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Primadonna's Latest Controversy
Scavenging, Wrecking or Theft?
April 19, 2014

C
ontroversy keeps lapping up against the S/V Primadonna, the steel boat with fading red paint that homesteaded in Oriental’s harbor for a year before going aground on a remote Bahamian reef this winter.

The S/V Primadonna as seen in a photograph taken this winter between Booby Cay and Mayaguana.

It was learned this week that Primadonna’s French crew – Pascal Ott and Monique Christmann — have not been deported back to France, as previously intimated. Instead, they have been detained for the past several months at the Government of Bahamas Detention Centre for illegal immigrants in Nassau, according to Bahamian authorities.

One official with the Royal Bahamas Police Force told TownDock.net this week that Ott and Christmann are “being processed” and that the Government of the Bahamas is “awaiting information from the French Consul so that we can proceed with deportation.”

Indications are that any deportation may not happen quickly. The stumbling block appears to be money — who would pay for Ott and Christmann’s passage back to France? That’s often a point of contention for smaller countries and their budgets.

Primadonna: A Wreck?

While Ott and Christmann remain in detention, their boat, last known to be stuck on a reef at the easternmost Bahamian island of Mayaguana, is at the center of a widening storm of debate.

This time, however, the main player is not Ott – who was involved in a counterfeit check cashing scandal in Oriental last fall. Instead, the limelight is now on a cruising family of four – who came upon the Primadonna a month ago on that reef and took what they wanted from the red boat familiar to Oriental.

Mira (or Dragomira Georgieva – the longer name that appears on an email sent to TownDock) has been living on a “shiny 38-foot relatively new catamaran” named “Fata Morgana” with her husband, Ivo and teenaged son and daughter, since last year. The family emigrated from Bulgaria to Canada 12 years ago. In a posting on her blog, “The Life Nomadik,” this month, she recounts how her family climbed aboard the Primadonna one day in mid-March. As she posted in her story, “The Day We Found Primadonna,” the crew of “Fata Morgana” went on to “spend the entire day going through all the things on the boat.”

Then they took. As Mira Georgieva wrote,

“We get what we need too plus some junk that we surely don’t need but it is too good to leave behind and we might sell it or keep it as spares. Like the winches (two oversize ones and two smaller ones), swivels (we love swivels), and ropes (five good long ropes, one is heavy duty, can use it for hurricanes), in excellent condition. We leave the sails except one that looks like a blue spinnaker in a bag, this one we take (we didn’t have a spinnaker and we so much wanted to have one).”

The listing of the haul continues:


“…we do need the life raft (it’s an old one, but a life raft is an essential expensive thing for the long distance cruiser), the surfboard, and the shiny new windlass (heavy but precious, we take it for a spare), three sets of snorkeling gear (strange yellow ones, very good quality, made in Italy, very dirty, as if people have been snorkeling in mud, but we clean them with Clorox), a marine radio, some flags and clothes (a strange dress made of window curtains and mosquito nets, became my official wrecking dress), a nice domino set, a portable compass, and many more treasure.”

Wrecking is the term she uses to describe taking the haul from Primadonna. “Wrecking,” Mira Georgieva writes, “is so much fun!”

Pat Stockwell’s Reaction

One item not mentioned in the “wrecking” account of the Primadonna is a roller furler.

That piece of equipment — still in Oriental — was central to last fall’s counterfeit check controversy. Back then, Pascal Ott had claimed that someone had sent him a check for $2980 to buy a roller furler he had offered for sale on Craig’s List.

The roller furler that Pascal Ott said he sold to someone for $2980 in September. Pat Stockwell co-endorsed what turned out to be a bad check and Ott declined to give him all the money back. He did leave the roller furler with Stockwell, the manager of the Provision Company, where the furler is currently among the used goods available for purchase.

Ott had asked Pat Stockwell, manager of the Provision Company in Oriental, to co-endorse the check. The $2980 check was bad and Ott kept most of the money, then departed US waters just after a small claims judge ruled that Ott should repay Stockwell in full. He still owed Stockwell some $2,500.

