Sad News Again Off Mexico

[sabray]

I failed to properly brief a crew member on doing a look about full 360. I briefed but did not emphasize enough. At the change of shift near about 2 am I got up and did my usual scan all about I didn't finish. Right behind us was a looming monster. Silent it made no noise at least not enough to be heard over our engine. The crew had,wandered off the channel edge and gotten into the channel. I think they got screen glazed. Turned the moment into a video game and forgot about what is happening in real life. By,watching the screen they weren't looking at real life occurrence. Using appropriate scale on a plotter or shifting the scale is another tool that I neglected to teach well. I believe it was scaled to far out for the narrow channel. Damn near miss. I love that plotter but out of habit I use other tools. Those other cross reference skills that I used to use always are important to keep honed. I still at night find the mark or compass course and steer by compass or visually on the mark and verify on the plotter. my crew seemed a little puzzled when I explained the merits of this I'm not glued to a screen I'm interacting with the experience. I do understand screen glaze. Every newbie I put on board glues there eyes on the plotter. I have to keep at them to lift there eyes. Like a tv in a bar same effect.

[mbianka]

Originally Posted by John A

Below is the latest reports from Latitude38 of the latest two tragic events off the coast of Calif.
It appears that, once again, the team from CF got it right!.

Latitude 38 - The West's Premier Sailing & Marine Magazine.

Damn we're GOOD!

[mbianka]

Originally Posted by sabray

I failed to properly brief a crew member on doing a look about full 360. I briefed but did not emphasize enough. At the change of shift near about 2 am I got up and did my usual scan all about I didn't finish. Right behind us was a looming monster. Silent it made no noise at least not enough to be heard over our engine. The crew had,wandered off the channel edge and gotten into the channel. I think they got screen glazed. Turned the moment into a video game and forgot about what is happening in real life. By,watching the screen they weren't looking at real life occurrence. Using appropriate scale on a plotter or shifting the scale is another tool that I neglected to teach well. I believe it was scaled to far out for the narrow channel. Damn near miss. I love that plotter but out of habit I use other tools. Those other cross reference skills that I used to use always are important to keep honed. I still at night find the mark or compass course and steer by compass or visually on the mark and verify on the plotter. my crew seemed a little puzzled when I explained the merits of this I'm not glued to a screen I'm interacting with the experience. I do understand screen glaze. Every newbie I put on board glues there eyes on the plotter. I have to keep at them to lift there eyes. Like a tv in a bar same effect.

I agree reminds me of a the lyrics of a Greg Brown song:

"It's a drifting time people fascinated with screens but, never know what's on the other side"

I remember a Mega Yacht that ended up on the rocks near Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket a number of years ago, GPS antenna got disconnected and the chartplotter went into dead reckoning mode no one noticed until after they hit the rock shoal.

[mbianka]

Originally Posted by sww914

I will say this about the journalists. We've been on the SD cop docks all week. There have been at least 20 race boats here overnight since the race and I've seen 3 different news crews here. Not one of the "journalists" ever walked down on the docks. As far as I could see they never talked to any of the racers at all I talked to one of the guys from 48 Hours Mystery crew for 1/2 an hour, we talked about Volkswagens and Porsches.

Does not surprise me having worked in the business. A lot of journalists just take their reports from "offical sources" do their stand up and go home. But, that's where "New Media" (Internet) comes in. Places like here on CF are where you are more likely to hear the news first and in more detail and yes sometimes speculation but, also from people like yourself who are on the scene.

When Hurricane Irene came over the harbor where my boat was moored last summer and I was 250 miles away working. I went on You Tube and not long after the Hurricane had passed I was able to see that most of the boats in tha harbor were safe. As more than one person had posted some videos of the aftermath which was just some minor flooding. I was much relieved to see those videos. I did not waste my time with mainstream media trying to find out what was happening it would have been a waste of time.

[R2boat]

Find the keel, find the accident....so when are they sending divers down at the cliff face?

