A “Small Damage”! in Germany.

[Eduard]

In August 2017 I had a collision on the River Rhine. Sailing downstream along the promenade of Emmerich am Rhine (Germany) a guy with a small speedboat came from the shore at high speed and tried to make before hitting me a 90 degree turn show off. He missed timing and hid me full speed with the side of his polyester boat. His boat had a tear over the length of nearly 2 meters and was barely floating. More than 100 viewers on shore saw a spectacular collision. My Volga had “only” 2 dents on the steering side gang board. One dent was next to the front screen another half ways the boat. The man who caused the accident thought my damage could be repaired with a little filler, primer and paint. He offered me a couple of hundred Euros.
I thought it would be wise to have the police involved and went back to the harbor where I docked and had the police made a report. The next day my boat was sinking. Luckily it was hanging with 3 lines in the dock. I needed a big pump to get the water out and keep it afloat. From there I could not start the engine anymore. It had been underwater completely. The boat had be towed and craned out of the water. Besides the visible damage described before, 3 nails were torn out of the hull which caused the sinking.
The problem now was to get a good expertise and a capable party to fix the boat in order to get money from the insurance. The German insurance always works very thorough and is hard to deal with. Afterwards I have to admit they were very correct and even helped me for some things.
Finding a party that is capable to support insurance expertise and will take care of repairing a Volga correctly is not simple. Surfing for a partner I found a company, called Nautic Refit which was not too far away and with a proven track record on Moldia and Volga. The specialists from the boat shop, together with the expert from the insurance established the size of the damage. It was estimated on 15,5 k Euro. In close collaboration with the insurance I could give the orders for repairs step by step.
Since aluminum dents can’t be bent back, this repair shop took care of cutting out the bended parts and replacing them. The boat got the correct coatings and the nails were originally repaired (not with pop nails). Nautic Refit took care of another big problem too. The board computer of my fairly new Volvo Penta d3 190 Hp was damaged by the water and had to be replaced completely.
From various friends from this board, from all over Europe I know we all have problems for getting spare parts. Each of us has to reinvent the wheel. What I found out about this repair shop has all kinds of solutions for problems we Volga, Moldia owners encounter. Pity I did not find them earlier. They have all kinds of original parts. For instance they have the rim rubber on the roll (for my boat I had a special extrusion part made). Nautic Refit has the original nails for the hull, the right parts for the drives and gearboxes. They can replace the old Zil 6 and 8 cylinders with modern engines and are even working on an electric Volga. They can provide the complete set for rebuilding the heck of the boat i.e. an aluminum transom mounting part for welding in, a casted extension part for a stern drive so it will be deep enough in the water and engines to will exactly fit in the engine room. Nautic Refit mounts engines with over 250 Hp. Maybe it is worthwhile visiting their website. http://www.nauticrefit.nl/
The end of the story, my Volga is restored to its old glory. A couple of hundred Euro’s for paint and filler ended up being 15,5k. I hope you never encounter a collision like mine.
Cheers,
Ed

[Mark]

whauw!

I know how hard it is to make a fairly dent free hull....

and in deed Arjan from nauticrefit did some fine hull works!!

Glad it worked out wel!


Godspeed

Mark