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Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
http://cruisersforum.com/showthread....5&pagenumber=1 Mayday off coast of Mexico The following information about the need to be rescued from his catamaran has been retrieved from www.themultihull.com forum and has also caused a considerable discussion on www.ybw.com forums as well - principly on drogues/parachutes. The mails are from Richard Woods who is well known in UK as a multihull designer and he has been cruising for some time now on his latest design cat "eclipse" . His designs are normally sold as plans for home completion, and occasionally, the hulls are commercially moulded on the more popular designs for home completion. The designs are clean and open plan, the resultant boats being light but strong and also fast. "As some of you probably now know, we are no longer on board Eclipse but on navy frigate USS Ford where, apart from saving our lives, everyone has been really friendly and welcoming. We left Nicaragua on Friday 13th, which probably didn’t help matters, and had a very frustrating sail along the coast of El Salvador and then Guatemala. Frustrating, as the weather was really changeable. For example we went from motoring to sailing under reefed genoa alone in under 2 minutes. But we did have some nice sailing for a couple of hours each day – then followed by several hours of motoring. So it was taking longer than we wanted to get to Mexico and we were both getting tired, but Jetti, as always, was preparing good food. There was a time constraint as we knew there would be a bad gale coming through the Gulf of Tehuantepec on Wednesday afternoon, and we had wanted to get past that area by then. Sadly we didn’t quite make it. The wind got up very quickly from south 7-10 knots to north west 30. As we got away from land the wind increased more. There are several proven, accepted, techniques for handling bad weather in a catamaran. If the wave and wind are not too severe, one can just heave to or take down all sail and lie ahull. But as the wind increases and especially as the wave height increases, this is no longer a safe option. So the next stage is either to run before a gale towing warps, or to lie to a sea anchor. The problems with the former are that a) you are going with the weather system so you stay in it longer b) if the wind increases you eventually cannot go slowly enough so you begin to surf and overtake the waves ahead c) you end up a long way downwind, at say 50 miles a day d) it would mean that I would be hand steering all the time, as Jetti is not experienced (or in the event as we found later, strong enough) to steer in big seas. So I have always preferred the sea anchor streamed from the bows. However, in 45 years of sailing and around 70,000 of offshore sailing, I have never had to stop sailing because of bad weather. So it had all been theory for me, until now. Anyway, at 8pm we decided to stop sailing and use our parachute sea anchor. I had first got this when we did the Azores race in Banshee in 1987, but had only ever used it for practice. This was the first time for real. It took sometime to sort out the bridle so that the boat would stay head to waves. It tended to swing 40 degrees each way and was scary (or so I thought at the time) when we got near-abeam of the waves. Also, from time to time the parachute would collapse, and we’d drift backwards until it reset, which was even more worrying. We spent the night like that, with no sleep of course. Next morning the wind and sea was much worse. Certainly a full gale, but not so bad that I thought the Eclipse was in real danger. Tests, theory and practice have shown that a catamaran can only capsize if it beam onto waves that are as high as the beam of the boat. So we are 100% OK in waves under 20 feet high, and these were 10 feet. I kept checking the warps and bridles but as the boat swung, the loads on the bridles were very high and eventually first one and then the other 12mm anchor warp bridle broke. Apart from holding the boat into waves the bridle also spreads the load onto 3 wear points. Now, all the load was on one bow roller and the parachute warp was beginning to chafe. I rigged up a second line with rolling hitches, which was rather wet to do on the foredeck. At some stage the forward trampoline started to tear but was still useable with care. (I had planned to get a new one this year as they have about a 5 year life). The wind and sea state had been steadily increasing. Every hour we said, “It can’t get windier can it?” By now it was probably a steady 40 knots and 10-15 foot seas breaking over the boat every 10 minutes or so. Our safety depended on our parachute sea anchor holding. But in case it failed, I set up the 2 main anchors to be used as drogues behind the boat. Surprisingly it was not the warp that broke, but the parachute. This was a 10ft cargo-style parachute specially made for use as a yacht sea anchor. I pulled it on board, the boat drifting beam on at this stage, and on quick inspection found it had shredded and that several parachute lines had pulled out. As I said earlier, I had only used the sea anchor in calmer conditions for an hour or so, just to practice. It seemed an excellent idea, the boat would just bob up and down, just like being on a conventional anchor, but in a real gale the loads were much worse, and the boat was being pulled and jerked as the waves passed. I didn’t like it, and I don’t think I would recommend a sea anchor again. We threw the anchors over the stern and also added the shredded sea anchor. It was very difficult to steer, but eventually I got the boat moving downwind. We were sailing at 5-6 knots despite the drogues. We let out more warp which helped slow us to 3-4. I think that might have still meant surfing down some of the bigger waves which would have the potential for a disastrous broach. However the real problem was now the following waves could catch us up and break into the cockpit. For the first time ever on any catamaran I’ve sailed we had to close the companionway door. The first wave broke into the cockpit. The second wave was much bigger and swamped the cockpit. Even worse it filled the dinghy which we keep in davits. The water weight broke some of the straps, and we had to cut the dinghy loose and so lost it. Clearly running downwind was not an option. So we now decided to try towing the anchors from one stern. This would allow the boat to lie at a 45 degree angle to the waves. Despite this temporary arrangement it actually seemed to work better than the sea anchor had done. Of course all the time the wind was increasing. We went below again to recover and see how the boat was handling the conditions. An hour later the wind suddenly got up even more. It was now screeching and the rig began vibrating which I had only noticed once before, when tied up in a marina during a 70 knot gale. The waves were now often over 20 feet so it was definitely getting to the dangerous, life threatening stage. We began to discuss the option of abandoning ship. Unfortunately our Raymarine wind speed indicator was obviously only designed for inshore sailing because it was still reading 32 knots. So I don’t know how windy it really was. By 1pm the waves were now consistently over 20 feet, maybe occasionally 30 feet. I know I tend to underestimate wave heights, partly because everyone normally over estimates. For example when sailing in Alaska in the summer I thought we were in 2-3 ft waves, but our skipper wrote 6ft waves in the log. It was getting more and more serious as there didn’t seem to be any limit to how high the wind and waves could get. By 1.30pm the wind really got up. The sea state changed and the whole surface was covered in flying spume, all the wave tops were blown off. It was much the worse conditions I have ever seen, even when standing on a beach looking out at 100 knot winter gales. When I went outside I couldn’t stand up except by holding to a tether line. I could feel the skin on my face distorting in the wind. I guess there is a known wind speed when that happens, but I’d never felt it before. That was when we decided to send out a Mayday, as we knew it would be several hours before any chance of rescue. Of course it was particularly hard for me as Eclipse is not insured. And of course no one likes the idea of abandoning a boat – usually boats are picked up later undamaged. I can always build another boat, and I had earlier said to Jetti that we might not survive. Accordingly we set off our EPIRB but also called Pip using our satellite phone. He gave us the UK’s Falmouth Coastguard phone number, and we called the Coastguard direct. We called back every hour to check on progress and to give a weather update and position check. We heard that Mexico was sending out a launch to stand by. By 6pm it was dark so we could no longer see the waves. We could still hear them crashing onto the boat, but so far, apart from the lost dinghy and torn but useable trampoline there was no other damage. The inside was beginning to become a mess. Normally on a catamaran one can leave cups on the table; there is no need for fiddle rails, etc. Now everything was being thrown around. There seemed little point in putting everything back in place, so most just stayed on the floor or was put on the bunks. The inside stayed dry though, no water had got below except for the one wave when we were running downwind and lost the dinghy. So it was dry and warm below. But all the time a wave/wind squall could have our name on it. We wouldn’t survive a capsize. We were still expecting the Mexican coastguard to call up on the VHF to say they were enroute. So it was a great surprise to hear a female American voice at 11pm saying she was in a helicopter and 10 miles from us. This was the first we knew that the US was involved. We kept in radio contact as they flew in and then set off a flare and made visual contact, although I suspect the pilot had seen us long before through their night vision equipment. The last book I had read was Perfect Storm, so I knew all about the skills and training of naval rescue personnel. We had earlier prepared some dry bags which we filled with passports, money, ship papers. All those can be replaced, so what else? What I really wanted to take was my computer with all my work on it. But I felt it was too big. So Jetti took her makeup bag, I took our CD’s. In hindsight we could have taken more. We tied the bags to each other and put on shoes and inflated our lifejackets. The US navy helicopters