How quick can your day change course? As it turns out VERY quickly. I had my day all planned:
Make coffee, check out with port captain, settle marina bill, perform one or two ‘odds and ends’ chores, untie lines and move SV Island Summers to Paradise Village marina (an hour or two away).
I had just set the coffee cups out and was reaching for the espresso machine when I heard a low thump like an underwater fire-cracker or a boat collision. (0 seconds) I looked out the window and saw my dock neighbors on their bow and another bow very close to their boat . . . too close. Time to take a look.
A boat across the fairway from us, SV Chrysalis was drifting apparently without power toward SV Hiva Oa (my dock neighbor). The skipper of SV Chrysalis shouted that he thought his battery had exploded and he had no power. (15 seconds) I jumped down to the dock to get over to lend a hand when someone said there’s smoke coming out of the boat.
I ran back to SV Island Summers and grabbed our biggest fire extinguisher. (45 seconds) Hopping onto Chrysalis from the bow of SV Hiva Oa, I ran to the cockpit and was confronted by a cockpit opening to a salon filled with dense black smoke and smoke streaming out from the edges of an aft hatch behind the cockpit. I would have been at best spraying the fire extinguisher into the salon with no idea where the actual fire was. Opening the hatch seemed unwise unless I actually wanted to allow more air to what was clearly an out of control fire. Emily from SV Hiva Oa had also jumped on and we all had reached the same conclusion. Get off this boat! (60 seconds)
Paul, the skipper, was still looking for something he could do. But suddenly the smoke coming from the cockpit turned to open flame. As he dodged around the burning cockpit to come to the bow of the boat I saw his hair catch fire. (90 seconds) He shook his head and his hair went out and everyone called for him to jump off the boat. Finally he jumped into the water. Now it was a race to get the flaming boat away from all the other boats. One of the dock workers tried to pull the boat down the fairway by hand with a dinghy.- not working. The burning boat was directly off our stern, in the center of the fairway with a slight wind blowing it away toward the other side of the fairway. (120 seconds) Someone on a paddle board out for a morning paddle helped Aron, the man with the dinghy, tie the boat to the dinghy and slowly SV Chrysalis moved down the fairway burning. A couple of further explosions happened as propane tanks ruptured. (2-3 minutes). Finally some fishing pangas got lines on SV Chrysalis and pulled her out of the marina into the anchorage.
Eventually firefighters reached SV Chrysalis out in the anchorage and were able to put the fire out, but it quickly re-ignited and eventually she sank to the bottom of Banderas Bay.
Paul lost everything (his home, passport, wallet, glasses, etc.). He got onto the dock only wearing a pair of shorts. SV Chrysalis was his home and he and his son had worked on it to convert it to an electric boat. At this point maybe you’re saying to yourself “ohhhh…” But stop right there. Everyone in the cruising community modifies their boats. Many of us have done electrical modifications without any “official” certification. All of us have been on the receiving end of some unexpected mischance that has ruined our day. Boats break, systems fail. Generally we laugh about it later. In this case anyone below after the 60 second point in this disaster would have been seriously injured, after 90 seconds….
Boat fires are absolutely terrifying. Battery fires, even worse. There’s no time to think. Deploy all your emergency equipment as fast as possible and get away from the boat. Maybe the boat will survive, maybe it won’t but don’t be on it to see. Watch from a safe distance.
I’m adding a link to a video from our friends on GnT Sailing who were nearby when this happened.
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