Bad news from Galapagos, Aggressor 1 Liveaboard is out of service 06/13

[tridacna]

Karma sucks.

 

[letterboy]

Yeah, but we can only surmise what we see in the pictures and the vague posts on the subject.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Shasta_man]

What posts? Don't see any info in the places I might expect to see it, like their website ("your upcoming cruise will be..."), or weekly Captain's logs here where they could say "everything is good and re-routed". Wouldn't know it happened if not for RoatanMan. It's like an iron curtain has descended...

Double whammy of boat accident AND in the Galapagos is tough. Glad it's on the mend, if that is possible. Wakeup call to pay attention again when going through the safety drills on your next trip (with any company).

 

[SC_Hoaty]

.... It's like an iron curtain has descended...

The real iron curtain is when the thread gets moved from a dive travel forum to "thumbs down."

trip-report-aggressor-dancer-fleets-new-carib-dancer-lots-pics

why-move-valid-trip-report-pictures-problems-whine-cheese?l

 

[Homi Adajania]

Hey All,

I was on board The Galapagos Aggressor 1 when she hit rocks while sailing in the dead of night so here's the lowdown:

After an amazing couple of days of diving with thousands of hammerheads around Wolf and Darwin Islands we headed back towards Santacruz. I was asleep in a cabin in the lower deck when at 2:30am, rocks scraped the hull below us creating an unbelievably loud sound and vibration throughout the vessel. When she finally came to a halt, she slowly started keeling over to the right and stopped at about 40degrees after which she started filling with water. It was pitch black and no one could tell how far any land was.

The crew and dive group were fantastic, contained and after much difficulty in deploying the life-raft, once done, all the guests got on and went in search for the closest vessel - The Deep Blue Liveaboard.

I came later on the other life-raft with the crew as they tried to salvage as much as possible. Unfortunately, stuff went missing - some was swept away and some was stolen (as told to me by certain crew-members). The company has verbally promised to compensate us for all the gear and personal belongings that were lost. I will update everyone on this and hope they stick to their word. Apart from this, no clarity has been given on what compensation will be given for cutting the trip short by a day or for the trauma people went through.

I can understand that diving, like every adventure sport, is a calculated risk. But sleeping in your cabin while a vessel runs aground owing to no fault of yours, needs some answers ad surely some kind of compensation. At the time, they claimed GPS malfunction and a rudder breakage. Who knows?

Luckily the injuries were minor. One passenger broke his toe, another sprained his wrist and two fingers and I bust my kneecap. The rest were okay with a few superficial cuts and bruises but pretty shaken up. I feel that as soon as we went back to the vessel at day-break and realised that she was in shallow water and wouldn't have sunk completely, the gravity of what-could-have-happened mitigated and people felt a little better. Though the lower berths were still underwater.

Will keep everyone updated on what happens and I will attach photographs of the same.

Safe diving... and now... Safe sailing.

 

[Amazz]

So So glad nobody was hurt. I see an offer of free nitrox coming to the "survivors." Since their experience was worse than ours on the Caribe Dancer, maybe the Waynes will throw in a free beer or two. The guests should not compile a single letter to the company, as the owners feel ganged up on and "extorted" when the group speaks as one.

 

[Homi Adajania]

Unfortunately, I do not have permission to post attachments so cannot upload the images or a video of the grounded Galapagos Aggressor 1 .

 

[diversteve]

Unfortunately, I do not have permission to post attachments so cannot upload the images or a video of the grounded Galapagos Aggressor 1 .

Try it now...

 

[Scared Silly]

Homi Adajania, welcome to the board and thanks for the first had account. If you contact a moderator they might allow you to post your pictures as I think this incident would be the exception to the std. rule of needing 25 posts.

What I find most interesting is no GPS + rudder issues + traveling at night == sunk ship. But even more so what was the issue with the life raft? There should not be any difficulty in deploying a lift raft.

 

[tracydr]

Hey All,

I was on board The Galapagos Aggressor 1 when she hit rocks while sailing in the dead of night so here's the lowdown:

After an amazing couple of days of diving with thousands of hammerheads around Wolf and Darwin Islands we headed back towards Santacruz. I was asleep in a cabin in the lower deck when at 2:30am, rocks scraped the hull below us creating an unbelievably loud sound and vibration throughout the vessel. When she finally came to a halt, she slowly started keeling over to the right and stopped at about 40degrees after which she started filling with water. It was pitch black and no one could tell how far any land was.

The crew and dive group were fantastic, contained and after much difficulty in deploying the life-raft, once done, all the guests got on and went in search for the closest vessel - The Deep Blue Liveaboard.

I came later on the other life-raft with the crew as they tried to salvage as much as possible. Unfortunately, stuff went missing - some was swept away and some was stolen (as told to me by certain crew-members). The company has verbally promised to compensate us for all the gear and personal belongings that were lost. I will update everyone on this and hope they stick to their word. Apart from this, no clarity has been given on what compensation will be given for cutting the trip short by a day or for the trauma people went through.

I can understand that diving, like every adventure sport, is a calculated risk. But sleeping in your cabin while a vessel runs aground owing to no fault of yours, needs some answers ad surely some kind of compensation. At the time, they claimed GPS malfunction and a rudder breakage. Who knows?

Luckily the injuries were minor. One passenger broke his toe, another sprained his wrist and two fingers and I bust my kneecap. The rest were okay with a few superficial cuts and bruises but pretty shaken up. I feel that as soon as we went back to the vessel at day-break and realised that she was in shallow water and wouldn't have sunk completely, the gravity of what-could-have-happened mitigated and people felt a little better. Though the lower berths were still underwater.

Will keep everyone updated on what happens and I will attach photographs of the same.

Safe diving... and now... Safe sailing.

Thanks for posting this and I'm very glad that you were not more badly hurt, although a broken kneecap is nothing to laugh about.
Our honeymoon on the Agressor 1 in Galapegos included fabulous diving but there were some unfortunate memories of crew stealing, lying and we also had our trip cut short, due to a passenger with DCS.
We did complain to the captain and the Agressor president but we were offered nothing, only an apology.
With the stories coming out this spring and our own experiences, I know that we will find a different dive company to take future dive trips with.