Blog

Revelations is a balsa and epoxy construction and there are a number of places on the yacht where the balsa got wet and spongy. This is due to holes drilled into the deck for fittings and the people who did the work never plugged the drilled holes with solid epoxy resin. Over time, water seeped through the holes and the balsa then got wet. The result are "spongy decks" - extensive damage, lots of hassles and money to get everything repair. Despite paying people to do the work properly and later instructing Jacque Basson and Johnathan in Cape Town to once again make sure that it is done correctly - it was never done.

Here is Garth Walker from Trinidad starting to repair the damage. He seem to know what he is talking about and comes highly recommended. He opened the soggy areas in no time and will replace all the wet balsa.

Pursuant to a lighting strike on Revelations, we started getting quotes for all the repair work to be done. The list was long as most of the electronic and some of the electrical equipment was rendered useless. These quotes were submitted to the insurance company and they duly appointed a assessor to assist in this matter. I was hoping that the insurance claim would all be done and dusted at the end of our one month trip back home. But not so fast; the assessor now wants more other suppliers to look at the work and give their opinions. This will now cause further delays in getting the ball rolling and repairing all the damage.

I received some good news when I spoke to Sue earlier today - Britsie, her father survived his lung operation. Although still in ICU, in pain and sedated, the prognosis is that he will recover and is no longer in immediate danger. This is a relief for both of us as the stress about his illness was starting to take a heavy toll.

After a hectically busy time in South Africa, I'm back on board Revelations here in Trinidad. Sue is still in South Africa and will hopefully fly back here within the next three weeks. I say "hopefully" as there has been a number of developments. Britsie, her father is critically ill in the hospital's intensive care unit. The latest setback is that his one lung collapsed and he can't breath on his own. He will undergo an operation tomorrow morning and as it is, he is very weak and frail. In his current condition, the operation is very risky and we can only pray for the best outcome.

Whilst we were in South Africa, we launched an urgent High Court action against the people who bought our company. We were successful in our application, the judge gave us our company back and there is a high possibility that we have to delay our world cruise and return to South Africa and manage the company.

So instead of having a nice break, meeting friends and family, we had a hectic time. We mostly ran around meeting with attorneys and advocates preparing for the court case - the remainder of the time, worrying and visiting Britsie in hospital. So there is a high possibility that Sue will remain in South Africa and not return to Revelations soon.

We have been really busy the past few days getting a range of things done; getting our USA visas, meeting with our attorney, arranging capital transfers with our bank, starting up a new manufacturing company, buying a range of yacht related equipment, opening new bank accounts and credit card facilities, meeting and talking to board suppliers, negotiating prices and terms, looking for business premises, making a couple of changes (re-branding) of a stunning website, etc. We leave early in the morning and return back home well after dark as we need to get things up and running in the quickest possible time frame.

Tired and bothersome, we finally arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa at 14H00 on Monday. Whilst the flights from Trinidad to Tobago, Tobago to Barbedos, Barbedos to Sao Paulo was fine - the flight from Sao Paulo to Johannesburg was not. We have flown on hundreds of airplanes and every now and then, we would encounter what we called a "sick" airplane. As they shut the doors for take off, we knew immediately that this was yet another one of these sick airplanes. With little air flow and ventilation, air conditioner set at a warm temperature, the air becomes stale and stuffy. Whenever we find ourselves in such an airplanes, we always get sick within days after flying in such an airplane. So here we are once again, both Sue and I have a throat infection and a nasal drip. Then in addition, we were surrounded by no less than 3 mothers with their babies seated around us - these babies screamed non stop! At times, I felt like I was on the edge of insanity!

