Cheeki Rafiki deaths: Yacht firm boss guilty

[Elessar]

Unpalatable though it may be to read LW395's post that the skipper alone has responsibility for the conduct of the boat, not some chap on the end of an intermittent satphone in an office 2000 miles away, I recall numerous RYA and Board of Trade courses where that suggestion was presented and underlined in relation both boat and crew management.

A prudent, supportive, and experienced office might have said, "Oh, by the way, probably a good idea if you get the liferaft and grab bag ready) but nothing absolves the skipper (by many personal accounts on the forum a competent and effective master) from taking whatever actions he regards as necessary for the best conduct of his vessel. It is not impossible to think that his mindset to defer to the office was preconditioned by management relationships with StormForce in their previous employment and relationship.

You are normally not the ranty type and consider the evidence SB, So consider this.......

Of course they got ready to abandon. But no good skipper would launch the raft early - too many lessons from the 79 fastnet.

You can usually keep a boat afloat. So you get in lifejackets if you're not already, get the grab bag handy and get the raft ready but you don't launch it. Only launch it if you are on fire, you have a MOB you can't recover or you are actually, beyond the point of no return, going down. To launch it early would be stupid. It could be damaged or lost. To get into it early would be even more stupid.

Then bam, you are inverted. And can't get the raft out of a poorly designed cradle on the stern of the boat in huge waves. How could that be anticipated?

The trial didn't blame the skipper.

So don't make up stuff, like others are doing, and blame him here.

 

[lpdsn]

The summary in the report states the above. However, the surveyors report is included as an appendix. In the Appendix he states quite the opposite.

Even MAIB inspectors can be fallible I suppose.

 

[Fr J Hackett]

Turn it round, if DI had turned up at court and said "Look I've demonstrated I fulfilled my duty of care by getting an intermediate survey for a completely irrelevant inappropriate coding" it would not have strengthened his case one iota. Therefore lack of it can't have weakened his case much.

Rightly or wrongly, not meeting Cat 0 is the important factor here everything else is padding, especially the lack of survey before departure. We'll never know but I don't think the jury would have considered it important - even compared to the lack of past surveys following groundings which I personally regard as quite flimsy.

It says it's impossible with the crew who were on board.

Leaving that aside it's clearly saying it's totally impractical.

Nice.

Of course, the real alternative to sending it as a Cat 2 is not modifying it to Cat 0, it's to send it as cargo or not send it at all or (maybe) get the crew to set up a delivery company and take the boat as a delivery FOC if that workaround works or register it abroad if that works.

Everything you say is correct the boat probably could not meet the stability of Cat 0 or crewing requirements it could not operate as it was with or without its cat2 certification as it was deemed unsafe to make the voyage as a commercial vessel. There is no doubt that Innes was informed of such. His only option was to ship it back at high cost he chose not to do that, end of story.

 

[Fr J Hackett]

Turn it round, if DI had turned up at court and said "Look I've demonstrated I fulfilled my duty of care by getting an intermediate survey for a completely irrelevant inappropriate coding" it would not have strengthened his case one iota. Therefore lack of it can't have weakened his case much.

Rightly or wrongly, not meeting Cat 0 is the important factor here everything else is padding, especially the lack of survey before departure. We'll never know but I don't think the jury would have considered it important - even compared to the lack of past surveys following groundings which I personally regard as quite flimsy.

It says it's impossible with the crew who were on board.

Leaving that aside it's clearly saying it's totally impractical.

You are normally not the ranty type and consider the evidence SB, So consider this.......

Of course they got ready to abandon. But no good skipper would launch the raft early - too many lessons from the 79 fastnet.

You can usually keep a boat afloat. So you get in lifejackets if you're not already, get the grab bag handy and get the raft ready but you don't launch it. Only launch it if you are on fire, you have a MOB you can't recover or you are actually, beyond the point of no return, going down. To launch it early would be stupid. It could be damaged or lost. To get into it early would be even more stupid.

Then bam, you are inverted. And can't get the raft out of a poorly designed cradle on the stern of the boat in huge waves. How could that be anticipated?

The trial didn't blame the skipper.

So don't make up stuff, like others are doing, and blame him here.

I don't think anyone is blaming the skipper in the face of the catastrophic and sudden inversion it's doubtful that anyone could have launched the life raft and once inverted it seems it was impossible to free. At that point the crew were as good as dead.

 

[Elessar]

I don't think anyone is blaming the skipper in the face of the catastrophic and sudden inversion it's doubtful that anyone could have launched the life raft and once inverted it seems it was impossible to free. At that point the crew were as good as dead.

