Lessons learned
Quite often, tripping and picking ourselves back up again has been a source of true learning which has paved the way for our accomplishments. These experiences can be important to remember and share. This section aims to highlight some of our less-bright moments which have had a ripple effect across the years.
The sinking of Toftevaag
Toftevaag is listed as a historical monument in Norway, and you can imagine the shock for our co-founder and skipper Ric when in 2014 he got a message from a friend which read ‘Wow, you don’t know how sorry I am about your boat.’
At the time, Ric was working on a European project in Malta. He had decided that he should leave Toftevaag in Menorca to have a series of maintenance jobs. He had agreed the repairs with a company and had made a first payment of 3,000 euros, then had left trusting that all would go well. However, the ship ended up sinking in the Colarsega area of the Port of Mahón.
“The company didn’t tell me, I had to learn about it from a friend,” Ric recalls. After waiting to see if the company would take responsibility, which it didn’t, Ric flew all the way back to take matters into his own hands. “I refloated it not because of it’s material value, but because of what it means to me personally” he says.
Here are a couple of photographs of the episode. After the rotting of some of the wood, it needed many more repairs than before, but to this day Toftevaag is floating once more and continues her work as a research platform in the open seas.