have a SAR (search and rescue) swimmer who jumps out of the helicopter and swims to the stricken vessel with a lifting strop. It looked very scary to me. A brave man. Eclipse was still moving around quite violently in the seas, but the conditions were fortunately not nearly as bad as they had been when we put out the Mayday. Ironically we probably were over the worst of the gale. Jetti was the first to jump into the sea and into the swimmer’s waiting arms. Five minutes later it was my turn. As I was hoisted out, I looked down and back at Eclipse and hoped I would see it again. I had not flown in a helicopter before. They look big on the outside, but are cramped inside and very noisy. Our flight back to the USS Ford lasted about 10 minutes. We watched the in-flight movie: the night vision viewer of the frigate as we approached was fantastic. Jetti was shown the weather radar and saw that Eclipse was right in the centre of the storm. We landed on the ship and faced a welcoming party of apparently the whole ship’s company, despite it now being 3 in the morning. A quick debrief, medical check, shower, and then into a set of navy issue jumpsuits. Next, a massive breakfast. We are not sure if it was put in front of us as a test, but it was the biggest meal I’ve ever eaten. Jetti finished her plates as well. But then neither of us had eaten anything for 36 hours except a few slices of bread. Then a 3 hour sleep. In the morning we had discussions with the crew. The helicopter pilot said she had great difficulty controlling her helicopter as she was flying at 50 knots to stay in position and going up and down 20ft to stay with the waves. Independent confirmation that it was still a full gale, if not F9. Even so, it was far less severe than earlier in the day. She also said it was her first real sea rescue. She, like the swimmer, had only done simulations in weather this severe. She also admitted that her helicopter had not been airworthy the day before as the rotor blades were being changed. We met the captain who said he had been steaming his frigate away from the area to keep away from the bad weather. He considers this area worse than sailing round Cape Horn. Even now as I write on board USS Ford, it’s hard to keep in my chair as the ship is rolling and pitching. Yet, looking outside, the sea state looks relatively flat compared to what we had been in yesterday. We have 24 hours before getting to port. We are desperate to see if we can salvage Eclipse. It is undamaged and will probably float for ever. Currently it is only 50 miles from a big fishing harbour, and we hope to find a salvage operator there to tow Eclipse in. Despite all that happened, I was very impressed with the seaworthiness of Eclipse. No real damage (we didn’t like our dinghy anyway), and the boat had survived a major storm without capsizing. Certainly life would have been much more uncomfortable on a monohull, and ultimately I think had we been on one, we would still have put out a Mayday, as did the yacht in the Perfect Storm. I’ll finish this by thanking all the crew on USS Ford. There will be more about them later. We don’t know what the future holds now. In a few days we will know about Eclipse. If it is salvaged, clearly we have to sort that out. If not, we will fly home. That’s it for now. Richard and Jetti, no longer on board Eclipse" ________________________________________ This was a very interesting story with some practical knowledge. Mic sailing '67 |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
Popeye: Are you listening to this one, me laddie???
"Mic" wrote in message ... http://cruisersforum.com/showthread....5&pagenumber=1 Mayday off coast of Mexico The following information about the need to be rescued from his catamaran has been retrieved from www.themultihull.com forum and has also caused a considerable discussion on www.ybw.com forums as well - principly on drogues/parachutes. The mails are from Richard Woods who is well known in UK as a multihull designer and he has been cruising for some time now on his latest design cat "eclipse" . His designs are normally sold as plans for home completion, and occasionally, the hulls are commercially moulded on the more popular designs for home completion. The designs are clean and open plan, the resultant boats being light but strong and also fast. "As some of you probably now know, we are no longer on board Eclipse but on navy frigate USS Ford where, apart from saving our lives, everyone has been really friendly and welcoming. We left Nicaragua on Friday 13th, which probably didn’t help matters, and had a very frustrating sail along the coast of El Salvador and then Guatemala. Frustrating, as the weather was really changeable. For example we went from motoring to sailing under reefed genoa alone in under 2 minutes. But we did have some nice sailing for a couple of hours each day – then followed by several hours of motoring. So it was taking longer than we wanted to get to Mexico and we were both getting tired, but Jetti, as always, was preparing good food. There was a time constraint as we knew there would be a bad gale coming through the Gulf of Tehuantepec on Wednesday afternoon, and we had wanted to get past that area by then. Sadly we didn’t quite make it. The wind got up very quickly from south 7-10 knots to north west 30. As we got away from land the wind increased more. There are several proven, accepted, techniques for handling bad weather in a catamaran. If the wave and wind are not too severe, one can just heave to or take down all sail and lie ahull. But as the wind increases and especially as the wave height increases, this is no longer a safe option. So the next stage is either to run before a gale towing warps, or to lie to a sea anchor. The problems with the former are that a) you are going with the weather system so you stay in it longer b) if the wind increases you eventually cannot go slowly enough so you begin to surf and overtake the waves ahead c) you end up a long way downwind, at say 50 miles a day d) it would mean that I would be hand steering all the time, as Jetti is not experienced (or in the event as we found later, strong enough) to steer in big seas. So I have always preferred the sea anchor streamed from the bows. However, in 45 years of sailing and around 70,000 of offshore sailing, I have never had to stop sailing because of bad weather. So it had all been theory for me, until now. Anyway, at 8pm we decided to stop sailing and use our parachute sea anchor. I had first got this when we did the Azores race in Banshee in 1987, but had only ever used it for practice. This was the first time for real. It took sometime to sort out the bridle so that the boat would stay head to waves. It tended to swing 40 degrees each way and was scary (or so I thought at the time) when we got near-abeam of the waves. Also, from time to time the parachute would collapse, and we’d drift backwards until it reset, which was even more worrying. We spent the night like that, with no sleep of course. Next morning the wind and sea was much worse. Certainly a full gale, but not so bad that I thought the Eclipse was in real danger. Tests, theory and practice have shown that a catamaran can only capsize if it beam onto waves that are as high as the beam of the boat. So we are 100% OK in waves under 20 feet high, and these were 10 feet. I kept checking the warps and bridles but as the boat swung, the loads on the bridles were very high and eventually first one and then the other 12mm anchor warp bridle broke. Apart from holding the boat into waves the bridle also spreads the load onto 3 wear points. Now, all the load was on one bow roller and the parachute warp was beginning to chafe. I rigged up a second line with rolling hitches, which was rather wet to do on the foredeck. At some stage the forward trampoline started to tear but was still useable with care. (I had planned to get a new one this year as they have about a 5 year life). The wind and sea state had been steadily increasing. Every hour we said, “It can’t get windier can it?” By now it was probably a steady 40 knots and 10-15 foot seas breaking over the boat every 10 minutes or so. Our safety depended on our parachute sea anchor holding. But in case it failed, I set up the 2 main anchors to be used as drogues behind the boat. Surprisingly it was not the warp that broke, but the parachute. This was a 10ft cargo-style parachute specially made for use as a yacht sea anchor. I pulled it on board, the boat drifting beam on at this stage, and on quick inspection found it had shredded and that several parachute lines had pulled out. As I said earlier, I had only used the sea anchor in calmer conditions for an hour or so, just to practice. It seemed an excellent idea, the boat would just bob up and down, just like being on a conventional anchor, but in a real gale the loads were much worse, and the boat was being pulled and jerked as the waves passed. I didn’t like it, and I don’t think I would recommend a sea anchor again. We threw the anchors over the stern and also added the shredded sea anchor. It was very difficult to steer, but eventually I got the boat moving downwind. We were sailing at 5-6 knots despite the drogues. We let out more warp which helped slow us to 3-4. I think that might have still meant surfing down some of the bigger waves which would have the potential for a disastrous broach. However the real problem was now the following waves could catch us up and break into the cockpit. For the first time ever on any catamaran I’ve sailed we had to close the companionway door. The first wave broke into the cockpit. The second wave was much bigger and swamped the cockpit. Even worse it filled the dinghy which we keep in davits. The water weight broke some of the straps, and we had to cut the dinghy loose and so lost it. Clearly running downwind was not an option. So we now decided to try towing the anchors from one stern. This would allow the boat to lie at a 45 degree angle to the waves. Despite this temporary arrangement it actually seemed to work better than the sea anchor had done. Of course all the time the wind was increasing. We went below again to recover and see how the boat was handling the conditions. An hour later the wind suddenly got up even more. It was now screeching and the rig began vibrating which I had only noticed once before, when tied up in a marina during a 70 knot gale. The waves were now often over 20 feet so it was definitely getting to the dangerous, life threatening stage. We began to discuss the option of