Expect you would be in the best position to answer that. Assume they didn't have your helicopter available as soon as the inflatable.
Will never forget CPO Peter Wicker ("Bear") in the water hauling Tony Bullimore into the inflatable
www.9news.com.au/9stories/tony-bullimore-ever-thankful-to-australia-for-miracle-rescue/a0d4a799-33d7-45e9-a317-375a67d9b0bc
or Sgt David Key's rescues in the 98 Hobart............superhuman.
www.smh.com.au/national/from-the-archives-heroes-of-the-1998-sydney-to-hobart-tell-of-yacht-rescues-20200607-p55099.html
Select to expand quoteMorningBird said..Ramona said..
Due East of Shoalhaven Bight 185 km. Windiest day of the year with the added bonus of extra wind channelled down the Shoalhaven. Fortunately directly offshore from the Navy air station NAS Nowra but it seems too windy for the navy helicopters to lift them off yesterday afternoon. Other units on their way.
Any thoughts on why they wouldn't have got the crew into the water and lifted them from there? It was the way we did it back many years ago.
The crew actually entered the water to get in the police rib. It was too rough the previous day for the navy helos. Two large navy assets there and they could have parked beam on up wind and use their ribs. That's how we did it in the old navy. I have a feeling the navy let the police have the honour in recognition of the very long and arduous trip in a small boat.
Select to expand quotejulesmoto said..Ramona said..
This is JB on the 13th of July. The MSB officer had already pumped water out several times.
Maybe new Queensland owners and they weren't told of the recurring water ingress problem. Would have thought if it was the same owner he would have rectified the problem before going to sea. Sad if that's the case and not a good reflection on the surveyor if there was one.
Do you remember the name of the one in JB?
According to the news the owners are in Sydney. The crew are just friends. Our mate the head of the local MSB said the engine had been underwater and engine oil has gone through the the whole boat and stained the sails stored below. My mate who took the photo thinks the bloke is the same one that sailed it in. This boat has sat on an anchor for 12 months. We should be asking what anchor was used! The MSB bloke is a particularly nice bloke and very efficient.
Select to expand quoteQuixotic said..Chris 249 said..
Hmm. I had assumed that they were on a longer passage and got caught out in the middle of it.
That looks to me like an old racing #3 or 4 and a furled and covered mainsail. So perhaps they put out to sea under that rig, which would explain why they sagged way offshore and why the sail tore. Under jib only they may not handle at all well upwind and may have needed a lot of helm.
Perhaps the issue is once again not using proper storm sails. A storm jib and storm trysail combo will keep the boat controllable, won't blow out and get hung up, and would allow the boat to be steered more easily.
Certainly a torn jib and furler problems should not cause a round the world boat significant trouble. There's a fairly easy way to get a boat of that size to self-furl a jib in windy conditions - just go around in circles and as the jib blows to leeward each time it will furl itself. It's really quite easy, and then one can secure it by wrapping halyards around the sail.
EDIT - after seeing Ramona's pics one can only hope that the problems had been well and truly fixed and good trials done before the boat left in those conditions. One can understand that the leak may have been something that could only be fixed in a major port, but in that case you'd have to wait for benign conditions.
I hope the RMS officer provides a report to the relevant authorities.
Reported rudder problem may have precluded circling to furl jib. Without main, might be hard in a gale to get her to point up and through the wind even with a working rudder. No mention of the engine, and whether that was part of the mechanical difficulties. Partly raising the main to get a bit of lee helm perhaps only feasible if already rigged with a decent 3rd reef. Alternative might be a storm trysail, if there was one on board, or better still one on the deck in a bag by the mast with halyard connected and sliders/luff in a separate track.
As I understand it Volvo 60s were designed with 5 watertight compartments and were virtually unsinkable. Perhaps that changed, or this boat was modified. Also standard at one stage were gudgeons on the transom for an emergency rudder. Of course even with these and if there were an emergency rudder on board, mounting it in 5m seas and a gale might be impossible or far too risky to attempt, especially if the boat could not be pointed into the waves. A sea anchor or drogue might have been useful, at least to slow her down and get her facing into the wind/swell.
