Loss of KELAERIN Rescue of Crew June 2018

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by Ericson38

Their boat was either a Kelly Peterson 46 or a Formosa 46.

No, it's an Omega 45

[estarzinger]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

However the USCG can declare your voyage to be manifestly unsafe and require you to abandon your vessel, which I’m awfully sure is what was fixing to happen here.

I looked at the USCG report - it says they dropped the swimmer "to assess the situation", and then winched the crew because of "potential hypothermia".

I know it’s armchair quarterbacking, but from the video, it didn’t look that bad, was the storm worsening, or lessening?

Weather was abating - from a reported peak of 30 kts declining to 11 kts over next about 12 hours, and nw winds with no bad weather for next several days - I don't know the exact rescue location but that's a point about the right distance off the Oregon coast.

It is a really nice looking boat.
The jib looks undamaged.

.............

[model 10]

I don't get that they rolled over. Knocked down for sure. I don't think you can stand at the wheel and roll a boat. Plus the boat looked ok.

[hzcruiser]

Originally Posted by daletournier

The Ais will be seen alot further out by aircraft. I recently contacted a search and rescue plane via vhf that was 70-80nm away. I saw them on my Ais and was interested if they knew the position of a boat that I knew was further behind me.

No doubt it will, only there were no SAR efforts underway at that time in that area.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by Ecos

I don't get that they rolled over. Knocked down for sure. I don't think you can stand at the wheel and roll a boat. Plus the boat looked ok.

In their report she said that "Jim assessed that we had been turned upside down" and she remembers finding herself on the "ceiling".
So whether it was a complete roll over or a roll way past horizontal, really doesn't matter.
Just a really tough situation to find yourself in, near the effects of the Columbia river.

Originally Posted by a64pilot

They may come get you, or may not depending on risk is my belief.
I am absolutely sure they have a risk matrix they fill out before each flight where weather, crew experience, crew rest, and a bunch of other things are each weighed, then depending on the final score, that depends on who can “brief” or approve the flight, the riskier, the higher up the food chain the briefer has to be. The pilot and crew really does not figure into the decision on whether to launch or not. That is the way the Army does it and I assume the same in the CG.

However the USCG can declare your voyage to be manifestly unsafe and require you to abandon your vessel, which I’m awfully sure is what was fixing to happen here, and likely the Husband knew it.
If I were in his shoes and the decision was to risk my wife’s life to save the boat, well the boat loses. I think he made the right call.
However I do not know how they could actually force a civilian to leave.

I know it’s armchair quarterbacking, but from the video, it didn’t look that bad, was the storm worsening, or lessening?

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by Ecos

I don't get that they rolled over. Knocked down for sure. I don't think you can stand at the wheel and roll a boat. Plus the boat looked ok.

We got knocked down, at night, zero moon, dark as a cave.
I could see well enough from the steaming light though that I could see the Genoa in the water. It felt like we were completely on our side.
However once I calmed down and began to think about it, the engine Low oil PSI alarm didn’t sound, and even though the Boat rounded herself up, I still had complete rudder effectiveness.
I bet we didn’t even get to 45 degrees, but it sure did feel like it.
Having no visible horizon didn’t help the assessment.

I can put you in an airplane and Dive at 60 degrees, and you will swear we are straight down, me too. Cause that is a scary sight looking up as far as you can and still see the ground.

I bet they we’re knocked down by a breaking wave and were rolled at least to 90, likely more, but maybe not all the way around, but enough breaking water over the boat to carry away the Bimini etc. and really tear things up, fill the boat with water etc.

The man looked at his wife, and made a smart decision I think. You have to above all else protect her.
Old saying it is always better to be sitting on the ground wishing you we’re flying, than flying wishing you were on the ground

[hzcruiser]

Originally Posted by Ecos

I don't get that they rolled over. Knocked down for sure. I don't think you can stand at the wheel and roll a boat. Plus the boat looked ok.

Roll-over was just speculation, if I read it correctly. There would be lots of evidence on the ceiling and liners in the cabin. A really bad knock down for sure.

As mentioned earlier, a lot of the damage on deck was due to solid water hitting it.


This happened to me a couple of years ago solo-ing Bass Strait to Melbourne, Australia, minding my own business (read: snoozing down below), drifting off the sea anchor just south of the traffic separation zone in the typical 30 kn SW, when solid water hit the starboard window of the wheel house. That threw me right out of my quarter berth. The lee clothes were not up as the weather wasn't that bad.


It certainly felt like we had hit some fairly big object out there on the ocean. Luckily there was no damage on deck, just some water in the cabin.

Although I did notice a few days later that the radar reflector was gone. It got ripped clean off the shrouds above the first spreader..

[GARRYOWEN]

Originally Posted by Ecos

Really happy about the outcome but I would ground that pilot. That is reckless flying.

Something was likely lost in translation......the guages and or pilot's calculations cannot be that accurate......just doesn't work like that....may have been 1 minute to a calculated time to a minimal reserve or something like that. Most likely 1 minute to their 20 minute reserve (as noted earlier)

[model 10]

[QUOTE=a64pilot;2664195]
I can put you in an airplane and Dive at 60 degrees, and you will swear we are straight down, me too. Cause that is a scary sight looking up as far as you can and still see the ground.


No you can't because I do aerobatics. I even got to fly a Pitts S1T for awhile. You move your head around, the horizon is out there somewhere. Can't imagine having inner ear problems.