Some people are. I don't respect their views. Otherwise I wholeheartedly agree with you.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Do you have any information that he was maximising profits compared to other sailing schools? It would be very interesting if anyone has access to the accounts at Companies House. Sailing schools tend to be marginal businesses so I'd be surprised if he were getting rich.

Only corner cut seems to have been delaying the Cat 2 survey.

They looked like a bunch of real penny pinchers when they advertised here for unpaid staff. Alas I believe that one "intern" whom they recruited in that round died on Cheeky Rafiki.

 

[JumbleDuck]

How do you differentiate between negligence and gross negligence, for me when you do something even by omission that you know you should do and especially for financial expediency when it has a health and Safety aspect it becomes gross negligence. I am sure the judge must have given some direction in his summing up it would be interesting to know what it was.

From the CPS guidelines:

Gross Negligence Manslaughter

This is where the death is a result of a grossly negligent (though otherwise lawful) act or omission on the part of the defendant. The law in respect of this has been clarified in the case of R v Adomako (1994) 3 All ER 79 where a four stage test for gross negligence manslaughter known as the Adomako Test was outlined by the House of Lords:

The test involves the following stages:

a) the existence of a duty of care to the deceased;
b) a breach of that duty of care which;
c) causes (or significantly contributes) to the death of the victim; and
d) the breach should be characterised as gross negligence, and therefore a crime.

(Deletia)

The Grossness of the Breach

It is for a jury to decide whether the defendant's conduct was so bad, in all the circumstances, as to amount to a criminal act or omission. In R v Misra and Srivastava [2005] 1 Cr App R 328, the court agreed with the direction by the judge that the term 'reprehensible' would be apt to describe the nature of the conduct.​

 

[JumbleDuck]

Absolute Rubbish, I suggest you read up on the Enron disaster and their suppliers who went down even though they were found to have done nothing wrong after the trial

What has that got to do with the question of why people continued to deal with Stormforce Coaching while the case was pending?

 

[JumbleDuck]

What are the MCA, RYA and ARC going to do about it?

Ah yes, the ARC. Quite absolutely positively a rally, not a race, unless a bit of legislation needs dodged in which case it's a race, not a rally.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Coding is irrelevent in this case as it was not a commercial voyage according to the law.

And your qualification to interpret the law is ... ? I only ask because the MCA, the CPS and a jury disagree with you.

 

[JumbleDuck]

"
(bb) in the case of a vessel owned by a body corporate, used only for sport or pleasure and on which the persons on board are employees or officers of the body corporate, or their immediate family or friends; and..."

I wonder if most of the other sailing schools who classify their return trips from the Caribbean as "pleasure" use are able to do so because their boats are corporately owned and therefore fall into the (bb) category?

Doesn't look as if they could have wriggled out with corporate ownership, because the delivery was not being done for sport or pleasure; it was an essential part of Stormforce's commercial operations. The "body corporate" rules seems intended to cover boats owned by clubs or companies for their members/staff to use for fun.

Yesterday I saw a boat maintaining moorings in the Lynn of Lorne. I am pretty sure that it was owned by a body corporate and that the persons on board were employees or officers of the body corporate but I don't think it would count as a pleasure trip, even though the sun was shining.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Oh good. If you know that for certain, you can list those available to do an MCA coding survey in Antigua. Remember it is an MCA coding survey so not just any old surveyor.

That, presumably, is the sort of thing a competent operator would consider before sending a boat in imminent need of a survey out there ...

 

[JumbleDuck]

Nope Stormforce and others do not offer or were not offering RYA validated courses therefore there was no action that the RYA could take.

(From http://www.stormforce.biz/Products/131/Complete-Yachtmaster-Fast-Track.html)

 

[Simondjuk]

Taken from the same MAIB report:

As part of the investigation, a YDSA surveyor, with experience of coding surveys onBeneteau First 40.7 yachts, was engaged to determine whether these vessels couldachieve Category 0 coding, as required under the SCV Code for a trans-AtlanticOcean passage. The report produced by the surveyor concludes that, withmodi cation, it would be possible for these vessels to achieve Category 0 coding(Annex I).

The summary in the report states the above. However, the surveyors report is included as an appendix. In the Appendix he states quite the opposite.

Even MAIB inspectors can be fallible I suppose.

Unfortunately, this isn't a unique inconsistency. There are glaring incompetency issues in certain quarters.

