Boat Fire - Marlow "Too Elusive"

One out of the four had a competent crew on board. They were 40nm's offshore in 110 fathoms on a 60' yacht fisher. We had the captain's son on our boat. Ran back in 15nm's when they called us to help. The crew of four had to abandon the boat in a raft and rescued by a nearby boat when we arrived. They said the fire started in the engine room and spread so fast they could not contain it. The boat burned until it sank around 2:00 in the afternoon. The boat had a very experienced local captain and assumed it was well maintained.

Not liveaboards, they have a home in New Canaan CT and kept there boat 1 slip away from mine. They jumped in the water and many boats just went by them and it wasn’t until the 5th boat stopped to rescue all but 1 that someone else came back for him. They could not get to the life raft as it was blocked by fire. I’m told it was an electrical fire. The owners are a very nice couple and well to do. They had left our marina for a summer New England cruise.

You’ve got about 60 seconds or less to get a fire under control.

Even though I’ve taken the Advanced Fire Fighting course a couple of times, I tell my crew we are not fire fighters.

If you can’t put it out quickly with one, maybe two extinguishers, we are out of there.

First priority is the safety of the passengers and crew.

I’d rather spend the time securing that than attempting to fight a fire that is most likely is a lost cause.

My guess is that more often than not the cause of these fires is electricity, and most likely DC systems. Often I see vessels with batteries stashed someplace conveniently isolated (meaning hard to get to and often forgotten) connected by lengthy large cable feeds to a handsome electrical panel placed like a trophy case. Very infrequently do I recognize a breaker system at the batteries themselves, prior to that long cable run.

Thanks for the tip on the extinguishers, Pascal. I sistered my handheld units at the ER door and wheel house as well as the master stateroom with the devices.

I did as well, and I placed one in the master as an added escape plan...