BOAT FIRE DRAMA
‘A putrid smell of burnt oil, fuel and resin filled the air’
First thing on Wednesday morning, my phone started to ring. Given the timing, I didn’t think the marina calling would be good news: a burst fender, frayed warp maybe... It was worse. Much worse: ‘There’s been a fire and your boat has been affected,’ the voice said. I know a fire on a boat is unlikely to have a salvageable outcome, but we hurried to the marina with thoughts of assessing the damage, recovering what we could and preparing for insurance company negotiations.
I mentally went through a list of what might have gone wrong on board, trying to think of any potential fire hazards or anything I might have missed in my usual leaving boat checks. For the life of me I couldn’t think of anything. My concerns were both for my boat and what further damage there might have been.
Nothing could have prepared us for the scene when we arrived – the fire brigade were packing up their hoses, there was a putrid smell of burnt oil, fuel and resin in the air and a few small blackened items of debris were floating on the oily water.
We searched anxiously for a first sight of Tern on her berth but the bay appeared empty, neither Tern nor the neighbouring boat were there. Maybe they had been moved, I hoped in vain, but as we approached the berth, reality struck, as I recognised the top of Tern’s mast sticking out from the murky water, the wind direction indicator still fluttering in the breeze.
It turned out that the blaze had started on the neighbouring boat, a fact that the Fire Officer relayed to us, which was the first boat in the row and the only one upwind of Tern. Once the blaze had taken hold, the stiff south-westerly wind had fanned the flames and Tern didn’t stand a chance, confirmed by the
pictures and video taken of the fire by the first onlookers.
We had to wait another anxious week until the salvage operation, knowing all was lost but still not quite believing it until we could see what was left of her. The reality of these images was chilling – Tern was literally burnt to the waterline with anything that wasn’t metallic having melted or combusted.
The remains of both Tern and the neighbouring boat were taken away for assessment, the insurance assessor confirming that the fire did start on the neighbouring boat. I was told that the remains of an electric dehumidifier were found on the steps of the forward accommodation but that it was too badly damaged to be confirmed as the cause of the fire.
As it was early October, Tern was still very much in commission – we had enjoyed the good weather in September and had been hoping to enjoy a few more autumn sails – these plans, clearly now very much a memory.
The insurance company acted honourably, but the loss of every item on board was very painful, particularly our handwritten logbook featuring the last five years of adventures. Sadly, many things left on board were irreplaceable.
In all the years of owning Tern, the routine when leaving the boat had always been the same – windows and hatches shut, battery master switches off, gas turned off at the bottle and mains lead unplugged and locked away. As I unplugged our mains lead the previous Sunday, I noticed that the neighbouring boat’s lead was still plugged in, as it often was when the boat was unattended.
If I had unplugged that lead also, maybe I wouldn’t be writing this article.