Jeremy_W
Well-Known Member
Didn't Eric Taberly go in a very similar manner, of unbriefed crew unable to do anything useful?
Didn't Rob James drown when his crew couldn't stop the (big racing multihull ) boat alongside him in the water, on the first pass?
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Certainly in the Rob James case Jeff Houlgrave, who had co-skippered the yacht 2,500 miles in the Round Britain race, was onboard. He hardly rates as unskilled.
I think the Tabarly crew were also pretty hot. From memory at least one of the crew had sailed in the Whitbread with Tabarly.
The initial press reports in these matters usually say that the remaining crew were a bunch of novices running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It's just one of the cliches they use. If the crew had been highly skilled (a hassled Press Association sub whose entire nautical experience is the Sea Cat to a stag night in Dublin would reason) the crew would have recovered the skipper. QED: In the recent case the "novice crew " cliche seems to have had some truth in it, so the PA misspelt the name of the yacht and got the size wrong instead.
I'm not being rude about news journos. The speed at which they get 75-80+% of the average story right is fantastic! But if you know the subject they're writing about you can always see mistakes in the initial reporting. Good papers correct these in later editions or on subsequent days or in a specialised E&O column. Bad papers don't - instead each reporter in sequence pulls up the cuttings file, takes it as gospel and repeats the misinformation.
Didn't Rob James drown when his crew couldn't stop the (big racing multihull ) boat alongside him in the water, on the first pass?
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Certainly in the Rob James case Jeff Houlgrave, who had co-skippered the yacht 2,500 miles in the Round Britain race, was onboard. He hardly rates as unskilled.
I think the Tabarly crew were also pretty hot. From memory at least one of the crew had sailed in the Whitbread with Tabarly.
The initial press reports in these matters usually say that the remaining crew were a bunch of novices running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It's just one of the cliches they use. If the crew had been highly skilled (a hassled Press Association sub whose entire nautical experience is the Sea Cat to a stag night in Dublin would reason) the crew would have recovered the skipper. QED: In the recent case the "novice crew " cliche seems to have had some truth in it, so the PA misspelt the name of the yacht and got the size wrong instead.
I'm not being rude about news journos. The speed at which they get 75-80+% of the average story right is fantastic! But if you know the subject they're writing about you can always see mistakes in the initial reporting. Good papers correct these in later editions or on subsequent days or in a specialised E&O column. Bad papers don't - instead each reporter in sequence pulls up the cuttings file, takes it as gospel and repeats the misinformation.