[John A]

In hindsight there were several things that were done that, if done differently, would have averted driving a sailboat into an island.
First the blind adherance to a waypoint destanation. Set a waypoint into the GPS, interface the autopilot to the GPS and enjoy the ride. Except the waypoint was the island. and nobody questioned the course the boat was traveling for THREE f---ing hours!!
We singlehanders don't do crap like that and we get blamed for all manner of poor seamanship.
That close to shore I spend 5 minutes every hour putting my position on a paper chart and with a ruler I can note where my boat is headed.

If, for whatever reason you chose to blindly trust whatever toys you have onboard, at least set the stupid waypoint two miles to either side of the island.

[Wand]

Originally Posted by sww914

When we were broken down off of Santa Cruz in the fog at night with a dead GPS and no wind they [the Coast Guard] wouldn't help us, all they would do was send Vessel Assist. Is their job description now law enforcement only?

Maybe you should have googled for help instead...

It was Google to the rescue of two fisherman who found themselves stranded in the middle of Port Phillip Bay this week on a tinny that refused to go into gear.

Mario and his mate had set out for an afternoon of fishing on Monday but, after nightfall, struck trouble when the gears on their 4.5-metre boat would not engage.

Stranded and floating aimlessly, Mario picked up his phone - but not to call the water police.*

Instead, he logged onto Google and typed in: "How to get a Johnson motor into gear."

He and his mate huddled over a set of instructions that had been posted on a boating forum and, after an hour or two, achieved success - of sorts.

They could only get their boat into reverse, so they backed their way to shore, arriving about midnight.

Mario, who did not give his last name, told radio station 3AW that he'd bought the boat from on the Trading Post a few weeks earlier.
He and his friend had encountered problems with the engine soon after setting off from Patterson Lakes late on Monday afternoon, but were able to get the tinny going again and decided to head out further into the bay.

"[It was] a bit of a stupid decision," he said on reflection.

"We went out further and had another fish and, after we got sick of it and wanted to go home, we tried to start it and it wouldn't start.

"We finally got it started, but then it wouldn't go into gear.

"We thought 'Worse comes to worst, we'll just end up fishing all night'."

But thankfully they had internet coverage and turned to Google to save them.

"It had a bit of a forum and someone else had the same problem and they had [fixed it] manually," Mario said.

"So we took the cover off and did it manually. After an hour or two of trying it finally worked, but only in reverse."

He said they'd spent a fair bit of time that night looking at the same patch of water.

"The fish were getting sick of us," he said.

Read more: Pair stranded on Port Phillip Bay start engines with Google help

[mbianka]

Originally Posted by John A

In hindsight there were several things that were done that, if done differently, would have averted driving a sailboat into an island.
First the blind adherance to a waypoint destanation. Set a waypoint into the GPS, interface the autopilot to the GPS and enjoy the ride. Except the waypoint was the island. and nobody questioned the course the boat was traveling for THREE f---ing hours!!
We singlehanders don't do crap like that and we get blamed for all manner of poor seamanship.
That close to shore I spend 5 minutes every hour putting my position on a paper chart and with a ruler I can note where my boat is headed.

If, for whatever reason you chose to blindly trust whatever toys you have onboard, at least set the stupid waypoint two miles to either side of the island.

Well said John. An important point that I'm sure many of us have done on our chartplotters. Setting a waypoint to the bouy just outside a harbor entrance. Which is not a fatal mistake in it's self but, if your waypoint on your chartplotter is connected to control your autohelm while underway it can easily lead to a disaster like may have happened here if you choose the wrong waypoint. I guess we will never know if that was the setup here. But, if it was and the waypoint was the island the technology could have easily lead to the fatal outcome. This is why I tend to give other boats (especially tricked out power boats) a wide berth when sailing. I imagine some boat owner setting his autopilot to some waypoint on the chartplotter engaging the autopilot and going below to watch a movie.
Here's another shaking my head video that runs through my head whenever I wonder what another boat is doing:
THE BIANKA LOG BLOG: A BEAUTIFUL DAY! WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

[zeehag]

is difficult at best to drive into an island that is noisey and is able to be seeen for miles away. i dont understand this--and waypoints need to be well away from any obstacles known--coronado norte is well known, and not small. and very noisey when ye get to the surf pounding part--their track is so straight....very terminal.
please folks do not repeat this mistake--for whatever reasons.. their reasoning will never be known--i doubt the extenuating circumstances will be known either as all hands died.
is a very very sad situation and we need to learn from it so as not to repeat their mistakes.
smooth sailing, be safe.