Communication received from the people (their attorney) to whom we sold our business, implies that we cooked the books (so to speak), misrepresented financials to them and as such overstated the value of the business. Well, none of this is true! We exercised due diligence and indeed were conservative declaring the profits actually made. Things like all the cash money taken out of the business were higher than actually taken into account, the donations and things we gave freely to churches and some welfare organizations were never mentioned nor taken into account - we also scaled down our personal expenses. If all of this are taken into account, the profits would even be higher and the company would be evaluated at an even higher value. Despite having been conservative, the company was evaluated more than double what it sold for. I wonder what the company would have been valued at had we declared every last cent on the above mentioned things.

So why would they make claims that the business was over evaluated? Frankly, I don't know the answer for this, but there are a number of possibilities;

• A disingenuous attempt to delay our legal action against themselves for not paying their overdue monthly financial obligation?
• Is it greediness, ignorance, lack of business experience or perhaps plain stupidity?
• Maybe they are not looking at the valuation process in the same way as practiced by business brokers traditionally evaluate companies.
• Perhaps they do not have an understanding of the norms and standards used by professionals who sell businesses.
• Maybe they want to re-invent the wheel how businesses are evaluated.

Instead of talking to the professionals in the highly specialized field of selling businesses, it seems they are listen to attorneys or accountants will probably only look at submitted financial balance sheets. As all business owners in South Africa know and commonly practice, financials reflect the least amount of profits to prevent draconian taxes being paid. Attorneys specialize in law and ligation - it is not their business selling companies which is a completely different specialist expertise.

Their attorney proposed to have the business re-evaluated and the new valuation (higher or lower) will then become the selling price of the company. Under such agreement, the new evaluation will replace the value the business was sold for. If the evaluation is lower than what they paid for the business, we will then settle for a lower sale price. On the one hand, if the business is evaluated higher than the sale agreement, they will be legally obligated to pay the new evaluation amount. We are most receptive to settle the matter in this way as we stand to make several millions more. But I wonder what these people will say and do when the new evaluation shows the company to be more than double the amount stipulated in the company sale agreement? How will this affect them? Where would they get the extra millions from? How will they deal with this huge financial burden?

Despite being wronged by their actions and seeming intentions, we need to remain human and have compassion - we certainly do not wish undue harm or damage to anybody, including them. Since this path will most likely involve a long drawn out process, destroy them financially and most likely also do damage in many other ways, in addition, we proposed an alternative solution which if accepted, will allow everybody to move on with the least amount of damage. However, with this counter offer, we once again bent backwards to accommodate these people.

Our conscience is clear, we sleep peacefully every single night without any ghost/s eating away at our souls for we have never cheated them in any which way or manner. To the contrary, in all our dealings with them, we bent over backwards and did more than our required obligations. Unfortunately and sadly I cannot say the same of them - but so be it. We extended the olive branch with our alternative proposal, a offer which ensures that there are no losers and which also prevents extensive harm coming their way. We are at peace with whichever course they take.

We will be flying back to Johannesburg, South Africa this coming weekend. We have a bunch of issues we have to go and sort out and we will be there for for awhile seeing friends, family and sorting out a mountain of outstanding issues. Booking the flights was almost a disaster and it took the best part of 4 days to sort it out. We originally booked flights from Trinidad to the JFK, in the United States and then on-wards to Johannesburg. After paying all the flights (there and back), we learned that we had to apply for a transit visa to enter the USA - which takes more than 3 weeks to arrange! This whilst the flights were for this week! Sue had to cancel everything and book new flights, this time a much longer route - Trinidad --> Tobago --> Barbados --> Sao Paulo --> Johannesburg. It will now take us almost 3 days of flying and stopovers to get back home.

There is a power boat race every year from Trinidad to Tobago and this year's race was held last Saturday. The race starts in the city of Port of Spain, Trinidad and after doing a small circuit shortly after the start, the boats then head for the first Boca (a narrow stretch of water between the island of Trinidad and a smaller island where the current runs very strong at around 6 knots on the incoming and outgoing tide.

