Ever had one of those "friends" with no sailing experience who runs out and buy a yacht way too big then asks you to help them sail it down the coast like you are privileged to be on a luxury cruise? Once on board you discover the thing is a death trap and your "friend" a tyrant?

Since promising myself never to do it again after Captain Cox tried to asphyxiate me with a carbon monoxide leak from his new pride and joys outboard well, I was stupid enough to agree. This time it was SV Phar Lap from Southport to Bobin Head. Let's just call her "Knox Revenge"!




My first requests where simple.

One: put some boicide fuel treatment in the diesel tanks. NO!!! The owner argued he had the tanks removed, cleaned, and the fuel systems were spotless. Likewise, he claimed the engine had been fully serviced.

Two: fill and run out the fresh water tanks a few times to ensure we had an adequate supply of potable water. NO. I was NOT to fill the tanks. He had a water maker. I did anyway.

Before even actually getting to the yacht I had to explain that a hybrid ocean racer was too much for the owner's physical disabilities. On the yacht the list started with me explaining that his VHF radio did not work. It being an essential item. The list is endless. Despite him expecting me to sail straight to sea almost NOTHING on the boat functioned.

After the fiasco it took to get out the heads - noting I had requested at least another week to prepare her - the boat broke down a few hours down the coast streaming into a light southerly wind. Guess what? A fuel line blockage typical of a boat with a fungal infection alge bloom and debris in the tank getting swished around in open water. Towed back to Port.





Next day, I identified the problem and for the moment had the engine running properly. Owner phones me, I tell him the news and he jumps down my neck that the issue was still that the 15 kg fishing line we were trolling had stopped and was still fouling his 70 hp Yanmar.



Never did find the water maker let alone see if it worked. Due serious safety concerns I booked a hire car home. So do you also need to know about how the island cabinet in the salon was not secured and flew across at sea nearly breaking my leg?

There have been many tales of disasterous yacht deliveries on the forum and your tale was certainly headed for disaster. Hiring a car to drive home might have saved your life.

I have done eight, four of which were with the owner (bailed out on two after three days), three of them on yachts I owned (two when just bought, one when just sold) and one for my boss (a near disaster).

If a seller is not prepared to participate in the delivery, warning bells should ring, likewise with a new owner.

The worst thing that happened on deliveries of my yachts was a raw water pump impeller failure just before exiting over the Wide Bay Bar. I had a spare so we were only delayed by an hour. Those three deliveries were a delight.

So my experience indicates that deliveries are a good thing to stay away from except if it is your yacht and mandatory if it is a yacht you have just bought.

Thanks for posting your tale and therein the lesson be learnt.

Sympathize Cisco. On a small scale, when I was yacht broker contracting, as an underling, I got given the job of delivering a 22ft boat Sydney Harbour to Pittwater. Two tanks of fuel for outboard. More than enough said owner When I got onboard it was very poor shape. Motored out heads and headed north due to head wind and lack of time. At Long Reef motor stopped, first tank of fuel dry. Connected second tank and pulled starter cord which promptly snapped. Rotted through. So no more motor. I called head quarters to get a tow. Nup, too busy. So step 2 rig its sails. Surprise surprise no sheets. Called HQ again. Reply was "can't you rig something and sail it". Ok then. Had to use the anchor line as main sheet, then using main only, with hence no upwind ability, tacked 100 times for hours and hours to get to Pittwater making 1 knot against the swell and often going backwards. Finally got there in the dark with no nav lights. The second tank of fuel would have run out too if the motor didn't die before I got there no doubt. So much for the owners "more than enough". If I had some beers it would have been ok. At least I got paid!

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cisco said..
There have been many tales of disasterous yacht deliveries on the forum and your tale was certainly headed for disaster. Hiring a car to drive home might have saved your life.

I have done eight, four of which were with the owner (bailed out on two after three days), three of them on yachts I owned (two when just bought, one when just sold) and one for my boss (a near disaster).

If a seller is not prepared to participate in the delivery, warning bells should ring, likewise with a new owner.

The worst thing that happened on deliveries of my yachts was a raw water pump impeller failure just before exiting over the Wide Bay Bar. I had a spare so we were only delayed by an hour. Those three deliveries were a delight.

So my experience indicates that deliveries are a good thing to stay away from except if it is your yacht and mandatory if it is a yacht you have just bought.

Thanks for posting your tale and therein the lesson be learnt.

Totally on staying away. I should have known better from the start. Even when he first contacted me, the first thing I informed the 250kg owner with chronic mobility issues that a quasi ocean racer was NOT suited to his disabilities. This included informing him that a friend had suffered injuries falling from the companionway stairs of a similar Jenneau and the steps were not made to hold anyone over 100kg and known to fail. Likewise getting around the oversized wheel would be difficult and the steering position uncomfortable.

