Fight on board
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Sat 21 Sep 2013 07:12
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Not on our boat, but on a neighbours boat. Forgot
to write about it while we where still in the harbour.
The day before we left a brand new catamaran with
no flag or name came in to Aviatu in Rarotonga.
They said they where only staying 1-2 hours to
provision but decided to stay longer and had to anchor close to our
neighbour.
He is a very friendly French guy waiting for his
family to fly in and continue the trip.
The harbour capten asked if he could share his
dinghy with the cat since they had none (!?)
Most of the stuff visible on board still had
plastic wrappings to protect them when you get a new boat from a
boatyard.
The skipper looked like "Jesus" and he had two
young men as crew members.
In the evening the crewmembers disappeared to the
village.
I woke at about two in the morning, big noise on
the dock.
The guys had returned and there was no doubt they
where really drunk.
They had also a local woman with them, she drove a
car and was sitting in it while they tried to get on board.
If you have read my description on how to get
ashore well it is the same to get on board, but top it up with being drunk
and the task becomes almost impossible. The poor frenchmans dinghy got smashed
and banged and a nice outboard that was on got a lot of hits.
Finally one of the guys came on board and probably
decided to let anchorchain out so the other fellow could step on board from the
dock.
How smart is that? And yes the skipper came out
furious. They started to shout at him and the guy on the dock JUMPED on board
from the dock. Not very happy landing...
So they where shouting and fightning. And the woman
ashore was singing loud from the car. Eventually the guy that jumped on board
decided he was such a great jumper that he jumped ashore to talk to the woman, I
dont know. Well that looked funny, he jumped at one of the tires but he bounced
back and splashed into the water. He got up on the doch and sat by the car. But
the fight continued on board. And since I had a phone I called the police. They
came after 15 minutes, did not even bother to stop by the boat, the fight had
moved indoors but the skipper had turned all lights on, in the boat so it was
easy to see what was going on.
They cooled down by themselves, the woman drove
away, and I went to bed.
Soon thereafter I heard another bang and yelling
and cry for help. Now the skipper had a satellite phone and he was trying to
call.
The other guys obviously did not like that and
fighted him down on deck. Then there was a lot of screaming and running on deck
so I called Radio Rarotonga on CH 16 and within 1 minute the security guy was
there and helped the skipper to get the crew members off the boat.
By talking, very calm. They got all their personal
stuff ashore and off went the skipper with the security guy.
Next day as Andreas and I moved about the different
offices to check out (oh yes, every country have their routines...) we
bumped into the skipper twice as he was doing the same.
He did not say that but I guess he HAD to take the
crew out with him on the boat or pay their air tickets home. And they came
from South Africa!
I told him I was the one who called the security
and he thanked me. He was surprised to hear I had seen so much because at the
police station he was one against two and the crew had a story that HE was the
one beating them down.
That would make me feel great to sail away on a
vast ocean with two guys I had to fight, and he said also that they threw the
satellite phone over board to hinder him from calling.
BUT he was also strange, when we talked he said
they had sailed the boat from South Africa and where delivering her to
Australia.
When they got into Rarotonga they came directly
from Galapagos (what a trip!).
He also said that when he came out to "talk to" the
guys he had turned his phone on voice recording to have all recorded, but they
had deleted it for him...
Might be, might be...
Hope the crew does not throw him over
board.
And here now?
Moving along fine, wind has increased and so have
the waves. They are about 3 meter now.
An informal chat on the net today made me feel
better.... since we have Erika and Andreas on board we feel we have to prepare
good meals.
And with the kitchen throwing things around for you
it takes TIME! And it is painful.
As we where reporting weather etc on the radio I
said "Wave height maybe 3 meters, uncomfortable to cook food for
sure"
The respons was "do you COOK? we gave that up the
day before yesterday!"
A nice happening today was that Ellinor has read my
new book and she gave me thumbs up! There are small things of course but she
liked the story and it got her hooked.
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