My ideas are a bit thin this week, so I thought I'd recap another boating experience, though less personal in nature.
Recently, we were working at the boat, installing the Captain's new chart plotter. While going to the car for something, we looked out over the water, and saw a huge power vessel being towed into our marina. Of course it was windy that day, and because of the boat's freeboard (that is to say, much of the boat is above the water), the wind just caught it and resulted in the boat swaying from side to side, and made it generally difficult to handle. We continued watching to see where the boat was going to be tied up. We assumed the gas dock, but instead it was being towed to the haulout area, which meant that it had to pass through the marina. Since we have a channel slip, we thought it was best to be onboard to fend off if need be. This turned out not to be necessary.
Once the boat was tied up, we went over to get the poop (pardon the pun for you Popeye fans...get it poop as in poop deck) on what happened. The vessel was a brand new 48 foot yacht (we discovered that it's worth is in the million dollar range). It was new and the owners were on their first cruise. They had many pieces of technology on board - including radar - but no chartplotter (like a small computer to display your position on marine charts). Their friends had instructed them to proceed on a pre-determined bearing which would have taken them out to open water. Unfortunately, they failed to take into account that a bearing is only a direction and they were on the correct bearing BUT about 150 yards too far south. So intent were they on following their bearing they missed the channel marking buoy and cruised over a rock shoal at a speed of 22 knots (44 KMH). They were lucky not to damage their hull, but they did manage to demolish the two huge 20" diameter bronze props and struts, and bend two 2-1/2" diameter stainless stell shafts. All needed replacing. Our guesstimate of the damage - about $30,000. This was also their second "grounding" this summer. I think they need a chartplotter: cost $469 and up.
The name of the boat: Disposable Income II
How does that saying go again? All the money in the world???
Have a fantastico weekend everyone. Cheers!
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