abandoning ship. Unfortunately our Raymarine wind speed indicator was obviously only designed for inshore sailing because it was still reading 32 knots. So I don’t know how windy it really was. By 1pm the waves were now consistently over 20 feet, maybe occasionally 30 feet. I know I tend to underestimate wave heights, partly because everyone normally over estimates. For example when sailing in Alaska in the summer I thought we were in 2-3 ft waves, but our skipper wrote 6ft waves in the log. It was getting more and more serious as there didn’t seem to be any limit to how high the wind and waves could get. By 1.30pm the wind really got up. The sea state changed and the whole surface was covered in flying spume, all the wave tops were blown off. It was much the worse conditions I have ever seen, even when standing on a beach looking out at 100 knot winter gales. When I went outside I couldn’t stand up except by holding to a tether line. I could feel the skin on my face distorting in the wind. I guess there is a known wind speed when that happens, but I’d never felt it before. That was when we decided to send out a Mayday, as we knew it would be several hours before any chance of rescue. Of course it was particularly hard for me as Eclipse is not insured. And of course no one likes the idea of abandoning a boat – usually boats are picked up later undamaged. I can always build another boat, and I had earlier said to Jetti that we might not survive. Accordingly we set off our EPIRB but also called Pip using our satellite phone. He gave us the UK’s Falmouth Coastguard phone number, and we called the Coastguard direct. We called back every hour to check on progress and to give a weather update and position check. We heard that Mexico was sending out a launch to stand by. By 6pm it was dark so we could no longer see the waves. We could still hear them crashing onto the boat, but so far, apart from the lost dinghy and torn but useable trampoline there was no other damage. The inside was beginning to become a mess. Normally on a catamaran one can leave cups on the table; there is no need for fiddle rails, etc. Now everything was being thrown around. There seemed little point in putting everything back in place, so most just stayed on the floor or was put on the bunks. The inside stayed dry though, no water had got below except for the one wave when we were running downwind and lost the dinghy. So it was dry and warm below. But all the time a wave/wind squall could have our name on it. We wouldn’t survive a capsize. We were still expecting the Mexican coastguard to call up on the VHF to say they were enroute. So it was a great surprise to hear a female American voice at 11pm saying she was in a helicopter and 10 miles from us. This was the first we knew that the US was involved. We kept in radio contact as they flew in and then set off a flare and made visual contact, although I suspect the pilot had seen us long before through their night vision equipment. The last book I had read was Perfect Storm, so I knew all about the skills and training of naval rescue personnel. We had earlier prepared some dry bags which we filled with passports, money, ship papers. All those can be replaced, so what else? What I really wanted to take was my computer with all my work on it. But I felt it was too big. So Jetti took her makeup bag, I took our CD’s. In hindsight we could have taken more. We tied the bags to each other and put on shoes and inflated our lifejackets. The US navy helicopters have a SAR (search and rescue) swimmer who jumps out of the helicopter and swims to the stricken vessel with a lifting strop. It looked very scary to me. A brave man. Eclipse was still moving around quite violently in the seas, but the conditions were fortunately not nearly as bad as they had been when we put out the Mayday. Ironically we probably were over the worst of the gale. Jetti was the first to jump into the sea and into the swimmer’s waiting arms. Five minutes later it was my turn. As I was hoisted out, I looked down and back at Eclipse and hoped I would see it again. I had not flown in a helicopter before. They look big on the outside, but are cramped inside and very noisy. Our flight back to the USS Ford lasted about 10 minutes. We watched the in-flight movie: the night vision viewer of the frigate as we approached was fantastic. Jetti was shown the weather radar and saw that Eclipse was right in the centre of the storm. We landed on the ship and faced a welcoming party of apparently the whole ship’s company, despite it now being 3 in the morning. A quick debrief, medical check, shower, and then into a set of navy issue jumpsuits. Next, a massive breakfast. We are not sure if it was put in front of us as a test, but it was the biggest meal I’ve ever eaten. Jetti finished her plates as well. But then neither of us had eaten anything for 36 hours except a few slices of bread. Then a 3 hour sleep. In the morning we had discussions with the crew. The helicopter pilot said she had great difficulty controlling her helicopter as she was flying at 50 knots to stay in position and going up and down 20ft to stay with the waves. Independent confirmation that it was still a full gale, if not F9. Even so, it was far less severe than earlier in the day. She also said it was her first real sea rescue. She, like the swimmer, had only done simulations in weather this severe. She also admitted that her helicopter had not been airworthy the day before as the rotor blades were being changed. We met the captain who said he had been steaming his frigate away from the area to keep away from the bad weather. He considers this area worse than sailing round Cape Horn. Even now as I write on board USS Ford, it’s hard to keep in my chair as the ship is rolling and pitching. Yet, looking outside, the sea state looks relatively flat compared to what we had been in yesterday. We have 24 hours before getting to port. We are desperate to see if we can salvage Eclipse. It is undamaged and will probably float for ever. Currently it is only 50 miles from a big fishing harbour, and we hope to find a salvage operator there to tow Eclipse in. Despite all that happened, I was very impressed with the seaworthiness of Eclipse. No real damage (we didn’t like our dinghy anyway), and the boat had survived a major storm without capsizing. Certainly life would have been much more uncomfortable on a monohull, and ultimately I think had we been on one, we would still have put out a Mayday, as did the yacht in the Perfect Storm. I’ll finish this by thanking all the crew on USS Ford. There will be more about them later. We don’t know what the future holds now. In a few days we will know about Eclipse. If it is salvaged, clearly we have to sort that out. If not, we will fly home. That’s it for now. Richard and Jetti, no longer on board Eclipse" ________________________________________ This was a very interesting story with some practical knowledge. Mic sailing '67 |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
Popeye: Are you listening to this one, me laddie???
"Mic" wrote in message ... http://cruisersforum.com/showthread....5&pagenumber=1 Mayday off coast of Mexico The following information about the need to be rescued from his catamaran has been retrieved from www.themultihull.com forum and has also caused a considerable discussion on www.ybw.com forums as well - principly on drogues/parachutes. The mails are from Richard Woods who is well known in UK as a multihull designer and he has been cruising for some time now on his latest design cat "eclipse" . His designs are normally sold as plans for home completion, and occasionally, the hulls are commercially moulded on the more popular designs for home completion. The designs are clean and open plan, the resultant boats being light but strong and also fast. "As some of you probably now know, we are no longer on board Eclipse but on navy frigate USS Ford where, apart from saving our lives, everyone has been really friendly and welcoming. We left Nicaragua on Friday 13th, which probably didn’t help matters, and had a very frustrating sail along the coast of El Salvador and then Guatemala. Frustrating, as the weather was really changeable. For example we went from motoring to sailing under reefed genoa alone in under 2 minutes. But we did have some nice sailing for a couple of hours each day – then followed by several hours of motoring. So it was taking longer than we wanted to get to Mexico and we were both getting tired, but Jetti, as always, was preparing good food. There was a time constraint as we knew there would be a bad gale coming through the Gulf of Tehuantepec on Wednesday afternoon, and we had wanted to get past that area by then. Sadly we didn’t quite make it. The wind got up very quickly from south 7-10 knots to north west 30. As we got away from land the wind increased more. There are several proven, accepted, techniques for handling bad weather in a catamaran. If the wave and wind are not too severe, one can just heave to or take down all sail and lie ahull. But as the wind increases and especially as the wave height increases, this is no longer a safe option. So the next stage is either to run before a gale towing warps, or to lie to a sea anchor. The problems with the former are that a) you are going with the weather system so you stay in it longer b) if the wind increases you eventually cannot go slowly enough so you begin to surf and overtake the waves ahead c) you end up a long way downwind, at say 50 miles a day d) it would mean that I would be hand steering all the time, as Jetti is not experienced (or in the event as we found later, strong enough) to steer in big seas. So I have always preferred the sea anchor streamed from the bows. However, in 45 years of sailing and around 70,000 of offshore sailing, I have never had to stop sailing because of bad weather. So it had all been theory for me, until now. Anyway, at 8pm we decided to stop sailing and use our parachute sea anchor. I had first got this when we did the Azores race in Banshee in 1987, but had only ever used it for practice. This was the first time for real. It took sometime to sort out the bridle so that the boat would stay head to waves. It tended to swing 40 degrees each way and was scary (or so I thought at the time) when we got near-abeam of the waves. Also, from time to time the parachute would collapse, and we’d drift backwards until it reset, which was even more worrying. We spent the night like that, with no sleep of course. Next morning the wind and sea was much worse. Certainly