But if you thought Pat Stockwell would take pleasure in hearing that Mira Georgieva’s family had taken things off of the Primadonna, you’d be mistaken.

When TownDock.net contacted him this week, Stockwell was blunt.

“They’re thieves,” he says, speaking of “Fata Morgana“s crew.

Pat Stockwell inside the Provision Company. He tried to help Pascal Ott last fall by co-endorsing a check that turned out to be bogus. Ott kept most of the money from it. Stockwell however criticizes those who took winches, a windlass and other items from Ott’s boat last month while it was aground on a reef in the Bahamas.

Stockwell says he understands how some might see some “what goes around, comes around” equivalence — that the crew of Primadonna “stole from me and now they’re being stolen from.” But Stockwell says he “can’t get past” the idea of one sailor boarding another sailor’s boat and taking things from it.

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Wrecking and Reckoning

While the “Fata Morgana” blogger describes the taking of things from Primadonna as part of the tradition of “wrecking,” Stockwell, who with his wife Laurie, cruised in the islands on their sailboat for years, wonders where the “Fata Morgana” crew would draw the line.

What would they do “if my boat was aground, “ Stockwell asks, and he went to shore for a while. Would his boat also be prime for “wrecking”? To Stockwell, the “Fata Morgana” crew’s actions violate a sense of honor among cruisers, including those he says he’s known who were “down and out.”

“I just don’t see the leap they’ve made,” says Stockwell. “They’re not any better than thieves.”

The “Fata Morgana” blog, “The Life Nomadik,” and its detailed listing of the family’s take from Primadonna has led to a strenuous debate in cruising circles. Some applaud the family’s action, either on the grounds that the grounded boat’s equipment was open for the taking or because of the karmic payback to Ott. Others see it as a gray area but question the wisdom of being so public about it by blogging about the spoils.

From “The Life Nomadik“s Facebook page at the time the story first went on the cruising family’s blog. Debate over the morality of the bloggers’ “you take stuff” position intensified in the following week and a half. By April 18th the posting about the Primadonna had been removed from “The Life Nomadik” blog (but remains available for viewing on Google cache.)

There are also many others, who, like Pat Stockwell, see it as stealing. Some in that camp question how one determines a boat is “abandoned” and so, open to the taking. Others question why the more formalized rules of salvage weren’t followed. Still others have suggested that the family on “Fata Morgana” should sell what they took from the Primadonna and use the proceeds to pay Pat Stockwell what Pascal Ott owed him.

The rub in that plan is that Stockwell says he wouldn’t want that. “If they sent me money, I would send it to Pascal, because they stole from his boat.”

To be clear, Stockwell wants Ott to apologize and make full restitution. “If I ran in to Pascal today, I’d still ask for compensation from him.” he says. It was an aggravating autumn for Stockwell, especially after Oriental law enforcement declined to pursue the case and Stockwell had to go through small claims court. Stockwell allows that he felt some karma at play when he heard that the Primadonna had gone aground on the reef this winter. But whatever Stockwell’s grievance with Pascal Ott, that’s eclipsed by what he sees as the broader moral issue of some sailors helping themselves to things on another person’s boat.

After The Taking, Compassion?

It was only after the family on “Fata Morgana” took the equipment off of the Primadonna in mid-March, Mira Georgieva writes, that they went on the Internet to find what they could about the boat. On-line, they found some of the stories that had been posted on TownDock. That led the blogger to muse about the fate of Primadonna’s crew. Again from her posting on her blog, “The Life Nomadik.”

“How did a French couple with a dog, penniless, end up in the United States on a boat, and most importantly, why did they leave France? The story is much longer, its beginning and end are still unknown, and maybe one day we will find out. In any case, what S/V Primadonna and her crew have been through is very unfortunate and I feel much compassion for them.”

Pat Stockwell in front of Provision Company which he manages.

In Oriental, Pat Stockwell hears a hollow ring in those last few words. “if they had compassion,” Stockwell says of the Fata Morgana crew, “they wouldn’t have boarded a boat and stolen things.”

