[shaman]

Declaraciones del Capitan del POLINA STAR III

1-Good Morning! I'm the captain of the 825 "Polina Star III". I have decided to say the thruth about the accident: We never had collisions, we never went aground; the 3th of July the boat lost in 5 minute 20 mq. Of hull, the stub and the keel and we suddenly capsized. We are alive just because we are lucky and because the crew managed properly the emergency.


2-Hello guys, in your posts there are a lot of questions to reply, I will try to reply to all of that and at the same time I will tell some "facts" about our story and about this building. I'm speaking about "facts" because the funny declarations released by Oyster can confuse the readers.
FACT 1: (why I know what I know)
The owner built the boat with the target to sail around the world, then he asked to me to follow the commissioning, to prepare the boat for this long trip and to choose and to organize the crew. I arrived in the shipyard in the April 2014, and I stayed there every day up to the launch of the boat in July, then I have sailed on her as captain about 10.000 miles: Southampton- Norway and back, Southampton-Las Palmas, ARC rally, cruises in Caribe, Antigua-Alicante (we never arrived).
FACT 2: (the crew)
The boat had two permanent crew member, to be able to manage this aspect I have organized a tourn-over of 5 people:
Alessio Cannoni
Dafne Mele
Giulia Visintin
Monica Rosini
Riccardo Salimbeni
during last trip the professional crew was: me and Dafne.
FACT 3the boat design)
the boat was not extended, she was designed and built by Oyster exactly as you can see in the pictures.
FACT 4: (the meteo)
we sunk in a sunny day we were reaching in 18 kn of TW with about 1.3 m of wave, sailing with staysail and 80% main sail.
FACT 5: (SHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCIDENT)
3 JULY 2015 TIME 14:07'
strong noise with vibration from the hull
14:07'15"
big flooding in the engine room
14:07'30"
water over the service batteries; all systems KO
14:07'45"
I bear away, the crew prepare emergency bilge pump, life rafts, grab bags, furl manually the stay sail, send the may-day by standard-C and by VHF
14:13'
the keel disconnected completely and the boat capsized, in that moment I was standing up in front of the chart table (deck-house) sending the may-day, the water was already cooling down my balls.
a fishing boat "fished"us after a couple of hours.
FACT 6:
we made a video from the life raft, it show the two rudders pointing the sky perfectly intacs, a big hole in to the hull; the relic float upside down all night long, the following morning we found the boat still floating about 15 miles from the capsizing point, one missing rudder, the other one partially broken.
FACT 7:
the CEO of Oyster knows exactly this story, he sent two people on site the following day, I told them every single detail of the accident and I gave to them all the pictures and movies that I had and that I still have.
The relic of the boat and the keel was rescued in October. This operation was a month-long, I participated to this operation and I participated also to the survey performed by all the insurance company's surveyors. We are waiting for the response.


3-I suspect the keel is identical and the structure as well, 8 months ago, when I was complaning about the structure because not convinced about the solidity of it, he wrote an email saying something like: don't worry, your boat has the same structure of the other 825, they are very strong! Go ahead with your around the world trip an enjoy your boat......after the accident, to reassure the owner of another 825 in building, the same man wrote to him something like: don't worry about your boat, the structure of Polina Star III was different from the other....
Thay changed version about it so many times that is difficult to say which one is the thruth. Anyways, they are trying to built more then possible in series, immagine that during the building I suggested to change the shape of the keel in order to move forward the center of gravity ( to compensate the weight of the garage), they used the identical keel, then they adjusted the balancement by about 1 Tonn of lead into the bow........one year ago, when I was complaning about that nobody care me..... now that the boat sunk and I show the lead into the bow to the surveyors they are scandalized. Enyway, in a heavy cruising boat like she is, you normally can put so much waight as you want on board....you would kill the performance, but you should not loose the keel. About the other 825: seems they stopped all the boats and they did some reinforcement inside, but as usual, everthing without share the details of their job. I'm in touch only with the owner of Albatross, the other owners or captains did not look for me......I supposed the shipyard convinced them by one of them fantabulous storyes that everything is fine and by" enjoy you boat".......one year ago they did the same with us.......