Sydney Hobart Race Upset - Celestial Loses Protest

[Ozbullwinkle]

Originally Posted by AKA-None

2 1/2% failure rate seems pretty bad to me

I would be interested to hear why they failed. Poor design? Hard to properly use? Seems like a lot to me based on how my work is assessed

I agree & I was hoping to find out more information through AMSA but no such luck. It would have been interesting to find out if the activations were mainly confined to the front runners in the fleet which would have been pushing hardest at the highest SOG.

Although a lot of yachts retired here were no rescues in this years S2H therefore no PLB's should have been intentionally activated.

In such circumstances I would expect zero PLB activations & anything above zero is unacceptable & needs to be investigated & action taken to prevent a future recurrence.

No competitors in the race would have been using a PLB incorrectly leading to an accidental activation. In fact they would not have been "using" them at all other than having them on their person. They have just activated totally accidentally due to crew being thrown around cockpits or leaning on something thereby releasing the often flimsy locking catch. They are simply not up to the task in a rough & extreme environment.

[gordonhinds]

Celestial was unable to explain why for over 90 minutes they didn't hear both Ichi Ban nor the Race Committee call them on both VHF and the satellite phone. They posted on Facebook something after the race but still didn't explain the 'radio silence'. My guess is someone turned the radio volume down so they could sleep. The conditions were mild and it was midnight in what was a relatively long race so the crew were exhausted... They only responded when ichi ban fired off some red flares. No one on board fessed up. So they were pinged 40 minutes - lucky they weren't dsq.

[chasfgr]

So I'm trying to sleep below and the damned VHF keeps on waking me with its carrier but no verbal message.
I aske my mate to turn the squelch down - he did - I slept - no messages disturbed me or the rest of the watch off...

[ChrisJHC]

Originally Posted by chasfgr

So I'm trying to sleep below and the damned VHF keeps on waking me with its carrier but no verbal message.
I aske my mate to turn the squelch down - he did - I slept - no messages disturbed me or the rest of the watch off...

It’s possible this is what happened, however they also didn’t respond to HF or satphone.