Princess crashes into Richmond Bridge

[Resolution]

Do you think they actually meant the windscreen? I wondered if they were referring instead to the wind deflector round the flybridge, which iirc is a single piece of plastic.

Listening to the crunch as the boat sort of pivoted round the arch of the bridge, and thinking where the impact appeared to be, I would not be surprised if there was was lot of structural damage to the superstructure. Hope not, for our friend's sake.
Does anyone know where the boat berths normally?

 

[Richard Shead]

Listening to the crunch as the boat sort of pivoted round the arch of the bridge, and thinking where the impact appeared to be, I would not be surprised if there was was lot of structural damage to the superstructure. Hope not, for our friend's sake.
Does anyone know where the boat berths normally?

In or around Chelsea I believe, not the Kings Road obviously.

 

[kcrane]

K, the mind plays tricks. Imagine this daft scenario:
1. You are in flat water in the med. No wind, no current, bliss
2. You're doing 4 knots SOG and STW at idle speed in a twin shafts boat, steering manually or a/pilot set to 1 foot XTE in a straight line, easy peasy.
3. After an hour, strangely you see a big fibreglass bridge replica floating in the sea behind you. Perfect replica of Richmond bridge. This bridge replica is driven by multiple pods and a computer and military grade GPS and is driving (sort of sideways as it were) towards you from astern in a perfect straight line, at 4.5 knots SOG. As it gets close you notice by coincidence it is following same ground track as you. If you do absolutely nothing and hold your course, the arch of the bridge will pass right over you at 0.5 knots relative speed and you wont collide. What fun you think! So you hold your course

In this scenario, would you lose your bow? Of course you wouldn't. You haven't lost it in the last hour so why should you lose it now?

Good thought experiment I'm with you now.

 

[Observer]

In or around Chelsea I believe, not the Kings Road obviously.

From memory Mr Skinner said he came from Imperial Wharf?

 

[Racingfrank7]

Am I the only one wondering if skinner56 isn't genuine and just some internet / forum troll ?
95000 views and nobody's thought this could be a good wind up ?!
Google anything to do with boats and it normally leads you here!

Not saying skinner56 is or isn't, just would have thought the hull, rubbing strip, And rails would be damaged not just mainly radar arch.
Also the paper reports that a 13 year old boy on a near by boat said the windscreen was cracked, surely a 13 year old boy knows what a windscreen is. I certainly did at that age.

If somebody personally knows of the boat and said skipper then there miss fortune / accident have my deepest sympathy as nobody wants this happen to such a gorgeous boat.

 

[MapisM]

Looking at the picture. I would expect wash from this prop to have an effect.

Yeah, nobody said it doesn't have any, but it's almost negligible.
Just compare that pic with the following, which happens to be also of a 67 footer.
This hopefully explains what I said before re. the different effectiveness of a single screw boat rudder, all other things equal.
In fact, just to put the size in perspective, the prop diameter is 60 inches - yep, sixty, not a typo!
Besides, the rudder is articulated, and that improves its effectiveness dramatically.
Not unusual in displacement single screw boats, while you almost never see that in twin screws vessels - let alone on planing hulls.
Actually, I'm not sure of the P67 prop (hence also rudder) size - maybe Hurricane can confirm that.
But it's bound to be MUCH smaller. Probably around 32 to 34 inches, I guess.

 

[Andrew72]

From memory Mr Skinner said he came from Imperial Wharf?

I'm pretty sure the Princess 67 is this one moored in St Kats. It's got a few scrapes in the "right" places I guess. Looks like they've lost the starboard nav light, got a few scuffs on the hull near the waterline, and the flybridge.

The stainless steel handrail is bent and there appear to be scrapes along the pillar of the windscreen. I couldn't see if the windscreen itself was broken though. The "windscreen" that is broken is the wind deflector on the flybridge. I think that's where reports in the paper (from the 13 year old boy who witnessed it) get muddled.

All in all, if this is the same boat, looks like the damage sounded a lot worse on the video.

With any luck there's no underlying structural damage. The flybridge arch didn't look too bad when I went past it this morning. The key thing is that nobody was injured.

Hopefully it's easily repairable and not too expensive an accident. Would typical boat insurance pay out for something like this? I'd be keen to know what the cost of the repairs are too.

As a total novice about to buy my first boat, it's been good to read on here how many of you experienced guys have owned up to the occasional bump and learned from it. The advice from those with the same sized boats has been invaluable too. Hopefully, one day, I'll be in a position to offer some useful advice on this brilliant forum!

 

[MrB]

Yep that's her, same name.

 

[MapisM]

As a total novice about to buy my first boat, it's been good to read on here how many of you experienced guys have owned up to the occasional bump and learned from it.

LOL, I'll tell you a secret.
There are boaters who actually cruise with their boat and others who don't.
Leaving aside the latter, the proper classification is NOT between those who sometimes made a mess and those who never did.
It's rather between those who admit it, and those who don't.

Oh, and since you mentioned "about to buy my first boat", you are already aware that a dedicated thread is mandatory, aren't you?

 

[Mr Googler]

Quite agree with Mapism there.

The saying goes "Experience is something you get after you needed it"

 

[Andrew72]

LOL, I'll tell you a secret.
There are boaters who actually cruise with their boat and others who don't.
Leaving aside the latter, the proper classification is NOT between those who sometimes made a mess and those who never did.
It's rather between those who admit it, and those who don't.

Oh, and since you mentioned "about to buy my first boat", you are already aware that a dedicated thread is mandatory, aren't you?

LOL I fear I may be one of those people who won't admit my boating errors - as there may well be too many to catalogue in my first year!

I'll be sure to start a thread when I finally get close enough to buying the boat. I've had some superb advice on here over the past year or so - with many people telling me, quite rightly, to start off with something a lot smaller than I actually want.

I haven't quite managed - or dared - make the leap and buy a boat yet. Part of me is desperate to join the club but part of me is terrified too. I have this fear that it could be the best and worst choice I ever make. It'll be fun but I think it could bankrupt me too!

Quite agree with Mapism there.

The saying goes "Experience is something you get after you needed it"

Too true!

 

[MapisM]

I fear I may be one of those people who won't admit my boating errors - as there may well be too many to catalogue in my first year!

LOL, no worries.
It's not the number that really matters. Of course there will be many, but as long as you'll be sensible, hopefully none of them will be too serious!

...and after all, don't forget that there are folks like the Concordia captain, who proudly places himself in the category of those who don't admit their mistakes.
If I never made any mistake (which of course is not the case), I'd rather invent some, just to avoid being associated with any category he belongs to...

 

[Aardee]

Quite agree with Mapism there.

The saying goes "Experience is something you get after you needed it"

Nice quote!! - My YM instructor always used to say that you start boating with a full bucket marked "LUCK" and an empty bucket marked "EXPERIENCE" - The trick is to fill the second one up before the first one completely empties