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Here’s a (not so) brief write up detailing our experience chartering from a large well-known company out of Kos in the Aegean. For the last few years we have been chartering three sailboats with two other families in various parts of the Mediterranean. This year we decided to sail in the Aegean, because of the fairly strong winds in that part of the Mediterranean and the many islands to explore.
The check-in process at Kos Marina was quite efficient – we were chartering a Bavaria 42 from 2005, a little older than we’re used to, but the interior of the boat was in good condition, the boat was clean, and the systems seemed to work quite well. Our plan was to sail to Kalymnos the first day, a distance of about 20 miles, against the prevailing wind.
About three hours out of Kos Marina, we are sailing on a close haul, about 40 degrees off the wind, in 22 knots of wind. The genoa is reefed quite heavily, the main sail just a bit (the advantage of in-mast furling). We are going very comfortably at about 6.5 knots. All of us are in the cockpit; because of the wind and wave (I’d guess about four feet or so) conditions, I’d told out kids, twelve-year old twins, to not go forward.
All of a sudden – a loud bang – I look up, the sails are billowing and the entire rig is coming down. The boom crashes into the cockpit destroying the bimini and dodger, the mast goes overboard, the sails are in shreds. Everything happens really fast.
My first reaction is to make sure everyone is fine and that everybody is wearing life jackets. Then I check the mast – it’s more or less parallel to the boat. I use one of the sheets to secure the foot of the mast; and pull in the backstay as much as I can. I start the engine, but don’t engage the prop to avoid fouling it.
At that point I call up the base in Kos Marina to let them know that we were dismasted requesting help. I give them our GPS coordinates. They tell us they will come out to take us off the boat and that they should be there in about an hour or so. An hour goes by – we’re drifting steerlessly in the channel between Kos and Pserimos – but noone shows up. We call again and they assure us that they will be there in about a half hour. An hour passes, nobody shows up. Meanwhile the wind is pushing us toward the Kos shore and we drop anchor to avoid running aground. After a half hour or so, we see another sailboat at the other side of the channel. We call the marina again and find out that they are looking for us in a Bavaria 54 at the other side of the channel – so much for GPS coordinates. After about two and a half, three hours the rescue boat finally reaches us. We manage to tie the boats together, exploding a fender in the process. Personnel of the charter company come aboard and secure the mast. We transfer to the other boat. Finally both boats motor back to base.
We reach Kos Marina after dark. The marina people are very nice and tell us to stay overnight on the Bavaria 54 – we’ll figure things out the next day. The next day, the boat is taken to a yard and the mast is taken off. It is clear that the head stay parted right at the swage near the masthead. We talk to the base manager, but he just tells us to sit tight. We spend one more night on the Bavaria 54. Finally two days after the unfortunate event, we hear back from the charter company: the base manager has filed a report stating that we made a mistake that overloaded the head stay. The whole event is our fault and the company will not provide another boat. Fortunately we paid for extra insurance and we're not charged anything. A day after the event, the other two families returned to Kos Marina, so we embark on one of the boats and set off again. The remainder of the charter is uneventful and a lot of fun with winds in the high twenties, at one point hitting 38 knots.
Needless to say, the attitude of the charter company was very disappointing to us – I am not sure what we would/could have done differently and it is surprising to me that it is possible to dismast a sound Bavaria 42 in 22 knots of wind, sailing close-hauled (an accidental jibe is a different story). The maximum wind speed we clocked was about 22 knots, although one of our companion boats got 26 knots at some point. I took some pictures (below) of the head stay and it seems to me that the cable failed by fatigue, although it is difficult to know for sure without better micrographs. I have posted one of the pictures of the fracture site – it is clear to me that some of the strands in the cable failed in a ductile fashion because of overload, while others show a brittle fracture surface, possibly due to fatigue. Moreover several strands show clear signs of corrosion.
Head stay:
Failure site:
Floating without a mast:
Is this really our fault or is this a case of poor maintenance? If the latter, how do you prevent this from happening again? Is there anything I could have done differently? What lessons to learn? When I launched my own boat at the beginning of the season, I inspected the rigging very carefully and found several cracks in the swages – I immediately had all of the standing rigging replaced as I didn’t want to lose my mast. Little did I know it was going to happen anyway, on a different boat.
