BBC ‘Inside Out’ (South West) Mon 16 Jan asks: Did a yacht delivery company pressurise Devon men into sailing in dangerous conditions?

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

I’ve been contacted by this lady Wendy Wood with the following information which seems to me to be worth highlighting on my personal blog.

These are entirely her words:

In December 2006 my brother, a yacht delivery skipper, and his two crew were lost at sea during a hurricane off the coast of Oregon, USA.  I believed that these three men died because they were forced to proceed up the Oregon coast against their better judgement and experience. Threats of non-payment and purposely being fed misinformation concerning the weather ahead by the company forced them to continue.

In my possession I had a trail of emails that were sent between my brother and his employer, Reliance Yacht Management/Deliveries, based locally to Southampton supporting this.  The emails showed a total disregard on the part of Reliance Yacht Management for the care and safety of my brother and his crew.

In September 2010, I was successful in a civil action against the company before Master Kay, Admiralty Court, Royal Courts of Justice.  Master Kay slated the practice and negligence of Reliance Yachts and in particular the Director, Nick Irving.

It was only after this court action that it came to light that two other skippers, recruited by this company, had also died in similar circumstances after being forced to proceed on a trip that was deemed dangerous.  Thankfully the crews on these two boats were rescued at the last moment but not the skippers.

It also came to light that Nick Irving had 4 other court judgements against him which have never been settled as mine never has.  To avoid paying these judgements, the company is closed and restarted in other similar names.  In fact, the Director has recently attempted to close Reliance Yacht Deliveries, the company we successfully took to court, without any attempt at settling the judgement.  The closure has been suspended due to an appeal lodged by my lawyer who is still attempting to get settlement.

The BBC has taken up this story and on Monday 16 January, the full 30 minutes of the regional programme Inside Out is being dedicated to these tragedies and the disgraceful and despicable practices of Reliance Yachts and the Director, Nick Irving.  The programme will be shown at 7.30 p.m. on BBC1 South, BBC South West regionally or SKY Channel 984.

I am writing in the hope that you can bring this programme to the attention of your readers/members in the hope that word will spread of the dangers of working for unscrupulous companies such as this and the tragic outcomes that can happen for unprotected and unsuspecting skippers and crew.  My family and I have suffered 5 traumatic years trying to highlight these practices and our wish is to avoid another family the pain and suffering that we have had.

Kind regards, Wendy Wood

•••

I have Wendy’s contact details and also a copy of the Court Judgement which makes fascinating reading.

 

Bonkers, cheerful, quirky and fun

http://dalesdesigns.net/hand-dancing.htm

Ear! Ear! Wot ‘ave we ‘ere?

Something a bit peculiar happened earlier this afternoon. I was walking to my car with my mobile phone earpiece in situ in my left ear, switched on but not talking to anyone. Suddenly I thought a big bug had found its way in as I heard this almighty buzzing or clicking sound and I slapped at my ear and ripped the earpiece out wondering what on earth it was. Immediately afterwards I could hear really clearly, the wind felt as though it was tearing through my ear, sounds were much sharper and I started to feel a dull ache.

Now I can hear really clearly, the dull but nonetheless quite painful ear ache I had immediately afterwards has gone completely and I’m still trying to understand exactly what’s happened.

Any ideas?

 

Will I ever live down this bit of RNLI fun at the London Boat Show?

The RNLI is a brilliant charity and its crews and volunteers are so courageous and, it seems, the organisation is keen on a joke or three at others’ expense!!

This is a little moment shared with the RNLI at the terrific Tullet Prebon London International Boat Show yesterday. It’s all the fault of my friend Graham Blair! I’ll let you decide whether this should remain simply as a personally blogged photo or should it go on my PR Works page for further ridicule?

If you’re going to the Show, pop by their stand and you too can get snapped! You can find the RNLI on stand B37.

Peta at the helm!

