Fiji Yacht Crash

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by conachair

Not so sure about the value of that, lots of the atlantic islands go from hundreds (thousands?) of meters to reef very quickly. Radar picks up nearly everything unless the seas are well up and gain turned right down - odd that it didn't see the surf here. Though as far as this incident goes, I'm in a state of mild panic offshore if there's even a sea mount within 50 miles, even if a reef has plenty of water to sail over it can ruin your day midocean..

The watchdog plugin for opencpn is very good as well with many alarm triggers available, draws very little power on a raspberry pi. Landfall alarm looks good
https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/do...landfall_alarm

Sure -- depth alarm is just one tool among many. Very useful near coasts; not useful for mid-ocean atolls.

The Landfall Alarm, and the whole alarm suite in O is magnificent. Another reason to keep O running all the time.

[poiu]

What a terrible thing. I met Peter, the owner and his crew a few times. All are very experienced of the S. Pacific. The boat is a H&P designed Oyster 61. It seems they hit an island, which was not where it was meant to be. 3 miles out apparently.

Don't our chart providers use Google Earth or similar to update charts for these areas? I realise to do depth soundings is a bit expensive, but these instances of displaced islands shouldn't happen at all now. They are letting us down.

Still, knowing that charts are not accurate, what to do about it?

A depth alarm would help, but I don't think it would have helped them if that was the last line of defence as here the reefs rise up from very deep in only a quarter mile or sometimes very much less. The reef in question was an abrupt one. If you are hurtling along at 10kts as they were, it gives you anything from a few seconds to a minute or two at best to stop the boat. Not that easy, when dazed and half asleep and on your own on watch. You'd have to be prepared for a crash turn and even then it wouldn't always get you out of trouble.

Radar could help, but here it was a 'king tide' day and most reefs would be covered. So if you were going near a reef with no island, radar would not pick it up always. With this accident, there was an island near the reef and that would have been picked up anyway, so radar should have saved them. They had radar on, but it didn't help them. Old radar is poor and isn't so easy to use maybe that explains the radar failure, I don't know.

I suppose in badly charted areas you need to just keep well clear to allow for chart errors. Given that certainty of safety is what you need then what else can you do?

[Saleen411]

Originally Posted by poiu

What a terrible thing. I met Peter, the owner and his crew a few times. All are very experienced of the S. Pacific. The boat is a H&P designed Oyster 61. It seems they hit an island, which was not where it was meant to be.

Don't our chart providers use Google Earth or similar to update charts for these areas? I realise to do depth soundings is a bit expensive, but these instances of displaced islands shouldn't happen at all now. They are letting us down.

Still, knowing that charts are not accurate, what to do about it?

A depth alarm would help, but I am not sure it would have helped them if that was the last line of defence as here the reefs rise up from very deep in only a quarter mile or sometimes very much less and if you are hurtling along at 10kts as they were, it gives you anything from a few seconds to a minute or two at best to stop the boat. Not that easy, when dazed and half asleep and on your own on watch. You'd have to be prepared for a crash turn and even then it wouldn't always get you out of trouble.

Radar could help, but here it was a 'king tide' day and most reefs would be covered. So if you were going near a reef with no island, radar would not pick it up always. With this accident, there was an island near the reef and that would have been picked up anyway, so radar should have saved them. I don't know if they had it on or not, presumably not.

I suppose in badly charted areas you need to just keep well clear to allow for chart errors. Given that certainty of safety is what you need then what else can you do?

10 kts.....that's moving. Does anybody ever slow down at night? Seriously...I would think avoiding stuff like semi submerged containers, logs, whales, reefs, nets, unlit fishing boats etc would be easier at a slower speed, not to mention incurring less less damage should one actually run into one of these things. I'm told some of these objects mentioned are hard, if not impossible to avoid, even in daytime.

My guess is the response will be "hell no"....maybe put in a reef at night.

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Saleen411

10 kts.....that's moving. Does anybody ever slow down at night? Seriously...I would think avoiding stuff like semi submerged containers, logs, whales, reefs, nets, unlit fishing boats etc would be easier at a slower speed, not to mention incurring less less damage should one actually run into one of these things. I'm told some of these objects mentioned are hard, if not impossible to avoid, even in daytime.

My guess is the response will be "hell no"....maybe put in a reef at night.

I don't think that going 5 knots instead of 10 knots makes a huge difference if you run into an atoll. You can't see a reef at night. You would be incredibly lucky to hear it. And you could drive on top of it at 5 knots as well as 10 knots. It might help for debris, but at either speed if you run into an atoll I would expect to be hard aground, and holed.

Where uncharted (or poorly) charted land exists, the only options we came up with were to stand well off all land and to augment the charts with satellite imagery when we knew the charts were off. I attached a thumbnail of the reef from SAS Planet.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Insufficient care and diligence is not always a result of "blind faith in technology". Sometimes it's just insufficient care and diligence.


Another technological aid which could have prevented this -- a depth alarm, set to a depth which would not be expected wherever offshore you are, maybe 60 meters. I try to always keep my depth alarm set so that it will shout if something is out of the ordinary.


As to being set off your course line -- you can also set an alarm for that, but in any case, you can have a cockpit instrument show XTE, and all you have to do is glance at that to know if this is happening. I can tell you that I certainly know more often than once an hour, how far I am off my course line.

None of this is a substitute for reasonable diligence in watchkeeping, but technology, properly used, can tremendously enhance situational awareness and safety.