a full gale, but not so bad that I thought the Eclipse was in real danger. Tests, theory and practice have shown that a catamaran can only capsize if it beam onto waves that are as high as the beam of the boat. So we are 100% OK in waves under 20 feet high, and these were 10 feet. I kept checking the warps and bridles but as the boat swung, the loads on the bridles were very high and eventually first one and then the other 12mm anchor warp bridle broke. Apart from holding the boat into waves the bridle also spreads the load onto 3 wear points. Now, all the load was on one bow roller and the parachute warp was beginning to chafe. I rigged up a second line with rolling hitches, which was rather wet to do on the foredeck. At some stage the forward trampoline started to tear but was still useable with care. (I had planned to get a new one this year as they have about a 5 year life). The wind and sea state had been steadily increasing. Every hour we said, “It can’t get windier can it?” By now it was probably a steady 40 knots and 10-15 foot seas breaking over the boat every 10 minutes or so. Our safety depended on our parachute sea anchor holding. But in case it failed, I set up the 2 main anchors to be used as drogues behind the boat. Surprisingly it was not the warp that broke, but the parachute. This was a 10ft cargo-style parachute specially made for use as a yacht sea anchor. I pulled it on board, the boat drifting beam on at this stage, and on quick inspection found it had shredded and that several parachute lines had pulled out. As I said earlier, I had only used the sea anchor in calmer conditions for an hour or so, just to practice. It seemed an excellent idea, the boat would just bob up and down, just like being on a conventional anchor, but in a real gale the loads were much worse, and the boat was being pulled and jerked as the waves passed. I didn’t like it, and I don’t think I would recommend a sea anchor again. We threw the anchors over the stern and also added the shredded sea anchor. It was very difficult to steer, but eventually I got the boat moving downwind. We were sailing at 5-6 knots despite the drogues. We let out more warp which helped slow us to 3-4. I think that might have still meant surfing down some of the bigger waves which would have the potential for a disastrous broach. However the real problem was now the following waves could catch us up and break into the cockpit. For the first time ever on any catamaran I’ve sailed we had to close the companionway door. The first wave broke into the cockpit. The second wave was much bigger and swamped the cockpit. Even worse it filled the dinghy which we keep in davits. The water weight broke some of the straps, and we had to cut the dinghy loose and so lost it. Clearly running downwind was not an option. So we now decided to try towing the anchors from one stern. This would allow the boat to lie at a 45 degree angle to the waves. Despite this temporary arrangement it actually seemed to work better than the sea anchor had done. Of course all the time the wind was increasing. We went below again to recover and see how the boat was handling the conditions. An hour later the wind suddenly got up even more. It was now screeching and the rig began vibrating which I had only noticed once before, when tied up in a marina during a 70 knot gale. The waves were now often over 20 feet so it was definitely getting to the dangerous, life threatening stage. We began to discuss the option of abandoning ship. Unfortunately our Raymarine wind speed indicator was obviously only designed for inshore sailing because it was still reading 32 knots. So I don’t know how windy it really was. By 1pm the waves were now consistently over 20 feet, maybe occasionally 30 feet. I know I tend to underestimate wave heights, partly because everyone normally over estimates. For example when sailing in Alaska in the summer I thought we were in 2-3 ft waves, but our skipper wrote 6ft waves in the log. It was getting more and more serious as there didn’t seem to be any limit to how high the wind and waves could get. By 1.30pm the wind really got up. The sea state changed and the whole surface was covered in flying spume, all the wave tops were blown off. It was much the worse conditions I have ever seen, even when standing on a beach looking out at 100 knot winter gales. When I went outside I couldn’t stand up except by holding to a tether line. I could feel the skin on my face distorting in the wind. I guess there is a known wind speed when that happens, but I’d never felt it before. That was when we decided to send out a Mayday, as we knew it would be several hours before any chance of rescue. Of course it was particularly hard for me as Eclipse is not insured. And of course no one likes the idea of abandoning a boat – usually boats are picked up later undamaged. I can always build another boat, and I had earlier said to Jetti that we might not survive. Accordingly we set off our EPIRB but also called Pip using our satellite phone. He gave us the UK’s Falmouth Coastguard phone number, and we called the Coastguard direct. We called back every hour to check on progress and to give a weather update and position check. We heard that Mexico was sending out a launch to stand by. By 6pm it was dark so we could no longer see the waves. We could still hear them crashing onto the boat, but so far, apart from the lost dinghy and torn but useable trampoline there was no other damage. The inside was beginning to become a mess. Normally on a catamaran one can leave cups on the table; there is no need for fiddle rails, etc. Now everything was being thrown around. There seemed little point in putting everything back in place, so most just stayed on the floor or was put on the bunks. The inside stayed dry though, no water had got below except for the one wave when we were running downwind and lost the dinghy. So it was dry and warm below. But all the time a wave/wind squall could have our name on it. We wouldn’t survive a capsize. We were still expecting the Mexican coastguard to call up on the VHF to say they were enroute. So it was a great surprise to hear a female American voice at 11pm saying she was in a helicopter and 10 miles from us. This was the first we knew that the US was involved. We kept in radio contact as they flew in and then set off a flare and made visual contact, although I suspect the pilot had seen us long before through their night vision equipment. The last book I had read was Perfect Storm, so I knew all about the skills and training of naval rescue personnel. We had earlier prepared some dry bags which we filled with passports, money, ship papers. All those can be replaced, so what else? What I really wanted to take was my computer with all my work on it. But I felt it was too big. So Jetti took her makeup bag, I took our CD’s. In hindsight we could have taken more. We tied the bags to each other and put on shoes and inflated our lifejackets. The US navy helicopters have a SAR (search and rescue) swimmer who jumps out of the helicopter and swims to the stricken vessel with a lifting strop. It looked very scary to me. A brave man. Eclipse was still moving around quite violently in the seas, but the conditions were fortunately not nearly as bad as they had been when we put out the Mayday. Ironically we probably were over the worst of the gale. Jetti was the first to jump into the sea and into the swimmer’s waiting arms. Five minutes later it was my turn. As I was hoisted out, I looked down and back at Eclipse and hoped I would see it again. I had not flown in a helicopter before. They look big on the outside, but are cramped inside and very noisy. Our flight back to the USS Ford lasted about 10 minutes. We watched the in-flight movie: the night vision viewer of the frigate as we approached was fantastic. Jetti was shown the weather radar and saw that Eclipse was right in the centre of the storm. We landed on the ship and faced a welcoming party of apparently the whole ship’s company, despite it now being 3 in the morning. A quick debrief, medical check, shower, and then into a set of navy issue jumpsuits. Next, a massive breakfast. We are not sure if it was put in front of us as a test, but it was the biggest meal I’ve ever eaten. Jetti finished her plates as well. But then neither of us had eaten anything for 36 hours except a few slices of bread. Then a 3 hour sleep. In the morning we had discussions with the crew. The helicopter pilot said she had great difficulty controlling her helicopter as she was flying at 50 knots to stay in position and going up and down 20ft to stay with the waves. Independent confirmation that it was still a full gale, if not F9. Even so, it was far less severe than earlier in the day. She also said it was her first real sea rescue. She, like the swimmer, had only done simulations in weather this severe. She also admitted that her helicopter had not been airworthy the day before as the rotor blades were being changed. We met the captain who said he had been steaming his frigate away from the area to keep away from the bad weather. He considers this area worse than sailing round Cape Horn. Even now as I write on board USS Ford, it’s hard to keep in my chair as the ship is rolling and pitching. Yet, looking outside, the sea state looks relatively flat compared to what we had been in yesterday. We have 24 hours before getting to port. We are desperate to see if we can salvage Eclipse. It is undamaged and will probably float for ever. Currently it is only 50 miles from a big fishing harbour, and we hope to find a salvage operator there to tow Eclipse in. Despite all that happened, I was very impressed with the seaworthiness of Eclipse. No real damage (we didn’t like our dinghy anyway), and the boat had survived a major storm without capsizing. Certainly life would have been much more uncomfortable on a monohull, and ultimately I think had we been on one, we would still have put out a Mayday, as did the yacht in the Perfect Storm. I’ll finish this by thanking all the crew on USS Ford. There will be more about them later. We don’t know what the future holds now. In a few days we will know about Eclipse. If it is salvaged, clearly we have to sort that out. If not, we will fly home. That’s it for now. Richard and Jetti, no longer on board Eclipse" ________________________________________ This was a very interesting story with some practical knowledge. Mic sailing '67 |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
Popeye: Are you listening to this one, me laddie???
