Earthrace

According to their press release...

" At 00:30, Distefano spotted a small white and red flashing light directly ahead. According to maritime law, flashing lights are to be used as navigational aids, marking things such as channels."

That seems pretty clear to me. Earthrace never formally withdrew this they simply refered to the "unlit vessel" as part of the follow up story i.e repairs to the vessel.

So we do know
 
Press release issued by whom? Presumably their support team. How many people did the strory go through before it was released how long did the person taking the strory have to talk to the crew, was it face to face, or down a poor phone line with a tired and stressed crew member (who might not even have been the one on watch).

Again, none of us have any idea. It's certainly not outside the realms of possibility that the first story to come out may not have been the most accurate, indeed, I'd be surprised if it was. Point is, until you have a good idea of the facts you should not criticise.
 
Something that baffles me - after losing so much time as a result of the collision with the fishing boat, why didnt they decide to 'start from scratch' again re this round the world record for a power driven vessel? They could have started again from eg Acapulco or San Diego.

Although they would have still lost some time with this latest crisis re the engine blowing up.

It looks like they are going to go around the world, or have a good bash at it, quite possibly without picking up any records as such, burning vast quantities of bio-diesel doing so, while saying that the whole reason for the exercise is to promote sensible fuel usage, bio-diesel as an alternative to fossil fuels etc.......

Me thinks this doesnt quite add up...... /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
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... that is their position and that forms the basis for peoples comments.

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That's fair enough, but no reasonable person would partition blame given such scant information. Lets accept, for the sake of argument, that the report is a true account of what happened. All we then know is that the helmsman saw a light (possibly flashing or possibly a fixed light low to the water). We don't know that it was part of the correct lighting for a fishing boat, that it was even a navigation light (and not a cabin or working light) or that it was even on the boat with which they collided with (though it's probably a safe assumption).

In court they used the defense that the boat was not properly lit, and that there was nobody on watch on the fishing boat. We know that a judge (who presumably had access to more information than we do) decided that they had no case to answer. That should at least give people some cause for doubt about their culpability. At the very least it should be enough to stop making such accusations in public.
 
I agree, and said as much above; it makes the crew look callous to say the least. However, that is entirely seperate to the issue of whether or not they were to blame for the accident.
 
Money! I think it is essentially a bunch of guys having a wonderful adventure selling legs, mercandise etc as they go. The good cause bit is I think just a marketing fig leaf to cover the fact that the trip might otherwise be seen as not very environmentally enlightened.
 
I agree, the issue isn't whether or not Earthrace should be blamed for the tragedy, but the distasteful way in which their PR machine turned it into an incident that caused some damage to the Earthrace boat...
 
I aslo wonder whether it will make people think twice about sailing big fast yachts singlehanded. It's probably fair to say that if the accident had involved a single handed yachtsman (who was asleep at the time) then someone would be looking at a prison sentence by now. I guess that's the subject for an entirely different discussion though...
 
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