The first Boca is around 4 nautical miles from the boatyard where we are and the Boca is only accessible by boat. With both the Revelations and our dinghy on the hard, we were desperately looking for a way or lift to the first Boca. The night before, we started asking around if anybody knew of a boat going there - but to no avail. We woke up at about 05H00 on Saturday morning an headed made our way to the waterfront - mere 50 meters from were Revelations is parked. The place was already busy with lots of people and boat activity, all heading to the same destination - the first Boca. But all the boats were privately owned and mostly full and after some 2 hours asking and looking for a way to get there, it appeared hopeless.

Then, at the last minute, a seemingly doped up guy of about 40 years of age arrived with his worn skiff which outboard motor constantly threatened to depart to the after life. A fee of 100 rand was negotiated and we piled in the rough an ready skiff heading to the Boca. When we finally arrived some 40 minutes later, we found the place packed with hundreds of pleasure craft in all shapes and sizes - all ready and waiting for the powerboats to race pass. It turns out that our doped up guy was not particularly under the influence of anything specific, it was indeed his permanent appearance and behavior - damage form years of substance abuse. Anyway, he was friendly and coherent enough to get us there safely.

Soon after arriving, the first powerboat raced passed and Sue managed to get some nice action photographs whilst I was taking videos. But with both eyes on the boats as they raced passed, I did not get one single boat in any of the video's I took (embarrassingly). This video footage is not mine - it was video recorded by another guy on a skiff close to us and on occasion, you will see us in the video footage.

On Thursday we decided to take the day off and go to town for lunch, few supplies, local sim card, a sander what what machine and to just take a break from unpacking Revelations for repairs to be done.

Very excited for the well deserved outing, we left at 10am for the bus stop just outside the gate at Powerboats where we are on the hard. The bus runs every hour on the hour to town, kinda a straight road. We've used the service the weekend before and were pleasantly pleased with the new, clean, ac bus. Only, on Thursday we waited for an hour and thirty minutes, no bus, in the heat of 35-40°C, feeling more like 45°C, humidity of 80+%, feeling more like +%. It's raining on and off, we are hot and bothered.

Eventually we decided to take a local minibus taxi, .... omw! A 2nd taxi had to be taken to where we needed to go, this time, a local car taxi, omw! We arrived safe to the hardware store, only, we got dropped off on the wrong side of the road, as in highway!

By now we are ready for anything, walking through a field of mud, we jumped the highway safely. Only to find no sander thingymajic. Back to jumping the highway, through the open field. Walked to the Market, it was closed. Sim card, .... long story, by no means off the shelve buy. Anyway, lunch was good ... roti.

Back to the bus stop. We found a bench, next to an older gentleman. Uncle Mikey. We started chatting, his got upper teeth and one lower tooth (from what I could see), this tooth flapped like our South African flag on Revelations in the wind. His 70, saw 3 buses .... just now, 3, ... so we wait. Uncle Mikey gave us a "steeldrum" mimic performance,.... see, he leads the band. He then gave his own performance as leader of the band, to cute, all the steps and rhythm with his arms going much better. He has a flag, no drum.

After an hour, no bus, ... we go back to taxi.

We arrived back at Revelations just after 5pm, drained and exhausted, .......with only a simcard

The sail people from Ullmann came around earlier yesterday morning and removed the mainsail, stack pack and jib. So Revelations is now bare pole without any sails. I will be going around to their loft later today and discuss the various bits of work which needs done. The also took the torn spinnaker which is beyond repair, they will use this to work out the dimensions for a new spinnaker. A mast rigger came around and spend about 2 hours trying to remove the broken topping lift which fell back into the mast - only partly successful. The remainder of the topping lift is stuck higher up in the mast, so we will have to see whether it can be done. I also learned that the electrical wires within the mast are not in tubes or channels - this means that the up and down movement of ropes will eventually chafe through the wires. To fix this, the mast must be taken down - why the job was not done right first time by Sparcraft in Cape Town beats me.

In the interim, Sue has been packing everything within Revelations into boxes for soon the boat will be swarming with workers doing all sort of repairs. She should be more or less done by Friday. Shit, we have a lot of stuff on board!

