March WNS

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And prepare lots of long ropes, becuase I'm sure you'll need them for something

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They'll be for close quarter manouevering next to the classic wooden yacht in the harbour /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
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the problem of an unnoticed or delayed MOB observation is a good one to tease out

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I agree with that and I have enjoyed the comments dealing with this aspect. I am still feeling quite cross about the moronic scene setting though.

Why not just say, someone's fallen off the back of the boat sometime in the last five minutes whilst boat with two remaining personnel (skip + 1) has been travelling inshore at X knots in Y conditions?

Alternatively, if there must be a back story, let's not be insulted with bad maths bad seamanship and bad attention to detail.
 
ONCE AGAIN PEOPLES' EAGERNESS TO RUBBISH THE SCENARIO HAS LEAD THEM TO FAIL TO READ IT PROPERLY.
It says he goes down to the cockpit to PREPARE the fenders, not rig them. That means extract them from the lazarette and get them ready for rigging when you enter the harbour.
 
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Boat travelling at 20kts, half mile out from harbour son sent to deploy fenders, 5 minutes later notice he's missing. At 20kts you would now have travelled over 1.5 miles and therefore either have missed the harbour completely or be in the harbour tieing up the boat!
L

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Good point - my mistake; I didn't do the maths. I should have said 'a few minutes later as you are about to enter the harbour entrance.'
 
Good point TJ. But the maths were still wrong, and why on earth the boy should have opened the transom door?
On the other hand, I wonder how you can take all this bashing and continue to entertain us with these threads...! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
You'd better keep them simpler, methink.
And if - as benjenbav said - you really need a back story, here's a suggestion:
About half a mile out, your son leaves the flybridge due to a strong urge to pee. After about five minutes there is no sign of him, so you send you partner to investigate. She finds the lazarette hatch up, the transom gate swinging on its hinges and no sign of your son...
That's a pretty realistic scenario btw, it can and does happen.

PS: I deliberately left the "lazarette hatch up" bit, it doesn't make sense in this scenario but heyho, who cares?... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
forgetting the infeasibility of the maths and the ridiculous events that ended up with son in the water, the question does raise a dilemna about when to call the Mayday.

There's two possibilities, son is conscious and can inflate his lifejacket, or son is unconscious and has probably drowned, but maybe not quite yet.

The water is warm, so if son is conscious, a good chance of recovery and an hour or more to do it. If son is unconscious, then every second counts and you are his only hope, slim though that hope is. However, it will take a few minutes to call a Mayday, give position etc. during which time son's tiny chance of survival has evaporated.

I'd be tempted to turn the boat around immediately, set off on reciprocal course at full speed with both yours and partners eyes peeled. You need partner scanning the water, not calling a Mayday or firing up the GPS. You may just get lucky and spot him unconscious in the water, stop the boat close enough, and dive in to get his head above water. If he is conscious and has inflated his jacket, you're unlikely to miss him and run over him, and if he isn't and hasn't then what have you lost, he'd have drowned otherwise anyway?

If you haven't found him in the first few minutes, then you have to hope he's conscious and has inflated lifejacket, and then you call a Mayday and fire up the GPS.
 
Hate to be a pedant but isn't it the tan of the angle which gives 0.1 not cos and of course that's only true if he zooms back out of the harbour at the same 20kts? If the search took place at say 10kts, then it would be the tan of the angle which gives approx 0.15. That also assumes that the tide is exactly perpindicular to the coastline and further assumes that the boat approached the harbour at a constant 20kts which it didn't because we are told it came off the plane at one point!
Not sure what good firing up the GPS does except to coordinate a search pattern as neither the GPS nor the plotter was operating on the approach so nobody knows for sure the course on which the boat approached the harbour and therefore the position at which the boy went down into the cockpit
All in all, IMHO, the best the skipper can do is to try to estimate his approach course from the remnants of his wake if it is still visible which I doubt given the conditions and retrace his approach but a few degrees downtide in the hope he gets lucky. Even though it's late in the season and the water should be at it's least cold, I reckon the boy has about 1 hour in the water max so given the poor sea conditions, bad viz and no certainty of his position when he went overboard, it's a lot less than 50/50 IMHO
 
Mapis

And my amendment is wrong as well! I was trying to produce a search area with a long side of about 1.5 - 2 miles. (5 mins at 20kt). So lets say you turned originally at that distance out. That brings an element of drift into the equation.

I would infer from the lazarette hatch being up and the transom gate open that he fell back against the gate while opening the hatch and it sprang open. This happened to Tim Bartlett on a boat test when the seat he was sitting on collapsed. It was a long time ago so I won't say which make of boat. But as others have said, perhaps the back story is unnecessarily complex.

So let's go from here with a back track of 1.66 miles (say 2 miles).

Once again, apologies for the original error.

Must now depart for LIBS, so may not have a chance to log again before Monday.

Best wishes
TJ
 
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If your son has been allowed to go wandering around unsupervised and dies as a result you, the parent are going to gaol. I suppose you will now say he's nineteen and over the age of majority, but please don't bother.

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Fine. If you think he shouldn't have been allowed to go down to the cockpit on his own - which IMHO is a quite common and reasonable thing to allow him to do - why not simply say so without getting all arsey?
 
