under control by a responsible and experienced skipper). In the event, the MCA surveyor was happy to let the trimaran go back to sea after seeing the temporary repairs and the boat was towed back to the Medway with no further problems.

This is a good (or very bad) example of the kind of bureaucratic meddling that the RYA exists to protect us from, so we haven't heard the last of this story!
 
Okay, it's a bummer, but it looks like agencies were acting in the interests of saving lives by preventing an unsound vessel from leaving that had already proven herself unsound. I don't see an issue with the authorities but do think that they could have acted more sympathetically by letting the owner stay onboard. What I see when I read the story is the amazing help of British people to get the boat secure, fixed and off again. Clearly the engine was not ripped out and halyards torn down and the council never broke the yacht apart with a digger either. That would have been unbelievable.
 
BlowingOldBoots said:
Okay, it's a bummer, but it looks like agencies were acting in the interests of saving lives by preventing an unsound vessel from leaving that had already proven herself unsound. I don't see an issue with the authorities but do think that they could have acted more sympathetically by letting the owner stay onboard. What I see when I read the story is the amazing help of British people to get the boat secure, fixed and off again. Clearly the engine was not ripped out and halyards torn down and the council never broke the yacht apart with a digger either. That would have been unbelievable.
Click to expand...

I presume the engine was an outboard and was probably removed in order to prevent it from being stolen. Similarly, the rigging would be worth something.

I was once selling a dinghy and had it in the drive next to the road ready for the buyer. When I went back to the house to get something else, someone went off with the rigging. Luckily I had the dimensions and was able to replace it.
 
According to the article the outboard, halyards etc were removed for safekeeping to prevent theft. Which is actually a wise precaution from what I know about wrecks and other seemingly abandoned craft.
 
Taking off an outboard for safe-keeping is one thing, but taking off halyards, which would have to be re-rove is a different ballgame, and seems way over the top. Mind you, the whole story seems over the top.
 
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