We are not posting much as we are trying to sort out all the things which need to be done on Revelations. It is a low process as there are a number of suppliers and tradesmen involved. Thus far, we met and have spoken to a couple of these suppliers and we now await their quotes for getting repairs done - a large list of over 70 items (and growing). The progress is slow and we have to wait to meet everybody and then wait some more for their quote. In the interim, we are emptying the entire boat and packing everything into boxes to be stored.

We have been smacking our lips ever since we heard of the various Indian curry roti's here in Trinidad. We went to get our share yesterday afternoon but was bitterly disappointing when we were told that they have old out. Damn! So we went back today, but much earlier and as it turned out, we almost lot out again - we received the last two plates of food. Pleased to be served, we at down and had a delicious lunch - me; roti with duck curry, Sue; roti with chicken curry. Man, it was great and tasted delicious!!! Right there and then, we pre-paid for another two dishes of roti tomorrow as there was no way in hell we were going to be disappointed yet again.

The next minute, this Green Iguana makes it's appearance and comes trapping past. The photograph is quite deceiving - but each floor tile is 300 x 300 mm - making this stunning creature at almost 1200 mm in length! And there was even a bigger one in a tree nearby. Sue almost be-kakked (shat) herself with fright. You can read more about these Green Iguanas on wikipedia.org - a native specie throughout the Caribbean and South America and sold as pets for thousands elsewhere in the world.

It is a sad day when people turn out to be nothing but thieves, liars and con artists. When they cannot be honest and open enough to tell you that they are having financial difficulties paying the large sum of money they owe you. Instead of openly and honestly discussing this and seeking a way forward, they resort to supposedly clever but cheating tricks and manipulation thought up by themselves and their lawyer to avoid paying the amounts due for the strong and wealthy kitchen and bedroom cupboard manufacturing company they have bought. Instead of admitting that they are having difficulties controlling, managing the company and making sufficient profits in order to pay the monthly installments, they resort to the clever tricks of a lawyer – perhaps even on the assurances that they have a strong case. In the end, there will be somebody who lose and will have to foot the bill and it is never the lawyers - for every lawyer tend to tell you that there is a strong case, for even if they lose your court case, they never lose anything.

For them to think that embarking on such a path would bring them success and that there will not be severe consequences costing them many times more than what they rightfully owe. Instead they embark on a legal war path of which consequence they as yet have no understanding. The repercussions will be huge, will affect not only themselves, but also the lives of the many innocent people employed there and dependent on the company for their well being. To then be known a liars and thieves in a market where every supplier know of each other and word spreads like wild fire is simply stupid, reckless and suicidal.

Then the embarrassment and humiliation of the continuous derogative whispers behind your back amongst your own employees and business associates who have lost all respect for who and what you are (whilst complaining about this very lack of respect) – nothing they say can ever be trusted again. In the end, when justice prevails, having brought about all sorts of negative effects and devastating financial consequences upon themselves and many others, when they finally have to own up to what they have done and be branded as thieves, liars and con artists – would they look back and say that it has all been worthwhile?

Your fortunes and conditions of life depends on the very decisions you make on an every day basis. Make good decisions and generally life will be good to you – make bad decisions and you will certainly pay the price, but many times over. Clearly they have no understanding of this fundamental life principle and as yet have to learn this. For such people, there cannot be any respect, understanding nor any empathy for they deserve every hardship coming their way. Unfortunately, a lot of innocent employees and suppliers will be affected by all this needless destructive results and callous greed of these thieves, liars and con artists. Being a business owner is all about honesty and integrity, for if you lose this precious value, you are no longer in business - for then you are nothing but a thief, a liar and a cheat. Then neither do you have a viable business and for the chosen path forward is devastating destruction. But these people clearly have no concept of that, besides the disgusting taste of these people, one can only wonder about their soul relationship with GOD Almighty.