Mr. Jakob Pinkster:

I apologise as I have a bit of a cold and my voice is not great.

I graduated as a naval architect from Delft University of Technology with a masters degree. I worked in shipbuilding first of all at a ship owner's company and later on I worked in the shipyards. After that, I taught in Delft University of Technology on ship design and stability. As a ship builder, I also had a fair amount of experience with stability.

I was introduced to the Gaffney family when they had the misfortune of discovering in 2007 that the Mary Kate did not pass our stability criteria. It failed an inclining test. Mr. C.J. Gaffney, who was the skipper of the vessel, did not feel safe on the ship as soon as they bought it and felt something was not right. The cleverness to turn around and say something might be wrong with the stability of the vessel shows that he is a good skipper who takes care of his family and crew on board and does not put them through any unnecessary danger. Fishing is dangerous but one wishes to do it on a good ship. He realised he did not have that and that is why he had the test done. I was asked to help him with this problem around the stability of the ship. Along with Mr. Delaney, who was a naval architect and did a large part of the number crunching and calculations, we came to the conclusion that the ship was wrong from day one. This means it was delivered with the weight and the centre of gravity being too high. Therefore, the boat did not pass stability criteria. A boat should pass in order to be found to be suitable to operate in a seaworthy way.

I think this is no reflection on the Gaffney family. They bought a going concern which was sailing at the time. They did nothing wrong. They got the business end of it perfect and they were just the unlucky ones who discovered this problem. As far as I am concerned, they were not assisted properly by a lot of authorities after the issue was discovered. I will leave it at that and I will wait for any questions.