Lesson Learned - Never let strangers run your boat!

[BelfastCruiser]

Hey All - trying to make up yard fees and insurance, we decided to bareboat through a local chartering outfit. The referred "captain" seemed to have good cruising credentials, but we eventually found out he really excelled at running boats aground. He hit a ledge and plowed on. Eventually, he got caught in a lobster trap set. Snaring trap line happens often up here in Maine, but wouldn't YOU stop before you started spinning the actual wire trap?

Didn't know about any of this til we hired a post charter diver to check her out (yup, he didn't tell us!) Seriously scraped about 15 feet of the keel with the grounding, and a lot of chafing around the shaft tube.

Point of the post - be very, very wary if you're thinking of letting your boat out of your sight.

*

 

[Anthonyd]

Holy cr@! I'm sorry to hear about, and see from the pictures, your damage. I hope you take this guy to the cleaners. I wonder if you can file a complaint against his license with the Coast Guard. Might be worth looking into. I wish you all the best Kevin.

 

[jleonard]

A similar incident happened to a friend who had his boat near me in Mystic. It was a sailboat, and scrapped the rocks a few times and was never reported.

*

 

[Edelweiss]

Wow!! *That's ugly. *I know the big bareboat charter companies here have a diver inspected policy after each charter. *But of course that is after the fact and doesn't make up for any serious damage.

I still wouldn't be willing to do it. *I hear too many horror stories of damaged boats repaired and given back to the owner, only to have more problems surface. *One in particular was a partial sinking where the insurance company strong armed the shipyard into doing a half ass'd job of clean up and repair. *Refused to replace the wiring harness and would only pay for an in place flush of the diesels, refilled with oil and called it good. *The boat was never dependable or "right" after that. *Everything from turbo's to electronics failed over the next year.