S/coast yard standards Umhhh...

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Ocean Hound

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47' Launched yesterday by major yard who, firstly, shall remain nameless, Solent area, who removed the reefing forestay foil, presumably to avert any potential damage to/by the hoist, securing with a halyard wire. Launch went perfectly, towed to berth, said they would come back and secure the forestay. Two very busy hours later, just about to leave the marina for home, checked the fore deck etc, looked up - no roller reefing foil and NO ....... halyard wire - all as free as air and gusting 30 knots. Apparently, someone in the team had taken off the temporary forestay in preparation, got called away and no-one ever came back, by which time everyone had knocked off. What would you do - apart from going ballastic?
 
go nuts..... not acceptable.... complete icompetence, and certainly massively negligent.....

They need to be reminded of the real danger they caused by being sloppy to avoid it happening again.....

A falling mast in a marina, besides probably causing thousands of pounds worth of damage, could kill some one quite easily...

I'd complain loudly, and also in writing, asking them to review their safety policy for launching, or threaten to contact their insurers or something similar...
 
i'd agree with that, an apology would be good, but personally, if it were me, I would also prefer them to confirm that most importantly of all, they have reviewed their procedures so that it can't happen again... they do really need to consider the seriousness of a mistake like that..... one gust or roll in the wrong direction, and its the sort of thing that puts people in jail..... gross negligence etc
 
Amazingly, no apology was offered by the yard office, other than to say 'it wasn't really good enough - was it' but at least they the grace to say they would come and help to refix the the foil if necc.
 
Everyone makes mistakes & I'm not a paricular fan of the HSE or the nanny state. BUT, with something like this, procedures need to be in place to make sure it's very difficult to happen, and they need to be followed. If they're not in place the yard management need to feel the results of their negligence. If they are in place and are not followed, the people concirned need to feel the results.

It's not the actions of people that send them to jail or kill others but the results of their actions and that's how the law seems to look at it. In this case there were no results other than a pissed off owner and an embarassed yard. It could have been far worse and if it had, someone could have been killed.

At very best, if the mast fell it could have caused £1000s of pound of damage. At worst it could have killed someone. Name & shame. At least if eveyone does that, yards should get far more careful.
 
Not good enough at all and the apology should be both grovelling and accompanied by their professional rigger to put it all right at their cost.

We bought our current boat 2 days after she arrived from the Med. We re-rigged her as a matter of course as advised in the survey and the riggers found the furling gear had only one thread holding the adjuster, the rest were stripped and a spacer/washer of the toggle was missing so the clevis pin was held in place just by a split pin. The furling forestay was removed like yours 'to avoid damage in the boatlift'! The husband/wife owners sailed her back from Malta to the UK with just a 2 day stopover in Lisbon for a sail repair - after the 2nd gale. When I told them what was found they were both shaken and extremely angry.
 
Surely they can't remove the temporary forestay before re-fixing the permanent one unless there is a baby stay or a pair of forward lower shrouds to hold the mast up.
 
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