[philiosophy]

My conclusion from all this is there is a hell of a lot of ignorance about Heaving to. Which in addition you can deploy a para anchor or drogue. In my opinion running with bare poles is just about the worse thing you could do. Totally out of control and setting your boat up for more broaching and worse yet pitch poling.
I have been very surprised at how few cruisers have learned how to Heave To. More than half, and these are boats that have made it half way around the world. There are definately some lessons to be learned. The main lesson here in my opinion should be to learn how to heave to with your boat and have the para anchor to add to that well established practice. Some said they didn’t like the ideaof heaving to because they would be broadside to the wind thus setting themselves up for a broach. Generally when heaving to your bow is 30degrees off the wind which is a very good angle for the saftey of the boat. Some of the most experienced offshore sailors like Skip Novak and Lin and Larry Pardy as well as many others use this tactic regularly. So why in the hell would I want to reinvent the wheel. If you are serious about the saftey of you boat and crew you should have this ability.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by philiosophy

My conclusion from all this is there is a hell of a lot of ignorance about Heaving to. Which in addition you can deploy a para anchor or drogue. In my opinion running with bare poles is just about the worse thing you could do. Totally out of control and setting your boat up for more broaching and worse yet pitch poling.
I have been very surprised at how few cruisers have learned how to Heave To. More than half, and these are boats that have made it half way around the world. There are definately some lessons to be learned. The main lesson here in my opinion should be to learn how to heave to with your boat and have the para anchor to add to that well established practice. Some said they didn’t like the ideaof heaving to because they would be broadside to the wind thus setting themselves up for a broach. Generally when heaving to your bow is 30degrees off the wind which is a very good angle for the saftey of the boat. Some of the most experienced offshore sailors like Skip Novak and Lin and Larry Pardy as well as many others use this tactic regularly. So why in the hell would I want to reinvent the wheel. If you are serious about the saftey of you boat and crew you should have this ability.

Yes, it shocks me too how many, even experienced sailors, dont know this basic technique.

[a64pilot]

[QUOTE=Ecos;2664215]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

I can put you in an airplane and Dive at 60 degrees, and you will swear we are straight down, me too. Cause that is a scary sight looking up as far as you can and still see the ground.





No you can't because I do aerobatics. I even got to fly a Pitts S1T for awhile. You move your head around, the horizon is out there somewhere. Can't imagine having inner ear problems.

I can tolerate mild aerobatics as long as I’m flying.
For some reason that makes it a little more tolerable, if someone else if flying I can’t stand it.
In Flight school helicopters were making me sick, my instructor was very good, he told me to get the wife to smuggle me some Dramamine and take that, I’d get used to it. She did, I did, and did fine. But if I had been caught self medicating I would have been kicked out.
If you threw up in Flight school, that was a precautionary landing and got reported, if it happened twice, your gone.
I’ve been told to eat bananas for breakfast if your going to do aerobatics. They don’t keep you from throwing up, but supposedly taste the same coming up as they did going down the first time

[hpeer]

As to the CG making a second run... first you ask for a pump then want a lift....the decision may have to do with resources. The crew can fly only so many hours and then requires a specific amount of rest. At a small station a second ready crew may not be available because they are in rest from an earlier call. Or the length of the run may exceed the crews allowed flight time. This is sort of unlikely but possible. Also the aircraft may have developed some maintenance issue which grounds it.

We used to use fixed wing aircraft (HC-130 and HU-16) to drop pumps and rafts. Don’t know about now.

I don’t know how reliable those pumps are, years ago I heard reports that they sometimes would not start. Also, if you think about it, you have a disabled boat. How you gonna maneuver and grab and muscle up a pump? Doesn’t sound easy to me.

I dropped a 600’ feel if floating line overboard in 30 knots. Poorly lashed down. I went back to retrieve it, using the engine it took me a few tries. No big swell, pretty light stuff, I was fresh. Not so easy.

[Snowpetrel]

Three times now I have been partially flooded in rough conditions, and in all cases the electric bilge pumps rapidly failed due to debris. In one case a whole bookshelf dumped its load of paperbacks into the bilge. In all three times we ended up bailing with buckets.

I had a starter motor go underwater once. It worked ok for a few weeks (after drying) then died.

A series drogue (or even a makeshift drogue of any type) would have made a huge difference here, as would satcoms of some sort.

I feel much more vindicated now about my OTT preparations when I sailed to East Antarctica. I had two liferafts, an inside and an outside one, the outide one was lashed with 4 separate lines to heavy welded tangs on the cabintop. I carried Two HF radios, the spare being double wrapped in a plastic bags and stowed in a water tight container. The main Hf was located deep inside the quarterberth with a watertight enclosure and a telescopic emergency whip antenna and manual tuner was onboard. I also had a series drogue plus a normal drogue with 220 meters of heavy warp. A Satphone was stowed in a waterproof case and there was immersion suits for the three of us.

Glad they got off safely, in their case they probably made the right decision, given the damage to the vessel, and the loss of vital safety gear. Shame about the boat and hopefully someone will salvage it.

I enjoyed reading Fatty Goodlanders book on stormproofing your boat. Lots of simple tips and low cost projects.

http://fattygoodlander.com/the_big_f...storm_proofing

[daletournier]

Originally Posted by MartinR

All my previous boats were stable hove-to. Have used it many times in varying conditions. Even in a Force 11 and 35´+ waves it was reasonable comfortable, and obviously safe.

No way to get my new boat to lie hove to. But, she is a fin keeled light weight spade rudder design, and I have always believed in sailing these actively in heavy conditions. Fast enough to give the rudder bite at all times. Also keeping windage low, especially aft is of importance.

The most important lesson to me from this is to look over the securing of all items on board. I have been very remiss in this, gotten complacent over time.

Do you forereach? What is your heave to substitute?