Damaged my neighbour but am I totally to blame?

PEJ

PEJ

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Leaving my berth I turned to early and caught my neighbour's front rope in my propeller. My fault, had a post mortem, know what I did wrong, won't do it again hopefully.

The neighbour is a 45ft sailing boat.

One of the marina staff was passing and gave assistance. My props managed to cut the rope and so I was free. The marina guy told me to carry on and leave the marina. He was on board the other boat when I left. When I came back the neighbour had a shiny new rope.

I pulled the neighbour towards me and there was a small scratch on his bow. However with no rope to hold him and no boat next to him on either side he rubbed up against the marina wall and has quite bad gel coat scratches on his transom.

Now to the point. All the boats in our section of the marina have TWO front ropes with the exception of my neighbour. He should have 2 and there are two fixings on the sea bed but the marina not maintained the second rope and the neighbour (I guess) has not asked them to fix it.

If he had had two ropes on he would not have swung free and hit the wall.

I accept that it all started when I cut his rope but do you think I can mitigate some or all responsibility for the cost of the repair?
 
I'm sure someone will pitch in with a legal viewpoint or a previous experience but Id say, yes, you are to blame 100%.

Whether in your opinion it was/wasn't sufficiently tied up, he thought it was and had you not cut the rope the boat would not have been damaged.
 
Are you saying the marina guy was on your neighbor’s boat and said you can leave and he takes full responsibility from then on?
 
Think of it this way .......the only person that should eventually be out of pocket is the OP , or his insurers.

Certainly not the owner of the gel coat damaged boat and not the marina either .

Further more the OP ( or his insurer) is responsible for putting both the marina and neighbour back in there respective original positions .
 
It's insured?
Marine insurers don't seem to get as hung up on who was to blame as e.g. motor insurers.
Half the policies are underwritten by the same underwriters anyway.
Tell your insurer what happened, apologise to your neighbour and move on.
If the 'front rope' was in the water waiting to catch your prop, it possibly was not doing a whole lot of good anyway?
Had it been pulling the bow in and keeping the stern out, there'd have been less slack in it?
Maybe it got your prop because it was already loose?
 
I can see why you are a bit miffed, the boat should have been tied up properly. Let it go, tell insurance co etc, move on. It won't cost much to sort some gel coat scratches. Take pics though just in case someone tries to be a smart arse.
 
lw395 said:
It's insured?
Marine insurers don't seem to get as hung up on who was to blame as e.g. motor insurers.
Half the policies are underwritten by the same underwriters anyway.
Tell your insurer what happened, apologise to your neighbour and move on.
If the 'front rope' was in the water waiting to catch your prop, it possibly was not doing a whole lot of good anyway?
Had it been pulling the bow in and keeping the stern out, there'd have been less slack in it?
Maybe it got your prop because it was already loose?
Click to expand...

by the sounds of it we're talking stern to mooring with bow lines to a fixed anchor point -
He should have 2 and there are two fixings on the sea bed
Click to expand...
 
Had you not been passing it would never of happened. Contact the owner apologise and sort our the damage. I also find a bottle of his/her favorite tipple helps relations, after all s/he is your nextdoor neighbour.

I am berthed in a marina where Princess Yachts finish off their new boats, I usually pass boats with the value of about £50,000,000 and the owners have not had the pleasure of either driving them or getting their crew to drive them. I spoke at lenght with my insurer at the Southampton Boat Show last year about cover should I have an accident. To put it simply they said I am covered. I am always extremely cautious when leaving and entering the marina.
 
Did the damage occur before or after the marina employee told you to carry on? If it was after then I would suggest the responsibility lies entirely with the marina. Had you reversed back into your your berth you could possibly have attached a new rope before any damage occurred but the marina employee assumed responsibility.
 
Mataji said:
Did the damage occur before or after the marina employee told you to carry on? If it was after then I would suggest the responsibility lies entirely with the marina. Had you reversed back into your your berth you could possibly have attached a new rope before any damage occurred but the marina employee assumed responsibility.
Click to expand...

Not sure that is correct at all.

There is a difference between accepting responsibility for sorting out a problem and accepting liability for any damage that may ensue.

What the OP said was One of the marina staff was passing and gave assistance. My props managed to cut the rope and so I was free. The marina guy told me to carry on and leave the marina. He was on board the other boat when I left. When I came back the neighbour had a shiny new rope.

The employee is just that and not there to accept liability for damage etc, she/he was indicating that they would help sort it out. It can be inferred the marina would be in a better position to do this than the OP returning to their berth with a neighbour untethered and then trying to attach a rope to the seabed!.