Mira Georgieva On The Wrecking/Stealing Debate

Before publishing this story, TownDock emailed Mira Georgieva for a response to some of Stockwell’s comments. She wrote back on April 15, at a time when the debate was putting her family under closer scrutiny:

“We are new in the world of sailing, less than one year experience, and what we knew about wrecking and salvaging was from friends and fellow sailors, as well as research in internet on the subject. We were left with the impression that when a boat is a “wreck” (damaged, unable to sail, grounded and abandoned on the reefs) it is “open to the elements” meaning, anyone can take whatever they want from it, in a way: recycle, use the stuff that would otherwise get spoiled by time and nature (or taken by someone else).”

“So, when we found Primadonna, she looked like a wreck to us, leaning on her port side, but it was strange that there were so many things still on the boat, she was not yet stripped. We thought the reason for this is because she is a recent wreck (so we thought we are among the first lucky ones to find it)”

“The Day We Found Primadonna Was A Good Day”

In her original blog posting in early April, which came almost a month after taking the items from the Primadonna, Mira Georgieva had boasted of the haul her family had made off with – the winches, the life raft, the marine radio, “the shiny new windlass (heavy but precious, we take it for a spare)”

The very last words of that original blog posting read, “…The Day We Found Primadonna was a good day.” But the email sent to TownDock.net on April 15, after several days of the “Fata Morgana” family taking a lot of heat on line, projected a different tone.

It downplayed the haul.

“Our booty is not such a big deal: an old windsurf board without the sail, old snorkeling gear covered in mud, a weird dress, a few used winches, of which most turned out to be broken, old ropes… “
What Price Pity

As with the original blog posting, Georgieva’s email sees no disconnect between taking “booty” from Primadonna and taking pity on Primadonna’s crew.

“My compassion extends to everyone who is in a situation like the Primadonna’s crew. We didn’t know them, we only knew that some poor people have lost their boat in bad circumstances, in a place where saving it would be impossible, and we felt pity for them.”

“I am stunned at the reaction of everyone accusing us of theft from a boat that is a piece of garbage polluting a remote reef… I am sure that many sailors in our place would do the same thing without hesitation or remorse.”

“Yet now, knowing all the previous issues with Pat and Primadonna’s crew, we regret taking anything from this vessel. We admire Pat Stockwell for helping out people in need and we are sorry for his troubles when it turned out the people are crooks. We would love to help him out, but I don’t think we will be able to sell any of the junk we got… We would love to get in touch with him, as well as the owners of Primadonna and return anything they thing they might need.”

Epilogue

By Friday, the posting, “The Day We Found Primadonna” was no longer to be found on the “Fata Morgana” blog, “The Life Nomadik.” However, it was still available via Google cache.

As of early April, according to their blog, Mira and her family on “Fata Morgana” were in waters off of the Dominican Republic.

Meanwhile, in Oriental, Stockwell says others – many of them strangers – have stepped up to compensate him for the $2500 that Pascal Ott pocketed from the bad check Pat Stockwell co-endorsed. In the past month or so, “people in our little village and beyond have taken care of me. From here and far away. “ says Stockwell, “I’m fine.”

He still thinks Ott should be the one to pay him back, but for the moment that seems a dim prospect with Ott and Monique Christmann in the Detention Centre for illegal immigrants in Nassau. Still, for as much as he suffered by Ott’s actions, Stockwell says the French sailor has “not deserved” to have his boat picked over by the crew of Fata Morgana.

“Those people, “ Stockwell says once again with a quiet persistence, “are thieves.”

A piece of the Primadonna saga left behind in Oriental: the roller furler that Pascal Ott said he’d sold on Craigs List and said he was paid with a $2980 check, which turned out to be counterfeit after Pat Stockwell co-endorsed it. Ott left the roller furler with Stockwell but did not fully repay him. It’s been for sale in the used goods aisle at the Provision Company and will be brought out for sale at next week’s Nautical Flea Market. Asking price is not $2980.

Letters To The Editor welcomed. Write us at letters@towndock.net

Some earlier stories about and relating to Primadonna and its crew:

Posted Saturday April 19, 2014 by Melinda Penkava


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