"Mic" wrote in message ... http://cruisersforum.com/showthread....5&pagenumber=1 Mayday off coast of Mexico The following information about the need to be rescued from his catamaran has been retrieved from www.themultihull.com forum and has also caused a considerable discussion on www.ybw.com forums as well - principly on drogues/parachutes. The mails are from Richard Woods who is well known in UK as a multihull designer and he has been cruising for some time now on his latest design cat "eclipse" . His designs are normally sold as plans for home completion, and occasionally, the hulls are commercially moulded on the more popular designs for home completion. The designs are clean and open plan, the resultant boats being light but strong and also fast. "As some of you probably now know, we are no longer on board Eclipse but on navy frigate USS Ford where, apart from saving our lives, everyone has been really friendly and welcoming. We left Nicaragua on Friday 13th, which probably didn’t help matters, and had a very frustrating sail along the coast of El Salvador and then Guatemala. Frustrating, as the weather was really changeable. For example we went from motoring to sailing under reefed genoa alone in under 2 minutes. But we did have some nice sailing for a couple of hours each day – then followed by several hours of motoring. So it was taking longer than we wanted to get to Mexico and we were both getting tired, but Jetti, as always, was preparing good food. There was a time constraint as we knew there would be a bad gale coming through the Gulf of Tehuantepec on Wednesday afternoon, and we had wanted to get past that area by then. Sadly we didn’t quite make it. The wind got up very quickly from south 7-10 knots to north west 30. As we got away from land the wind increased more. There are several proven, accepted, techniques for handling bad weather in a catamaran. If the wave and wind are not too severe, one can just heave to or take down all sail and lie ahull. But as the wind increases and especially as the wave height increases, this is no longer a safe option. So the next stage is either to run before a gale towing warps, or to lie to a sea anchor. The problems with the former are that a) you are going with the weather system so you stay in it longer b) if the wind increases you eventually cannot go slowly enough so you begin to surf and overtake the waves ahead c) you end up a long way downwind, at say 50 miles a day d) it would mean that I would be hand steering all the time, as Jetti is not experienced (or in the event as we found later, strong enough) to steer in big seas. So I have always preferred the sea anchor streamed from the bows. However, in 45 years of sailing and around 70,000 of offshore sailing, I have never had to stop sailing because of bad weather. So it had all been theory for me, until now. Anyway, at 8pm we decided to stop sailing and use our parachute sea anchor. I had first got this when we did the Azores race in Banshee in 1987, but had only ever used it for practice. This was the first time for real. It took sometime to sort out the bridle so that the boat would stay head to waves. It tended to swing 40 degrees each way and was scary (or so I thought at the time) when we got near-abeam of the waves. Also, from time to time the parachute would collapse, and we’d drift backwards until it reset, which was even more worrying. We spent the night like that, with no sleep of course. Next morning the wind and sea was much worse. Certainly a full gale, but not so bad that I thought the Eclipse was in real danger. Tests, theory and practice have shown that a catamaran can only capsize if it beam onto waves that are as high as the beam of the boat. So we are 100% OK in waves under 20 feet high, and these were 10 feet. I kept checking the warps and bridles but as the boat swung, the loads on the bridles were very high and eventually first one and then the other 12mm anchor warp bridle broke. Apart from holding the boat into waves the bridle also spreads the load onto 3 wear points. Now, all the load was on one bow roller and the parachute warp was beginning to chafe. I rigged up a second line with rolling hitches, which was rather wet to do on the foredeck. At some stage the forward trampoline started to tear but was still useable with care. (I had planned to get a new one this year as they have about a 5 year life). The wind and sea state had been steadily increasing. Every hour we said, “It can’t get windier can it?” By now it was probably a steady 40 knots and 10-15 foot seas breaking over the boat every 10 minutes or so. Our safety depended on our parachute sea anchor holding. But in case it failed, I set up the 2 main anchors to be used as drogues behind the boat. Surprisingly it was not the warp that broke, but the parachute. This was a 10ft cargo-style parachute specially made for use as a yacht sea anchor. I pulled it on board, the boat drifting beam on at this stage, and on quick inspection found it had shredded and that several parachute lines had pulled out. As I said earlier, I had only used the sea anchor in calmer conditions for an hour or so, just to practice. It seemed an excellent idea, the boat would just bob up and down, just like being on a conventional anchor, but in a real gale the loads were much worse, and the boat was being pulled and jerked as the waves passed. I didn’t like it, and I don’t think I would recommend a sea anchor again. We threw the anchors over the stern and also added the shredded sea anchor. It was very difficult to steer, but eventually I got the boat moving downwind. We were sailing at 5-6 knots despite the drogues. We let out more warp which helped slow us to 3-4. I think that might have still meant surfing down some of the bigger waves which would have the potential for a disastrous broach. However the real problem was now the following waves could catch us up and break into the cockpit. For the first time ever on any catamaran I’ve sailed we had to close the companionway door. The first wave broke into the cockpit. The second wave was much bigger and swamped the cockpit. Even worse it filled the dinghy which we keep in davits. The water weight broke some of the straps, and we had to cut the dinghy loose and so lost it. Clearly running downwind was not an option. So we now decided to try towing the anchors from one stern. This would allow the boat to lie at a 45 degree angle to the waves. Despite this temporary arrangement it actually seemed to work better than the sea anchor had done. Of course all the time the wind was increasing. We went below again to recover and see how the boat was handling the conditions. An hour later the wind suddenly got up even more. It was now screeching and the rig began vibrating which I had only noticed once before, when tied up in a marina during a 70 knot gale. The waves were now often over 20 feet so it was definitely getting to the dangerous, life threatening stage. We began to discuss the option of abandoning ship. Unfortunately our Raymarine wind speed indicator was obviously only designed for inshore sailing because it was still reading 32 knots. So I don’t know how windy it really was. By 1pm the waves were now consistently over 20 feet, maybe occasionally 30 feet. I know I tend to underestimate wave heights, partly because everyone normally over estimates. For example when sailing in Alaska in the summer I thought we were in 2-3 ft waves, but our skipper wrote 6ft waves in the log. It was getting more and more serious as there didn’t seem to be any limit to how high the wind and waves could get. By 1.30pm the wind really got up. The sea state changed and the whole surface was covered in flying spume, all the wave tops were blown off. It was much the worse conditions I have ever seen, even when standing on a beach looking out at 100 knot winter gales. When I went outside I couldn’t stand up except by holding to a tether line. I could feel the skin on my face distorting in the wind. I guess there is a known wind speed when that happens, but I’d never felt it before. That was when we decided to send out a Mayday, as we knew it would be several hours before any chance of rescue. Of course it was particularly hard for me as Eclipse is not insured. And of course no one likes the idea of abandoning a boat – usually boats are picked up later undamaged. I can always build another boat, and I had earlier said to Jetti that we might not survive. Accordingly we set off our EPIRB but also called Pip using our satellite phone. He gave us the UK’s Falmouth Coastguard phone number, and we called the Coastguard direct. We called back every hour to check on progress and to give a weather update and position check. We heard that Mexico was sending out a launch to stand by. By 6pm it was dark so we could no longer see the waves. We could still hear them crashing onto the boat, but so far, apart from the lost dinghy and torn but useable trampoline there was no other damage. The inside was beginning to become a mess. Normally on a catamaran one can leave cups on the table; there is no need for fiddle rails, etc. Now everything was being thrown around. There seemed little point in putting everything back in place, so most just stayed on the floor or was put on the bunks. The inside stayed dry though, no water had got below except for the one wave when we were running downwind and lost the dinghy. So it was dry and warm below. But all the time a wave/wind squall could have our name on it. We wouldn’t survive a capsize. We were still expecting the Mexican coastguard to call up on the VHF to say they were enroute. So it was a great surprise to hear a female American voice at 11pm saying she was in a helicopter and 10 miles from us. This was the first we knew that the US was involved. We kept in radio contact as they flew in and then set off a flare and made visual contact, although I suspect the pilot had seen us long before through their night vision equipment. The last book I had read was Perfect Storm, so I knew all about the skills and training of naval rescue personnel. We had earlier prepared some dry bags which we filled with passports, money, ship papers. All those can be replaced, so what else? What I really wanted to take was my computer with all my work on it. But I felt it was too big. So Jetti took her makeup bag, I took our CD’s. In hindsight we could have taken more. We tied the bags to each other and put on shoes and inflated our lifejackets. The US navy helicopters have a SAR (search and rescue) swimmer