They seem to have achieved that but not before some (inevitable) damage occurred. It is difficult to conceive that the OP could have done it better but, in any event, he drove off and left it to the marina to sort out (not a criticism).

Accept responsibility to your insurers and your neighbour. Never mention outloud to your neighbour the single rope issue (otherwise you are backing out of your acceptance and it will be seen that way) and the previous postings about kind gifts are spot on. It will be a very small price to pay for peace and harmony when the alternative might so easily be triggered.

 
I am in Cala Dor also and only have one bow line on my boat ( which is all the berth has). Asking for another was met with a shrug.

My boat is 18m and the distance from the front of my boat to the opposite pontoon is not much more than that 20 - 22?

Due to bow lines of next door boats in this berth I use power to get the boat moving forward and goto neutral after 10 Mts or so. As I exit I then use bow thruster for nearly all of the 90 degree turn required due to avoid the risk of slicing adjacent bow lines. I am sure someone in the marina rolls their eyes of why use a thruster as opposed to engines - but it removes the risk of bow line damage so it suits me.

I did snag my own line there other day and snapped it. I think it caught in a trim tab as it was not round the props. It was to short anyway - which I think is why I snagged it. We tied up on the boat next door, divers can in 5 mins and fixed it. Bill was E110 from the marina for the divers.
 
Poecheng said:
Not sure that is correct at all.

There is a difference between accepting responsibility for sorting out a problem and accepting liability for any damage that may ensue.

What the OP said was One of the marina staff was passing and gave assistance. My props managed to cut the rope and so I was free. The marina guy told me to carry on and leave the marina. He was on board the other boat when I left. When I came back the neighbour had a shiny new rope.

The employee is just that and not there to accept liability for damage etc, she/he was indicating that they would help sort it out. It can be inferred the marina would be in a better position to do this than the OP returning to their berth with a neighbour untethered and then trying to attach a rope to the seabed!.

They seem to have achieved that but not before some (inevitable) damage occurred. It is difficult to conceive that the OP could have done it better but, in any event, he drove off and left it to the marina to sort out (not a criticism).

Accept responsibility to your insurers and your neighbour. Never mention outloud to your neighbour the single rope issue (otherwise you are backing out of your acceptance and it will be seen that way) and the previous postings about kind gifts are spot on. It will be a very small price to pay for peace and harmony when the alternative might so easily be triggered.
Click to expand...

I largely agree. What does it does it cost to run a 50ft mobo a year, £40-50k? Ask the neighbour if he has a gelcoat guy that you could pay to repair the damage. Unless it's particularly bad, you're probably only looking a couple of hundred €'s so insiginicant in the grand scheme of things.

However, I might be tempted to mention to neighbour that it was a bot of a shame that he didn't have a second line as that would have minimized the damage.
 
I’d also mention that had you not been sent away by the marina staff, that you would have secured the yacht to your boat so as to keep it in place and would have put some fenders on the stern to protect it while a new line was attached.
It’s this basic care that should have been shown by the port people. (Unless the damage occurred during the initial incident)
 
Thanks for your input.

To clarify, the marina guy just confirmed that I was free and could go, I was content to leave because I assumed (correctly) that I hadn't just abandoned the yacht; he was aware of the situation and would take care of it. Of course I don't know and never will know exactly what he did to prevent it hitting the wall by putting fenders out etc but, hey ho, sh*t happens.

I spoke with the yacht owner and apologised and he was very nice about it


lw395 said:
It's insured?
Marine insurers don't seem to get as hung up on who was to blame as e.g. motor insurers.
Half the policies are underwritten by the same underwriters anyway.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I was working on the assumption that my insurers would be keen to try and pass the blame to anyone that they could
 
As I understand the situation, once you had left your berth having cut the yacht’s bow anchor line, the yacht was left alone without a boat at either side? At this point there were only the stern lines from the yacht to the jetty?
In other words the yacht was free to drift in whatever direction it wanted to and without control.
No matter what a passing marinaro might indicate, he had no access to the yacht’s motor or bow thruster so would have been unable to hold position.
At that point, it would seem that the safest course of action would be for you to return to your berth and secure the yacht to your boat so that it wouldn’t drift uncontrollably, and no further damage would have occurred.
 
alex_m24 said:
by the sounds of it we're talking stern to mooring with bow lines to a fixed anchor point -
Click to expand...

That makes more sense.

Accidents happen, that is why we have insurance.
It's tempting to avoid going through the insurance to keep a clean record but that can go wrong.
Most people I know who've had one claim against them don't report excessive premiums, that mostly seems to happen if you have serial accidents.
 
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