Mel Bolton's yacht Classique was dragged on its mooring into the Auckland Harbour Bridge piles at Shoal Bay during a storm in June 2014. Photo / John Sefton
Mel Bolton's yacht Classique was dragged on its mooring into the Auckland Harbour Bridge piles at Shoal Bay during a storm in June 2014. Photo / John Sefton
Melville Bolton had been battling the council for years for compensation after his yacht was damaged in a storm. A year after his death following a car accident, his wife has had a win.
Mel Bolton sailed all over the world in his beloved Classique.
Long before his untimely death following a car crash last year, Bolton single-handedly sailed the 22.8m wooden yacht along the West Coast of the US, around the Bahamas, through the notorious waters of Cape Horn at the bottom of Chile, across the Southern Ocean and back to New Zealand.
"It was apparent from the outset that Classique was one of the great loves of Mr Bolton's life," his lawyer Shane Elliott said.
Bolton was an experienced skipper, who counted the late Sir Peter Williams, QC, among one of his closest sailing companions.
Sometime after his return to his wife, Caroline, and their home in Auckland in the early 2000s Bolton arranged to moor Classique in the Waitematā Harbour, on an Auckland Council-owned "emergency mooring", moving the boat between moorings when required.
By early 2014 the boat was moved to the council's Number 7 mooring at Shoal Bay on Auckland's North Shore.
The starboard side of the 22-metre wooden yacht was smashed when Classique was blown into the Auckland Harbour Bridge piles. The damage was estimated at $1.089 million to repair. Photo / Supplied
When a storm caused the boat to drag its mooring more than a kilometre until it struck the Auckland Harbour Bridge piles on June 10, 2014, Bolton was devastated.
Classique was valued at between $350,000 and $600,000 at the time and the estimated cost of repair was $1.089 million.
The then 75-year-old immediately wrote to the council seeking compensation to repair his pride and joy.
But Auckland Council denied any liability, sparking the beginning of a David and Goliath battle.
The case dragged on for five years until Bolton retained Elliott through Legal Aid to sue the council under the Consumer Guarantees Act.
A statement of claim seeking damages of $1.089m was issued in the High Court at Auckland in June 2020, almost six years to the day since the storm.
The claim pointed to defects in the mooring, which Bolton paid $50 a week to rent.
"Unknown to Mr Bolton when he rented the mooring, the base of it consisted of a single-fluked 'half-Fisherman's anchor'," the claim read.
The anchor had been laid on the sea-floor upside down - with its single fluke pointing skywards, rather than digging down into the seabed, the claim said.
"Placed in that way, the anchor relied entirely on its weight for holding power and had approximately only 15 per cent of the holding power it would have had if laid correctly.
It was what's known in sailing terms as a fairweather mooring, "insufficient to hold Classique other than in still conditions".
The yacht Classique high and dry under the Auckland Harbour Bridge at Shoal Bay after a storm in June 2014. Photo / John Sefton
The council again denied liability, saying Bolton only had agreement to moor Classique on Number 8 mooring.
It denied requesting in early 2014 to move Classique to Number 7 mooring.
It also said Bolton witnessed a mooring contractor service N7 and later admitted he had been concerned about whether the mooring had been reset correctly but did not notify the harbourmaster of this.
The council denied the mooring's improper placement led to it being dragged across the seabed and said this was caused by the extreme weather that night.
It said the Consumer Guarantees Act did not apply and that it leased the mooring on an essentially charitable basis.
But Bolton argued the mooring was wildly underweight.
In his second statement of claim, dated May last year, Bolton said the emergency moorings were intended for use by larger craft including visiting super yachts and commercial vessels of up to 30m in length.
He said the anchor at N7 weighed only 1278kg and was significantly underweight for a vessel of Classique's size, and for the size of boats for which the emergency moorings were intended.
Bolton said the council was aware of and consented to his using emergency moorings other than N8 from time to time and he claimed the harbourmaster's office had issued receipts for his rent of N7.
The front of Mel Bolton's yacht Classique bears the brunt of storm damage sustained when an incorrectly set mooring holding the boat failed during a June 2014 weather event. Photo / Supplied
In its defence, the council said the emergency moorings were not available to rent for general use other than by Bolton.
The council repeated its earlier stance that Bolton only had permission to berth Classique on N8, except for limited times when repairs to that mooring were required.
It denied Bolton rented N7 and said he paid rent only occasionally for N8.
The council said it was a risk to berth a vessel the size of Classique on a mooring during a significant weather event and Bolton should have known this.
But Elliott, an experienced sailor himself, said it was almost unheard of that a yacht would be dragged a kilometre on its mooring in a storm.
He pointed out it was not practical to move a vessel to a marina ahead of every storm, and even if there was space, a yacht was more likely to sustain damage in a marina than on an open mooring.
"A boat is not like a car. You can't just go and park it in a garage."
Despite the council's claims that Bolton did not have permission to use N7, the pensioner produced years of rent receipts for N7 signed off by the harbourmaster, proving the opposite.
At some stage during the saga, Bolton grew frail. Once capable of negotiating the trickiest of seas, the debonair skipper's age was beginning to show.
He'd undergone hip surgery, was on crutches and spoke almost in a whisper.
As he waited for the case to go to trial Bolton regularly visited Classique where it was moored on the Mahurangi River with a boat salvage company in Warkworth.
The elderly skipper would row out to his yacht, crutches in tow, to tinker with and attempt minor repairs.
It was on one of these trips north that Bolton - by then 83 - was in a car crash with a truck and admitted to Auckland Hospital.
He died a few days later on June 23 last year, before he could sign his new brief of evidence in the case.
When Bolton's widow and executor of his estate, Caroline, took over as plaintiff and tried to have the brief admitted as hearsay evidence, the council protested, questioning its reliability.
Melville Bolton was an experienced skipper but Auckland Council said he should have known that an emergency mooring could not hold the weight of his yacht Classique in a storm. Photo / Twitter
The council pointed to Bolton as being an irresponsible skipper, who had run over buoys and was prosecuted by Maritime New Zealand for cutting off the Auckland to Waiheke ferry in 2011.
"They made it out like he was Blackbeard the pirate and couldn't be relied upon," Elliott told Open Justice.
Bolton was a "colourful character", a "lovable rogue", but he could not be criticised as a poor sailor or a man who did not care about his yacht, Elliott said.
"The position they took was so disingenuous."
Then, in May, almost eight years after the storm and just weeks before the trial was due to start, a financial settlement was reached and a notice of discontinuance was filed in the High Court.
Elliott said this was despite none of the evidence changing. He said Bolton would be pleased with the win were he alive.
Auckland Council did not answer questions about whether it admitted liability by settling out of court and said its defence was outlined in its statements to the court.
A spokesperson said the terms of the settlement were confidential but the council had spent $10,000 of ratepayers' money on legal fees in the long-running saga.
She said the $10,000 represented Auckland Council's insurance policy excess.
"Any additional costs are not known by the council and would be subject to legal privilege."
