[Update 27.08.2021: Boat to yard. Surveyor’s report issued, and favourable. Insurance claim approved, and their first payment sent to yard.]
[Update 26.08.2021]: Our lift out for repairs is scheduled for tomorrow morning. We then get a taxi to Olbia, stay overnight there and then fly to Paris on Saturday, from where we go by TGV to Angouleme, where our friend Griff will taxi us to Aubeterre. Sari and Thorne will be at our house and promise that the BBQ and drinks will be waiting.
Meanwhile, Missy Bear will have month’s visit to boat hospital. The surveyor should have issued her draft report today, and when I spoke to the woman at the insurance company, she could see no reason why our claim (Eu 20k) would not be approved.
Alix and I hope to be back in Arbatax from France in about four or five weeks, and have already started our planning to get to and around Sicily in October! Apparently it’s very nice there at that time of year. If anyone fancies tagging along, let us know… Love R x]
[Update: 23.08.2021: We had the lift out this morning. Marco took some photos and sent them back to his boss (Giualia). They advised that the small damage could become larger damage, and they recommended that we get Missy Bear fixed here. So we will.
The yard (OYS) has availability to start next week, but I think they need the surveyor’s report, and our insurance company needs that and the quote, before they examine the claim. I hope they are not going to play difficult with delaying tactics. So a few administration hoops to jump through, but we have done all we can for now.
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Anyone following our track on Marine Traffic today (Saturday 21st) might be puzzled to see Missy Bear re-tracing her steps back up the south-east coast of Sardinia. It’s a long story, starting last Saturday lunchtime:
We slipped our moorings at the lovely Santa Maria Navaresse, to head further south. After two nights in a marina, we thought that it would be nice to anchor overnight somewhere about 20NM south. We found several options using the Navily App.
Around lunchtime we were approaching our first option - Plage de Murtas – so we furled the genoa and motored slowly towards the spot. The recommended bay is at the northern end of an enormously long, sandy beach, albeit quite typical of this coastline. The cove faces south, guarded by rocks to the east, and so we kept our distance from the charted rocks as we motored south, and planned to turn up into the cove when we were clear.
I was at the helm and we were in about 7m of water, according to the depth gauge. Alix was also in the cockpit, when she suddenly noticed a change in colour of water to a bright, turquoise blue. My heart stopped, as I also noted sandy, brown colour ahead. I engaged reverse gear immediately and looked at the depth gauge, which now showed 5 metres! I instinctively turned to port - away from land - and still in reverse. The depth dropped to 3 metres, which meant we only had 1m under our keel.
Bang! and bounce!
Before I could stop Missy Bear, a hard rocky object stopped her dead in the water, as the lead bulb at the bottom of her keel met it at about 2 or 3 knots.
I talked to myself, as usual, and said “Breathe, keep calm and think”.
I kept her in reverse, to try and get off back where we entered. To motor forward would have been crazy. I felt the keel scraping on its starboard side. I see deeper water to the left, but because Missy Bear has twin rudders, there is no ‘prop-wash’ to turn the boat (wash from the prop rushes back over a central rudder, which can use this to turn a yacht. With twin rudders, the wash simply passes between them, which is of no practical use!) For Missy Bear to turn, we would have had to be moving forwards, to get water passing over the rudder. But no way was I going to do that!
So, I quicky started the bow thrusters, and gave a couple of bursts to port. That worked, and she floated off, but as any yacht pivots around her fin keel, her stern swung to starboard, and I felt a light touch of the starboard rudder on the hard stuff. Now facing deeper water, I engage forward gear, and we are free! Phew!
Now to assess the damage.
Alix jumped onto the helm and kept Missy Bear safe in the deeper water, while I clambered below and started lifting the floorboards. There was no water ingress. Good. I checked all the eight keel bolts (literally the bolts that fix the keel to the hull). They all looked sound and un-budged. Good.
I looked at the grid - this is the matrix of fibreglass ‘cross-members’ in the monocoque construction, that forms the hull. There were a few cracks from where the keel had been shoved backwards and upwards by the impact. Not good! But, were these superficial and cosmetic; was it just paint and gelcoat that had shattered or flaked off in the impact? Or was it more serious and structural, and was the flaked paint a mere manifestation of cracks within the fibreglass hull? I didn’t know.
We dropped anchor in the bay, somehow not really feeling like lunch and a swim anymore. I wanted to have a look underneath. So, I put on my mask and snorkel and climbed into the water. I dived down and looked at the two rudders; yes, the starboard one is showing a small impact on the lower leading edge, but that is not too bad, and the steering had felt fine.
I came up for air and then dived down deeper to look at the keel. The starboard side of the bulb was scratched where I had felt it scrape on the rocks. And the leading edge of the lead bulb was showing a largish, if localised impression of the collision. That would be easily fixed. I came up for air again, as I wanted to look under the flat bottom of the keel bulb.
I took two good deep breaths and dived down again, to about 3 or 4 metres, so that I could look up at the flat keep base. There were no marks whatsoever, which confirmed that we had not grounded and bounced the yacht on the keel, which can cause further hull damage. Good.
As I came up to surface, I looked up at the area where the keel joins the hull, but I could not see any evidence on the hull of the impact. That doesn’t mean there was not any, just that we would need to lift Missy Bear out of the water somewhere and get her looked at by a marine surveyor.
I clambered back on board and dried off. Alix and I probably had a hug. I don’t know [Alix – we did, we clung to each other. We checked each was okay].
What the heck had just happened?
I looked at the chart plotter again. Our historical track was shown clearly as was the exact location where we had come to a shuddering halt. No rock on the chart.