 

[Talulah]

MAIB reports lost a lot of credibility in my eyes after reading that report. Given the public interest this one particularly should have been perfect.

 

[Mark-1]

Doesn't look as if they could have wriggled out with corporate ownership, because the delivery was not being done for sport or pleasure; it was an essential part of Stormforce's commercial operations. The "body corporate" rules seems intended to cover boats owned by clubs or companies for their members/staff to use for fun.

Yesterday I saw a boat maintaining moorings in the Lynn of Lorne. I am pretty sure that it was owned by a body corporate and that the persons on board were employees or officers of the body corporate but I don't think it would count as a pleasure trip, even though the sun was shining.

If the entire crew's hobby was laying moorings and they were unpaid and nobody was paying the company to lay the moorings then I think it would certainly count as a pleasure trip.

In the CRs case from the crew persepctive the boat was being "used only for sport or pleasure" - they were doing the trip unpaid as a holiday/adventure. I think the jury in this case and many of us on this thread (myself included) think that the fact that the destination was the new charter ground means that, overall, it wasn't being used *only* for sport or pleasure. However, if there was a future appeal and the judges decided that as the crew were doing the delivery purely for their own pleasure the boat was being "used only for sport or pleasure" that view wouldn't be especially contradicting the law as written.

 

[mjcoon]

In the CRs case from the crew persepctive the boat was being "used only for sport or pleasure" - they were doing the trip unpaid as a holiday/adventure. I think the jury in this case and many of us on this thread (myself included) think that the fact that the destination was the new charter ground means that, overall, it wasn't being used *only* for sport or pleasure. However, if there was a future appeal and the judges decided that as the crew were doing the delivery purely for their own pleasure the boat was being "used only for sport or pleasure" that view wouldn't be especially contradicting the law as written.

For years it has been common for flotilla companies to have "delivery cruises" at start and end of season. I did one from Gouvia on Corfu to Lavrion near Sounion & Athens. The yachts were going further, to the Sporades. I wonder if the delivery aspect has ever been used to challenge the pure charter aspect of the deal...

 

[ex-Gladys]

MAIB reports lost a lot of credibility in my eyes after reading that report. Given the public interest this one particularly should have been perfect.

How? The vessel wasn't recovered to allow detailed examination...

 

[Fr J Hackett]

If the entire crew's hobby was laying moorings and they were unpaid and nobody was paying the company to lay the moorings then I think it would certainly count as a pleasure trip.

In the CRs case from the crew persepctive the boat was being "used only for sport or pleasure" - they were doing the trip unpaid as a holiday/adventure. I think the jury in this case and many of us on this thread (myself included) think that the fact that the destination was the new charter ground means that, overall, it wasn't being used *only* for sport or pleasure. However, if there was a future appeal and the judges decided that as the crew were doing the delivery purely for their own pleasure the boat was being "used only for sport or pleasure" that view wouldn't be especially contradicting the law as written.

Two of them were, one was an "unpaid" intern of Stormforce and the other was a regular paid Stormforce skipper, I doubt that he was doing it for free and there is plenty of case law about the status of unpaid interns to indicate that they count as bona fide employees of a company. There are other factors that Innes was specifically told by the MCA that the voyage was not and would not be considered as for pleasure. The two additional crew members had signed on for a mile building voyage, they were refunded their money and resigned on a cost contributory basis in an attempt to circumnavigate those rules. Taken with other evidence it all points to a deliberate attempt to reduce costs in returning the vessel to the UK and does not paint a good picture of the practices of Stormforce and for that matter other similar organisations who will now be wondering how they get chartered boats from one location to another legitimately.

 

[lpdsn]

For years it has been common for flotilla companies to have "delivery cruises" at start and end of season. I did one from Gouvia on Corfu to Lavrion near Sounion & Athens. The yachts were going further, to the Sporades. I wonder if the delivery aspect has ever been used to challenge the pure charter aspect of the deal...

I can't see that being an issue if they're within their coding (if UK flagged). With the CR case the issue is that the voyage which, as I understand it, would've been perfectly legal (assuming UK flagged) for a private boat, or a commercial boat on a non-commercial trip (even with lapsed Cat 2)* or a commercial boat with Cat 0, but not for a commercial boat with cat 2 (or lapsed cat 2). So it gets down to whether this was a commercial trip. Jury says it was, but the consequences of that are more far reaching than a lot of people yet realise.

*Commercial boat on non-commercial voyage is the bit that is still wooly, even after this case. I suspect some will avoid the risk by re-flagging.