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...
