TeVega  Early 1990's

From: aaac-asia [mailto:pieter@aaac-asia.com]  Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 9:01 PM
To: palmer.stevens@enterpriseintegrators.com  Subject: Te Vega - the True Story!

I noticed that despite my informing you to the contrary, you still maintain that  "In 1991, TeVega's owner goes bankrupt and TeVega, which is impounded in a Portuguese yard, is almost sold for scrap. TeVega is bought by an Italian and painstakingly restored to her original glory and even enters sailing races."  Below is the true story of the Te Vega under my ownership of her from 1988 to 1992.

The owner you refer to here, myself, never went bankrupt. All the repairs for the ship were covered in a bank guarantee issued by ABN on my behalf prior to the repairs. During the period the shipyard manager repeatedly sent me faxes to buy the ship at some ridiculous price. Campers and Nicholson's (Cannes) wanted to buy her for a client and promised the manager a fee of $100,000 if he could wrest the ship from me.

The manager in Avero Portugal decided to attempt a legal piracy by ignoring the bank guarantees and impound the ship. Pleas to the US and Dutch Embassies fell on deaf ears, so we sent our Captain down, and our trouble shooter, who hired the lead attorney for the Portuguese Admiralty, who succeeded to find a local court to acknowledge that the payment was in order and to release the ship. The shipyard refused to release the ship so on a full moon night, just as the high tide was going out, our Captain made a daring rescue of the ship, which has the key motor parts removed, and with a small crew, broke the chains to the night's silent background sounds of weapons checking, hoisted the sails, spun the ship around and sailed out under the full force of the rising wind and outgoing tide. Pursued on both sides of the dock and with speedboats firing guns and automatic weapons, the ship outdistances all comers, reaching the entrance to the harbour going 18 knots. Reaching the ocean the Captain turned her north back to Scheveningen, where she was greeted with much fanfare by the Dutch Press that had followed the story and the public. All this happened in the spring and summer of 1991.

Subsequently, our charter broker brought in Cadillac to charter the ship for the 1992 San Diego America's Cup races. We sailed her to Gosport and engages the ship repair company Campers & Nicholson's. As the ship was being prepared to meet US Coast Guard Standards, the daughter of Calisto Tanzi visited the shipyard and decided to make an offer. we settled on US$2 million, and closed the sale sometime in early 1992 at our attorney's offices in Rotterdam. We had a modest bank loan, which was paid off period.

As most of my business was in the US, I subsequently sold my 6 hectare estate in Wassenaar and moved back to the US. My company's business interests continue in the US, Europe and Asia. I've never filed for bankruptcy nor been bankrupted. It's true that from time to time wealthy private people meet up with treacherous relatives and business partners, who try whatever they can, but none has succeeded, and the business continues.

During the 4 years that I owned the Te Vega we had the ship refitted several times. The first time was by an Amsterdam Shipyard, with the repair under the management of the company chartering the ship at that time, who had a fixed quote for the work. They engaged a naval architect to oversee the cost and budget. Once the ship was repaired, the charterer's supervisor came to me to report that there had been a 50 % cost over run, then he left the country. The naval architect came to report that the cost overrun was 100%, and then he went on an extended vacation. In any case we had budgeted for a 100% cost overrun, based on the reports of the Chairman of the company established in the Netherlands to buy the ship for us. The shipyard then submitted invoices representing cost overruns of 3 times. We then hired Van Den Andel, the leading Naval Consultancy company in the Netherlands to go through the invoices and research the operations of the ship and then gained a court ruling of closer to a 70% cost overrun, which was immediately paid. Subsequently, the Amsterdam Shipyard went bankrupt, not us.

The same charterer during the previous summer arranged the Soviet/American trans-Atlantic Sail on the 156 foot schooner Te Vega in 1989, which crew similarly abandonned the ship without notice with massive lacking in maintenance, which costs the charterer made up over their winter sail, after which we took over the ship.

We entered the Te Vega in virtually all the Regattas in Europe over that period and won every race, mostly by distances of days, except in one case of very light winds, where brilliant sailing nevertheless allowed the ship to win the stretch from Bordeaux to Zeebrugge by 100 meters over a Danish Navy schooner.

Our Captain during these 4 years was originally recommended to us by the Dutch Admiralty as being the most brilliant sailor, Capitan Hendricus "Rick" Groen, for this kind of a ship, which turned out to be the case from every aspect of ship operations management, maintenance and unrivaled sailing skills. When we took over the ship from the school that was chartering her, the condition of the ship was so extremely badly maintained and filthy, that the Captain, crew and all students arrived unannounced at the Schevening harbour, and abandoned the ship, which the dockside police found and called us on. Our new Captain arrived first and myself shortly thereafter to hear and see the disaster of maintenance left to us from the sales, to the masts, to the deck condition to the engine room.

Again we refitted the ship, and again we went out to win the Regattas. In one voyage from Brest to the NW tip of Spain took 26 hours, averaging 15 knots with one 4 hour period sailing at 24 knots. The Te Vega was so well built that she could tak (spin) on a dime, accelerate with tremendous speeds, and sail on with wind forces rising from 6 to 10, even 12 in every weather condition.

I can say that during the refits we replaced nearly 80% of the steel hull, 100% of the teak deck and rebuilt the entire engine room, and interior, and operated to a first class standard with a Captain, First Mate, Boson, 4 crew, a chef and 2 attendants to the 8 very large cabins.

And we had many adventures, races, pleasant trips and melodramas such as the above stories, some with more incredible scripts then the popular TV Soaps of the time involving JR types in "Dallas" and "Dynasty."

Probably the Tanzi family bought the Te Vega with the first leveraged funds they set up, which now turn out to be 10 billion Euros.

As I mention, she ship was never on the verge of being sold for scrap, was sold at a considerable profit in which we recovered all our costs for the period of ownership.  This is the real story. Please delete the false statements made about me in your website

If you want background about our companies, as you have for the now defunct Tanzi companies, let me know.

Pieter Schoonheim Samara

From: Palmer Stevens [mailto:palmer.stevens@enterpriseintegrators.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 9:02 PM
To: aaac-asia
Subject: RE: Te Vega - the True Story!

Mr. Samara,
I apologize for any mis-information that I may be propagating. I don't remember receiving your email from many months ago. I will fix the web page shortly. Thank you for your personal account of what happened. Often, I rely on 'hear-say' for vague periods in TeVega's history. I would welcome any first-hand stories or photos from your time as steward of TeVega.
Regards,  Palmer Stevens