The owner and crew of the ill fated Oyster 61 actually appear to be very experienced sailors. Sometimes events like this can be attributed to simply bad luck. They've been at it for years, and eventually their luck ran out. Doesn't necessarily mean someone did anything wrong.

Stuff happens.

BTW: Didn't you run aground or hit an uncharted rock last season? Or was that me?

And who will be tomorrow? For sure, not one of the armchair sailors.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

The owner and crew of the ill fated Oyster 61 actually appear to be very experienced sailors. Sometimes events like this can be attributed to simply bad luck. They've been at it for years, and eventually their luck ran out. Doesn't necessarily mean someone did anything wrong.

Stuff happens.

BTW: Didn't you run aground or hit an uncharted rock last season? Or was that me?

And who will be tomorrow? For sure, not one of the armchair sailors.

I don't understand at all what you're saying. Insufficient care and diligence may be exercised by highly skilled and experienced sailors as well as by idiots. I don't know these guys and never said anything about their skill or experience level. There but for the grace of God go I, and yes, I've run my boat aground, and more than once, and insufficient care and diligence certainly played a role.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I don't understand at all what you're saying. Insufficient care and diligence may be exercised by highly skilled and experienced sailors as well as by idiots. I don't know these guys and never said anything about their skill or experience level. There but for the grace of God go I, and yes, I've run my boat aground, and more than once, and insufficient care and diligence certainly played a role.

Not always.... last season we bounced off the top of a submerged rock that wasn't supposed to be there when the chart indicated 8 meters. Ran aground on a sandbar two weeks ago while being extremely attentive to charts and having four lookouts.

Stuff happens even when sufficient care and diligence is in place. Spend enough time on a boat and stuff will happen.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by poiu

I suppose in badly charted areas you need to just keep well clear to allow for chart errors. Given that certainty of safety is what you need then what else can you do?

As mentioned in a post above, google earth can be a fantastic free resource when charts are suspect, GE2KAP can create chart files for opencpn along a route.

[JPA Cate]

It would be helpful to know what charts they were using, and whether or not, if elecctronic, they just hadn't looked at it zoomed in.

[svrodeorm]

[QUOTE=poiu;2421998

I suppose in badly charted areas you need to just keep well clear to allow for chart errors. Given that certainty of safety is what you need then what else can you do?[/QUOTE]

This is knowledge well known since the age of sails, and yet people do the same kind of mistakes over and over again.

To much reliance on tech aids to navigation.

Sad story, and it will needlessly be repeated.

[poiu]

I don't know the charts they used, but the island they hit; Tuvana-i-ra is shown on OpenCPN CM93 2011 charts as being located half a mile north and 1.6 miles east of where GoogleEarth has the island. Not the 3 miles the owner mentions, but maybe he has worse charts and maybe GoogleEarth's location isn't bang on either. Anyway, something's amis.

[Dauntlessny]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Point well taken. There are places like this for sure.

But a depth alarm as a backstop warning system is extremely valuable, and would prevent this kind of incident in most cases. There are relatively few places where you go from "off soundings" to aground without at least a mile or so of warning time.

I'm reminded also of the Jean Socrates grounding a few years ago -- definitely could have been prevented by having a depth alarm set up. Probably countless other incidents as well.

There go I but fro the grace of God.

This past year I have been setting the radar alarm pretty much all the time.
But I had not thought to set a depth alarm. It's a bit clunky to do, but a great idea and I will.

Rihcard

[topmast]

A learning experience for every boater at considerable cost. Being aware of how a situation developed should help us all be safer operators. Dependence on the electronic devices for pinpoint position can leave gaps in the complacency blanket. Case in point.. Big teak schooner approaching Attu Taki from the south. Radar fix from building on the north end of reef. Give 3 miles clearance and sail on in the night. A better scale chart, local knowledge ,more caution ,,,, However the reef extends south some 3 miles .

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by conachair

Not so sure about the value of that, lots of the atlantic islands go from hundreds (thousands?) of meters to reef very quickly. Radar picks up nearly everything unless the seas are well up and gain turned right down - odd that it didn't see the surf here. Though as far as this incident goes, I'm in a state of mild panic offshore if there's even a sea mount within 50 miles, even if a reef has plenty of water to sail over it can ruin your day midocean..

The watchdog plugin for opencpn is very good as well with many alarm triggers available, draws very little power on a raspberry pi. Landfall alarm looks good
https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/do...landfall_alarm

Take a look at the charts covering the area from where they decided to change destination for Tonga to either Suva or Savevusevu in Fiji. There is no way to not pass near reefs for more than a hundred miles - which means you will be passing them both at night and with poor sunlight.. It is just the nature of the beast. The charting in the area is not that bad, you just have to understand that the exact positions are not necessarily correct. While adding Google Earth sat images helps in a lot of cases, the images do not cover all the reef areas. For example North Minerva reef is nicely covered while South Minerva Reef is not.

[maxingout]

When we cruised in Fiji, there was a yacht that sailed up on a reef. The captain and crew gathered up their valuables - passports etc - and they got off the yacht. They immediately went to Suva, got on an airplane and left the country.

Why the rush?

At that time, even if the yacht was a total loss, the owner of the yacht had to pay customs duties for "importing" the yacht into Fiji. So if you lost your yacht on a reef, customs duties would add insult to injury. Hence, if you lost your yacht, you got out of Fiji ASAP.