who jumps out of the helicopter and swims to the stricken vessel with a lifting strop. It looked very scary to me. A brave man. Eclipse was still moving around quite violently in the seas, but the conditions were fortunately not nearly as bad as they had been when we put out the Mayday. Ironically we probably were over the worst of the gale. Jetti was the first to jump into the sea and into the swimmer’s waiting arms. Five minutes later it was my turn. As I was hoisted out, I looked down and back at Eclipse and hoped I would see it again. I had not flown in a helicopter before. They look big on the outside, but are cramped inside and very noisy. Our flight back to the USS Ford lasted about 10 minutes. We watched the in-flight movie: the night vision viewer of the frigate as we approached was fantastic. Jetti was shown the weather radar and saw that Eclipse was right in the centre of the storm. We landed on the ship and faced a welcoming party of apparently the whole ship’s company, despite it now being 3 in the morning. A quick debrief, medical check, shower, and then into a set of navy issue jumpsuits. Next, a massive breakfast. We are not sure if it was put in front of us as a test, but it was the biggest meal I’ve ever eaten. Jetti finished her plates as well. But then neither of us had eaten anything for 36 hours except a few slices of bread. Then a 3 hour sleep. In the morning we had discussions with the crew. The helicopter pilot said she had great difficulty controlling her helicopter as she was flying at 50 knots to stay in position and going up and down 20ft to stay with the waves. Independent confirmation that it was still a full gale, if not F9. Even so, it was far less severe than earlier in the day. She also said it was her first real sea rescue. She, like the swimmer, had only done simulations in weather this severe. She also admitted that her helicopter had not been airworthy the day before as the rotor blades were being changed. We met the captain who said he had been steaming his frigate away from the area to keep away from the bad weather. He considers this area worse than sailing round Cape Horn. Even now as I write on board USS Ford, it’s hard to keep in my chair as the ship is rolling and pitching. Yet, looking outside, the sea state looks relatively flat compared to what we had been in yesterday. We have 24 hours before getting to port. We are desperate to see if we can salvage Eclipse. It is undamaged and will probably float for ever. Currently it is only 50 miles from a big fishing harbour, and we hope to find a salvage operator there to tow Eclipse in. Despite all that happened, I was very impressed with the seaworthiness of Eclipse. No real damage (we didn’t like our dinghy anyway), and the boat had survived a major storm without capsizing. Certainly life would have been much more uncomfortable on a monohull, and ultimately I think had we been on one, we would still have put out a Mayday, as did the yacht in the Perfect Storm. I’ll finish this by thanking all the crew on USS Ford. There will be more about them later. We don’t know what the future holds now. In a few days we will know about Eclipse. If it is salvaged, clearly we have to sort that out. If not, we will fly home. That’s it for now. Richard and Jetti, no longer on board Eclipse" ________________________________________ This was a very interesting story with some practical knowledge. Mic sailing '67 |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
"Danny" wrote: Popeye: Are you listening to this one, me laddie??? I'm waiting to hear if Eclipse is still going to be upright when she's recovered. |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
|
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
wrote:
wrote: I'm waiting to hear if Eclipse is still going to be upright when she's recovered. Hasn't it already been about a week or more ? Is it difficult to find a 32' boat about 50 miles offshore ? Perhaps we should have a service using satellite cameras and computer programs to find lost boats (and people) in the ocean. We do have a system for people. The system depends on you have a 406 EPIRB onboard and deploying it in the event of an emergency. Its position is triangulated by SARSAT (or sometimes given by an onboard GPS) and the SAR guys come out and look for you where the EPIRB is (if there is anyone around). The system is not infallible and many times you may be too remote for anyone to get to. Basically, prepare like you are on your own. Not many folks care about lost empty boats. Gaz |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 02:46:44 GMT, Gary wrote:
Not many folks care about lost empty boats. That's true and the boat was abandoned in an area without a lot of sea traffic or civilization. It will probably wash up somewhere sooner or later. Lack of planning and preparation gets another one in my opinion. |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
Wayne.B wrote in
: It will probably wash up somewhere sooner or later. A couple of years ago, I read a new article somewhere where a big cruiser that was abandoned in a big storm off the West Coast of USA was found by some fishermen and towed to port in Hawaii....years later....in good condition as I remember. Anyone know a source for that story on the net? |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
hi folks,
why do people abandon ship ? it's a naive question i'm sure, i have not ever been in this kind of a situation where things are so bad you "have to abandon ship", and i only know from what i've been reading in books and things how scary it must be, etc. and for a cat if it flips over it's flipped and that's the end of it, so i can kind of understand leaving, i guess. but for a "normal" sailboat, a monohull, isn't it always the best idea to stay ON/in the boat ? why do you EVER "have to abandon ship", it's the "have to" part i'm not understanding ? i mean you go through regular storm management ... heave to, run before the storm, maybe later put out a sea anchor or something, all the usual things ... but even if that all goes to hell, shouldn't you STILL stay in the boat ? i mean the hull is sort of like a ping pong ball, even if it flips over, loses it's mast, has all it's deck hardware ripped off, loses it's rudder, everything ... as long as it's not full of water you should stay in it, right ? it's still going to float. it might be rolling over every few minutes, but it's still floating. isn't the idea to stay IN something that floats ? even if a big breaker comes aboard and cracks the hull, you can still leave, it's not going to go down like a rock, you'd have a little time to get out, right ? how often does the sea actually crack the hull anyway ? like this article says, most of the time they find the boat drifting after the storm, wouldn't you want to be drifting there inside of it ? why leave it in the first place ? it just seems like you have more going for you IN the boat than OUT of the boat. out of the boat, in the ocean, it seems like you'd have a whole lot less going for you. like i said, i'm sure it's naive, but it just seems like a lot of people leave a perfectly good floating boat for even greater danger to me, i must be missing something ? people sometimes joke that skydivers are crazy for jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, isn't it just as crazy to leave a perfectly good floating hull ? lol and even in this cat, if it flipped completely over and stayed flipped over, it's still floating, right ? it just seems like the only reason you "have to" abandon ship is the thing is filling up with water and is headed for the bottom of the ocean. |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
"purple_stars" wrote in message oups.com... hi folks, why do people abandon ship ? Injury, fatigue, hunger, thirst, hypothermia, JimB |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
|
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
DSK wrote:
wrote: Is it difficult to find a 32' boat about 50 miles offshore ? 50 miles? Shucks, ten miles out is as good as infinity if you're lost. You have no idea how big the ocean is. DSK Thank God the Search & Rescue people have helicopters and airplanes. Can you imagine being lost/shipwrecked in the 1800s? |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
In article ,
says... DSK wrote: wrote: Is it difficult to find a 32' boat about 50 miles offshore ? 50 miles? Shucks, ten miles out is as good as infinity if you're lost. You have no idea how big the ocean is. DSK Thank God the Search & Rescue people have helicopters and airplanes. Can you imagine being lost/shipwrecked in the 1800s? 1800s? Things haven't improved all that much if you read some of the not so old literature about survival at sea. Does anyone recall the large cruise ship that was hijacked by pirates in the Caribbean, taken out to the Atlantic and disappeared for a whole week with the entire US Navy looking for it? I doubt so large a ship could disappear these days but your 32-footer isn't even a blip on a high resolution satellite picture if you don't know where it is to begin with. |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
If you're off the west coast of the US, head east. You'll hit land
eventually. :-) In fog, you could be lost within a couple of miles. Happens all the time out here. In article , DSK wrote: wrote: Is it difficult to find a 32' boat about 50 miles offshore ? 50 miles? Shucks, ten miles out is as good as infinity if you're lost. You have no idea how big the ocean is. DSK -- Capt. JG @@ www.sailnow.com |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
In article .com,
purple_stars wrote: hi folks, why do people abandon ship ? it's a naive question i'm sure, i have not ever been in this kind of a Besides filling up with water and being about the sink (always step up to the liferaft philosophy), there's the issue of being rolled over and over and over. You'd be inside a washing machine with lots of heavy and possibly sharp objects flying around. In the '79 Fastnet race, that reason was used by many who chose to get off the boat. I can't think of another reason. But, I'm open to suggestions. The bigger the boat, the better off you'll be, so you should stay with the boat if at all possible. -- Capt. JG @@ www.sailnow.com |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
In article ,
