We watched as Limitless dropped her bow anchor and backed down to less than 100 ft from us and dropped a stern anchor from under the boat not visible from the stern. After letting out the stern anchor line and pulling in the bow line the boat reached its anchoring position and work commended on lowering the stern platform. Limitless' stern is about 30 feet above the water which is the level of the pool deck. Railing sections at the pool deck level had to be moved to lower and open up the stern. As the stern lowered creating a very large "swim" platform, a stair way on each side stern ascending to the lowered swim platform, became visible. Railings were then installed around this huge platform. At the aft end of the platform fenders and posts were installed to provide a dock for a large tender.
Shortly after all was in place a large inflatable from another mega yacht, Blue de Nimes with crew of four and two owners arrived. Limitless' Owners stood at the top of the stair while Blue de Nimes Owner climbed the port stair for formal greetings. The crew of Blue de Nimes remained on board their tender and two crew members of Limitless stood guard at the platform entrance between the the two stairs. The last time I had witnessed similar formalities was when I was an acting admirals aid for the Chief Of the Navy Civil Engineers, and we were visiting the Chief of the Taiwanese Navy in Taiwan. The current "visit" started just before sunset and lasted a little longer than an hour. Just before complete darkness the entire process reversed including raising the stern after the guests had left.
About mid morning the following day the entire process was replayed for the same guest. This visit again lasted for only an hour. After the guests left this second time and the stern was again raised to its closed position, Limitless retrieved its anchors and left the anchorage.
During that night it occurred to me that what we had witnessed was probably little different than when a medieval lord of one castle lowered his draw bridge to accommodate a visiting lord from another castle with his security troops. While the visit took place the visiting lord's troops remained out side the castle.
The high freeboard of cargo ships have not been a deterrent for Somali pirates. And, as I opinioned in an earlier blog discussing the high stern on Steve Jobs' 257 ft. Venus, line handling is much more difficult on closed stern boats than on open stern boats. While in Gustavia the day before we watched a nearly 180 ft closed stern ketch, Seahawk, maneuvering to stern tie to the quay wall. The wind was 20 nmph from the SE on the port beam as the ketch backed to port after dropping a bow anchor to windward in the harbor. Both the ketch and the harbormaster had large tenders assisting in the maneuvering. One of the harbormaster tenders passed a line tied to the quay wall on upwind side (port) of would become the stern tie berth. The line was passed to crew on the ketch on the starboard side of the stern. Crossed stern lines to provide more leverage on a stern tie is common. In addition to the freeboard being about 10 feet above the water the transom was raked. The passed line by the time the ketch crew was able to start securing it was rapped under the raked transom and the captain on a second level at the helm station unaware of this problem continued to back. The crew sensing a problem tried to ease the line so it could be flipped around the back of the reverse transom some 10 feet aft of the stern deck. As the line was eased it was sucked into the props and the engines stopped still 100 feet from the quay wall. Thanks to a great toss of a monkey fist to get another stern line to the quay wall and quick action of the tenders pushing against the starboard hull, there was no damage.
The probability of this happening would have been significantly reduced with an open stern boat with cleats at the aft end of the stern. In my book good architecture is where form follows function artistically. Castle sterns inhibit proper line handling and do little to improve a boats security.
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