[sidmon]

Sad...

The Sirens have grabbed more of the unwitting...

[jerrymc]

Originally Posted by R2boat

Find the keel, find the accident....so when are they sending divers down at the cliff face?

Below report, posted this AM on SA:

The mysterious story of the Aegean continues.... I went to North Coronado island today with a Search and Rescue diver. We spent 2 hours
searching the NW 55-60% of the island. It's definitely a washing machine, even in today's
modest swell, but no debris on the bottom. Depths were 40 to 60 feet. Visibility was excellent
with the exception of foam and bubbles form agitated sea-water. The diver was extremely
skilled. We saw nothing. Our experience suggests that something would have gone to the
bottom at the crash site. The mystery continues.... Anarchist Russell.

[zeehag]

random alien invasion.......(music from outer limits)

[Dennis.G]

Few thoughts (guesses really):

• The ispot track makes it look as if they started up their engine some distance North of the island. Guess this is allowed under "cruising class" (or they just decided to get DQ'd?).
• Likely they would have been running under engine then, in which case likely could not hear surf until way too late.
• Likely set an autopilot course (again, allowed in "cruising class"?) for a waypoint off of Ensenada, thinking (wrongly) that they were well inside or outside of the Coronados.
• From their track, looking Southwards towards the North Coronado, the island is very narrow and would be harder to see (than say from East or West of island).
• Island would be dead ahead with helmsman looking through dodger (photo shows dodger up at race start), pulpit, mast etc. Not a clear view.
• Didn't see and didn't hear hazard until already in the surf, and then BAM.

Easy to find fault in decision making from comfort of sitting in front of our computers. I know for myself that not falling into a trap like above takes a special effort to be aware of the situation you are putting yourself. I have made poor decisions in the past, but by fortune only have avoided the tragic results experienced by crew of Aegean.

[zeehag]

dennis--the only fault with your paragraph is that the coronado islands are visible from san diego undermost all circumstances. they ar closer to sd than catalina is from lost angeles(only 20 miles away). why did the helmsman not see them and divert.. why did he allow the boat to hit. where did the boat actually hit--the search is obviously not where the boat went into it, if that is the case.
the coronados are larger than a rock.
onmy way south, i passed between them and mainland.

[sabray]

In most cases of near disaster and this case tragedy there is more then one failure. If I put a list of possible things that went wrong in a column I could then add value to those. This would of course be based on my experience and knowledge. I could take away from that things I should be careful of. It would not reflect on what occured so much but that which
Is plausible in my experience. Of course I also need some idea of my shortcomings to get an honest look. I might have trusted or misread a crew members ability. Not recognized a crew member showing signs of fatigue or failure. Relied or compensated experience with technology. Failed to review basics because they were obvious. Allowed myself to become fatigued and tired. Did not secure items below deck as well as I could have. Etc.... All of these with another situation thrown in can add to a bad time. I did this really dumb thing. Snagged a pot off cuttyhunk. So no wind but the main is up. I get in the dink crew at helm. I'm head under water chest under water untangling and the boat takes off. The dinghy is scooping water and I'm hanging on trying to get back on the surface.I lived to tell. But 3 things at least went wrong. I snagged a pot. I didn't drop sail. I did not give crew good complete direction. Some things I am thinking about. Also I think screen data takes away from some sailing sensation. Would I sail within 100 yards of breaking water. No. Mow looking at a screen I see 20 feet below me I can push a tad closer. Not really but I wonder if that is nit occurring in some way with this screen technology.