Very true. The boat would go out long after an emergency flare.If your boat is on fire, I would think that increases the odds of being located.
My worse boat nightmare... What is yours?
- Thread starter jssailem
- Start date
- Oct 22, 2014
- 23,269
There is a solution for that....
Everyone gets a Life Jacket when they board the boat. They choose to wear it or not at their own risk... Like the boats of old... No turning back....
Unbelievable !What I find alarming about that video, is the guy didn't understand his diesel engine.
Early on in the video he says the engine has always run fine and he has no idea what's going on, just that it runs. At no time during the video does he say he has any intention of learning anything about his engine. He had it serviced in Grenada so what could go wrong
? It was serviced in Grenada, that's what went wrong. He expects his engine to catch fire again so he says he wants to install a sea water pump to handle all of his future fires. Forget the prevention and concentrate on the cure.I'm afraid that gentleman is a continuous accident looking for a place to happen. I worry about how many people saw that video and will follow in his two steps forward, one step back bumbling footsteps.
Some just buy a boat and go sailing never thinking what might happen.Unbelievable !
Early on in the video he says the engine has always run fine and he has no idea what's going on, just that it runs. At no time during the video does he say he has any intention of learning anything about his engine. He had it serviced in Grenada so what could go wrong
I'm afraid that gentleman is a continuous accident looking for a place to happen. I worry about how many people saw that video and will follow in his two steps forward, one step back bumbling footsteps.
It seems like every day we get treated to someone asking where my charger is, where the water pump is, etc … clearly with no clue what to look for or where should the boat flood or some other emergency occur.
My biggest fear - getting on such a person’s boat.
One night, I was at the helm of "Alert" (a wooden 65' ketch), alone on a four hour watch, when flames came reaching out of the engine room portholes into the cockpit. We were half way between LA and Hawaii. The only engine room access was from a hatch in the port cockpit seat forward. I yelled for help, but I knew there wasn't time for that. After a few seconds of hesitation I slid down the engine room ladder to be met with the room engulfed in flames, it seemed. I identified the source as an electric motor, so I killed all electricity at the panel and the flames receded to a few rags engine manuals. There was a little damage to the boat and I got the genset running in a couple of hours, so we were extremely lucky. In that second of hesitation, before I jumped into the inferno, I imagined the boat burning to the waterline and sinking. I was 15 or 16 at the time. It wasn't the only time I experienced a fire aboard a vessel, just the first. What is it they say about your first? LOL
Interestingly, a fire isn't my greatest worry at sea. When I'm sailing a wooden vessel, I worry most about springing a plank. It is literally a situation where water is rushing in from forward as the vessel charges through the water. If you are on the helm, I imagine the boat just sliding under the waves ahead and ending up in the water alone, wondering what happened. The person on watch would likely be the only survivor.
Interestingly, a fire isn't my greatest worry at sea. When I'm sailing a wooden vessel, I worry most about springing a plank. It is literally a situation where water is rushing in from forward as the vessel charges through the water. If you are on the helm, I imagine the boat just sliding under the waves ahead and ending up in the water alone, wondering what happened. The person on watch would likely be the only survivor.
- Oct 22, 2014
- 23,269
That sound like what happens on a submarine when the Skipper shouts Dive Dive Dive...
If you're at the helm on a sub you are inside the boat. When it happens on a sailboat... You are left floating...
I would think as the water entered the boat the crew would wake, shouting foul words at the helm...
Wooden boat wood floats... Wouldn't there be debris?
That's just GREAT ! I hadn't thought about that and you had to bring it up.
I can just see our next overnighter on a friend's boat. Me dressed in an asbestos fire suit with a respirator, a PFD, and headed off to bed
. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.
Apparently there is very little debris when that happens. It isn't as though she was sinking in place, the stuff inside getting bashed about from the motion of the foundering boat. Unfortunately, the crew can't move about freely as the water pressure from the forward motion is pretty powerful.
There was a beautiful big, well equipped schooner with a good crew, SSB radio, life raft and EPERB lost between NZ & Oz a few years back. She just disappeared quietly without a call for help. I suspect she sprung a plank or to in the heavy weather forecast for that area.
