Interruption
Ile Jeudi
Bob and Lin Griffiths
Sat 16 Feb 2013 15:04
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Friday 15 and Saturday 16 February
2013
I was going around the boat today for a final
inspection for the passage and found something that needed to be checked by a
Raymarine (navigation instruments and electronics) technician. There is
one here who has a good reputation but his promises to come at 11am, 3pm and 5pm
came to nothing. It's not surprising because he is very busy but as is so
often the case it doesn't stop people promising something they can't hope to
deliver.
Late in the afternoon we were down below
and heard a very loud bang. We both leapt up top to find that a nearby
boat had broken it's mooring line at the bow and had blown around to hit us on
the beam. We fought to fend the boat off and the marina marineros arrived
quickly in a dinghy to pull him away and re-attach the boat to the mooring
buoy. It took some time for the Hungarian skipper to get sorted out
and he eventually came over to inspect the damage with his crewmember who spoke
very good English. They were very apologetic but didn't seem to recognise
that their mooring line broke because it was very thin but felt it happened
because the marina put them in the wrong place in the marina. In any event
they accepted liability and gave us their ships papers and insurance
certificates to record details. There were some other formalities to
attend to and the marina staff, several of whom had witnessed what happened,
were very supportive. We then got an incident report off to our
insurers.
On Saturday I had a closer look at the damage from
the marina's dinghy which gave a better view than checking from our deck.
Initially it doesn't look too bad - damage to a wooden cap rail around the deck
and to a metal strip and a bent stanchion (metal upright tubes which support the
guardwires around the edge of the boat). We believe the hull itself is
fine but the repair work can't be done in Cape Verde islands as the skillls
aren't available.
Much later in the day a technician did look at our
Raymarine problem and we believe we are now OK but a Saturday departure
was no longer on.
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