3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happen?

Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

[ QUOTE ]
I KNOW it was a Belgium boat, I am being careful NOT to talk about any one particular incident, just talking about fishermen's attitudes and financial difficulties in general. This is openly being shared by those in the industry who have been kind to share some info, all we are trying to discuss is how to limit loss of life and ensure that it is minimised in the future. Perhaps fishermen are too busy to go to LIBS or SIBS and see what can be bought fairly cheaply to alert the emergency services and save a life, and if one buys a personal EPIRB and that saves a life it has been a worthwhile discussion.

The discussion is also letting others see what conditions some of these fishermen are working in and perhaps next time they go to LIBS or SIBS they may wish to buy a personal EPIRB and donate it in to a local fisherman, you never know, that may be one less local funeral in the future! If you love your fish so much surely with the wealth on this forum that is not a lot to ask people to do.

I went to a function at the Dorchester hotel only last week that was in aid of the NSPCC, the guests including us in the room on the night raised through live auctions and donations £568,000 which was given there and then, so nothing is impossible with some effort. Lets start getting the fishermen GPS EPIRB'd up and save some lives, it may not be the full answer, but nobody deserves to sink and have nobody know it has happened immediately with the technology available today.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's better.....

It's difficult to beleive that some of your earlier remarks were written by the same person.

I'm still pissed off about your slagging off of "Explorers". This is the website of a friend of mine, http://www.bensaunders.com/

People will chose their own level of risk in whatever they do.
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

Although the EPIRB is a brilliant piece of kit, ring Falmouth MRCC and ask what happens when they get an alert. Seriously, ring and say you are considering one and ask. 01326317575. I think you may find that they wait for a second 'hit', and bear in mind that the first hit might have been to a satellite that only passes every three hours. I hope I'm wrong and that things may have changed by now, but a few years ago we thought that the Sea Marshall PLB was the answer for small boats, until we asked the CG what their response would be. The first response to your situation may well have to come from you. The RNLI CPRS, now about to be marketed by McMurdo, alerts a monitoring centre via satellite when power to the onboard unit fails, but we have been testing it and there has been a number of false alarms. Ask the CG. None of these has initiated a rescue, no rescue was needed, but if the CG gets overloaded with any such false alarms (which a lot of beacon alerts are) the system is devalued, and it's back down to you in the first instance.
A chain is only as good as the weakest link. One August saturday afternoon a few years back the MRCC was so overloaded they stopped answering Ch16 calls. I had gone back to sea having finished for the day to free a yacht from some gear (not mine!), but could not let the CG know he was OK. A fishing boat under tow had got in and crew gone home but the CG did not know, and could not be told since the boat was not answering them, but the CG did not respond to me trying to tell them. The CG once asked me how many watchkeepers I thought there were on duty. Three. The first response to your situation may have to come from YOU.
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

Explorers, what they do is up to them, but they should take out insurance to cover rescues e.t.c. in my opinion. Why should they put others lives at risk to get them out of the poo. Anyway, enough of that, it is another issue that can be discussed another time.

With regards to the fishermen, what is sad is the unnecessary loss of life, if you read all I have said it boils down to the same thing, WHY? when systems are available that could minimise it. It seems that perhaps the spotlight is on other things in life, perhaps we as sea loving people can act to help those that risk their lives to feed others (I still don't like fish though).

It is the orphans that are left that get my sympathy, these little souls do not deserve to be fatherless at all! If I can do anything to help stop that happening unnecessarily then I will try to or support those who know what they can do about it.

My heart goes out to that 19yr old left clinging to a hull from 5pm all through the night to 8.30am having lost the other crew members, what horror has that young chap been through? I have a 19yr old son and my heart was full of sadness at the story I read of the sinking, I would never wish anyone to go through that again, that is all I have to say on the matter.
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

OK, I take your point, what you say saddens me even more, but then I guess that is the state of this country and it's management at the current time, the technology is there, but it still requires an 'efficent operator' to action the alert. I am just trying to help, but as I stated in another post it requires the input of professionals in the industry of which I am not one, but which I would support in any way I could.

P.S. I think the Sea Marshall runs on 121.5 which I understand is not reliable and takes loads of false hits, the GPS EPIRB I am talking about uses 406 and gives an accurate GPS reference of its location. Perhaps an EPIRB specialist on here could clarify this for us.

I was looking at this one Here

Details of how it works which includes details of a maximum of 45mins per passing of satelite for activation are shown Here

Personal GPS EPIRB's are shown Here You will see that amongst others it was designed for fishermen to be found at sea in an emergency, why do they all not have one?
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

From this report (which may be wrong!) It looks like the boat may have had an EPIRB or DSC.

http://english.people.com.cn/200512/15/eng20051215_228095.html

"Expatica reported that the emergency signal the ship transmitted on Tuesday night was not immediately received. A passing container ship raised the alarm on Wednesday morning".



Contradicted by this report.

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_arti...men%27s+deaths+

"Inquiries will focus on why the boat's life raft was not used and why the ship's safety mechanism did not automatically send out an alarm signal".
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

I cannot comment on that but thanks for the info, the GPS EPIRB's continue to emit the warning signal, see my last post, I for one will now consider getting my own personal one as shown above as well as one for the vessel.