In the end if they were too tired and too seasick (as I think one said when they were back on shore), and had no means to slow or manoeuvre the boat, better to seek help before getting blown even further offshore, and physical capacity deteriorating further. She reportedly covered from 80nm offshore when EPIRB triggered around midday to 160nm offshore by the time the crew were rescued the next morning.
Yes, if the rudder had gone before the jib then circling would be an issue, but like you I believe that Volvo 60s needed proper emergency steering and some of them clearly have gudgeons. If they didn't have a cassette rudder they could mount in those conditions two handed them IMHO they should not have been out there in those conditions two-handed.
Like you I think a storm trysail should probably have been used and if it couldn't be used they shouldn't have been out there with that forecast.
To make it clear, I reckon it would be OK to head out into the forecast conditions in a two-handed Volvo 60 IF the crew and boat were properly prepared and did the right thing. A Volvo 60 can lope along at slow cruising speed under storm trysail alone and be faster than the vast majority of other boats and most of the loads would probably be lower than that of the typical 40 footer with full gear up in an afternoon sea breeze.
But to go out with gear that is unreliable enough to suffer multiple breakdowns, using the sort of storm sails that the pros didn't use for very good reason, is another matter entirely. I'd also say that the breeze may not have been all that strong - if the breeze had been really strong, then what looks like an ageing #3 or #4 racing sail would probably have been torn to tatters and split from luff to leach in multiple places very quickly.
Select to expand quoteRamona said..MorningBird said..Ramona said..
Due East of Shoalhaven Bight 185 km. Windiest day of the year with the added bonus of extra wind channelled down the Shoalhaven. Fortunately directly offshore from the Navy air station NAS Nowra but it seems too windy for the navy helicopters to lift them off yesterday afternoon. Other units on their way.
Any thoughts on why they wouldn't have got the crew into the water and lifted them from there? It was the way we did it back many years ago.
The crew actually entered the water to get in the police rib. It was too rough the previous day for the navy helos. Two large navy assets there and they could have parked beam on up wind and use their ribs. That's how we did it in the old navy. I have a feeling the navy let the police have the honour in recognition of the very long and arduous trip in a small boat.
Sounds fair.
Select to expand quoter13 said..
Expect you would be in the best position to answer that. Assume they didn't have your helicopter available as soon as the inflatable.
Will never forget CPO Peter Wicker ("Bear") in the water hauling Tony Bullimore into the inflatable
www.9news.com.au/9stories/tony-bullimore-ever-thankful-to-australia-for-miracle-rescue/a0d4a799-33d7-45e9-a317-375a67d9b0bc
or Sgt David Key's rescues in the 98 Hobart............superhuman.
www.smh.com.au/national/from-the-archives-heroes-of-the-1998-sydney-to-hobart-tell-of-yacht-rescues-20200607-p55099.html
The Bullimore rescue was a real classic. Were you part of it?
I did only a couple of rescues at sea in my two years on helicopters. But we very often practised winching from the water, including in mildly difficult conditions and winching in hazardous situations.
Yacht rigging makes winching very hazardous, Masts and flailing ropes and things preclude winching from the yacht except maybe in very benign conditions. Even then I would get the survivor into the water.
A few years after my time you might remember those Navy heroes doing rescues in the 98 S2H. They did what we had always practiced, have the crew put a raft in the water attached to the yacht, get the crew into the raft then either winch them out of the raft or get them in the water and get them from there.
The 1998 rescues were done in the most extreme conditions. Very courageous aircrewman and SAR divers, some of whom received well earned bravery awards.
No I wasn't part of it but followed it very closely. As a civilian consultant through the 80s to 2008 - when budgets were frozen or reduced - I did a lot of projects for AASSSPO Garden Island including Kanimbla, Manoora, Tobruk, army marine - Larcs, fast water craft - as well as Howard Smith and Teekay tankers, HS chemical carriers, Wallarah, Sydney Ferries. The halcyon days when everyone co-operated and collaborated to fix problems and avoid more, rather than now with too many people walking around talking nonsense and running interference, searching for phantoms or witches, inventing hindsight. I am not talking about ADF personnel - they were always top shelf.
