mjkinch1
Well-Known Member
As some of you are aware I sold my boat earlier this year, and I have been putting off posting this until things have settled, which is now the case.
The guy who purchased my boat was very impatient to take it off to Sardinia, and even during the survey it was push push push to get everything completed including money transfers, so that he could take the boat away. I personally wanted to slow the process a little as I didn’t want any shortcuts in the paperwork trail, and the boat was not going anywhere until all funds had cleared.
Also a few silly things happened which didn’t help the timing - The lift out broke and was out of action for two days, which delayed the survey, and as part of the survey the fire extinguishers in the cabin (not the engines I hasten to add) were just out of date, as was the liferaft by 2 months. So we agreed to pay for the extinguishers, but not the liferaft, and we find out a week later, the shop had replaced all the boat extinguishers with - wait for it - out of date ones. So yet more delays to sort, but in the end the buyer wanted to go, and we sorted out a cash adjustment.
So the situation was, as we flew home, the buyer was leaving early Friday with extra fuel tanks and a hand pump, moving from Alcudia to Mahon overnight, refuel and then taking a straight line to Sardina, about 220 miles from Mahon to the nearest fuel marina, and he had employed a skipper for the journey. Engines had been checked, spare parts were on board, and it was a go with the weather.
That of course was the theory - not that I care that much as it was no longer my boat, BUT you still get a sense of ‘did everything go alright' and we were waiting for news of his safe arrival.
I texted him at around 2100 and got back “problems, alarms going off talk later”, then 1 hour later “we have problems, engines stopped, at sea outside Toulon, awaiting rescue, scared”
You can imagine how we felt – was it the boat, had it let him down, was there anything I could do, we had a sleepless night worrying what had gone wrong. At the time we assumed they were going in a straight line to Sardinia but had diverted to Toulon, which is heck of a distance.
This story now picks up from the email I had from the buyer (the names are changed!)
"As agreed they organized a skipper for us to bring us directly to Sardegna. The deal was, that the skipper is able to go straight. On Thursday, Skipper Chris showed up in time, but with no charts and it seems to me that he knows boats, but not in particularly the fairline phantom.
On this Friday the plan was to make the route map for going straight to Alghero (Sardinia). Chris's calculation was that we needed 100 Liter extra fuel to arrive to Alghero.
We bought the GPS Card and 5 tanks at 20 liters and agreed that he will come for the night so we can leave Alcudia early in the morning.
At dinner time Chris’s boss checked with him the GPS System and they agreed that the trip will not go directly from Menorca to Alghero but we will ship along the Spanish/French coast line with the argument that we will be more save crossing the coast line and it’s only about 60 miles longer.”
(Note: bear in mind despite all the discussions and planning, at the last minute they made a change to follow the coast rather than go direct on the basis it’s around 60 miles longer, which as anyone with a map can see is not even close)
“Early in the morning we crossed over the sea and 4 hours later we arrived at the port (San Felix du Guixos) but not the one we actually planed to be. Chris could not even say where exactly we are. After lunch at 15.30 we left the port and Chris says that we needed about 4-5 hours to get along the coast to reach Toulon. But because Toulon is a very big harbour he decided to go a little bit further and picked up the Port Hyeres.
The fact is that after 6 hours on our way we started to be a little worried about when we will arrive to this Hyeres because there was no land we could see and we were running out of fuel. Chris says always we should not worry we will arrive safely. Then almost on reserve with the fuel the engines start to make problems and we could not go on normal speed. At 22 pm we made pressure to Chris just to go to any harbour but he still confirmed that we just have to pass the lighthouse and go around the island and we will reach Hyeres. At 23 pm we asked Chris to inform the emergency because we where almost empty with fuel. After a quarter hours Chris agreed and called the emergency people. The said at about midnight they will pick us up.
Me I have to confess was already in panic because we had to wait in the dark in a place which we did not know and with no fuel left. It was really scary.
At midnight one engine stop. Because the coordinate was not right we gave to the port (Chris says the the GPS is not working properly) the security boat reached us at about 1.30 am.
At about 3 am we were in the harbour Porquerolles, completely unhappy about the situation. We were around almost 24 hours and we are still fair way from our goal. We made today the calculations by ourself and on the first stop (lunchtime) we did already 160 sm and to go to Alghero is 190 sm. Means for 30 sm Chris chose such a long way to go. On the same day we did another 160 sm means 320 sm in 1 day!
