Powercat 525 Evolution-Our Experience of Ownership

Yesterday I cooked my first solar powered meal.
Today I cooked my second :

Here's my solar cooked moussaka with feta cheese topping.

I left it in the solar cooker for about three hours and placed teflon non stick pan liner on top to try and increase the heat absorption properties as well as protect the food from the sun bleaching effect I got with my stuffed vegetables yesterday.

It worked and an added bonus was that the cheese topping actually browned and crisped!!!

I'm going to try and cook some chicken legs tomorrow.

Lots to do and it is very very hot...

Spending time swimming, snorkelling, and just doing day to day stuff slowly so as not to get overheated.

It was around 40 yesterday!!!

I have set up our solar powered oven on the top balcony and we have bought a small oven/rotisserie/hob to use on the bottom balcony so we don't have to cook indoors.

My first attempt at cooking in a solar cooker - Yemista me Ryzi (except I didn't have room in the pot for tomatoes as well so I just chopped one up into the cooking liquid).  So this is green capsicum peppers, baby round marrows and aubergine, stuffed with rice and herbs and other things.

Judging by all the steam and the thermometer which is still rising in temp - I am onto a winner here

The good thing is we were a bit worried about how we would cope with the heat of a Greek Summer - but it looks like we will be fine - touch wood.

Monday is supposed to be THE DAY for a predicted serious earthquake (tommorrow) so trying not to be too anxious about that.

I suppose there are quite a few people who would be quite relieved if we were squashed flat in an earthquake

I used to think that the only people who don't make mistakes are people who don't do anything at all. Now I think it's the only people who don't make enemies are people who don't do anything at all LOL.

Found another fascinating quote about fib telling:

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. ~Henry Louis Mencken, A Little Book in C Major, 1916

I suppose it is just another way of saying that people tend to judge others by their own standards. Which is why I always get so surprised when people tell me fibs or decieve me. Or maybe its just because I'm a bit thick

Will take some nice Summery pictures to add to the blog soon.

We are getting a visit from someone next week (or are supposed to be) who is travelling on a seaplane!! I was hoping to get some interesting action photos of it landing on the water. But it will be landing at the airport instead

I suppose it's more sensible, but a lot less interesting.

for July the 16th 2008 which is the latest date we can expect a reply to the questions we submitted to the INFORMATION MANAGEMENT UNIT – FREEDOM OF INFORMATION of Cornwall County Council.

In the meantime we still hope for a resolution between Powercats Ltd and ourselves that we can both live with and move forward from.  Unfortunately as time moves on and more and more expense is incurred, the less likely that becomes.

Now this is how a business should be run.

Industrial Revolutionaries

Reynholm Industries

Company Motto
"If you're not sexy, we don't want you working here"

Sheer class.

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that our friends Justin and Sue were staying with us for a week. They were the ones who took the great pictures of the Turtle we saw while at Spartia Beach last week.

Here's a photo Justin kindly gave me of the Yacht that the charity he works for has recently purchased and taken delivery of.

As you can see it is quite a large boat and a very nice looking one.  I don't know much about boats in general and have only just been persuaded to stop calling sails 'flaggy things' but I am learning slowly.

Anyway we heard today that Justin and his crew had won their class in the Round Lundy Race in this yacht.

http://www.ilfracombeyc.org.uk/Lundy.html

Here is the link to the offical results page.

I congratulate Justin and his crew on this win.  They were looking forward to the race and were hoping to have fun but I know it is the icing on the cake to actually win as well as to take part.

Looks like his holiday did him good - he's only been back since Tuesday night and already achieving great things.

38 degrees yesterday and we wanted to go out on the water to seek sheltered private coves to swim and cool off.  There is a boat hire place near us at Aghia Kyriaki and so we hoofed it down to hire a power boat.
Alas the waves were too big for the boat hire guy to be hiring out. 
So we popped along to old favourite Antisamos beach instead. Not very sheltered and certainly not private, but the sea is wonderful there and once we paid for the sunbeds and beach umbrella we had a small patch of shade to hide under when needed.

With my trusty vivitar camera I donned a snorkel and ventured under the water to catch some video action of the fish at Antisamos.

But my snorkelling wasn't too successful.

Hubby kindly donated his bread from the swordfish lunch he had eaten at the Antisamos beach taverna and with young son in tow I went back into the water with the camera and without the snorkel.

This is the result achieved by standing in the water with the camera beneath the surface and while young son holds bread to attract the fish.

