I do not want to get into he said she said back on forth on this incident. There are lessons to be learned from this incident. Do yourself a favor and learn from this expensive mistake. I do not want to bash the clients as they fully understand what they did right and wrong in the incident. They accepted full responsibility and paid for the recovery of the vessel.

The takeaways are this. The clients were on a schedule. They planned to be at Cane Garden Bay and pushed how much ground they could cover in the available daylight. Our boats are contractually required to be moored an hour before sunset. The guests pushed this and did not arrive in Cane Garden Bay until a half-hour after sunset. This was the first of two major mistakes that were made. The reason for the stipulation is to give you time in the daylight to get moored or anchored. Then to give you enough daylight to inspect the mooring or set. Given their timeline, this was not possible in the twilight. The second major error made goes back to timing and limited visibility. The mooring they chose was not a normal mooring. It was a private mooring of very questionable construction and condition. This would have been clear in the daylight. It was not at dusk. It failed shortly after they went ashore for dinner. Almost all marine accidents are of a cascading effect. Then somehow the boat drifted through the mooring field without anyone seeing or saying anything. More than one thing usually has to go wrong.

There are lots of other mitigating factors but these two items, coupled with the bad luck of no one noticing the vessel drifting was the root of the incident. One of the challenges for all of us in the industry is to overcome clients' complacency. Overconfidence in one's abilities will sooner or later catch up to you. Fortunately, this case ended with no injuries and only minor damage to the vessel. It was still a very expensive mistake in that the recovery bill was substantial and the client's responsibility due to negligence.