I think we understood that but the point remains that no skipper in their right mind would instruct anyone to go and prepare fenders at 20kts in a lumpy sea and no crew member would think about doing this of their own volition when the safety of the harbour and calm water is but minutes away. IMHO these WNS's need to better thought through as well as getting the maths right
 
Tony, It wasn't my original intention to have a pop, although clearly I did get carried away and would like to apologise for any offence caused. I did want to make the serious point that I feel very strongly about that as parents we are responsible for our children's safety. I think if it had been the partner going overboard, I wouldn't have reacted as I did.

After all, you can always find another girlfriend can't you? Sorry, off I go again /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
Geez... You replied to a forumite quoting his post, and in the meantime he deleted his original post. There must be something in LakeRegs about it?!?
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Pedantry is fine :-) I wont get into a battle on it becuase you can argue it either way. For a ratio of 1/10th as here, there aint much difference between a tan and a cosine and so I only thought about it for 10 seconds and chose cosine because the boat itself will be travelling at an angle to the tide on the way back during the search. Get my drift? (And scuse the pun!). But I agree with you, depending on what assumptions you make about the geometry a tan is definitely as good a contender as a cos for the answer. And, needless to say, we both know this discussion is theoretical!

Firing up the GPS was just to log the position of discovery of the missing person. This skipper is pretty incompetent but I thought it useful to have at least one hard data item, bearing in mind eveything else is gonna be guesswork.
 
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I reckon the boy has about 1 hour in the water max so given the poor sea conditions, bad viz and no certainty of his position when he went overboard, it's a lot less than 50/50 IMHO

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I'd have thought his odds were a fair bit better than that, assuming he's able to inflate his lifejacket. It's not that rough, close to a harbour so other boats/rescue services can be there quickly, and the waters warm, plus his warm clothing and yachting jacket will help a bit in that respect as well.

Some people may remember the events in summer 2006 when a yacht was found mid channel with no-one on board. The Mayday was co-ordinated by Portland I think, and they found him alive and well about 4 hours later. I doubt he had an immersion suit on, though of course I don't know.
 
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forgetting the infeasibility of the maths and the ridiculous events that ended up with son in the water, the question does raise a dilemna about when to call the Mayday.

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IMHO - the moment you decide it is a MOB - ie confirmed he isn't in the heads having a pee ....

The reason why you'd declare it asap is that you DON'T KNOW why he is a MOB, you DON'T KNOW what condition he is in and you DON'T KNOW when you'll find him ....

I wouldn't call a mayday IF I was motoring along at 5kn in a flat calm sunny day in the summer and a crew member who was monkeying around went overboard whilst I was watching - more likely to laugh my head off ...
 
but you also DON'T KNOW when he fell off, it may have been just a few seconds before you noticed he'd gone, and he may drown while you call in the Mayday and fire up the GPS.

It would depend on the exact circumstances, which you could only judge if you were actually there, but in some circumstances I would decide that the pro of possibly finding him before he drowned, outweighed the con of delaying the Mayday a few minutes
 
Tony, you've got form on this score so people sort of expect dodgy aspects in the scenarios. In this case, folks shouldn't be flamed for thinking you meant deploy the fenders. No-one reads this stuff in detial and your statement that skipper suspected a problem when there was "no sign of the fenders" makes the reader think skipper was expecting to see them being attached to the guardrails. I mean if skipper merely expected them "prepared" on the aft deck then his non seeing of them after 5 minutes would have been what he expected, and wouldn't have alarmed him.

The overall idea of what to do if someone is missing is a great theme, as others have said. Maybe scrap this whole scenario, and rework it just to deal with that theme. And do the theme assuming a competent skipper with a good plotter, instead of piling on unlikely scenarios like a busted plotter. There's lots to say on this subject if you keep the scenario pure. As starter for 10, on the general theme of what to do if someone is missing, I'd throw in

(a) on night passages I always set the "leave a track" function on 2 plotters (for backup) at the max resolution, ie leaving a waypoint every 10metres or so, and clear the memory. Then, at least, and not allowing for tides, I can retrace my own steps perfectly if I need to go back and find a body
(b) Remind folks how cheap the GPS personal Epirbs are now. £350 or so. These and LifeTags are great for night work or any case where a crew could be lost and not noticed
(c) Remind sailors (not mobos) of the benefit of Raymarine's remote control for the AP. If the handset goes out of range, the AP turns off. The sailboat will then steer into the wind (assuming it's normal, ie has a bit of weahter helm) and stop, heave to, ish, allowing the lone helmsman to swim to it. Much better than seeing it go off on AP over the horizon.
(d) Also many sailors tow a long line to grab onto if they fall in the sea. A mobo could hardly do this cos 20kts is too fast, but it could do it if slower perhaps?

And there are prob lots of other suggestions
 
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It would depend on the exact circumstances, which you could only judge if you were actually there, but in some circumstances I would decide that the pro of possibly finding him before he drowned, outweighed the con of delaying the Mayday a few minutes

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Of course - but it is easier if you've got a VHF at the helm position as you can radio at the same time as looking ... assuming you can multitask ... /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

If he fell off a few seconds ago then I would assume you can see him ...
 
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