Schooner Nina - MERGED 3 THREADS

[rfnk]

Easy to see if you don't have the faintest idea about this kind of boat.

Rick

[Boatguy30]

You can't mean me.

But,perhaps others have made this same observation?

Unless this boat was 100% refastened including keel and floors in the last say 20 years, all bets are off in these types of conditions.

Originally Posted by rfnk

Easy to see if you don't have the faintest idea about this kind of boat.

Rick

[Albro359]

Unfortunately like the Winston Churchill lost in the Sydney Hobart some years ago, the garboards come adrift first and then there's nothing to be done....

[Boaty1]

As someone who lives in Northland and enjoys getting out on the water I am following this story with interest, I regularly saw Nina when she was berthed in Whangarei at the Town Basin for some time before they departed heading North to the Bay of Islands and then off on the ocean voyage, the area at the top of NZ is known as the meeting of the waters, where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean, you can see the unusual water patterns and currents looking down on the sea from the lighthouse at Cape Reinga, and I imagine that the meeting of the water would extend for miles in whatever direction depending on conditions at the time, and depending on seabed depth, the 8m seas and 65knot winds could have been worse than an imagined spaced out 8m swell. Bob McDavitt is a well known and respected identity within the marine scene and throughout NZ, this is the most comprehensive search operation taking place for a missing vessel that there has been in a number of years.

[boden36]

It would be unlikely that they would founder without the chance of setting off the EPIRB.
One of the earlier posters suggested the scenario of lightning strike or other disablement to electronics.
If they continued to sail towards their destination with compromised navigational equipment, Middleton Reef is a candidate. Bill Belcher, on his way to Australia from NZ lost his boat there, as have many others.

Regards,

Richard.

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by Boatguy30

his forecasts are maybe 50/50

Great! That makes him better than 90% of the rest of them!

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by bazzer

Lot of "Armchair Quarterbacking" going on in this tread so I'll join in with my two cents worth.

Originally Posted by bazzer

Yes, but you set out in the middle of winter or in the hurricane season? Ie, dodging bullets as was previously quoted.

Originally Posted by bazzer

I can't believe how some are thinking they now better than the rescue services and the weather forecaster.

Any chance of getting a little positive? There are friends and probably family reading this stuff hoping for their loved ones.

[Capt Phil]

Many would be amazed at what an older boat can take weather wise. I grew up in the PNW working tow boats and fish boats that were at least 70 years old and probably not made of the stern stuff Nina is. i recall working aboard a seine boat called the 'Silversides' in the 50's and she was 50 years old then. Last I heard, she was tied up to the Government dock in Egmont BC in 2008 which would put her at arounf 110 years old today... don't give up on the ship yet! Those old girls normally hang in there long after the crew want call it quits... Phil

[boatman61]

Hi Bazzer... in reply to your question... yes have set off from UK mid Nov from UK to Portugal and took nearly 4 weeks to cross the Biscay sailing backwards Hove to on a 22ftr.. wind speeds 50-70+kts and seas up to 10+metres... so yeah.. I do tend to be more optimistic about survival chances than many..

[Boatguy30]

I imagine Nina was built to sailing yacht scantlings and not tugboat/ massively heavy workboat standards? Anyway, doesn't really matter if the the fastenings go.

Anyhow, clearly doesn't look good but they may turn up sometime. As for the time of year, plenty of boats cross the Tasman at this time of year. Most don't aim to get as far south as Newcastle. That's a bit odd. You can generally have quite benigh conditions a bit further north when headed for say Brisbane especially when a area of high pressure moves in.

[rfnk]

The point is that even if fastenings etc. do fail, the boat doesn't fly to pieces and sink in a couple of minutes. If catastrophic failure of the hull does occur, there's still plenty of time to set off an EPIRB.

Rick

[Albro359]

It's 2000 in NZ now and no news from NZ SAR........I guess they didn't see anything....

[Albro359]

2 July 2013: 8.00pm
An RNZAF P3 Orion has returned to New Zealand this evening after completing a seventh day of searching, without sighting a missing American schooner or its liferaft.
The 21m (70ft) Nina was sailing from Opua in the Bay of Islands to Newcastle, Australia, with seven people on board, but has not been heard from since 4 June.
The Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ) tasked a P3 Orion to conduct an aerial search today of an area south of Norfolk Island measuring 2,100 square nautical miles.
RCCNZ mission coordinator Dave Wilson said today’s search has not yielded any fresh information and forecast poor weather is likely to prevent any further aerial searching for the next two days. However, he says RCCNZ will continue to evaluate the available data and consider all possible options for the next steps to take.
Mr Wilson said RCCNZ is very concerned for the family and friends who are anxiously awaiting news of the missing vessel and its crew.
Extensive ocean and shoreline searches have now covered an area totalling more than four times the size of New Zealand. The P3 Orion was initially tasked to make radar sweeps of broad expanses of the Tasman Sea as far as the Australian coast. Shoreline searches were also conducted from Northland south to New Plymouth. Since Sunday, visual searches have been focused on locating a liferaft, targeting areas identified from detailed modeling of drift patterns from the yacht’s last known position on 4 June. For these searches, the P3 Orion has trained observers on board and travels at low altitude in a tight flight pattern.