My big sister, the Artist

My beautiful, wise and charming big sister Pippin, or as she is known in art circles, Rella, (after my paternal grandmother)  is an artist. She has always been an artist ever since I can remember. She is eight years older than me and a lot more sensible. She is married to a very successful and much admired in his field New Yorker called Sanford and she has lived with him in New York City since 1969. They have two delightful grown up ‘children’ and are now very proud grandparents – twice over – to boot.  Pip still has her lovely gentle looks (aged 64) and hasn’t lost any of her English accent, nor her inherent Englishness, which must make her very attractive and appealing to New Yorkers.

Pip used to send me little black ink drawings of beautifully drawn, exquisite teddy bears, fairy characters and dingle dells, elves and wood folk with her letters to me at Boarding School as I was growing up.  I adored these. She has just held her inaugural one woman show at the Painting Centre in NYC and I’m very proud of her accomplishments hence putting a link to a relevant website here and a bit of blurb that another website writes about her and her work.

•••

http://www.thepaintingcenter.org/member-art/rella-stuart-hunt

When Rella Stuart-Hunt read Ernst Mach’s ‘The Analysis of Sensations’ in which
he talked of parallel lines providing an illusion of wave-like curvatures and
swellings, she thought about the early paintings of Bridget Riley, her fellow
countrywoman. However, rather than focus on parallel lines creating an illusion
as Riley had done, Stuart-Hunt in her most recent paintings – she has had two
previous shows at The Painting Center – decided to simplify and refine what she
had been exploring previously.
While her previous exhibits were inspired by her poetry, in this, her first one person
show in the main space of The Painting Center, Stuart-Hunt focuses on
the purely visual for personal expression. She has chosen to explore the color
effects of interrupted color shapes on either side of vertical divisions. Using a
format that has been part of her work for several years, she has placed alternate
gray arcs (or swellings) on either side of an implied vertical line, intending to
subvert the simultaneous contrast that usually occurs. She has used grey
extensively for its tendency to change easily in visual color qualities when seen
in different contexts, an effect which occurs only in the eye-brain system of the
viewer. She hopes that the patient viewer will be rewarded by extended and
slower visual investigations of her paintings, creating a further sensory
awareness of her expressive intent.

It’s a knockout!

Hello. I’ve been meaning to write something for ages but have been so busy, I just haven’t got around to it.

I am still waiting on my results (Nov 19th) after spending half a day in hospital two weeks ago. The general anaesthetic was amazing and lasted me for 24 hours but then the pain started and oh how it hurt. Poor tummy. I was pretty uncomfortable for a week.

The staff at the Princess Anne Hospital in Southampton were delightful. I was naturally scared (a bit terrified actually) as I’ve never been to hospital in my life and have never had a general anaesthetic and was rather proud of the fact.

I felt a bit nervously tearful whilst waiting in a holding area with my husband. Then he went (even more teary-eyed now) and they took me through to the ward and we all sat about waiting for what seemed ages before a nurse came around with the huge amounts of paperwork, explanations of what was going to happen and surgical stockings.

So much paperwork - everything's in triplicate

 

Everyone explained everything twice to me (am I that dim-looking?) from the knocker-outers to the probe and prodders. The nurses were delightful.

Eventually I was wheeled through to the theatre, given my knock out drugs and woke up to find someone bending over me saying ‘hello, are you awake?”. What an extraordinary thing it is to be knocked out, lose all control and have not a clue as to what has happened in the intervening period! I had previously met two delightful registrars but whether it was they who were in theatre peering at my bits, is a complete unknown!!

Anyway, ’tis all done. Polyps removed, biopsy taken, fibroids found but they will shrivel up and dye on their own apparently.

Since all that happened I have thrown myself gainfully back into work which is great and I am really enjoying it. I’m also very happy having been back in touch recently with a very dear friend of mine – a real soul mate – and we have made contact again after many years. It’s a comfortable feeling. And my husband knows about it which is even more comfortable!

I’ve always faced new challenges head on: this time it’s bottom’s up!