News f2s wrote: "purple_stars" wrote in message roups.com... hi folks, why do people abandon ship ? Injury, fatigue, hunger, thirst, hypothermia, JimB Jim, I'm sure those are reasons, but they're not particularly good reasons. You're not going to be doing better in a smaller and much more uncomfortable liferaft. Perhaps psychosis or delusion would be a better excuse. :-) -- Capt. JG @@ www.sailnow.com |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
On 25 Jan 2006 23:06:04 -0800, "purple_stars"
wrote: it just seems like the only reason you "have to" abandon ship is the thing is filling up with water and is headed for the bottom of the ocean. Once you trip off the EPIRB and the rescue helicopter shows up things may be out of your hands. As I understand it, they can "order" you off the boat at that point. |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 10:11:56 -0000, "News f2s"
wrote: why do people abandon ship ? Injury, fatigue, hunger, thirst, hypothermia, Fear. |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
In article ,
Wayne.B wrote: On 25 Jan 2006 23:06:04 -0800, "purple_stars" wrote: it just seems like the only reason you "have to" abandon ship is the thing is filling up with water and is headed for the bottom of the ocean. Once you trip off the EPIRB and the rescue helicopter shows up things may be out of your hands. As I understand it, they can "order" you off the boat at that point. And, if you don't comply, they can open fire? :-) -- Capt. JG @@ www.sailnow.com |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
In article ,
Jonathan Ganz wrote: In article , Wayne.B wrote: On 25 Jan 2006 23:06:04 -0800, "purple_stars" wrote: it just seems like the only reason you "have to" abandon ship is the thing is filling up with water and is headed for the bottom of the ocean. Once you trip off the EPIRB and the rescue helicopter shows up things may be out of your hands. As I understand it, they can "order" you off the boat at that point. And, if you don't comply, they can open fire? :-) To be somewhat serious about this, I doubt they can order you off. They can strongly suggest it, along with outlining the consequences, such as revocation of your license, and them not planning on returning. I believe that's what happened with the Satori (Perfect Storm) rescue. -- Capt. JG @@ www.sailnow.com |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
|
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
In article ,
Mys Terry wrote: On 26 Jan 2006 15:49:58 -0800, (Jonathan Ganz) wrote: In article , Mys Terry wrote: bs deleted Stop stalking me Comode. You are over the top. Check yourself in for treatment. I don't think outpatient care will cut it any longer. This from a sockpuppet. No problem. PLONK -- Capt. JG @@ www.sailnow.com |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
Wayne.B wrote:
On 25 Jan 2006 23:06:04 -0800, "purple_stars" wrote: it just seems like the only reason you "have to" abandon ship is the thing is filling up with water and is headed for the bottom of the ocean. Once you trip off the EPIRB and the rescue helicopter shows up things may be out of your hands. As I understand it, they can "order" you off the boat at that point. I'm not sure they can "order" you off, but once you've set off the EPIRB and/or requested a rescue, its pretty hard, if not negligent, to refuse after the crew has risked their lives (and possibly jeopardized others) getting to you. On the other hand, when you trip the EPIRB, you're making a guess that at some point in the future, perhaps several hours, thing will be so bad that you'll need to get off in a hurry. Perhaps you have severe structural damage, and you know the boat will sink if it gets any worse. I don't think I'd want to spend a night 100 miles offshore in that situation. So this brings up the question, if you could quantify the risk, at what point would you say, "please send a chopper"? Would you do it at 50% risk? 10%? 90%? Or should you wait until you're stepping into the liferaft? I have old cruising friends who spent a horrible night many years ago at the hands of a hurricane - I won't tell the story now, but they spent 8 hours struggling to save the boat, convinced they were going to die. The next day they just drifted, recovering their strength. Shortly thereafter, they said "If a helicopter appeared overhead then [after the storm], we would have taken the ride." The funny thing is that nowadays they don't carry an EPIRB because they don't think it's fair to ask someone to risk their life because of their incompetence. Fortunately, they don't do long passages. |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 19:40:58 -0500, Jeff wrote:
So this brings up the question, if you could quantify the risk, at what point would you say, "please send a chopper"? Would you do it at 50% risk? 10%? 90%? Or should you wait until you're stepping into the liferaft? My boat? 1. After I'm in the liferaft and the big boat sinks or is clearly about to; 2. Someone has become seriously injured. Easy to say here in the comfort of my home... Refusing to follow an order from the coast guard is a felony for those who are inclined to go that way. |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
Jeff wrote:
Wayne.B wrote: On the other hand, when you trip the EPIRB, you're making a guess that at some point in the future, perhaps several hours, thing will be so bad that you'll need to get off in a hurry. Perhaps you have severe structural damage, and you know the boat will sink if it gets any worse. I don't think I'd want to spend a night 100 miles offshore in that situation. So this brings up the question, if you could quantify the risk, at what point would you say, "please send a chopper"? Would you do it at 50% risk? 10%? 90%? Or should you wait until you're stepping into the liferaft? I have old cruising friends who spent a horrible night many years ago at the hands of a hurricane - I won't tell the story now, but they spent 8 hours struggling to save the boat, convinced they were going to die. The next day they just drifted, recovering their strength. Shortly thereafter, they said "If a helicopter appeared overhead then [after the storm], we would have taken the ride." The funny thing is that nowadays they don't carry an EPIRB because they don't think it's fair to ask someone to risk their life because of their incompetence. Fortunately, they don't do long passages. Tripping the EPIRB is the electronic Mayday. Not leaving the boat would mean that you called a false emergency and that is a crime. Not having an EPIRB when offshore because "they don't think it's fair to ask someone to risk their life because of their incompetence" is silly. Once you are noted as missing the authorities will come looking. The EPIRB just saves them time and money. We ran into that situation recently in the Van-Ilse 360 race. All boats now require an EPIRB since a multihull flipped offshore (2001) and the crew spent a miserable 24 hours or so before they were noted as overdue, by then the search zone was enormous. An EPIRB would have got help much sooner and made the search shorter and cheaper. With the money saved the Coast Guard could have paid for everyone in the race to have an EPIRB. On another point, all boats in that race are now required to also carry a handheld VHF in a ditch bag reachable when the boat is upside down so they can also call for help when the fitted VHF is underwater. Gaz |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
A very long time ago I spent a tour of duty in the USCG, aviation unit,
as a radio man. We would fly searches looking for boats. It is incrediby difficult to see anything down on the water. As I reacall we would change watch standers every 15 minutes. But even so, as a watch stander you tire quickely and you mind wanders. You find yourself daydreaming and not paying attention. Or when you do see something it is a 300 foot freighter and you realize that you would have never picked up on a 30 foot sailboat. Radar? Forget it. It may work, it may not. A small boat does not present much of a target, especially when you have any kind of chop. A VHF is great so they can DF in on it. An EPIRB is great, but they don't always work. And the Coast Guard is NOT in the salvage business. I rember once we found a guy that fell off a freighter during the night watch. Everyone at the base was astounded. Hopefully things have improved in the ensuing decades but I doubt it. I recently read of a couple of kids swept out to sea in a small sailboat who were given up for dead and then, by chance, found by a fisherman. And that was an easy search. The CG had multiple airbourn resources out, and boats, and there were young lives at stake. So is it difficult to find a 32' boat 50 miles offshore? Damn straight! Howard wrote: wrote: I'm waiting to hear if Eclipse is still going to be upright when she's recovered. Hasn't it already been about a week or more ? Is it difficult to find a 32' boat about 50 miles offshore ? Perhaps we should have a service using satellite cameras and computer programs to find lost boats (and people) in the ocean. |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
In article , Jeff wrote:
Wayne.B wrote: I'm not sure they can "order" you off, but once you've set off the EPIRB and/or requested a rescue, its pretty hard, if not negligent, to refuse after the crew has risked their lives (and possibly jeopardized others) getting to you. I couldn't find anything that says you are required to get off the boat. But, I'm sure the pressure would be significant. On the other hand, ultimately, the skipper is in charge of the vessel. So this brings up the question, if you could quantify the risk, at what point would you say, "please send a chopper"? Would you do it at 50% risk? 10%? 90%? Or should you wait until you're stepping into the liferaft? Good question. I wish it were possible to do it accurately. Many people would go for the 50/50.. others would think a 5% chance is time to leave. This is a pretty typical decision problem we all go through from time to time. Is it safe to fly after 9/11? vs. driving across the country? There are lots of studies that suggest we're not very good at making these decisions based on the facts. I have old cruising friends who spent a horrible night many years ago at the hands of a hurricane - I won't tell the story now, but they spent 8 hours struggling to save the boat, convinced they were going to die. The next day they just drifted, recovering their strength. Shortly thereafter, they said "If a helicopter appeared overhead then [after the storm], we would have taken the ride." The funny thing is that nowadays they don't carry an EPIRB because they don't think it's fair to ask someone to risk their life because of their incompetence. Well, if I were going off shore, I'd want one. -- Capt. JG @@ www.sailnow.com |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