[s/v 'Faith']

Hope is to lost.

Longer rescues have been successful, thoughts are with the crew and the good ship Nina.

[Jroach321]

Update on NZ RCC meeting today
Dear all--family of those onboard, our key sailor friends, and US Consul in Auckland Dana Deree,

Laszlo and I met with NZ RCC for about three hours today and got a very full briefing of everything they have done over the past weeks. I will try to summarize everything we learned. This email is only going to you as family of those onboard, tomorrow we will send it to concerned friends as well. Feel free to distribute as you see fit.

First, we were met at the airport by the operations manager of NZ RCC, John Seward. He drove us out to headquarters and gave us background on the coordination center and the people working there, they seem like an extremely experienced team, all of them with years of experience before they even come to RCC. We then met with Dave Wilson who has been doing a lot of work on our case and he spent 3 hours going over everything, starting with the first day and all the possible scenarios they have considered and why they have searched where they have.

Included in this email as an attachment is the active aerial chart of where they have looked so far. The red circle is the area in which they have sent out constant radio broadcasts alerting vessels of Nina, each large vessel gets this every day and must physically press a button for the alarm to stop--meaning they will read the alert about Nina at least everyday.

Following is the explanation of the different colors which correspond to different days. The large swaths are radar searches and the smaller ones are visual searches (all aerial).

On the first day of air search 25 June (NZ time) they searched the large, somewhat slender swath between NZ and the Cook Islands in the lighter blue green color using a P3 Orion, they searched this area because there was already a plane returning from there. The P3 Orion is a military grade plane with the best radar detection currently available, as well as other sensors they don't know about and can't tell us anyway due to military regulations (NZ RCC searches are often conducted by the military). At this time they were looking for Nina. They have the capability to tell the radar to look for a vessel of Nina's size. They also were sending out VHF communication with vessels in the area as they flew back towards NZ. Upon finishing this, they also searched the large green square area to the north of NZ, again looking for Nina and contacting any vessels via VHF if need be. If Nina was disabled, the thought was that they may have drifted eastwards from last positions given. The last positions given are the yellow pushpin markers, the one to the far east is the iridium location (assumed from the satellite phone on 4 June), the middle one is the spot beacon message Evi sent out on the 2nd of June and the most westerly one is the position Evi gave via text message on the sat phone to Bob McDavitt (weather guy) on 4 June. Looking at all data, they were using the spot message and iridium as the last positions for the initial searches because their information about iridium phones was that they are correct within 10 miles and thus assumed Evi may have given a faulty position for a variety of reasons (may have read it wrong under duress, unsure what instruments they had onboard for reading correct position etc). This past Saturday, 29 June, they learned iridium is 10 miles plus or minus correct on land, but can be vastly off over water. Given this info they have recently changed the search area, more on that in a bit.

On 26 June, they were still looking for the vessel and not a life raft, they conducted the large search to the west, in brown, that goes from NZ to Aus., again using the P3 Orion to search. This covered all areas that a disabled vessel would be in--this info was derived using complicated drift models looking at both wind pattern and ocean currents over the past however many days since 4 June. If the vessel was disabled but still mobile, it may have gone beyond the search area.

There were several other vessels that left Opua at the same time as Nina headed to Australia, NZ RCC has been in contact with Australian authorities and customs to see which vessels arrived safely and to determine what conditions they encountered, we are still waiting to hear back from Aus.

27 June weather interfered with continued search efforts.

28 June is the hot pink area on the north of the North Island, at 90 mile beach if you know that area. At this time, due to the fact that they found no vessel in the 25 and 26 June searches, they started looking for life raft or vessel debris.

29 June they searched using a fixed wing aircraft and helicopter along the west shore of the North Island from Cape Reinga to Plymouth (South of Auckland), a similar search to the day before.

This led to 30 June search of the small bright, light green rectangle in the lower half of the large green square. At this time they conducted a visual air search, not using the radar, so they could detect possible life raft. The area covered is significantly smaller because they have to fly lower and go slower and use eyes instead of computers.

1 July is the darker green small rectangle just above the previous day's, same search criteria using drift modeling for life raft dating from 4 June positions.

The search today, 2 July, has shifted west due to the new information they received about Iridium's lack of accuracy over open water. You can see this area as the dark red rectangle just south of Norfolk Island.

Tomorrow and most likely Thursday they will not be able to continue aerial searches due to weather.

We inquired with NZ RCC about what, if anything Australian RCC could bring to the table. We learned that Australian RCC has been privy to the search and independently created their own search patterns using drift modeling (they have the same technology as NZ). The two are almost exactly the same, which means Australia would have conducted the same searches.

Please send us any questions by 10 am NZ time as that is when we plan to meet with them again.

The hospitality and sharing of information provided by NZ RCC has been above and beyond our expectations, we are very thankful for their tremendous work thus far.

Love,
Libby (Evi's niece) and Laszlo