Sailboat Grounds Off Bimini

[Pete7]

Originally Posted by svHyLyte

I hope those kids remember that what goes around, comes around--frequently in spades.

I thought a true salvage claim was worth about 8 - 10% of the value, if so the kids should be paid by the insurance company who should be grateful they got away lightly.

Pete

[doug86]

Originally Posted by Pete7

I thought a true salvage claim was worth about 8 - 10% of the value,

A pure salvage claim (sometimes called a merit salvage) can be worth much more than 10%, and also can be less. Much depends on the peril that boat was in, and how well the salvors did the job. In this case, I would say that sailboat was in immediate and severe peril. She was completely at the mercy of the forces of nature and likely to sustain damage if she hadn't already.

In general, around 10-12% is the average award in recreational craft - of POST SALVAGE VALUE. That is, they might get about 10% of what the boat would be worth on the open market as it sits on the dock after the job is done. If the boat suffered $20k in damage, you deduct that from the pre-event value (often taken as the insured value).

There is another CF thread going about salvage here:

[doug86]

Originally Posted by markpj23

Bahamas Chatter posting now says that a group of US college kids went out and got the boat off the bar..... and they're now claiming salvage rights!

The Triton News story, source for the thread, states otherwise:

Later in the afternoon, a commercial barge pulled her off

Perhaps there was two incidents?

[markpj23]

Wonder whose source is the accurate one.... since Bahama Chatter is just email reports from the field it may be unreliable... OR may be the true story. We may never know eh?

[TabbyCat]

Hi, Susan --
That looks like a pretty nice cat, though I don't recognize the type. I take it that they were not your clients?
Any idea how they came to be there? From the chart, it doesn't look like a tricky entrance.

I didn't see it go aground. We went through the channel, which is really quite easy, but a little narrow, on March 1, and it was not there. When we departed on March 5th, we saw it. So it arrived sometime during that week. The boom was lying along the port side, but otherwise it looked undamaged. We think it might be an Edelcat. It was still there, altough bit lower in the water, when we returned on March 9th.

Not my clients. Due to the lack of activity, I sorta wonder if it broke loose from a mooring & maybe the owners didn't know it has gone on a walkabout?