Missing yachtswoman in South west.

FishyInverness said:
To clarify, as to what was reported by the media:

1. The broker advised her to take a refresher course.

2. Her husband advised she was not inexperienced, as she had been accompanied by an experienced sailor previous to this sailing and both he and she were comfortable with her competence.
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FishyIverness,

thanks, I have been trying all along to say this lady knew what she was doing, and something dramatic must have happened.
 
I have had a gas fire on another boat I owned - the flexible hose to the gimballed cooker ruptured, and as it was an 'armoured' hose I didn't see it when I put the kettle on, then looked at the chart table trying to fix our position - a few miles South of the Eddystone lighthouse in September, we had lifejackets but no raft, so if the thing had sunk we would have been gonners...forensic evidence will eventually say what happenned to Mary Unwin which may be a guide for us luckier yotties and I hope a comfort to her family.

Above all I get the notion that Mary Unwin didn't screw up, she was overtaken by circumstances.
 
bbg said:
Nav error not so difficult to understand. She hadn't had a lot of time with the boat. How much time did she have to do a proper passage plan? Plug waypoints into the (new and possibly unfamiliar) GPS? What charts did she have on board? I don't know that coast very well - only sailed past it about 4 times - but I do know that if you are sailing along an unfamiliar coast at night without a chart plotter you had better have done some preparation. Dark, possibly tired and disoriented could easily lead to hitting something solid. With an onshore swell it wouldn't take long from "bang" to become something much worse. Without recent experience, and without being familiar with the boat, would she have had time to send off a mayday? Would it have occurred to her to do so?

Also, if she hasn't been sailing much recently, and was on an unfamiliar boat, there are a lot of factors that could conspire to send her over the side. Darkness, tiredness, disorientation, unfamiliar footing, unfamiliar motion.
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If I understand correctly, she arrived in Mousehole on the Friday and didn't depart until the Sat evening, so should've been enough time for passage planning, even if she hadn't done a lot of prep before leaving home.

Could also have planned routes and waypoints on a HH GPS before leaving home and taken it with her. However, having to beat up through the rocks is more of a challenge than simply following GPS rhumb lines. And, as you say, her skills were apparently rusty and it was an unfamiliar boat.
 
Here's a picture of the area taken from outside the Longships in good weather in August
8096680239_f2e544ea66_b.jpg
 
Seajet said:
I have had a gas fire on another boat I owned - the flexible hose to the gimballed cooker ruptured, and as it was an 'armoured' hose I didn't see it when I put the kettle on, then looked at the chart table trying to fix our position - a few miles South of the Eddystone lighthouse in September, we had lifejackets but no raft, so if the thing had sunk we would have been gonners...forensic evidence will eventually say what happenned to Mary Unwin which may be a guide for us luckier yotties and I hope a comfort to her family.

Above all I get the notion that Mary Unwin didn't screw up, she was overtaken by circumstances.
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1. Oohh... errr!

2. Exactly.
 
TamarMike said:
It would seem that, although not ideal she probably picked as good a weather window as she was likely to get this time of year so her haste might perhaps have been due to her hope to complete the passage before it worsened, as indeed it has.
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That is as may be. We always want to get to a destination. Sometimes it can be better to be patient and wait longer. Or just leave the boat and come back later. Given the very unsettled spell that was, and is still, being indicated, taken together with factors such as being single handed, the reported lack of recent experience, a new (to her) boat, I must question her judgement.

I have done enough cruising to know that a decision to wait in harbour longer than you really want is always difficult. I doubt that many of us can truthfully say that we always got it right. We just probably got away with it. This unhappy event should be a lesson to us all.
 
franksingleton said:
That is as may be. We always want to get to a destination. Sometimes it can be better to be patient and wait longer. Or just leave the boat and come back later. Given the very unsettled spell that was, and is still, being indicated, taken together with factors such as being single handed, the reported lack of recent experience, a new (to her) boat, I must question her judgement.

I have done enough cruising to know that a decision to wait in harbour longer than you really want is always difficult. I doubt that many of us can truthfully say that we always got it right. We just probably got away with it. This unhappy event should be a lesson to us all.
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So you're saying you wouldn't sail on the Sat evening on a coastal voyage of less than 24 hours when the forecast indicated good weather but with a 6 or 7 coming in by the Monday evening?

You do realise that that approach would preclude almost all sailing in Scotland?
 
franksingleton said:
This unhappy event should be a lesson to us all.
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As it looks inceasiningly unlikely that Mrs Unwin has survived, I doubt anyone will ever know the true facts of this incident.

Thus the only lesson to be learnt may be that if anyone of us suffers a catastrophe at sea, our abilities, family life, and sanity, will all be called into question both in the media and on the internet long before the truth is known.
 
fergie_mac66 said:
Couple I took in July from inside passage of Sennen and Longships Taken within a few minutes of each other
edit for those who dont know the area
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THe white water shows the rocks to the W of Sennen Harbour, but there is another area of rock further out which are not showing, presumably the piccies were at highish tide?
 
As it is little more than a mile further to round the Longships than take the inshore passage I would expect any vessel rounding Land's End at night, with a westerley breeze and without the latest electonic gizmos to pass west of the Longships. If indeed (and we will never know) she took an inshore passage, as assumed by several posters, that would indeed be an extremely unnecessary risk.

I am wary of being too critical as I realise my avatar is a pic another vessel took (14 yrs ago) of me running east close inshore to the Lizard in worse conditions - single handed in an old fishing vessel with a dipping lug mainsail.

At least it was daylight, though a few years earlier I made my first trip to the Scillies (not even a handheld GPS back then) in a 20 hr passage from the Helford in very light winds, cat napping in the sun across Mount's Bay with the tiller lashed (with my alarm set at 10 minute intervals) ready for the night time passage past Land's End arriving at St Mary's just before dawn (slightly earlier than I intended).
 
The press coverage of this really does bring home how sensationalist and inaccurate popular journalism is. Its almost bordering on the criminal.
 
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