[Great Red Shark]

Amazing the stories you hear at The Right Bars - boatyard workers are a well-connected view into some wild stuff. Stories that are some of the best stuff on SA at times. Can't use any names on this one - it's still kinda a touchy situation - as you'll soon see, suffice it to say I'm not providing any pictures - so maybe none of it happened.

Act One:

Rich royalty-dude from one of those screwed up Petro-nations where 95% of the populace lives in squalor while the head honchos reap gazillions feeding gas-guzzlers while trashing the land - you know, a place like Equatorial Guinea, for instance. Anyhow, Prince big-bux likes flashy stuff that goes fast (of the crumpet variety as well) and has a couple super-dooper speed boats, serious speedboats - one of them a 49' power cat with FOUR 1,150 hp engines was shipped out to the islands for The Prince's vacation ( like this clown really needs to 'get away from it all' ).

Any shipping company, somebody like Matson Navigation for example, is only as good as thier labor force, and upon unloading the boat in Honolulu (reportedly worth $ 1.9 million) the trailer comes unhitched exiting the ship and careens down the ramp out of control, across the yard and into a bollard-protected light pole, resulting in SIGNIFICANT damage to hull and machinery. Welcome to Hawaii !

Insurance geeks are brought to play immediately and the extensive repairs are made to the hull and stern drives ( a single drive unit priced around $ 55 K ) - and all in complete "must be done NOW !!! " direction from the owner's reps, the repair firm working near rond-the-clock. It's a major undertaking, but they perform.

Act Two:
Repairs complete, the boat is to be shipped up to Maui, but before it can be loaded it must be certified finished/tested and a sea-trial is the requirement. As this is quite obviously NOT your father's ChrisCraft, a big-name pro from the mainland is flown in at considerable expense to run the boat up - supposedly it's capable of well over 160 mph and nobody smart would touch the liability of getting it wrong. Boat is trailered to the ramp at Keehi Lagoon - which if you aren't familiar is a grimy industrial harbor under the flight path of HNL international airport, whose facilities are in an advanced state of decay approaching complete atrophy (although the annointed state employees have a new office building). Anyway the boat is splashed and upon firing up the first (extremely loud) engine the entire sit-on-your-hands-until-payday cabal of process droid decends and much hand-wringing and threatening ensues: you know the - " You can't run that HERE !, Where is your registration ? Florida documents ? Is that thing insured ? We need to see your flares..." - kinda bullshit - to the point one uniformed clown from DLNR was witnessed fingering his holster ! - ( over a powerboat trying to sea-trial, nice ). Welcome to Hawaii part 2 !

As you might imagine, this doesn't sit well with the hired gun, who, in classic "fucking Haole" fashion proceeds to run the "not from here" playbook with all the classic ingratiating lines; 'Do you know who I am ?, I fuckin' FAMOUS !' kinda stuff - which never helps, I don't care where you are. Some of the local boys that performed the repair work intercede and like most situations it's not what you know, but who, and in short order the boat is cleared to perform it's test - under the agreement that the pro shuts up and goes away asap. As luck would have it the trial occurs on a rare, flat-water day and a speed run ensues up the coast, faces flapping in the rush of a 140 + mph run - all systems check out save one oil-cooler, which is tasked to a mechanic with the pro and the boat loads onto a barge as scheduled for shipment to the Valley Isle.

Act Three:
"the Prince's People" are tasked with hiring a captain for the upcoming 'vacation' and the guy on the top of the list commands a fee of a boat-buck a day AND the stipulation that HE ALONE drive the craft if he's to be responsible for it - again, this in NOT a toy, but a very complex, very high-performance machine. This don't fly with the big cheese - "too expensive" and he want to drive his toy and when the # 2 guy says essentially the same thing (for a little less dough) and the third candidate is heard to say he declined no matter the price or conditions - he's caught this bunch's act before and is Not Interested. So, a young local skipper is hired for a couple hundred a day and he's obviously NOT going to tell anyone paying him not to drive - nor is he the least qualified to operate a 1,600 hp powercat. You might see where we are headed with this.

On the 16th (yep, last Friday) they splashed the boat and Price Poontang arrives in the Buggatti Veyron they flew in for him (those go for north of 2 mil, in case you wondered) with a bevvy of hired strange and they board for a quick run around Koohalawe and over to Lahaina - you know 40-something miles in an hour or so with lots of start/stop/blasting about, with a run of 150+ reported - wonder what the whale-huggers on Maui made of THAT !?