Sad thing was after a few days on the boat his medical conditions had messed him up so bad he couldn't get off the boat and make the walk off the marina. We almost had to phone an ambulance rescue team. Eventually he crawled down the transom and flopped into a dinghy, rolling onto the wharf closest the gate. So what was I supposed to do if he fell in the water? Life jacket or not?

I also didn't doubt once that he would not comfortably fit in the toilet. Saddest thing I have seen at sea is him naked sitting on his bunk moaning in pain after pissing on the floor. I am not going to bother describing the odour as the imagery is traumatic enough. In passing - No - his big yacht had not extended the pitiful length of his penis.

My experience was not a delivery but the 2013 Lord Howe rally.
A mate and I had worked up on Morning Bird and a month or so from departure his father in law passed away in the UK. He and family would not be back in time for Lord Howe.
A Cole 43 owner heard of my dilemma and asked if I would skipper his boat to Lord Howe. I jumped at the idea, a 43ft S&S shaped boat that had many years before done a few major races including a Hobart would be an ideal MB replacement.
We had to relocate the Cole from Middle Harbour to Newcastle a bit more than a week before departure to Lord Howe. By the time we got to Newcastle I had a list as long as your arm of essential repairs. No worries says the owner, boat out of the water at Noakes Newcastle for the work to be done.
While it was on the slip the owner told me of some work he had had done on the quadrant. On looking at the rudder I realised the original skeg hung rudder had been replaced with a massive spade rudder. It was maybe a metre longer than the original and unsupported below the remains of the skeg.
The quadrant work had resulted in the rudder and its post having dropped a few cm. Not knowing the boat I queried the shipwright who was adamant that the rudder was fine.
OK. At the departure time I'm onboard with the owner (who despite owning the boat for 10 or more years was on his first non coastal passage) and his mate who wasn't a sailor. The other two crew who we had worked up with on the Newcastle passage had pulled out.
We departed Newcastle about midday. Later at 1700 we were 60 or so nm out in beautiful weather, nice breeze and maybe a metre swell and no sea. I go down below to have a rest as I was to have the first watch. I'm snoozing and I hear 'Don't panic, Don't panic' from the owner.
I rush up and the top rudder post mount on the lazarette seat has broken free and the top of the rudder post is moving in circles. ****. We are still sailing along so I stopped the boat, dropped the sails and took the load off the rudder.
Because the rudder had dropped down with the quadrant work the rudder post, which should have been hard up in the top mount, was 3-4 cm down and therefore had a 'lever' affect on the mount. The strain had broken three of the four bolts holding the mount and, when I first saw it, the top of the rudder post was making circles of about 5cm diameter. By stabilising the boat we reduced it to a couple of centimetres movement, except as the boat lurched occasionally the rudder post would move hard over.
The only S&S34 lost at sea I knew of, Morning Tide, had sunk for exactly this reason. Its owner, Alan Fenwick, told me a previous owner had extended the S&S skeg hung rudder by a couple of feet but with no additional support below the skeg. Alan told me that after a savage knockdown the post had broken the skeg pintles and the rudder post movement broke the tube. When they found the tube broken away they couldn't slow the flood. They declared a Mayday and watched the yacht sink from the rescue helicopter.
I had visions of the Cole 43 rudder tube breaking below decks (at least on the S&S you can get to it, on the Cole it was much more difficult) and we would need rescuing.
To the owners credit he became a contortionist and secured the mount from underneath while I did the above deck bit.
Once he was finished with the jury rigged repair he looked at me with expectations we would continue to Lord Howe 350 nm away.
We went back to Newcastle.
I told myself to never sail on a yacht that has had a rudder modified from the original design.

@Trek & Morning Bird,

Least we are left with some great yarns. I enjoyed reading yours!

