How a Shipwrecked Crew Survived 10 Days Lost at Sea

[zengirl]

How does a mast rip off a boat and no one hears it!

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by Discovery 15797

The rescue videos show the boat sitting pretty high in the water. I guess they spent their days bailing and pumping water.

I noticed that too, and their account that it spent quite some time inverted - I wonder if part of the keel fell off.

[joelhemington]

Originally Posted by Lodesman

Oh the irony!
I stand by my criticism - they had a crew of three on board but apparently didn't have anyone keeping watch at all during the night. The story is missing a lot of details, but from what was written it does seem they managed well with the cards that were dealt. They were lucky, in that the mast didn't smash a hole thru the hull while they slept, the hull didn't break apart after the tumbling, and the second ship saw them.

Yep, I have to agree. There's no excuse being in the middle of the Pacific (or any ocean) with no one on watch. This is why many insurance carriers require a minimum of three crew for ocean passages (4 hours on. 8 hours off) it may at times be boring but it's not like you're digging as ditch. It's unlikely the watch person could have avoided the demasting but at least they would have had more time to go to plan B.

[Knotical]

Glad all 3 of them survived without major injuries, except maybe Sumi's concussion.

To me, the write up appears very amateurish and not by a seasoned sailor (he says "I've been sailing most of my life..").

How could they lose a mast and not know about it until he goes above to "change course"? Wouldn't the boat be rolling like crazy and not making headway? Shouldn't they have realized something was seriously wrong way beforehand?

[JPA Cate]

Our previous boat was dismasted. Yes, it makes a lot of noise. It also took a good deal of effort above decks to get rid of the rig. So, at first, the mast and sails in the water dampen the motion. The boat was all bashed up, from where the furler smashed the bow pulpit, and the port side lifelines were all down, from when they took the weight of the mast, boom, and sails. When they are gone is when the motion becomes twitchy. Incidentally, this is not true of catamarans, they have more form stability than monohulls, when dismasted. Emotionally, I found it a moderately devastating event. It all had to be dealt with, right now. And, we were only 65 miles or so offshore, so we motored in to safety and lengthy repairs.

Ann

[Jono as 2234]

Regardless of any holes in the story it makes a very solid case for EPIRBs

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by Jono as 2234

Regardless of any holes in the story it makes a very solid case for EPIRBs

To make a 4+ week ocean passage without an EPIRB or checking or having the rig checked before leaving borders on madness, not carelessness.

Difficult to believe that someone who has "been sailing for a long time" would do that.

[waterman46]

Originally Posted by zengirl

How does a mast rip off a boat and no one hears it!

Really! And 3 crew with nobody on watch? Any decent skipper will wake up even when the wind picks up or boat motion changes.

[JPA Cate]

Frankly, I thought the article was balderdash. So unlikely as to be totally untrustworthy. Just put it on ignore, something's just too fishy about it. Decayed fishy.

Ann

[SteveSadler]

That's a funny story! Survival at sea for 10 days with no mast! Where did there water go?
Where did their food go? Where did their fuel go? Wake up and lo and behold the mast just vanished? They are still on a seaworthy sailboat, not a liferaft.
Put up a jury rig as thousands have done before, DR or bring a sextant and quit whining!

[tp12]

Originally Posted by Dsanduril

From all the comments here I guess we're going to send the crew of Coco Haz III to the Group W bench

Post of the thread so far


Alice's Restaurant gets a run out at family gatherings over Christmas, always a chuckle.

[Montanan]

Originally Posted by StuM

I'd dispute the use of the word "shipwrecked" in this case.

Wreckedship.

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by carstenb

To make a 4+ week ocean passage without an EPIRB or checking or having the rig checked before leaving borders on madness, not carelessness.

Difficult to believe that someone who has "been sailing for a long time" would do that.

Amen! An EPIRB is so cheap and something you hope you never need but needing it once makes it cheap. Maybe giving up some electric toy in lieu pf an EPIRB would make sense.

[JBsurfin]

Originally Posted by GordMay

The story of how three crewmen lived more than a week, in the middle of the Pacific, in a wrecked sailboat with almost nothing. On November 25, 2019, Chris Carney. and his two-man crew, Pete Brown and Jun “Sumi” Sumiyama, set off from Japan on their way to Hawaii in a 42-foot sailboat, the Coco-Haz III ...
It was December 19, and we were about a thousand miles from Oahu, Hawaii ...
➥ https://www.outsideonline.com/240941...=pocket-newtab

Lets go back in time when things were even less technical and no one searched for you: English Captain William Bligh and 18 others, cast adrift from the HMS Bounty seven weeks before, reach Timor in the East Indies after traveling nearly 4,000 miles in a small, open boat.

[Steve DAntonio]

Lots of unanswered questions, but it is a magazine article after all, not a book (that will be coming I presume, and a movie, oh darn they just made one of those). The 'crew of three and no one on watch' part is mind-boggling.

One of the best instructional lines, "The battery came blasting out of the engine compartment and shot through the cabin like a rocket." I have condemned countless battery installations for just this reason, in a knock down, capsize or very rough seas, they can become a missile. Forget the wimpy nylon strap, plastic buckle, plastic strap eyes and short, mild steel tapping screws, if your batteries are not secured using a clamp mechanism or heavy duty ratchet strap with metal buckle, they are not secure enough for offshore passages.