42ft cat destroyed off oregon, usa

You meet so many cats on delivery in every season often with very little equipment. I have sometimes felt that a disaster was waiting to happen.

Could not make the link to find out more but do hope everyone is ok.
 
[ QUOTE ]
You meet so many cats on delivery in every season often with very little equipment. I have sometimes felt that a disaster was waiting to happen.


[/ QUOTE ]

I've delivered cats so I'm intrigued at your comment. What vital equipment do you think is missing?

If the boat is checked out and is in good shape then I can't think of any critical equipment that I couldn't buy at the local supermarket or bring with my luggage.
 
I made my original post before I know the awful circumstances and do not want to get into a speculative discussion. I know the 30 or so kilos personal luggage allowance bring obvious restrictions and not every skipper is prepared to pay excess. When delivering a new boat how many buy warp, wire cutters and so on. I certainly do not mean to imply that you or this crew were unequipped but I know about the all seasons requests for skipper and crew to deliver from the factories and have seen delivery boats leave in the hurricane season with little more than lots of skill, experience, personal lifejackets and a satellite phone. I do not mean to suggest that more equipment or a different boat would have made any difference.
 
I have been sitting in Ensenada, Mexico waiting for a new debit card and watching this story unfold.

The seas here have been pretty serious, hundreds of miles from the scene of this tragedy, as a result of a really bad series of deressions in the North Pacific.

The vessel was found upturned and dismasted with an EPIRB in a locker down below. There was a line wrapped around a prop (not sure whether this boat has two) and I can just imagine being in serious weather when the prop was fouled, pulling the boat around quickly and leaving no chance to prevent a capsize, send a may day or do anything else.

The crew had brought her all the way from South Africa as a professional delivery and I can only assume that they knew what they were doing. I doubt that anyone with any knowledge at all would have put to sea in the conditions they faced unless they felt prepaRed to deal with the conditions and had faith in the boat.

Perhaps this is a good time to reflect on their families, no bodies have been recovered yet and I for one feel for them, especially at this time of year.

Perhaps also it is time to think about some way of ensuring that traps and pots are properly secured by fishermen, possibly even to the point of forcing them to mark them with identification that would enable the line recovered from the prop to be traced to an owner. This may sound ridiculous but it is technically quite easy and may help to prevent another tragedy.

I am not, of course laying the blame for this at the feet of fishermen. However, crab and lobster pots pose a problem here and, I am told, in the area where this boat foundered.
 
Mike

I don't know any more about this particular tragedy than you do, but was just genuinely intrigued about what equipment you thought might make a difference in general. Given the limited luggage capacity one of my main tasks between trips was refining my "essentials" list.

Good point on wire cutters - a hacksaw with some spare blades was the lighter option, albeit a much slower one. Warps - don't really think of them as much of a problem at sea, and we tended to have a basic set from the factory, with possibilities of using spare halyards in a real emergency - but as we'd have to be in harbour to need extra warps, then it wasn't high up on the risk list.

Re. satellite phones - alas the budget never remotely ran to it although we always made sure at least one person brought along a personal EPIRB.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top