American schooner Niña is officially lost at sea
Earlier this month, the Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ) called off its search for 70-foot American schooner Niña, last heard from on June 4.
www.sailmagazine.com
- Oct 22, 2014
- 23,269
Reading the Augst report in Sail magazine... I was struck by the importance for long passages of satellite phones. Even if you do not communicate the system can track you and provide information to Search & Rescue of your position.
www.sailmagazine.com
One indicator that Niña was fighting a seesaw battle in the treacherous winds and seas: Three days before the search was suspended, satellite phone service company Iridium turned over to the coordination center an undelivered text message from Niña. Who its recipient was, the coordination center didn’t say. It was sent at 11:50 a.m. June 4, the day Nemeth texted McDavitt, and it established Niña’s position at that time as 370 miles west-northwest of Cape Reinga. It read, “Thanks storm sails shredded last night, now bare poles. Goining [sic] 4kt 310deg will update course info @ 6 p.m.”
There were no follow-up messages, the coordination center says. “The text message clearly indicates that the Niña was affected by the storm but gives no indication of immediate distress,” says Nigel Clifford, the coordination center’s general manager of safety and response services. “While it shows that Niña had survived the storm up to that point, very poor weather continued in the area for many hours and has been followed by other storms.”
The Disappearance of the Nina
The 85-year-old staysail schooner Niña, a fabled 50-foot (LWL) ocean racer that once was the flagship of the New York Yacht Club, disappeared without a trace on the stormy Tasman Sea with its American owner, his wife and 17-year-old son, and four crewmembers.
www.sailmagazine.com
Wow an understatement! He's gonna buy a big pump to fight the NEXT fire? LOL.
I tend to look at this as a testament to the overall robustness and safety of boats; if that imbecile is still alive and hasn't killed anyone else...
I think what many "newbie" boaters can't get through their heads is that "they don't know anything about their car so why should they know anything about their boat ?" When your car craps out, you get out, walk away, and call a tow truck. When your boat craps out, very often you're forced to rely on it for your life.
I think I can say, with little fear of contradiction, that every time you see some big gin mill ploughing past you, with some Rodney Dangerfield look alike at the helm :
........... you're looking at an idiot who doesn't know the front end of the boat from the back. The gentleman with the boat that burned to the waterline in post #1 was one of those idiots and is no smarter today than he was before his boat burned to the water line. I'm afraid one of his "next times" may be his "last time". It's his innocent passengers I really feel sorry for.
Last edited:
That depends on the weather. I learned as a young man, that being stuck out in the highway at -30 degrees, without gear to survive easily, will hopefully just teach you a lesson.
I had 2 coworkers almost die in when stuck at the side of a highway during a blizzard. The highway was closed as they were driving. They didn't listen to the radio. They ran out of fuel trying to stay warm. No way to call for emergency help. They only survived by the luck of a farmer occasionally going out in the storm with his tractor to clean his road. The farmer saw the car half buried beside the highway and took them back to his home.
And yet... There are still idiots that live here, that can't change a tire, nor have winter supplies in their vehicle.
They don't realize that in a storm, the tow truck may take hours to get there due to the long waiting list. assuming the tow truck don't get stuck themselves.
Now people think a cell phone will save them. While hiking, while sailing, while driving. Ask SAR how that has increased their number of callouts.
Why would any sane person willingly go into weather conditions like that when we have places like Hawaii and Bermuda
? Yes, I once did it in a tiny little place called Fort Nelson where we often saw -50℉ before global warming tempered that. And that was before the wind chill factor was invented. I was just getting started out in the natural gas racket and desperately needed the experience and the money.
And that is why my retirement job was in the Bahamas and not some God-forsaken place where the weather goes down to -30, -50, or -∞.
Well.. There are things like Skiing, Snowmobiles, Skating, Car Ice Racing.. And more on topic... Greenland, Svalbard, Labrador, South Georgia... All places with beautiful scenery, and no old folks wanting to play pickle ball.
And of course, family ties
, birthplace 
etc.AFAIK the true hawaiian locals still aren't too keen on immigrants. They tried to send a message by killing Capt Cook, but Brits didn't listen.
Never had the pleasure, but I know a few that have lived in Fort Nelson.
I spent a winter way north of Yellowknife, in a camp. I enjoyed the camp. More space, less people, no idjits because natural selection enjoyed working there too.
(it instilled an even stronger sense of needing to be prepared)
That truly made me laugh.and no old folks wanting to play pickle ball.
Oh suppose that's off topic so perhaps something more on topic. My real nightmare was borrowing a boat and having the wind blow it towards a pier. We put out the fenders (which we had bought) to fend the boat off and to our horror the hull starts to buckle where the fenders were placed.