It is amazing how many varieties and how many fish wanted that little piece of bread.

There was a real feeding frenzy going on.

Update on the Powercats saga... frankly getting sick and tired of the whole thing, but our solicitor and barrister are working hard and our latest communications with the Cornwall Trading Standards Office and the Freedom of Information Office show a great deal of promise for a successful resolution.

I found that Mark Twain (the nome de plume of Samuel Langhorne Clemens) has some very interesting quotes which tie in wonderfully with my personal ethics and here I share them with my readers.

Always tell the truth; then you don't have to remember anything. 

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction after all, has to make sense.

The glory which is built upon a lie soon becomes a most unpleasant incumbrance. How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!
- Mark Twain in Eruption

Which should come first?  Above all a blog should be interesting to read imo.  I like lots of pictures and I like happy stuff.  It balances out the bad things and gives a certain equilibrium.

It isn't enjoyable going over unpleasant ground and so to add some light relief I like to include some fun pictures.  After all our problem with our boat is a small piece of our lives thank goodness and we are generally having a great time living on Kefalonia and sharing our lives with our wonderful new neighbours and lately some old friends.  Old in the sense we have known them a long time - they aren't old in either age or out look. LOL

So I'm starting with happy pictures taken by our friend Justin Cotter who was out here last week.  Turtles are not generally easily spotted by tourists, but we were super lucky to see some at very close quarters last week and Justin and his girlfriend Sue took some great photos of the experience.

Here's the turtle as spotted a small distance away from the menfolk as they fished off the shore.

Here the turtle has swum up to the jetty and is heading towards a moored fishing boat in the hope of finding some discarded fish.

Here is the turtle as it swam right under the camera.  I think this one was quite keen on being photographed!!!

These turtles are called Caretta caretta or loggerhead turtles. There is an organisation on Kefalonia  - The Katelios Group which is a small organisation working to protect the natural environment of Kefalonia. They focus on the conservation of the endangered Loggerhead sea turtle Caretta caretta.

Justin also took some photographs of our Powercat 525 in storage to show the progression of the corrosion on powerboat approximately one month on from our original marine surveyor's photographs.

They can be seen in the folder in my media on blog.co.uk at  New Powercat 525 - corrosion as on 16th June 2008

Here's one of them showing the rust on a pin which is part of the steering linkage equipment on our Powercat powered catamaran

and one showing the corrosion on one of the keel bands

I have my own theories on why the biggest purchase of our lives so far (apart from real estate) has turned to a disaster.  This is my attempt to put them into words.

I run a very small business.

It has taken many many years to develop it from absolutely nothing into something 'dependable' that feeds, clothes and waters the family and pays for a few little extras into the bargain.

It got to that stage because I spent a great deal of time and effort on researching what people wanted and then made a huge committment to making sure that I gave my very best to ensuring they were offered the closest approximation I was capable of providing.

This is a constantly changing requirement and a constantly changing and growing committment.  When you are dealing with market forces you can never sit on your laurels or the world just leaves you behind.

I am always taking little 'temperature' checks on my business.  There are numerous tools on the web to facilitate this. Here's one example from the Small Business Advice Service  - The Guide to help you Health Check your Business

Then there are books such as The Complete Idiot's Guide to Being a Successful Entrepreneur

One of the lessons I took close to heart was the damage that can be done to a business when it expands too fast.  Is an overflowing order book necessarily a sign of success? Or might it be a danger signal that businessmen ignore at their peril?

The cautionary tale of  Boo.com is remembered by most internet entrepreneurs with a shiver.  But their demise is educational to all businesses in expansion.

The simple truth of the Boo story is that their marketing was too successful for their organisational skills and infrastructure to cope with.

When the flood of customers arrived, they could not serve them appropriately and their entire business collapsed under the strain caused.

Here is a link to an article on the Cornwall Marine website entitled Powercat roars ahead.  It is also to be found on the Google cache of the Falmouth Packet but this time entitled redruth boat builder expands and date stamped as follows From the Falmouth Packet, first published Saturday 10th Mar 2007

Anyone seeking to improve their PR skills could learn a lot from the Powercats PR Initiative.  In the article they pay tribute to the help given by the Cornwall Marine Network which is the owner of the Cornwall Marine Website previously mentioned.

However I found and read this article recently with different eyes, having had my own experience of Powercats' product and 'customer services'.