Hopefully this is not too much information for those of you of a nervous disposition but for those interested in what all the fuss (yawn) is about regarding me going into hospital in less than an hour (EEK!), I have been having tests, scans etc over the past couple of months to see if there is a gyne problem as things are not all as they should be apparently (at my age .  I am going into hospital at midday today (Nil by Mouth since 10am and no food since 6.30am!) and at some stage this afternoon I will be trussed up with blow-up ankle cuffs, surgical stockings and given a general anaesthetic.

The specialist (whom I have yet to meet despite having had three appointments with him already but he’s never been around and I’ve always seen a deputy) will then fill me up internally with some gassy mixture, send a camera in and check to see if there’s an obvious problem, then possibly take biopsies to check for nasties. Hopefully all will be well.

I feel perfectly well but have never been in hospital in my life so am rather nervous.  I wonder whether it would have been better ignoring a small inconvenience rather than dashing off to the doctor who then said there could be a problem so let’s investigate further – that turns into weeks and weeks of appointments and ultra sounds, scans, prods and pushes and hopefully culminates in this….today.

I believe this is a very common occurrence for women but having never had to have a stay in hospital I’m ultra cautious. I’ve even had to bathe and shower in some special anti-bug pink goo for the last two days and this morning prior to going in. Tra la la!

NIL BY MOUTH/ HUNGRY *Deep breaths*!

Irish eyes are barely smiling (unlike mine after a great break) as country heads further into recession

We’ve just returned from a lovely relaxing week in Ireland. More pictures are on my Facebook page for my friends to peek at.

Our days were filled with friends, fun and far too much to eat & drink. We were staying with our farming and St. Killian (available in all good Waitrose stores) cheese-making friends near Wexford for a couple of days, visiting other long-lost friends for their son’s three-day wedding party in Co. Kilkenny (just on the Saturday afternoon/evening alone there were around 250 guests & 5 lambs roasting around a humungous fire in the garden + a brilliant burlesque singer plus a jazz band) and we spent one night with friends at the beautiful Ballaghtobin (another superb B&B http://www.ballaghtobin.com/run by our friend Catherine Gabbett whilst her erstwhile husband Mickey farms the family farm with his son Will (now aged 27!).

Not where we were staying but the Bothy at Kylemore Abbey Gardens. Kylemore is the oldest of the Irish Benedictine Abbeys

Making myself at home!

The Ballaghtobin breakfast table

I should explain that Mickey is an ex-boyfriend of mine from the very late 70s/early 80s but he is currently off rallying a 1920 Stutz Roadster in the Peking-Paris Rally http://www.pekingparis.com/index.html (Check out videos on ThePtoP10) for six weeks so we never got to see him on this trip.

A street in Galway City near where we stayed

We then went back to Carrigbyrne with Jules & Paddy (the cheese makers) for a day and another night and took off last Monday to Galway City where we spent one awful night in a hotel on the street and bejesus, it was NOISY! Awful room – either you left the window open to cool down and slept in what sounded like the middle of Piccadilly Circus OR you closed the window and overheated. Ugh. The only saving grace was knowing we only had one night there and thence to Clifden and the beautiful Quay House. http://www.thequayhouse.com/

The cake at the Calder-Potts post-wedding party

We go to all the best places - the pub at Inistioge with Paddy, Jules & Adrian

What a fabulous spot, guest house, owners, breakfast, view, room, etc etc etc. From there we drove out each day into the Connemara hills and swooned at the beauty. It rained every day but actually it didn’t matter a jot. It was still beautiful in the rain and the mist. I continuously drove the hire car each day for many many hours,  a VW Golf.

Beside the bone shaker on the Sky Road out of Clifden, Connemara

I hate heights and some of those roads are steep and narrow. I really had no option but to drive to give me something to concentrate on rather than giving Ado a hard time every time he went round a bend!  Now I am suffering with dreadful hip and back ache. Back in the UK and taking muscle soak salt baths combined with massage!

Half of our room at The Quay House. Fabulous.