We spent already a lot of money just to fuelled up and stay now in this little harbour instead in Sardegna. On the weekend nobody could checked neither the engine nor the GPS system. We had to wait until Monday, so we decided that we sent Chris and his Girlfriend home and are trying to manage the right people here to check the boat. If they confirm that we can go on to our trip, we have to refuel again (so we spent almost Euro 3'000 only for fuel and we are still far away from Sardinia)
But that the skipper put us in such a bad situation, I could never imagine.
One person who checked this morning the engine said that if we run out of fuel, the bottom of the tanks are dirty and will cause always problems. As a professional skipper Chris should know this. Then they checked the GPS system and they both working properly. The only problem was that Chris did not put the autopilot switch in the electronic panel to on so they did not communicate with the satellite. But again Chris should know how this systems works. Because of this mistake he could not say where we are and gave the rescue person the curser point instead of the real position (GPS data).
-I had to pay the emergency services for picking us up: Euro 805.-
-I already payed two full tanks and spent Euro 1500.- and have a complete empty tank. ----To get fuel until Sardegna I need at least Euro 3'000.-.
-Only because Chris was not sure to go directly from Menorca to Sardegna and his calculation about the 60 extra miles for this trip was complete wrong.
- Have to organize new mechanical people to fix the engine problems caused by using the complete tank reserve.
- I have cost for phone calls I even do not want to know.
I have to say I am not the expert, but we had perfect weather and a professional skipper an board, how can it be that we stay at midnight out on the sea without knowing exactly where we are, no fuel left in the tank and had to be picked up by a emergency boat with blue light and throwing handheld parachute rocket just to get recognized? In my opinion this is just not professional, and if the GPS is not working properly we still had the charts to do the calculations and if one is not even able to make the right calculations, at the time, where we had low fuel and we were shipping along the coast line, it is just not possible we end up like we did.
For our first trip we did not have a good experience and hopefully will have better time in the future.”
It turns out the skipper had no maps, and had not switched on the GPS correctly, and he was a professional skipper! Perhaps he thought it was an easy trip. Also what on earth he was thinking letting the boat run out of fuel? It took quite a lot of work to get the engines back to running smoothly, but I believe they are all OK and non the worse for the wear!
The guy who purchased my boat was very impatient to take it off to Sardinia, and even during the survey it was push push push to get everything completed including money transfers, so that he could take the boat away. I personally wanted to slow the process a little as I didn’t want any shortcuts in the paperwork trail, and the boat was not going anywhere until all funds had cleared.
Also a few silly things happened which didn’t help the timing - The lift out broke and was out of action for two days, which delayed the survey, and as part of the survey the fire extinguishers in the cabin (not the engines I hasten to add) were just out of date, as was the liferaft by 2 months. So we agreed to pay for the extinguishers, but not the liferaft, and we find out a week later, the shop had replaced all the boat extinguishers with - wait for it - out of date ones. So yet more delays to sort, but in the end the buyer wanted to go, and we sorted out a cash adjustment.
So the situation was, as we flew home, the buyer was leaving early Friday with extra fuel tanks and a hand pump, moving from Alcudia to Mahon overnight, refuel and then taking a straight line to Sardina, about 220 miles from Mahon to the nearest fuel marina, and he had employed a skipper for the journey. Engines had been checked, spare parts were on board, and it was a go with the weather.
That of course was the theory - not that I care that much as it was no longer my boat, BUT you still get a sense of ‘did everything go alright' and we were waiting for news of his safe arrival.
I texted him at around 2100 and got back “problems, alarms going off talk later”, then 1 hour later “we have problems, engines stopped, at sea outside Toulon, awaiting rescue, scared”
You can imagine how we felt – was it the boat, had it let him down, was there anything I could do, we had a sleepless night worrying what had gone wrong. At the time we assumed they were going in a straight line to Sardinia but had diverted to Toulon, which is heck of a distance.
This story now picks up from the email I had from the buyer (the names are changed!)
"As agreed they organized a skipper for us to bring us directly to Sardegna. The deal was, that the skipper is able to go straight. On Thursday, Skipper Chris showed up in time, but with no charts and it seems to me that he knows boats, but not in particularly the fairline phantom.
On this Friday the plan was to make the route map for going straight to Alghero (Sardinia). Chris's calculation was that we needed 100 Liter extra fuel to arrive to Alghero.
