Quote:
Originally Posted by Nausikaa
The story itself is a tale of woe. It just goes to show that not all pirates are operating in the Gulf of Aden or thereabouts. The only advice I can give is to charter from a reputable company or on the recommendion of others. Of course, a charter is a legally binding document and therefore the charterer can revert to legal action - but who would want to? As a rule, only lawyers make money on that.
Aye // Stephen
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Reading the post I think of a couple things:
This sort of story is why I don't like the idea of bare charters--no captain, no body on board who really knows the boat. This can be a big mistake when the folks handling the boat are not professionals such as a delivery crew who are used to dealing with the nuances of individual boats.
Clearly our CL member didn't have a great time, and sorry to hear of his woes. Perhaps in the future Corrado will consider chartering from a large, well known company rather than from an individual. Even so, stuff does go wrong.
Lesson learned for all CL members--think twice before you charter a boat. I can certainly understand the frustration Corrado dealt with during his chater: waiting on autopilot and dealing with electric furling for example or the depth sounder (I wonder if the sensor was fouled? did anyone dive on it to see? This is so common) and not knowing what magnetic issue on the boat was causing compass problems (could have been anything from a camera hanging off the binnacle to something below deck) and that a compass correction card wasn't stationed at each binnacle is too bad...other issues that Corrado brought up are things that I wouldn't even have thought of as issues but rather as just the way it is with a particular boat. I've rented enough boats to know that they're never quite right, unfortunately.
Good luck to Corrado in future chartering adventures.
Fair winds,