Another short run was made later and there was some engine over-heating so they came ashore, offloaded the guests and the hired-help was told to have the cooler fixed, and anchor off for the night, His Highness would bo down in the morning for another sortee. This was wishful thinking.

I heard they actually had to borrow an anchor because the boat didn't have one that could be trusted, but no matter because shortly after motoring out of the small Kihei facility with the 2 engines they could get started and achoring in 25 feet of water off a popluar beach the boat sunk quickly by the stern, - with the captian trying to call 'the prince's people' to find out HOW TO OPEN THE ENGINE HATCHES. Yep, they'd never checked the engine bay and in the course of the runs and manuvering in the harbor (with a following sea) had overwhelmed the bilge pumps. Stern-drives resting on the bottom, bows well clear of the surface, a message was sent to the Honolulu repair firm " Please call immediately, part of the boat has sunk" - classic, huh ?


True to form, the sunken boat was looted the first night - can't say the locals aren't resourceful ! First to go was the stereo and steering wheel.

After 2 days the boat was raised, and aside from secondary, cosmetic damage the surveyors found no failure in the drives, seals or hoses - the thing sunk from being swamped into it's many stern-vents, the ruling, 'operator error' and the bilgel pump's switch ? - in the OFF position - nice. Good thing they saved $ 700 bucks ! Y'all come back now, y'hear ?

At last report the boat's back on it's trailer for return to the mainland to the factory for re-build.

And you thought sailing was expensive - better gas up your muscle car Ed, The Prince wants to go Boating !

Gotta love a good Sea-Story, Aloha.

[Oxygen Mask]

um. pics?
or.....

[dreaded]

1

[svitale]

http://mauinews.com/photos/news/lg/524803_3.jpg

[irishman72]

http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/public/style_images/master/snapback.png' alt='View Post' />svitale, on Oct 21 2009, 08:14 PM, said:

HA HA! I halfway expect to see Neptune stride out of the water, holding a big ol' two-prong fork instead of a trident! Bwa ha ha!

Always makes me happy to see rich bastards take it in the shorts.

Now if only he would sink the Bugatti. . . .

[Prouda my Pickle Dish]

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LMFAO!

[R Booth]

If you hadn't found any pics, I would have then had to guess this story was a complete work of b-s fiction, perpetrated on us by none other than our own ProofReadWrite, who (gawd bless him) has a very wicked sense of humor and a talent for showcasing the absurd..........

[U20guy2]

If there were no stupid rich people the boating biz would be a very different program from what we have now. Thanks to these people - normal people can actually buy boats given the boat biz can afford to sell at minimal profit when they make a killing off folks like this guy.

U think boats and boat crap is expensive now - just imagine what it would be like if all the rich folks stopped buying - fixing and breaking their boats.

[HNL2ORD]

Classic!

[walterbshaffer]

irishman72, on Oct 21 2009, 01:17 PM, said:

Always makes me happy to see rich bastards take it in the shorts.

Why?

A-holes come in all shapes, sizes, colors & incomes. Yes, wealthy folks often exude a misplaced self loving arrogance, but that just means it's up to you to learn from thier mistakes and not become like that.

Great story, any photos of the hired strange? That really what we want to see, not some dumbass power boat.

[longy]

Another classic from a 'hawaiian waterman' Back when I was running boats around there, every Tom, Dick, & cocktail waitress had a 100 ton CG license. None of them had any real talent. I never did get a CG license because of the lasting impression those clowns left with me. The only major difference from when I was there is the amount of coin dropped.
Even the locals can do stuff like that, tho. Rodney I (carrie ann owner) once sunk his cigarette fish boat by insisting that the skipper keep backing down hard on the big tuna he was hooked up to, even as solid water came over the transom. At least Roney was seen still trying to fight the fish while he swam.

[irishman72]

walterbshaffer, on Oct 21 2009, 11:16 PM, said:

irishman72, on Oct 21 2009, 01:17 PM, said:

Always makes me happy to see rich bastards take it in the shorts.

Why?

A-holes come in all shapes, sizes, colors & incomes. Yes, wealthy folks often exude a misplaced self loving arrogance. . . .

Yeah, gotcha. I guess I might've better said, "I take unhealthy pleasure in seeing arrogance humbled." Few things on earth are more arrogant than a 4000 horsepower speedboat or a 1000-hp Bugatti ('cept maybe the people who buy them). So seeing all that 4000 horsepower sitting on the bottom makes me smile.