These are the points which leapt out at me.

"we began producing Powercats in 1999"

"The company has just passed another milestone with completion of its 50th Powercat 525 "

"Powercats managing director Barry Philpott confirmed that he was on target to beat his goal of 36 motorised catamarans a year"

So according to the article;

Powercats at the time of publication in 2007 had been in business 8 years maximum

It had built in total - 50 Powercats 525

This year (2007) they had built more than 36 Powercats

So

50                                     minus                      36                                       =   14 
(total boats built ever)    (boats built  2006 - 2007)    (boats built  1999 to 2006)

which is on average 2 boats a year up until the expansion.

Going by those figures even if they had built ALL the previous boats in the year 2005 - 2006 it would still be an expansion of more than twice the production rate!!!

Now in my opinion a phenomenal expansion like this has got to be fraught with dangers.

As far as I can see, Powercats used to employ 2 people when they were the tiny original company, and according to the article (mar 2007) it  " now employs eight people and may need to recruit more".

So the production expansion from average 2 boats a year to 36 boats in a year (an eighteenfold production increase) was managed with a fourfold staff increase!!!

If they could manage all this and keep standards as high as when they were providing a much more leisurely product, then I think all business owners should be beating a path to their door to learn how.

I am so pleased with the way my son has taken to snorkelling He has also discovered he likes taking underwater video. I already included one of his shipwreck videos, but had to include this one as well :

It is a bit slow to get going, but as the shipwreck emerges out of the gloom it is a very eery moment.

There were two shipwrecks when we visited last week, but unfortunately another boat went down in heavy winds shortly after our visit.

We will be revisiting the site next week and we will get some footage of the new vessel. Don't worry there aren't any bodies or anything The boat was in poor repair and had been moored in the bay awaiting refurbishment, but alas nature had other ideas

It just goes to show that nothing can be taken for granted as far as the sea is concerned. Anyone who takes to the water must be able to rely on their boat being seaworthy.

When we bought our Powercat 525 Evolution from Powercats Ltd of Redruth Cornwall, we thought we had that peace of mind. We were very mistaken.

As we snorkel over the shipwrecks with our friends next week we can count ourselves lucky that the main inconvenience in having our brand new Powercat powered catamaran condemned as 'unsafe' and 'unfit for purpose' is primarily a financial one. We are having to pay to charter someone to take us out on the water instead of using our own boat, and we are having to pay legal expenses trying to get the dispute sorted out with the boat builders.

But at least we aren't having to pay to have it salvaged and at least I am not counting the costs in funeral expenses and bereavements.

Have you noticed how when you are young and you learn a new word it suddenly starts to turn up everywhere?

Or when you get a broken heart every song on the radio seems to speak directly to you about exactly your situation?

Well the same thing is happening to me now except it's all about legal disputes

Both hubby and son are members of the RYA - the Royal Yachting Association - they joined when they did their powerboating quals last year.  The RYA sends out a members magazine each quarter. 

The Summer 2008 edition of the RYA magazine had the article Legal Disputes and How to Resolve Them in large friendly letters on the cover.

Regular readers of this blog will by now be well aware that I am currently engaged in a nasty dispute with Powercats Ltd of Cardrew Way, Redruth, Cornwall.

To summarize for newer readers...

In February 2008 my family collected a new build powered catamaran direct from Powercats' workshop in Redruth.  Rather stupidly we were persuaded that a sea trial was not practical.

OK you can fill in the blanks yourself I expect...

9 weeks into Powercat ownership and we were very unhappy bunnies. 

New build Powercat 525 Evolution from Powercats Ltd - condemned as unsafe and unfit for purpose

End of summary - details can be perused at leisure on the link above.

So when I saw the article on the RYA magazine I was keen to check if we had followed the procedures reccommended.

The article was written by the RYA's Legal executive Mandy Peters.

But apart from not having a written contract, the other stages detailed in the piece were almost identical to the process we had followed.

So that was a relief.

Here's what we did.

1. Phoned up Barry Philpott at Powercats Ltd in Cornwall., to tell him what had happened this time - ie near miss situation due to complete electrical system failure in the dark in front of a bulk carrier.  We told him that we had no faith in the boat and we wanted him to arrange to collect it and refund us our money.

2. Phoned up Consumer Direct  to check what the general situation was.  Then double checked their advice.  Be careful when speaking to them as they are not able to give legally reliable advice (which means if they get it wrong and it costs you, you can't get redress from them), so double check before making a move, especially if it involves big money - they will tell you this themselves.