Sorry for the longish write-up - I'm just trying to paint as accurate a picture as possible. The goal is not to malign the charter company, but to learn from the mishap. We'll never see our money again, but we're chalking one up for experience - and most important of all, nobody got hurt.
The check-in process at Kos Marina was quite efficient – we were chartering a Bavaria 42 from 2005, a little older than we’re used to, but the interior of the boat was in good condition, the boat was clean, and the systems seemed to work quite well. Our plan was to sail to Kalymnos the first day, a distance of about 20 miles, against the prevailing wind.
About three hours out of Kos Marina, we are sailing on a close haul, about 40 degrees off the wind, in 22 knots of wind. The genoa is reefed quite heavily, the main sail just a bit (the advantage of in-mast furling). We are going very comfortably at about 6.5 knots. All of us are in the cockpit; because of the wind and wave (I’d guess about four feet or so) conditions, I’d told out kids, twelve-year old twins, to not go forward.
All of a sudden – a loud bang – I look up, the sails are billowing and the entire rig is coming down. The boom crashes into the cockpit destroying the bimini and dodger, the mast goes overboard, the sails are in shreds. Everything happens really fast.
My first reaction is to make sure everyone is fine and that everybody is wearing life jackets. Then I check the mast – it’s more or less parallel to the boat. I use one of the sheets to secure the foot of the mast; and pull in the backstay as much as I can. I start the engine, but don’t engage the prop to avoid fouling it.
At that point I call up the base in Kos Marina to let them know that we were dismasted requesting help. I give them our GPS coordinates. They tell us they will come out to take us off the boat and that they should be there in about an hour or so. An hour goes by – we’re drifting steerlessly in the channel between Kos and Pserimos – but noone shows up. We call again and they assure us that they will be there in about a half hour. An hour passes, nobody shows up. Meanwhile the wind is pushing us toward the Kos shore and we drop anchor to avoid running aground. After a half hour or so, we see another sailboat at the other side of the channel. We call the marina again and find out that they are looking for us in a Bavaria 54 at the other side of the channel – so much for GPS coordinates. After about two and a half, three hours the rescue boat finally reaches us. We manage to tie the boats together, exploding a fender in the process. Personnel of the charter company come aboard and secure the mast. We transfer to the other boat. Finally both boats motor back to base.
We reach Kos Marina after dark. The marina people are very nice and tell us to stay overnight on the Bavaria 54 – we’ll figure things out the next day. The next day, the boat is taken to a yard and the mast is taken off. It is clear that the head stay parted right at the swage near the masthead. We talk to the base manager, but he just tells us to sit tight. We spend one more night on the Bavaria 54. Finally two days after the unfortunate event, we hear back from the charter company: the base manager has filed a report stating that we made a mistake that overloaded the head stay. The whole event is our fault and the company will not provide another boat. Fortunately we paid for extra insurance and we're not charged anything. A day after the event, the other two families returned to Kos Marina, so we embark on one of the boats and set off again. The remainder of the charter is uneventful and a lot of fun with winds in the high twenties, at one point hitting 38 knots.
Needless to say, the attitude of the charter company was very disappointing to us – I am not sure what we would/could have done differently and it is surprising to me that it is possible to dismast a sound Bavaria 42 in 22 knots of wind, sailing close-hauled (an accidental jibe is a different story). The maximum wind speed we clocked was about 22 knots, although one of our companion boats got 26 knots at some point. I took some pictures (below) of the head stay and it seems to me that the cable failed by fatigue, although it is difficult to know for sure without better micrographs. I have posted one of the pictures of the fracture site – it is clear to me that some of the strands in the cable failed in a ductile fashion because of overload, while others show a brittle fracture surface, possibly due to fatigue. Moreover several strands show clear signs of corrosion.
Head stay:
Failure site:
Floating without a mast:
Is this really our fault or is this a case of poor maintenance? If the latter, how do you prevent this from happening again? Is there anything I could have done differently? What lessons to learn? When I launched my own boat at the beginning of the season, I inspected the rigging very carefully and found several cracks in the swages – I immediately had all of the standing rigging replaced as I didn’t want to lose my mast. Little did I know it was going to happen anyway, on a different boat.
Sorry for the longish write-up - I'm just trying to paint as accurate a picture as possible. The goal is not to malign the charter company, but to learn from the mishap. We'll never see our money again, but we're chalking one up for experience - and most important of all, nobody got hurt.
