‘Our charter skipper was too drunk to sail!’
Alan Peddar recalls a birthday charter trip ruined by a drunken skipper
It was June and we were in Italy for a family holiday, as my son had just moved out there with his girlfriend. As a birthday surprise for me, my wife had paid £450 for a skippered day trip from a local sailing school.
After a two-hour drive we arrived a bit early and started the day with a social drink while taking in the scenery and waiting for our skipper to arrive.
The excitement was mounting as we spotted him walking along the jetty and after introductions he said he had to pop to the local shop for a few provisions. When he returned it was obvious that his ‘provisions’ consisted of a plastic bag full of beer! As we hadn’t quite finished our drinks he got out a can of Tennent’s Super Lager (9%) and necked it as quickly as he could.
Once on board, in a mixture of Italian and English, we had a chat and I told him that we owned a small Southerly yacht and had done quite a bit of sailing.
On hearing this he was quite happy for me to take the helm so we dropped the lines onto the pontoon and motored out of the marina.
He didn’t want to take in the fenders so they were left dangling over the sides. Of course it wasn’t a problem but the boat would have looked prettier with them stowed and it would have been nice if the rest of the family had been given the job of stowing them to make them feel more involved in the adventure.
Out of the channel and turn left. I wasn’t paying much attention to the course we were sailing, just pointing in the direction he told me.
There was hardly any traffic on the water; the horizon was clear, glorious sunshine and we were heading down the coast to anchor in a bay for lunch.
Once in open water I asked him when we were going to get the sails up. “Not enough wind!” he said.
There wasn’t a lot, I admit, but it did occasionally blow up to Force 4 and the idea was to have a day’s sailing – even drifting with the sails up is pretty atmospheric, especially for those who don’t get out onto the water very often. Again, it would have been nice for them to participate in sailing the boat.
There were a few G&Ts being passed around which the skipper was happy to be included in.
He spent some time on deck flirtatiously (light-heartedly) giving my wife instructions on the basics of sailing. The rest of the time he was down below texting on his mobile phone and staying acquainted with his stash of beer. When he came up he was swaying and had to hang on to the stanchions to stop himself from falling.
After initially heading into the wrong bay we dropped the anchor and had a swim off of the back of the boat. Lunch was served and then the harbour authorities came along and told us we’d anchored in a prohibited area. So we moved the boat and the skipper disappeared down below once again.
Beyond a joke
I was already getting concerned about the situation, but when he came up to ask if he could ‘have a go’ at my son’s girlfriend I decided it was time to leave before things turned nasty. The skipper went back down to the saloon and refused to come up, saying he was talking to ladies on his phone.
I took over. We raised the anchor and set off in the general direction back towards the marina. I hadn’t paid much attention to our route on the way out, but I knew we’d gone around a headland. I hadn’t spotted any buoyage indicating undersea dangers but getting back was going to be pure guesswork. The skipper was asleep on his bunk and we were unable to find any charts or even a chartplotter. Navigation was going to be by eyeball.
After giving the headland a very wide berth we eventually spotted a series of masts behind a sea wall and saw a buoyed channel leading into the marina.
I knew it was busy with lots of boats but had a rough idea of where his mooring was and prepared the others to get us ready for tying up. This proved to be a bit of a challenge as we couldn’t find any lines on board – they had all been left on the pontoon! At least the fenders were already down.
When we reached the harbour entrance the skipper miraculously woke up and took over the helm saying that it was his boat and his responsibility. I would have felt much safer berthing the boat myself but I assumed that I would not be insured if anything went wrong so I let him get on with it.
He then spent 20 minutes in a horizontal position at the helm going backwards and forwards, narrowly missing lots of boats, getting screamed at by a very frightened family and crashing into a pontoon damaging its corner.
At one stage he dropped the anchor after confusing the anchor windlass control for the bow thruster.
All of this was witnessed by the port authority staff who came along to find out what on earth was happening. When we did get into an empty berth a member of the port staff passed us a line to secure the boat.
As we gathered ourselves to leave, the skipper sat on the helming seat and fell asleep. No-one could move him so he stayed that way until an ambulance came to ship him off to hospital to sober up.
I wrote a letter of complaint to the charter company and received a humble apology from the skipper and a full refund without any hesitation or quibble.
My son’s girlfriend wrote a report for the police but we have never received any feedback from them.
This special day out for my birthday could have ended in tragedy. What would have happened if the group on board had never been sailing before?