That said, I know plenty of nice rich people, and plenty of poor assholes. And it may be base of me, but I wish it'd sunk with Prince Jackass standing on it.



Rereading that, I see that perhaps I have an arrogant dislike of arrogant people.

[walterbshaffer]

The sad truth of it is that prince jackass will never know how good a cold beer tastes after mowing the lawn on a hot saturday afternoon, so you got him there.

Too, do you think he has any real friends? No, he doesn't.

So you see, you don't need to wish or hope for harm on him. He's taken care of that already.
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Number of downloads: 8

[R Booth]

My greatest wish in the after-life is to come back as someone who was fortunate enough to be born in a f'ng tent that sits atop 368 trillion gallons of pureed dinosaur carcasses............

[enzof]

Maybe "asshole" doesn't quite do people like the "Prince" justice.

[R Booth]

enzof, on Oct 21 2009, 05:37 PM, said:

Maybe "asshole" doesn't quite do people like the "Prince" justice.

Jeezis E, don't get me fricken started...........

[Monster Mash]

Its a good story, aparently it happened cause there's pics but there ain't no way a pickle fork ocean capable cat is going to do 165mph. This story if true has been embelished a bit.

[Great Red Shark]

Hey, I don't have a dog in this fight - speed numbers stated are actually a bit LOWER than as told, and I've spoken to a 'knowledgeable party' who thinks the boat WAS capable of nearing 200. Which I found hard to believe also, but 4,600 hp is some serious whap.

[walterbshaffer]

Great Red Shark, on Oct 21 2009, 06:38 PM, said:

Hey, I don't have a dog in this fight - speed numbers stated are actually a bit LOWER than as told, and I've spoken to a 'knowledgeable party' who thinks the boat WAS capable of nearing 200. Which I found hard to believe also, but 4,600 hp is some serious whap.

Fuck all that. Pics of the hired strange????

[Great Red Shark]

All about the bimbage for ya, isn't it ?

No, no spy shots of the 'entourage' - though there was report that the quantity and quality of said renta-companions was an issue of great concern for the 'arrangers'.

The guy sounded like a real winner.

Glad I had no contact.

[liquorpig]

Monster Mash, on Oct 21 2009, 09:31 PM, said:

Its a good story, aparently it happened cause there's pics but there ain't no way a pickle fork ocean capable cat is going to do 165mph. This story if true has been embelished a bit.

Any YahWho can buy a production go-fast capable of 120, so it's not a great stretch for my to think that a couple million $$ can get a custom to do 165+

[Monster Mash]

liquorpig, on Oct 21 2009, 07:38 PM, said:

Monster Mash, on Oct 21 2009, 09:31 PM, said:

Its a good story, aparently it happened cause there's pics but there ain't no way a pickle fork ocean capable cat is going to do 165mph. This story if true has been embelished a bit.

Any YahWho can buy a production go-fast capable of 120, so it's not a great stretch for my to think that a couple million $$ can get a custom to do 165+

Ocean capable?

[Brett]

Monster Mash, on Oct 22 2009, 11:31 AM, said:

Its a good story, aparently it happened cause there's pics but there ain't no way a pickle fork ocean capable cat is going to do 165mph. This story if true has been embelished a bit.

Have a look here at the Class 1 boats....... Most are quoting ~160 mph with 2x900hp. These guys are around +-50' length.

Here

http://www.class-1.com/teams.asp




Oh, and don't knock the rich arabs with their boats. One is keeping me employed right now!

[tuf-luf]

http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/public/style_images/master/snapback.png' alt='View Post' />svitale, on Oct 21 2009, 12:14 PM, said:

That is one fucked-up fossil-burner!

Ok, on three... everybody say "wah!!!"

[Bow Monkey]

Monster Mash, on Oct 21 2009, 10:13 PM, said:

liquorpig, on Oct 21 2009, 07:38 PM, said:

Monster Mash, on Oct 21 2009, 09:31 PM, said:

Its a good story, aparently it happened cause there's pics but there ain't no way a pickle fork ocean capable cat is going to do 165mph. This story if true has been embelished a bit.

Any YahWho can buy a production go-fast capable of 120, so it's not a great stretch for my to think that a couple million $$ can get a custom to do 165+

Ocean capable?

These toys can play in some pretty big seas. They can't get anywhere near their top speeds in big waves though. The guy down the street from my parents owns this thing, which tops out at about 165 mph with twin 775 HP engines. The thought of an unskilled yahoo driving scares the hell out of me.

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