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MorningBird said..
My experience was not a delivery but the 2013 Lord Howe rally.
A mate and I had worked up on Morning Bird and a month or so from departure his father in law passed away in the UK. He and family would not be back in time for Lord Howe.
A Cole 43 owner heard of my dilemma and asked if I would skipper his boat to Lord Howe. I jumped at the idea, a 43ft S&S shaped boat that had many years before done a few major races including a Hobart would be an ideal MB replacement.
We had to relocate the Cole from Middle Harbour to Newcastle a bit more than a week before departure to Lord Howe. By the time we got to Newcastle I had a list as long as your arm of essential repairs. No worries says the owner, boat out of the water at Noakes Newcastle for the work to be done.
While it was on the slip the owner told me of some work he had had done on the quadrant. On looking at the rudder I realised the original skeg hung rudder had been replaced with a massive spade rudder. It was maybe a metre longer than the original and unsupported below the remains of the skeg.
The quadrant work had resulted in the rudder and its post having dropped a few cm. Not knowing the boat I queried the shipwright who was adamant that the rudder was fine.
OK. At the departure time I'm onboard with the owner (who despite owning the boat for 10 or more years was on his first non coastal passage) and his mate who wasn't a sailor. The other two crew who we had worked up with on the Newcastle passage had pulled out.
We departed Newcastle about midday. Later at 1700 we were 60 or so nm out in beautiful weather, nice breeze and maybe a metre swell and no sea. I go down below to have a rest as I was to have the first watch. I'm snoozing and I hear 'Don't panic, Don't panic' from the owner.
I rush up and the top rudder post mount on the lazarette seat has broken free and the top of the rudder post is moving in circles. ****. We are still sailing along so I stopped the boat, dropped the sails and took the load off the rudder.
Because the rudder had dropped down with the quadrant work the rudder post, which should have been hard up in the top mount, was 3-4 cm down and therefore had a 'lever' affect on the mount. The strain had broken three of the four bolts holding the mount and, when I first saw it, the top of the rudder post was making circles of about 5cm diameter. By stabilising the boat we reduced it to a couple of centimetres movement, except as the boat lurched occasionally the rudder post would move hard over.
The only S&S34 lost at sea I knew of, Morning Tide, had sunk for exactly this reason. Its owner, Alan Fenwick, told me a previous owner had extended the S&S skeg hung rudder by a couple of feet but with no additional support below the skeg. Alan told me that after a savage knockdown the post had broken the skeg pintles and the rudder post movement broke the tube. When they found the tube broken away they couldn't slow the flood. They declared a Mayday and watched the yacht sink from the rescue helicopter.
I had visions of the Cole 43 rudder tube breaking below decks (at least on the S&S you can get to it, on the Cole it was much more difficult) and we would need rescuing.
To the owners credit he became a contortionist and secured the mount from underneath while I did the above deck bit.
Once he was finished with the jury rigged repair he looked at me with expectations we would continue to Lord Howe 350 nm away.
We went back to Newcastle.
I told myself to never sail on a yacht that has had a rudder modified from the original design.

Extending the Rudder for a metre is an unbelievably long extension. What were they thinking? Lucky if it didn't go deeper than the Keel?

Apparently the North Shore 38 that I bought had the lower rudder bearing on the skeg give way on a delivery voyage from Melbourne to Lake Macquarie resulting in a lot of water ingress which killed the batteries and required a rescue tow and urgent pump out and repairs in Bega. Worst part was that the purchase survey had indicated the very worn/loose bearing and the new owner paid for installation of a new one which was never installed.

Even though the 38s have a good skeg hung rudder the first thing I did when I bought the boat was to extend the standard bulkhead which already extends two thirds of the way across the boat from the foot of the starboard quarter berths and across between the quadrant and engine all the way to the hull and deck on the port side plus fill around all the apertures for wiring, exhaust throttle cables, bilge pump...Will feel much better when I finally get it to sea. Furthermore when I took delivery the emergency rudder apparatus appeared very non-standard/dodgy so I had to remake that as well. The boat had spent 14 years sailing around Lake Macquarie and neither of the two perfectly good spinnakers on board had ever been used by either of the 2 POs although the original owner made annual trips to the Whitsundays from Melbourne for over 10 years. A lot of people simply don't venture offshore and don't know the difference between a boat prepared for Blue Water sailing and a weekender much less understand how to fix anything or recognise suspect engineering. Going to be a lot more people who don't recognise suspect engineering and can't fix things in the future as most Marinas no longer allow you to work on your own boat .

Luxury!!!!

In the 1800s the racing yacht Mignonette was being delivered to Aus when she sank. The captain, mate and cabin boy ended up
in the dinghy for a while...until they got hungry and then the cabin boy became the evening meal. We have it too easy these days. How are kids going to learn about life at sea if no one eats them ?

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Chris 249 said..
Luxury!!!!

In the 1800s the racing yacht Mignonette was being delivered to Aus when she sank. The captain, mate and cabin boy ended up
in the dinghy for a while...until they got hungry and then the cabin boy became the evening meal. We have it too easy these days. How are kids going to learn about life at sea if no one eats them ?

Lol. Read my profile and have a good look at my avatar. I have reason to believe the taste is more like veal than pork? Noting the vital part is the hydration from the blood.

Beware of COVID. Captain Tom Dudley ended up dying of bubonic plague with he contracted through rats in the long drop of his Balmain workshop.

So the situation turned out to be exactly what I expected. The new owner is a dangerous narrcist who wanted to show me up. Clearly another sad little man who needs to compensate for the size of his dysfunctional penis?

I never once held myself out to be a professional delivery skipper. He asked me onboard for no other reason than to show off a death trap anyone who was not a "friend" would have avoided.



Seems also my suspicions of the yacht having been submerged and no maintenance since to the systems was also correct. Again, nothing in the yacht worked from the VHF to navigational equipment, the fuel system was contaminated, the floorboards rotten and fixtures unsecured causing me injury both from a broken floorboard and flying cabinet, then failures in everything from the AC system to the plumbing and refrigeration.....,,,,,