Rocks that are visible at low water (bearing in mind there is little tide out here) have one brown symbol showing the shape and size of the rock, but rocks that are permanently underwater, but a hazard, have a different symbol - simply a black cross. Neither was there on the chart. I zoomed in and zoomed out, to make sure the point/vector data was turned on at that magnification. Still nothing. We had just discovered an uncharted rock. Great!
We decided not to spend the night at anchor, but to head to the next port south, called La Corallo. Safely tied up later that evening, I decided to get some paperwork done.
First, I contacted the insurance company. As it was a Saturday, I ended up speaking to a girl on the out-of-hours line, who basically directed me the website. I completed a claim form on-line, but any response, but would to have to wait until Monday.
Next, I got onto social media (Med sailing groups on Facebook, and the Cruising Association's web forum) to ask for recommendations for a local surveyor. I mentioned the incident that had led to my enquiry, which might have been brave or naïve, but I received no trolling, just genuine sympathy and helpful advice.
Quite a few people simply wanted to know the exact location of the uncharted rock, and I gladly provided the information. I told them that I would add a comment on Navily App, which I did later and received thanks; these sorts of Apps rely almost totally on community inputs and editing.
I got a couple of shocks from Facebook replies.
The first was when one chap posted a screen shot, from Google Earth, of the isolated, underwater rock we had hit. The satellite (or aeroplane?) imagery was as clear as day, and the rock was a big one! I started mentally kicking myself for not having studied the imagery beforehand. It turns out that several sailors have Google Earth running on their iPads, alongside their chart-plotters, for just this eventuality.
But relying on such a source seemed to be a bit like the sailor who tried to navigate his way around the British coast using only an AA road atlas; you sort of hope the charts are the best source of appropriate data. And satellite imagery is often obscured by ripples and reflected sun, which obfuscate the view. Some commentators could not believe how this rock had not been surveyed and shown on the charts.
The second, and much bigger shock, was from a chap called Pavel, who posted a screen shot of the Navionics website chart showing three rocks, including mine! I immediately turned on our chart-plotter and looked again. No, definitely not there. I logged onto the Navionics website, and sure enough Pavel was right! Oh no, maybe my Navionics card was not up to date, and these rocks had been discovered recently? I quickly inserted the SD card, which stores Missy Bear’s charts, downloaded the charts from the website, and put the SD card back into the chart-plotter. Still no rocks showing!
I resorted to social media again to try and get an explanation for this, but I eventually spotted the solution myself; I tapped on the three rocks shown on the website and realised they had been added by someone that same day at about 7pm! Basically, someone in the community must have seen my Facebook post, and then gone into the Navionics website and added the data! Amazing. I downloaded the chart again, but this time I clicked on the checkbox that said ‘include Community Edits’.
Still the rocks didn’t appear on the Zeus 3. At this point I contacted Navionics. First, I filled out a form for their cartography department showing the exact latitude and longitude of the hazard. They thanked me, and later told me that their chart would be updated on September 7th. I don’t know if that will be based on some sort of survey, nor whether the source data (from the hydrographers cum paper chart makers) will also be revised.
Second, I asked about the ‘community edits’, and their response helpfully guided my to the depths of our Zeus 3 chart-plotter, to where I could toggle that option on.
Now we, and everyone else who knows what they are doing, can see our rock. I am thinking of naming it, or claiming it, but I don’t know what forms I need to fill in to set up a sovereign state on a claimed rock that never appears above the water surface. I feel as though I have been a good sailor and citizen, which mitigates some of the pain of the encounter.
Of course, we did come across the odd English ‘armchair admiral’, who chastised me (on a Cruising Association forum) for not having thoroughly studied a paper chart beforehand, to familiarise myself and crew thoroughly with the area. The fact is, as others also pointed out to him, the electronic chart makers take their data from the local hydrographers’ data, and simply vectorise it. Provided that you are zoomed in correctly, any data that is on a surveyed chart will appear on the electronic chart. So having a paper chart (not that a detailed one is available for that area of Italian coastline) would have made precisely no difference.
Further, although the electronic chart got updated almost immediately with the new hazard, it is not clear when that will make its way onto a paper chart. And my critical friend would then have to find/receive the revisions when published, get his pencil out and then make the addition himself.
Anyway, Alix and I decided to keep heading south with Missy Bear, and get to the biggest place we knew about, with several marinas - Cagliari. Surely, someone there would be able to haul her out and inspect her?
As it turns out, that assumption was flawed. Andreas, the manager of Portus Karalis marina, where we berthed, did a sort of Italian sucking of teeth, and would not recommend a yard. So, I did some of my own research, but the local yard I found recommended another yard, that was many miles away on an island of south-west Sardinia. Hmmm.
An early Facebook comment had mentioned yards up in Arbatax, about 70 NM away, close to Santa Maria Navaresse, and just north of our new rock. So that’s where Missy Bear is sailing now, and she has a lift-out booked with a yard on Monday morning. She is stable and sailing well.
Our insurance company has now appointed a local Italian marine company, who in turn has appointed a Sardinian surveying company (from Olbia). A chap called Marco Strina will meet us on Monday (tomorrow) and inspect the damage.
We want to know if Missy Bear is safe enough that we can continue our (fast becoming 'Epic') voyage. Or, more likely, how long it will take to make the necessary repairs. We expect it to take weeks, and to be costly, in which case we will need to get out of Italy (and probably head to Aubeterre somehow) in order to stop the Schengen Clock! Tick Tock.
So, there you have the story so far of ‘Missy Bear and the Hydrographer’s (missing) Stone’.
We’ll let you know the results on Monday (tomorrow).
<Eastenders' drum roll...>