Last month we were sailing , as one does, between various places . Islands in the San Blas in our case
We dropped the
anchor and I go inside making some coffee as we are getting ready to go ashore and exploring the island and beach.
As I am making coffee I smell burning plastic and I think to myself ‘Its a little early for the local people to start burning plastic’ but still I look around not seeing anything , no smoke , no fire , nothing and the smell is considerable less pungent inside as it is outside . so I walk outside to take a better look as to where the smell is coming from and as I walk up to to nav station I suddenly see flames, not just the little ‘nice and cosy’ flames but the ones that are aleady 5-6 feet high licking the
bimini hardtop that is above the
steering wheel
I kinda panic as I look around and start tossing every burning item
overboard , half molten burning lines,
canvas that is burning , everything goes
overboard and at the same time grabbing a bucket with
water and start pouring
water of the still burning and smouldering
fiberglass ,
gelcoat and
electronics while burning the soles of my feet standing in hot burning and molten fibreglass &
gelcoat
The
Navico B&G /
Simrad V50 wireless handset had absolutely no issues with the water and happily kept throwing out flames so I decided to do the dumb thing , grab it , pull it out of the charger/holder and toss it in the ocean
Somewhere in these 30-60 seconds I must have called out ‘FIRE’ as when I looked up my 12YO daughter was there with the 6Kg fire extinghuisher ready to help put out the fire (Thank you sweetheart !! , you have no idea how proud I am of you !)
If this would have happened 30 minutes later , while exploring the island, or much worse, while we were asleep we would have been ‘just another
boating casualty’ on page 18 in a small black lined ad saying something like ‘tragic fire on a sailing yacht causes
family to die’ and some good soul would have started a ‘go fund me’ to pay for the funeral
I reached out to
B&G /
Navico through FB , messaging them privately to let them know what happened and after careful considration ( I assume?) they reached the conclusion that Rene would accept a new
VHF under the condition of silence
this is what they offered :
a new (my choice)
V60:
V60-B VHF Radio and GPS-500 | B&G Sailing Electronics (bandg.com)
V100-B:
V100-B B&G VHF and GPS-500 | B&G Sailing Electronics (bandg.com)
BUT under the following conditions :
in return for this replacement and as a matter of finalising this case and putting it to a conclusion we would like to get your agreement on the following points. We are required to get your approval on the below conditions in order to provide you with the offer for a replacement unit.
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If you wish to accept our offer, we request that:
1-
You confirm that the case is to be considered as fully settled and that you commit not to submit any other claim to Navico, either directly or indirectly through third-parties, in relation to the said case.
2- You confirm that you will cooperate with Navico through its investigation and provide information about the said unit, if available and identifiable, as soon as practically possible.
3- You commit to keep the matter, investigation and case confidential, and to refrain from sharing details about the event identifying Navico or its product(s) on your social media/blog/public channels. More generally, you confirm that you will not bring Navico into disrepute on your social media/blog/public channels or through other means.
4- Upon receipt of the replacement product, should you be satisfied with its quality, you remove the negative comments posted on our social media channels (including Facebook).
We would appreciate if you could confirm if the above offer and its conditions would be agreeable to you. If so, we would appreciate if you could revert by
email confirming that you accept the offer and its conditions, and confirm which unit would have your preference. We will ensure such is shipped to you shortly upon receipt of your
email.
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As you understand by reading this here and now , I ‘kindly' declined to offer as I could never live with myself if this happened to someone else . loosing their
boat or worse , loosing their lives
I so badly wanted to share our story , what happened and how Navico took their responsibility and made us ‘whole’ but instead they choose to try and shut down Rene by offering a new
VHF radio and shut me up , sadly Rene is not the kind of person that is easily ‘shut up’
And before you are all up in arms and putting me down , please remember this could have been you , your
boat and your
family , tos those wireless handsets as they are not worth it , even if it ‘only’ happens once every 1000 or more handsets , its
boats and lives that are at stake here
so be careful out there
ps were in a marina now where we have a great
fiberglass / gelcoat person that will make it look like it never happened , everything molten and damaged will be replaced with new
lagoon parts but no one should have to go through this
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