Our double checking involved a call to our solicitor who has done lots of stirling work for us previously.

He confirmed our thoughts that to accept a 'repair' under the circumstances was not reasonable and might affect our position regarding our decision to reject the boat as 'unfit for purpose'.

3. Followed up with an email (if in the same country a letter would have gone out, but from Greece email is faster and more reliable) to reiterate our position.

4. Engaged in dialogue to try and get resolution without recourse to court action.

5.Contacted Cornwall Trading Standards and the British Marine Federation to make our complaints official.

Cornwall trading Standards,  not because of needing advice, but because we had concerns that our boat may be the tip of the iceberg and we wanted to be able to sleep at night knowing we had done what we could to help prevent this happening to anyone else.

The British Marine Federation - because a nice commenter on this blog (thanks Justin) gave us a heads up that this might be a wise move and it did turn out that Powercats were members of the BMF which is a trade organisation.

Unfortunately following the correct steps doesn't always work straight away. So we had to consult our solicitor again who reccommended appointing a well qualified and reputable marine surveyor - who was very experienced as an 'expert witness' just in case we needed his testimony. This choice was made because it would save getting one report done by a surveyor (which we needed to find out just exactly what had gone wrong and what else was lurking potentially, or on a more positive note whether the boat wasn't as bad as we had feared - which would have been great ) who wasn't expert witness qualified, and then having to get another later if it went to court.

So that's where we are at the moment.

We have jumped through the hoops and the BMF and Trading Standards are doing their best to get this sorted out.  Trading Standards have organised for a European expert in Recreational Craft Directive and CE marking issues to come and inspect the boat and then they will make a decision as to their next action on their investigation of our complaint.

Watch this space...

I have finally learned how to use Youtube.  I don't know why I had such a reticence about it. 

But here are some of the videos from our lovely day out.

Here's footage of Jamie collecting a starfish from the sea bed for us to have a closer look.

Ahoy landlubbers!!!  Aaargh!!!  Shiver me timbers.

At last we got underway and onto the water yesterday.  
As previously explained on this blog we are unable to make use of the £37,000 plus Powercat 525 we bought from Powercats Ltd of Redruth and Poole, Cornwall in February 2008 as it was judged unsafe and not fit for purpose by a marine surveyor after a near miss incident caused by dangerous electrics on the new powered catamaran.

But we are not to be kept off the water that easily and here is one of the ways we managed to keep our promise to a young family we have known for years to take them on the Ionian sea  for a day on the ocean wave.  Well more like gentle ripple actually

 Here is a picture of our vessel

We chartered this lovely old caique (pronounced Keye ee kee) to pootle around the blue sparkling waters of the Ionian seas around kefalonia for the day.

The wind was gentle and warm, the sea was just cool enough to keep you refreshed without chilling, and it was crystal clear for snorkelling to our hearts content.

Jamie, the Captain is a marine biologist and he helped the littlest pirates go hunting in the ocean deep for the secrets that are there contained.

They found beautiful deep red starfish, a killer starfish, a sea cucumber, some urchins and a lovely cuddly octopus.

After lunch he gave an informative talk on the life and habits of these creatures.  They were placed safely in an onboard aquarium so that the children (and the adults) could get a close look at them.

Then we went snorkelling around some ship wrecks.

Original Video - More videos at TinyPic

The life cycle and the dangers faced by sea cucumbers (which start out with the disadvantage of looking like a lump of poo in the first place) was told in its tragic entirety.  Sensitive souls should skip through this part to the next picture which will be pleasant and calming.

Apparantly sea cucumbers have a deadly enemy - the pearl fish, which uses the sea cucumber like a sleeping bag and enters via the sea cucumbers bottom opening   The pearl fish is not a little creature, but is about 2/3 the size of the cucumber  

Once it has forced its way into the poor cucumber - it stays there as long as it can.  Which means it eats the cucumber's reproductive organs to keep itself fed !!!!  If I understood correctly the fish can then leave the cucumber and the cucumber can regenerate, only for the same thing to happen again, and again.  

So it seems to me that the cruellest curse of the seas - must be to be reincarnated into a sea cucumber.

Here we can see a large red starfish a killer starfish and a large mussel shell.

If you are interested in having this sort of experience yourself you can find out more on Jamie's website at http://www.ioniandiscoveries.com/