The Fire
Christian:
On August 18 2024 at 2am a lightning bolt hit the mast of a Sun Reef 70 starting what would be the largest fire I have ever seen.
The boat was a Sun Reef 70 a massive catamaran worth about nine million dollars. The boat was docked in a small bay in the north west corner of Luperón. On August 18 Hurricane Erin just missed Luperon causing large amounts of lightning.
At around 2am several bolts hit the hill near Las Velas restaurant one of which hit the catamaran. The catamaran’s engine room was quickly engulfed in flames by 4am the back portion of the boat was burning. The lights were sill on so at around 4am people went in a dinging to check if anyone was still on board luckily nobody was. The lights were most likely turned on when the lighting hit it caused a power surge overheating the battery causing the fire and tuning on the lights.
An hour later the entire aft portion of the boat was burning, the fire was creeping its way through the interior and the fire had started burning the fly bridge. As the sky slowly turned from black to blue some boat on the dock which was just a mere 50 meters from the fire began to feel the heat and move away from the dock. There fear was not unfounded if the boat was to burn though the mooring lines it could drift into the dock causing an even bigger problem. to raise the stakes the boat was carrying a full load of fuel but luckily it ran on diesel if it had been carrying gasoline there could have been a rather large explosion rather than the smaller ones from the jerry cans on deck.
It was only now that my parents woke me up. I had heard the lightning but just went back to sleep. After my parents woke me up we watched the fire burn and then It all happened rather quickly. after the fly bridge burned down we heard several loud snapping noises(which we would come to realize were the rigging snapping) then the gargantuan 100 foot tall mast crashed down on to the the for deck with a massive “BOOM!” As dawn approached the fire raged warping the once pristine fibreglass causing the structure of the boat to slowly collapse in on its self
It was only now as most of the boat lay in ruins that the fire department began its efforts to put out the blaze. The local fire department had arrived well before this point but they were ill equipped to handle the situation and had to call for reinforcements from Santiago, the closest large city. After the hour long dive the reinforcements finally arrived only to find the boat as a devastated smouldering reck with smoke billowing out. As the firemen began hosing down the ship I decided to fly our drone over and take some photos (seen below).It was now after all the action that all anyone could do was reflect on the past few hours and think to themselves “Who has the next tallest mast?”
