A former captain at a top yacht club who was sued after a row over an 80ft houseboat dubbed ‘Barge-gate’ has been cleared of harassment.
Ex-Greenwich Yacht Club cruiser captain Stefan Oloffs, 54, is alleged to have hounded his senior officer, commodore Richard Phillips, 60, with claims he received ‘preferential treatment’ when trying to moor his ‘whopping’ barge at the club.
Mr Oloffs was said to have accused Mr Phillips of ‘misusing his position within the club’ to avoid paying hefty mooring fees – and allegedly launched a smear campaign in order to undermine his position.
The cruiser captain allegedly published his claims on a WhatsApp group with 230 members, and on a website called ‘Barge-gate’ – named after the Watergate scandal – while also making a formal complaint to the Port of London authority.
Mr Phillips sued Mr Oloffs for £20,000 in damages at London’s High Court, despite warnings from Mr Oloffs’ barrister that the case could end up costing the loser a total of £300,000 in legal fees if it went to trial.
Mr Phillips pushed ahead with the case, claiming he was on the receiving end of a ‘public campaign of harassment’ causing him ‘significant distress, loss of sleep, anxiety and public embarrassment’.
But Mr Oloffs has now been cleared of harassment.
His defence had mounted a bid to get the harassment claim struck out, labelling it ‘wholly unnecessary’ and motivated by Mr Phillips’ wish for ‘recrimination and financial oppression’ against him.
Stefan Oloffs (seen outside the High Court) was cleared of harassment after being sued over a row about an 80ft houseboat
The row centred on the Verandering (pictured), a Dutch barge owned by club commodore Richard Phillips that he was trying to sell
Richard Phillips (pictured) sought £20,000 in damages over the alleged harassment campaign, but lost the case in court
In a ruling dismissing the bulk of Mr Phillips’ court case, Mrs Justice Hill ruled that Mr Phillips’ claims and comments were insufficiently serious to qualify for the ‘quasi-criminal’ offence of harassment.
While Mr Oloffs’ actions may well have caused the ex-commodore ‘irritation, annoyance and upset,’ the judge said, ‘I do not consider that Mr Phillips has a real prospect of showing at trial that Mr Oloffs’ conduct crossed the boundary to being ‘oppressive and unacceptable’, and thus meeting the threshold for harassment under the Protection from Harassment Act’.
The court heard that the two sailors had each held positions on the yacht club’s council, with Mr Phillips starting out as head of IT before being appointed rear commodore, and finally full commodore in December 2022.
The pair began bickering after each ‘expressed different views’ about how far ‘social activities’ benefited the club, and they later also argued about how to boost participation in cruiser sailing.
But they ultimately fell out over the barge issue, with Mr Oloffs later being expelled from the yacht club in 2024 and Mr Phillips also giving up his commodore post.
The pair clashed due to Mr Phillips needing a berth for his 80ft barge, named Verandering, which he had relocated to London with a view to selling.
In June 2023, Mr Oloffs accused him of ‘underpaying’ mooring fees for his vessel at the club, although the commodore said he had in fact paid £15,000 for the berth.
Despite an internal investigation ‘exonerating’ Mr Phillips of any financial misconduct, his lawyers claimed his former club colleague subsequently ‘ran a public campaign of harassment’ against him in a bid to blacken his good name, leaving Mr Phillips plagued by ‘distress, humiliation, embarrassment and loss of dignity’.
On the ‘Welcome to Barge-Gate’ homepage of his website, Mr Oloffs stated that its aim was to ‘highlight a conflict of interest concerning a director of the club and the subsequent cover up by the club management’.
Mr Oloffs later promoted his website when he handed out flyers at the January 2024 ‘Club Night’.
In a later ‘Welcome to Barge Gate’ message, Mr Oloffs claimed that ‘all discussion on Barge Gate was quelled by the commodore in collaboration with the flag officers and the other committee members’ and that he, as a ‘mutinous member’, was ‘hauled in front of the committee in January 2024 and expelled’.
Mr Oloffs had also complained about the barge to the Port of London Authority, alleging that it was ‘moored illegally and created a risk of drowning’. Two months later the commodore relocated it.
Mr Phillips formally complained about Mr Oloffs’ conduct through his lawyers in February 2024, prompting the former cruiser skipper to take down his website and to make clear that ‘an apology was on offer’.
But the row then went to court, with Mr Phillips alleging not only harassment, but also breach of confidence, misuse of private information and breach of the UK Data Protection Act by publishing his private information.
After a day in court last month, the judge threw out all the claims, save for allegations that Mr Oloffs breached the ex-commodore’s data rights by disclosing his private information on his website.
The judge said Mr Phillips that had ‘no real prospect of succeeding on the harassment claim’.
Mrs Justice Hill said: ‘I do not accept (the) submission that the scale of Mr Oloffs’ campaign against Mr Phillips was so ‘remarkable’ that it arguably met the quasi-criminal threshold.
‘At its simplest, it amounted to one email, ten WhatsApp messages sent over two days, a complaint to the PLA, and the website, which Mr Oloffs then promoted.
‘This is especially so, given the context of robust debate in the club environment, where the claimant also made serious counter-allegations about the defendant’s conduct in the club.’
She granted Mr Oloffs a summary judgment in his favour in relation to Mr Phillips’ claims for harassment, breach of confidence and misuse of private information, as well as his data breach claim in relation to Mr Oloffs’ use of social media.
The issue of whether Mr Oloffs breached private data rights on his ‘Barge Gate’ website must be decided at another hearing unless – after further legal argument – the judge decides the issue is too minor to be tried.
Greenwich Yacht Club, which is located around three miles downriver from Tower Bridge, has a roll call of over 400 members and hosts facilities for dinghies, cruisers and rowing boats.
Originally founded by Thames watermen and river workers in 1908, the club once had a venue at a riverside hut. In 2000, it relocated to its current iconic platform in the middle of the river itself.