NOT ALL EPIRBS have the accurate GPS transmitter which gives an updated position, they are more expensive than the standard ones, so you have to choose how much you want to invest in your safety.
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

There have been some detailed threads on whether or not gps epirbs are worth the extra money, depending on whether you are local to a large western country with resources to throw at rescuing you, or if you a blue water cruiser often 1000's of miles from any possible rescue. Well worth reading them
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

Brendan, can you guide me to those as I would like to read others views before making up my mind on what to get, cheers.
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

V difficult with current state of search on the forums, but I'll have a look a bit later when I have a moment

You can see here from google search that there used to be a wealth of information on subject, but most now no longer accesible from google search
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&am...2005-46,GGLD:en
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

I'm considering a personal EPIRB (at least partly because of this thread!). I'm actually surprised that some models are cheaper than I thought, well within even my budget! Not GPS, but better than shouting.......

http://www.seamarknunn.co.uk/catalog/items/item1782.htm

I see that the warning is given that the GPS needs a clear view of the sky, not good for a capsized vessel. A possible explanation for the trawler's lack of an alarm signal?
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

I thought these 121Mhz sets were of limited usefulness as a "personal locator beacon", cos the systems in future would only listen on 406Mhz. Or something. Not sure.

dv.
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

That one is limited as it is 121.5 but as you say better than shouting, I have one of those as new and will be upgrading to the GPS version as a result of this thread, so if you are interested in my one let me know.
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

[ QUOTE ]

I thought these 121Mhz sets were of limited usefulness as a "personal locator beacon", cos the systems in future would only listen on 406Mhz. Or something. Not sure.

dv.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're right! The 121 is VHF based (uses VHF direction finding equipment) and will be withdrawn in 2009 anyway.
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

[ QUOTE ]
That one is limited as it is 121.5 but as you say better than shouting, I have one of those as new and will be upgrading to the GPS version as a result of this thread, so if you are interested in my one let me know.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll PM you.

If it's only good until 2009 it's not a great deal of cash for 3 years.
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

The basic 406 gets the rescue teams within a 5km radius I think, them they use the 121.5 that it also transmits to guide them in, so what will happen to that? surely they must be keeping the same equipment to track those.

I did hear that they were going to stop monitoring 121.5 around now, but then reversed the decision.

Also seems that DSC has not taken off as much as it should have done, could it be to do with the training on it being boring, unreal and not fully understood? Great earner for the trainers so I hear /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

I little like none dsc being withdrawn by 2006 was it.....

I would wait and see on 121Mhz locator's losing support to be honest.

I listened to a rescue one night in the Irish Sea somewhere quite west of Holyhead. The crew of a dredger (10m boat, so guessing a harbour dredger), had to jump into the liferaft as the boat was sinking fast, quite choppy weather. This was their last VHF as no h/h.

Upon entering the raft the crew set off the locator, within minutes the CG was telling of position reports coming in from Kinloss in Jockland. Rescue 122 (RAF helo) picked up the beacon and headed straight for the casualty as well as Pwllheli lifeboat who was getting a signal about 20 miles away.

Pretty impressive stuff.

My point, I think for inshore work and boating 121Mhz is as good a bet as 406. In 2007 rescue services are not just going to start turning off equipment. I think for example, my leisure RADAR will pickup and marker a 121Mhz signal like it does a RACON, so even local yachts etc. should pick up and locate person epirbs. I have never been able to put my radar to the test, must read the manual again to make sure I am right on this one.

Which brings me to my next point, it is all very well wearing personal locator beacons, but very little point unless you can track them from the main vessel. If you go overboard your best chance of survival is the crew turning the boat around, not waiting for Falmouth to sort out some kind of rescue. One Epirb in the companion way or set location is all that should be needed, if at all.

I brought this up in another thread recently. I would consider carrying an epirb in local waters on the south coast almost a waste of time, just look how many false DSC alerts are being reported. There are so many of the London Navy in the Solent pressing buttons that the whole system has as said become devalued.

It seems every good idea is ruined when they allow the public to use it, sad really.
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

My point about the GPS personal one and the boat one and having both was that if your boat sank and you became detached from it your personal one would guide the rescue team to you. The 406 is registered to your vessel, so more chance of the rescue services finding out if it was a genuine call or not, an updated CG66 would help I guess, but I wonder how many people keep these updated, and if the CG take any notice of them, anyone with experience of this out there?

As for 121.5, I see Breitling still sell their range of watches with these built in, although you have to unscrew the crown and hold the wire type aerial up for it to work, not sure how effective this would be.
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

[ QUOTE ]
As for 121.5, I see Breitling still sell their range of watches with these built in, although you have to unscrew the crown and hold the wire type aerial up for it to work, not sure how effective this would be.

[/ QUOTE ]

Try an educated guess?
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

[ QUOTE ]


Also seems that DSC has not taken off as much as it should have done, could it be to do with the training on it being boring, unreal and not fully understood? Great earner for the trainers so I hear /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

I use proper simulator radios - fully operational - they just have the tx amplifer removed. My course is not boring!! Tried very hard for it not to be, done badly it can be worse than watching paint dry.
 
Re: 3 Drowned, 1 Survived clinging to hull all night, How does it happ

Not for one minute saying yours is, but appreciate that you understand not done properly it 'can be', been there seen it done it /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

Now about a refresher course? /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top