Abandon Ship! The Rescue of the Crew of Wolfhound

[Blue Crab]

Dave, Raku asked me the same thing. I think it is obvious. You guys can bandy on about evidence all you want. Human nature is what it is.

[jmcdboater]

Originally Posted by pdf27

Actually, that's another part of it. sailing has gone from a profession to a leisure time activity over the past century. The sort of risks professional sailors of a century ago accepted without a thought would turn the average recreational sailor into a gibbering wreck.

Touché'. And that, Everybody, IMHO is a Truism !!!

[Rakuflames]

Originally Posted by rbyham

Being a new sailor I tend to Read all of these analysis discussions, in the hope that I can learn from those more experienced. Reading this one, a Mike Tyson quote came to mind - "Everyone has a plan until they get hit."

Mike Tyson said that? He stole that quote from a movie -- THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS. Great movie although not about sailing.

[JazzyO]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

The same is true in coal mining , so what.

No it is not. Comparing leisurely cruising with coal mining is ludicrous. That lives of ordinary professionals were cheap (and still are in many parts of the world), is not disputed. But mining engineers are far more knowledgeable than the average Joe on the water, and they know the dangers. The difference is that there no untrained mining engineers in the western world. There are plenty of untrained sailors in the western world.

As someone who always says "we weren't there so we don't know", I find it strange that you comment on an industry you clearly have no knowledge of. Coal mining in the west is an advanced technological industry, no matter what kind of Victorian images of pit ponies you may have in your head.


Onno

[Strait Shooter]

Matt Rutherford encounters abandoned Swan 48 during Ocean Research Project expedition | Sailfeed

Wolfhound encounter.......

[mbianka]

LESSONS LEARNED:

1) If you find an abandoned boat don't waste time and energy lugging your batteries over to it to try and start the engine. There are reasons why it's abandoned. Dead engine is probably one of them.

2) Don't request fuel from a passing freighter. Bunker fuel can be nasty stuff when it attempts to go through a smaller diesel's injectors. Even if the ship did give you actual diesel fuel it may be older and more foul than anything you have on board. Same for the abandoned vessel.

[captain58sailin]

Sounds like he went after a bear with a willow switch. Trying to shuttle heavy stuff back and forth on the open sea with a kayak, sounds like an exercise in futility. I am sorry he had so much trouble.

[Andrew Troup]

Perhaps there's a third alternative to the simple "Go or Go Not" choice which this thread implies.

I learnt a great lesson about humility from my first ocean crossing in a sailing vessel.

The skipper had (on the face of it) little to be humble about.

What's more: We thought there was a chance we were the best-prepared boat ever to leave that harbour.

We were farewelled by so many boats that you could just about have walked ashore over them.

It was one of two Round the World race boats entered from NZ that year, both sailing halfway round the world to the start of the race, and the other skipper was successfully positioning his campaign as the 'underfunded underdog', taking potshots at the boat I was sailing on.

So, when the main alternator regulator packed up that same evening before we'd even reached blue water, given that we had spares, redundancy and backups, the obvious thing to do was carry on dauntless. But the skipper was troubled by our inability to explain the failure.

We pulled in at Great Barrier. We stripped everything out. The skipper was at the forefront, working harder, getting dirtier, testing hypotheses and gathering data.

Tech people flew out and confirmed the problem was not caused by the unit which had failed -- exactly what the skipper had intuited. Our spares would have failed in quick succession.

We sailed back to Kawau to be closer to skilled help, which landed in a floatplane and tied off our transom.

The press (and the competing campaign) had a field day. "Tough maxi fails in attempt to leave Hauraki Gulf" (I'm making that up; I can't remember the actual headlines)

Our skipper never once mentioned it; it was simply not on his radar. I doubt he spent five minutes thinking about it.

Other people might have looked at our 'schedule' and our 'reputation' and made a different choice, but I learned from him that the exigencies of the sea are at a different level altogether from such mundane considerations.

[JPA Cate]

Originally Posted by Andrew Troup

Perhaps there's a third alternative to the simple "Go or Go Not" choice which this thread implies.

I learnt a great lesson about humility from my first ocean crossing in a sailing vessel.

The skipper had (on the face of it) little to be humble about.

What's more: We thought there was a chance we were the best-prepared boat ever to leave that harbour.

We were farewelled by so many boats that you could just about have walked ashore over them.

It was one of two Round the World race boats entered from NZ that year, both sailing halfway round the world to the start of the race, and the other skipper was successfully positioning his campaign as the 'underfunded underdog', taking potshots at the boat I was sailing on.

So, when the main alternator regulator packed up that same evening before we'd even reached blue water, given that we had spares, redundancy and backups, the obvious thing to do was carry on dauntless. But the skipper was troubled by our inability to explain the failure.

We pulled in at Great Barrier. We stripped everything out. The skipper was at the forefront, working harder, getting dirtier, testing hypotheses and gathering data.

Tech people flew out and confirmed the problem was not caused by the unit which had failed -- exactly what the skipper had intuited. Our spares would have failed in quick succession.

We sailed back to Kawau to be closer to skilled help, which landed in a floatplane and tied off our transom.

The press (and the competing campaign) had a field day. "Tough maxi fails in attempt to leave Hauraki Gulf" (I'm making that up; I can't remember the actual headlines)

Our skipper never once mentioned it; it was simply not on his radar. I doubt he spent five minutes thinking about it.

Other people might have looked at our 'schedule' and our 'reputation' and made a different choice, but I learned from him that the exigencies of the sea are at a different level altogether from such mundane considerations.

Hi, Foolish Sailor (not!):

I hope you share this story with your mates who have volunteered to go off with the same skipper on his new boat at the end of the month. I hope they can hear your concerns realistically. Hard for folks without experience, though.

Refer them to the Atlantic Delivery thread Boatman 61 started. See what they think of some pretty "cat"astrophic failure.

Ann