I noticed that all the sheep looked like Shaun with their fluffy bottoms and black stick-like legs. Their bottoms are spray painted different vibrant colours to ensure the farmers can recognise their own sheep from so-and-so’s down the road. Beautiful old country houses mingle on the hillsides with run-down old cottages burning their peat, the walls running with water and the rooms I am certain smell of  damp socks.

Sheeps

The disturbing reality of the matter though is that amidst all the beauty and the romance, on Thursday it was announced that Ireland’s economy was facing a double dip recession when the Irish government announced that national output dropped by 1.2% in the second quarter of 2010. After posting an increase in growth in the first three months of the year, official data showed that the former “Celtic Tiger” sank into a double dip recession in the spring. They had it so good and now they’re paying the price. Everyone seems to be suffering but being with a lot of farmers this past week it seems they are hit hardest and it is showing in their faces. S_T_R_E_S_S.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside...

AN ASIDE…

As we left Connemara and drove to Dublin and our flight home, I came up with some potentially new material for Michael McIntyre. I can’t believe that someone hasn’t thought of it already but then again I expect they have… but you never know.

Baby changing facility. Place your baby on pull down moulded changing mat thingy. Push whole mechanism upwards and swiftly pull down again to reveal brand new baby. Voila!

COPYRIGHT: Peta Stuart-Hunt 24th September 2010.

Now let’s hope there’s a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

I want results!

As you age and things start to go wrong, you really don’t have either the time nor the patience to wait ages for the diagnosis nor the results!

After a rather useless visit to hospital two weeks ago for exploratory investigations which ended up with me being seen 50 minutes late by an exhausted specialist consultant who couldn’t eat because he was fasting (just my luck!) and no-one being around that day to do the scans, I was then given another appointment for some scans which I went and duly had done today.

Now I just have to wait a further three more weeks to find out if there’s actually anything wrong with me or am I just ageing more slowly than most!

Regrets? Yes, but only for being a plonker!

I am feeling so utterly fed up, angry and pretty humiliated this evening. I’ve been in Cowes all day. Firstly I arrive at my client’s ‘office’ in Cowes for a major meeting to discover that they – the client and a title sponsor AND the title sponsor’s PR agency are already in a meeting that I am not party to, discussing this year’s event and my not insignificant part in it (my retainer fee is paid for by the organisers).  So they all sat around debating whether I am worth having around, of some value and worth keeping. What did I contribute and do they want to hang on to me in 2011?  How did the agency get on with me etc etc etc?

The next meeting (which included me!) was with more event supporters/partners and the title sponsor and the title sponsor’s PR agency looking back at the success of the ‘event’. It was agreed that it was one of the best yet. This was followed by half an hour with the client – just me and the client telling me that although it was agreed by all and sundry that I had contributed a great deal and my input is valued and appreciated etc etc etc, they can’t possibly agree to my proposal to pay me the commercial rate I’m asking for to fulfill the role again in 2011 and 2012 – offering them a two-year deal on the same level of fee.

Firstly, I am apoplectic that the PR agency was involved in any sort of discussion about me and my future with MY client; it’s incredibly humiliating and embarrassing.

I waste an hour this evening crying with anger, frustration and tiredness. What a plonker. This has simply got to stop. Clients need to understand the value I bring to the party and stop this ridiculous notion that they can all tap into my experience, contacts and know-how, creative ability and results for a peanut and a half. I’ve really had enough of it now.  I throw myself wholeheartedly into everything I take on with a passion and drive seldom witnessed in others; the results are usually amazing, the feedback equally amazing. So why oh why is everyone trying to get it all for a song?

I will not undervalue what I deliver. If people aren’t prepared to pay me commercial rates to do the job, then I won’t do the job. Simples.

In the one breath I am being told that ‘so and so down the road is putting up their fees next year and all our dues are going up, so our overheads will be higher and we have to make some cuts somewhere so we can’t pay increased fees to you as well‘.  Well, why the hell not?

I have little motivation for the task in hand now given this attitude and the way the whole thing has been handled and any enthusiasm I had is quickly being eroded.