We bought the GPS Card and 5 tanks at 20 liters and agreed that he will come for the night so we can leave Alcudia early in the morning.
At dinner time Chris’s boss checked with him the GPS System and they agreed that the trip will not go directly from Menorca to Alghero but we will ship along the Spanish/French coast line with the argument that we will be more save crossing the coast line and it’s only about 60 miles longer.”
(Note: bear in mind despite all the discussions and planning, at the last minute they made a change to follow the coast rather than go direct on the basis it’s around 60 miles longer, which as anyone with a map can see is not even close)
“Early in the morning we crossed over the sea and 4 hours later we arrived at the port (San Felix du Guixos) but not the one we actually planed to be. Chris could not even say where exactly we are. After lunch at 15.30 we left the port and Chris says that we needed about 4-5 hours to get along the coast to reach Toulon. But because Toulon is a very big harbour he decided to go a little bit further and picked up the Port Hyeres.
The fact is that after 6 hours on our way we started to be a little worried about when we will arrive to this Hyeres because there was no land we could see and we were running out of fuel. Chris says always we should not worry we will arrive safely. Then almost on reserve with the fuel the engines start to make problems and we could not go on normal speed. At 22 pm we made pressure to Chris just to go to any harbour but he still confirmed that we just have to pass the lighthouse and go around the island and we will reach Hyeres. At 23 pm we asked Chris to inform the emergency because we where almost empty with fuel. After a quarter hours Chris agreed and called the emergency people. The said at about midnight they will pick us up.
Me I have to confess was already in panic because we had to wait in the dark in a place which we did not know and with no fuel left. It was really scary.
At midnight one engine stop. Because the coordinate was not right we gave to the port (Chris says the the GPS is not working properly) the security boat reached us at about 1.30 am.
At about 3 am we were in the harbour Porquerolles, completely unhappy about the situation. We were around almost 24 hours and we are still fair way from our goal. We made today the calculations by ourself and on the first stop (lunchtime) we did already 160 sm and to go to Alghero is 190 sm. Means for 30 sm Chris chose such a long way to go. On the same day we did another 160 sm means 320 sm in 1 day!
We spent already a lot of money just to fuelled up and stay now in this little harbour instead in Sardegna. On the weekend nobody could checked neither the engine nor the GPS system. We had to wait until Monday, so we decided that we sent Chris and his Girlfriend home and are trying to manage the right people here to check the boat. If they confirm that we can go on to our trip, we have to refuel again (so we spent almost Euro 3'000 only for fuel and we are still far away from Sardinia)
But that the skipper put us in such a bad situation, I could never imagine.
One person who checked this morning the engine said that if we run out of fuel, the bottom of the tanks are dirty and will cause always problems. As a professional skipper Chris should know this. Then they checked the GPS system and they both working properly. The only problem was that Chris did not put the autopilot switch in the electronic panel to on so they did not communicate with the satellite. But again Chris should know how this systems works. Because of this mistake he could not say where we are and gave the rescue person the curser point instead of the real position (GPS data).
-I had to pay the emergency services for picking us up: Euro 805.-
-I already payed two full tanks and spent Euro 1500.- and have a complete empty tank. ----To get fuel until Sardegna I need at least Euro 3'000.-.
-Only because Chris was not sure to go directly from Menorca to Sardegna and his calculation about the 60 extra miles for this trip was complete wrong.
- Have to organize new mechanical people to fix the engine problems caused by using the complete tank reserve.
- I have cost for phone calls I even do not want to know.
I have to say I am not the expert, but we had perfect weather and a professional skipper an board, how can it be that we stay at midnight out on the sea without knowing exactly where we are, no fuel left in the tank and had to be picked up by a emergency boat with blue light and throwing handheld parachute rocket just to get recognized? In my opinion this is just not professional, and if the GPS is not working properly we still had the charts to do the calculations and if one is not even able to make the right calculations, at the time, where we had low fuel and we were shipping along the coast line, it is just not possible we end up like we did.
For our first trip we did not have a good experience and hopefully will have better time in the future.”
It turns out the skipper had no maps, and had not switched on the GPS correctly, and he was a professional skipper! Perhaps he thought it was an easy trip. Also what on earth he was thinking letting the boat run out of fuel? It took quite a lot of work to get the engines back to running smoothly, but I believe they are all OK and non the worse for the wear!
