I wonder what he hit?

[garymalmgren]

Solo sailor winched to safety in dramatic Indian Ocean rescue

Australian authorities executed the textbook helicopter rescue after the Canadian sailor's vessel began taking on water 1,000 kilometres south-east of Christmas Island.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Will Gilmore]

He might not have hit anything. The sea just came aboard.

...he failed to make two scheduled calls to family back home.

His brother alerted AMSA...

What happened to his EPIRB?

Why might a sailor in his position, boat swamped, but still afloat, not have set off his emergency beacons, or was it trapped, still inverted in its basket on the stern rail?

Two days like that. What might the options be for self-rescue? That man was in his RIB, not a life raft. Another item trapped beneath the surface? He must have been without water.

-Will

 

[kappykaplan]

He might not have hit anything. The sea just came aboard.

What happened to his EPIRB?

Why might a sailor in his position, boat swamped, but still afloat, not have set off his emergency beacons, or was it trapped, still inverted in its basket on the stern rail?

Two days like that. What might the options be for self-rescue? That man was in his RIB, not a life raft. Another item trapped beneath the surface? He must have been without water.

-Will

Great questions that we may never get answers to.

 

[garymalmgren]

RE: He might not have hit anything.
From AI. Western Australia hosts one of the largest humpback whale migrations in the world, with over 45,000 whales traveling up to 13,000 kilometers from Antarctica to the tropical Kimberley region and back.

My guess is that a whale took his saildrive out in the middle of the night.
It looks like he had to abandon pretty fast.
If his EPIRB was in the unflooded hull it would not have been submersion activated.
Even in the flooded hull it may have been located high enough to have stayed dry.

Lucky to have been found and rescued in that area.

gary

 

[PaulK]

Could the sailor's brother have told the authorities where to look? The sailor might have reported a precise location to his brother on an earlier call. Finding a single boat in the Indian Ocean without having an idea about where it might be would take a lot longer than this did. The news report does not include many details.

 

[capta]

Over the years I've had numerous encounters with whales, but only one incident where I actually collided with one. I can only presume it was asleep (we never saw it) and my 24 ton sailboat stopped dead, rolled her keel over the whale, straitened up and sailed on. It wasn't like hitting something hard like a container, but more like punching a pal in the shoulder. In every other case, the whale made every effort, successfully, I might add, to miss the boat, even if the calf was on one side of the boat and the mom(?) on the other.
I would be most interested to know what sort of boat it was, how old, and her condition.
Like most who began ocean sailing before the USCG began offering "Get out of a fearful situation" cards, for free, we had thought through how we should react to losing our boats at sea. Those with multihulls had it a lot easier, as most often the boat would float with one hull damaged, meaning they had water, food, shelter, tools and cloth available. I have had to cut up my main sail to make covers for hatches torn off in a capsize, so I wonder why this man had a cloth draped over his face, rather than using an oar or two to build a shelter over his dink to protect himself from the sun?
It seems there are way too many folks setting off to cross an ocean on a sailboat, just because they have GPS and a bit of sailing knowledge. It's the old question, just because they can, does that mean they should?

 

[Will Gilmore]

In the video, he looked older, late sixties or early seventies, judging primarily by his posture standing on the rescue ship. I don't know about his experience as a sailor, but he may not have felt physically up to the task of diving down to free a stuck EPIRB or unlash his life raft.

They said there had been storms in the area, so perhapse he wisely chose the safer course to stay with his RIB until the weather settled. He clearly had the wisdom to report regularly to his brother, probably included his position. Waking up to a sinking boat isn't the best time for clear thought. Radio, sat phone, EPIRB, PLB, or MOB DCS locators are all secondary thoughts to staying out of the water.

In the video, only the bow of his boat was above water. An activated EPIRB, stuck in its basket on the stern rail, might not be able to punch a signal through 6' to 10' of seawater. I don't know, but it would have been important to me to dive down and fix that situation as soon as I could see well enough to do it.

Both hulls were submerged. I would guess he left the hatches opened and a wave picked his stern up, surfed him along, while pouring the ocean down the hatches, Then, with all that water aboard, the passing wave lifted the bow on its backside, the water all ran astern, and the next wave sank him. Just a wild guess. He could have gone end-over-end.

-Will

 

[colemj]

Apparently, this was an escape hatch issue. Either a failure of the hatch, or he left the hatches open or poorly dogged. I suspect a failure, since an open hatch would have been noticed much earlier in the trip.

I would never have escape hatches on a boat unless they were positioned like Catana and Chris White does (maybe others) - up high in the bows. Putting them at the waterline midships is just stupid.

It is a Lagoon 42, with isolated engine compartments, so any saildrive issue would have been contained.

Mark