In article ,
Wayne.B wrote: Refusing to follow an order from the coast guard is a felony for those who are inclined to go that way. I'm not sure this is correct in all situations. It might also not be enforceable. What are they actually going to do to you? Say you're 500 miles off, there is high wind and big waves, the epirb is activated (how about by mistake?), the CG shows up, and you say, no, it was a mistake. Everyone is fine (of even better, you're single handing and you're fine). Are they going to stay on station until the weather gets better then arrest you on the high seas? What if you're not a US citizen? Are they going to follow you to port or attempt to board you? I know of at least one situation with a fishing boat out here where they asked to board for an inspection. The guy had apparently been boarded many times. He told them to screw off. Finally, they backed down and left him alone. -- Capt. JG @@ www.sailnow.com |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
On 26 Jan 2006 18:40:36 -0800, lid (Jonathan Ganz)
wrote: He told them to screw off. Finally, they backed down and left him alone. OK, you first. |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
Jonathan Ganz wrote:
In article , Wayne.B wrote: Refusing to follow an order from the coast guard is a felony for those who are inclined to go that way. I'm not sure this is correct in all situations. It might also not be enforceable. What are they actually going to do to you? Say you're 500 miles off, there is high wind and big waves, the epirb is activated (how about by mistake?), the CG shows up, and you say, no, it was a mistake. Everyone is fine (of even better, you're single handing and you're fine). Are they going to stay on station until the weather gets better then arrest you on the high seas? What if you're not a US citizen? Are they going to follow you to port or attempt to board you? I know of at least one situation with a fishing boat out here where they asked to board for an inspection. The guy had apparently been boarded many times. He told them to screw off. Finally, they backed down and left him alone. What are the Coast Guard doing 500 miles offshore? |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
"Jonathan Ganz" wrote in message ... why do people abandon ship ? Injury, fatigue, hunger, thirst, hypothermia, JimB Jim, I'm sure those are reasons, but they're not particularly good reasons. You're not going to be doing better in a smaller and much more uncomfortable liferaft. Perhaps psychosis or delusion would be a better excuse. :-) You're quite right of course. Proper reasons for abandoning ship (for a life raft) are fire and uncontrollable leakage such that the vessel is about to sink. The reasons I gave above are reasons for transferring to a larger vessel, which wasn't the point of the previous poster, but is the most common type of abandonment, the one being discussed earlier in the thread. JimB |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
On Fri, 27 Jan 2006 05:44:34 GMT, Gary wrote:
What are the Coast Guard doing 500 miles offshore? It was 50 miles. They have routine patrols on both coasts going down as far as South America, primarily for drug interdiction but also for Search and Rescue (SAR) operations. |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
In article ,
Wayne.B wrote: On 26 Jan 2006 18:40:36 -0800, lid (Jonathan Ganz) wrote: He told them to screw off. Finally, they backed down and left him alone. OK, you first. Not me buddy. I might not be too bright, but I'm not stupid. :-) -- Capt. JG @@ www.sailnow.com |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
In article 6riCf.337319$2k.178832@pd7tw1no,
Gary wrote: Jonathan Ganz wrote: In article , Wayne.B wrote: Refusing to follow an order from the coast guard is a felony for those who are inclined to go that way. I'm not sure this is correct in all situations. It might also not be enforceable. What are they actually going to do to you? Say you're 500 miles off, there is high wind and big waves, the epirb is activated (how about by mistake?), the CG shows up, and you say, no, it was a mistake. Everyone is fine (of even better, you're single handing and you're fine). Are they going to stay on station until the weather gets better then arrest you on the high seas? What if you're not a US citizen? Are they going to follow you to port or attempt to board you? I know of at least one situation with a fishing boat out here where they asked to board for an inspection. The guy had apparently been boarded many times. He told them to screw off. Finally, they backed down and left him alone. What are the Coast Guard doing 500 miles offshore? Air/sea rescues. We were just over 200 miles off when we were overflown by a USCG Air/Sea rescue plane. I think they were wondering what we were doing out there, since we were just drifting for a couple of hours. They did a couple of loops while we waved, and then they took off in the direction of another sailboat we had seen a 1/2 day before. I think they did the extra loops so low because a couple of the women were skinny dipping, but you never know. -- Capt. JG @@ www.sailnow.com |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
In article ,
News f2s wrote: You're quite right of course. Proper reasons for abandoning ship (for a life raft) are fire and uncontrollable leakage such that the vessel is about to sink. The reasons I gave above are reasons for transferring to a larger vessel, which wasn't the point of the previous poster, but is the most common type of abandonment, the one being discussed earlier in the thread. I would think that some boat interiors would become uninhabitable if the boat were dismasted. This happened in the Fastnet Race, and I'm sure it's happened other times. -- Capt. JG @@ www.sailnow.com |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
"Wayne.B" wrote
why do people abandon ship ? Injury, fatigue, hunger, thirst, hypothermia, Fear. Yes, fear. In this case, fear for themselves, with no consideration of the risk to the rescue crew. Did anybody else notice that they asked others to risk their lives? By the time of the rescue, the worst was past: "conditions were fortunately not nearly as bad as they had been when we put out the Mayday. Ironically we probably were over the worst of the gale." " In the morning we had discussions with the crew. The helicopter pilot said she had great difficulty controlling her helicopter as she was flying at 50 knots to stay in position and going up and down 20ft to stay with the waves. Independent confirmation that it was still a full gale, if not F9. Even so, it was far less severe than earlier in the day. She also said it was her first real sea rescue. She, like the swimmer, had only done simulations in weather this severe. She also admitted that her helicopter had not been airworthy the day before as the rotor blades were being changed. We met the captain who said he had been steaming his frigate away from the area to keep away from the bad weather. " Yes, this was an extreme situation, but all too often we hear of morons calling for assitance, when there is little real danger, or when reasonable planning could have averted the situation. Coast Guard (or Navy) personnel WILL come get you out of it - but every mission, even in the best conditions, puts them at risk. Sal's Dad |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 20:14:03 GMT, (Mic) wrote:
http://cruisersforum.com/showthread....5&pagenumber=1 Mayday off coast of Mexico The following information about the need to be rescued from his catamaran has been retrieved from www.themultihull.com forum and has also caused a considerable discussion on www.ybw.com forums as well - principly on drogues/parachutes. http://www.ssca.org/sscabb/index.php...m=6&topic=2221 # Posted: 23 Dec 2005 10:27 I was recently made aware of an interesting and relevant statistic. The total number of fatalities, per year world wide, as a result of sailing (in any form) is identical to the total number of fatalities suffered by people playing golf. Paul # Posted: 23 Dec 2005 21:15 Paul, where did you get that stat? Smells of urban myth to me. Is it published anywhere? http://www.ssca.org/sscabb/index.php...m=6&topic=2221 78% of sailors give up before their boats 60% of boats abandoned are found in fine shape later 50% of wifes get divorced over a boat 13% of wifes making long passeges with husbands "fall overboard" -------------------------- http://www.radford-yacht.com/stablty1.html Introduction This outline on stability is based on "The Safety of Small Commercial Sailing Vessels" A Code of Practice, which emphasises the point of vanishing stability as THE MAJOR INDICATOR of a yachts ability to resist capsize. We are not attempting to address other issues relating to stability in this section. Boat stability links http://www.rya.org.uk/images/uploade...e_10_11_05.pdf http://www.rya.org.uk/images/uploade...lity_Intro.pdf Xantrex links http://www.xantrex.com/support/web/t...cldoc_type.asp http://www.xantrex.com/web/id/736/docserve.asp http://www.xantrex.com/web/id/475/docserve.asp http://www.xantrex.com/web/id/268/docserve.asp -from Bilge Water Review, Fool Hardy Publications |
Mayday off coast of Mexico-rescued from catamaran
Wayne.B wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 19:40:58 -0500, Jeff wrote: So this brings up the question, if you could quantify the risk, at what point would you say, "please send a chopper"? Would you do it at 50% risk? 10%? 90%? Or should you wait until you're stepping into the liferaft? My boat? 1. After I'm in the liferaft and the big boat sinks or is clearly about to; 2. Someone has become seriously injured. Easy to say here in the comfort of my home... Refusing to follow an order from the coast guard is a felony for those who are inclined to go that way. Richard Woods (the skipper of the cat we're discussing) is British and his boat is UK Flagged - and this is international waters. What felony law would apply? I do agree that once you've asked for a rescue, you should be prepared to abandon the vessel, unless conditions have really moderated when the rescue vessel arrives. I met Richard last summer and really feel for him losing his boat. I hope he gets it back. Evan Gatehouse |
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