Nina : NO COMMS DOES NOT MEAN NO SURVIVORS - KEEP SEARCHING

Epirbs

Thanks to lw395 on this thread I have just read the Australian Maritime Safety Autority's (AMSA) multi-page information on EPIRB. It is very informative and should be read by all ....
http://beacons.amsa.gov.au/usage.html

Cherry picking some of the information, I have the following comments to add to the discussion ..

Although the units are water proof they can be damaged by corrosion and hence rendered useless.This corrosion may not be found by the self-test.

Epirbs with GPS operate similar to those without GPS UNTIL SUCH TIMES AS THE GPS SIGNAL HAS BEEN PROCESSED. This is VERY important as the GPS signals are more prone to failure in bad weather conditions AND unused GPS systems are known to have difficulty finding their position when first turned on as is the case with an EPIRB.

A polar orbiting satellite may take seconds or up to 5 Hours before it receives an EPIRB signal according to http://beacons.amsa.gov.au/gps.html ... i.e. in or around Australia.

I am a great believer in carrying EPIRBS, and the best one I can afford, BUT I also believe that it is VERY important to know under what circumstances they will not work despite the Self-Test indicating that they should.

I also believe there is data available that will indicate the failure rate of EPIRBS when used in emergency situations. I look forward to any informed help on this matter.
 
http://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/lectronicday.lasso?date=2013-07-26#Story4

Search Continues for Niña and Crew

July 26, 2013 – Tasman Sea

Ricky and Robin Wright of Lousiana, the parents of Danielle Wright, 19, who has been missing for nearly two months after setting sail from Opua, New Zealand, for Newcastle, Australia, with six others aboard the 70-ft staysail schooner Niña, haven't given up hope that their daughter and the others can be still be found alive. They and others have hired Equusearch, a Texas firm, to try to figure out where the schooner and/or her survivors might be now.

In addition, family and friends of the Niña crew are pressing for the U.S. government to have the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), a part of the Defense Department that supposedly has the capability of working out exactly where Niña's satphone calls were made from, to try to help find the survivors. The NGA was instrumental in locating Osama bin Laden. On the other hand, the NGA doesn't have the best record on the water. It was the NGA that provided the erroneous digital maps that contributed to the nearly new 224-ft U.S. Navy vessel Guardian going up on Tubbataha Reef, a World Heritage Site in the Sulu Sea, on January 17 of this year. The NGA charts showed the reef to be seven miles from its actual position. The expensive ship had to be cut up into three pieces and destroyed.

Friends of the Niña base their continued hopes on the possibility that New Zealand SAR resources may have been searching the wrong area in what has been their biggest search ever. Two GPS positions from Niña's Iridium phone were 700 miles apart, even though the reports were sent within just seven minutes of each other. Clearly one or both of the positions was in error. Friends of the Niña crew believe the Kiwis may have focused their search on the wrong GPS coordinate, and have thus been looking close to 700 miles from where they should have focused their search.

Realistically, there is reason to doubt that the Niña crew may still be alive. Nothing has been heard from their VHF, SSB, Iridium or EPIRB in nearly two months. And no matter which of their last GPS positions was correct, they were in cold and often rough waters.

But based on history, there is a chance they are still alive. In 2006, three fishermen from San Blas, Mexico, drifted 5,000 miles in nine months before their 29-ft disabled panga was spotted by a fishing boat near the Marshall Islands. One of the crew had died. In 1942, Poon Lim, a Chinese seaman, was on a merchant ship torpedoed by the Nazis off South Africa. He survived for 133 days in remarkably good shape, having lost not much weight at all. In 1973, Brits Maurice and Marilyn Bailey had their sailboat holed by a whale while on their way from Panama to New Zealand. They survived in their liferaft for 117 days before being rescued in poor health by a Korean fishing vessel. And sailor Steve Callahan drifted almost all the way across the Atlantic in his liferaft after a whale holed his boat.
 
Don't worry they gave up the search on the 4th of July. Any searches that have been done since then, have been paid for by Family and friends. PLEASE look at, "Bringing Home The Nina And Her Crew. We have a face book page where people can donate to the search.
 
Yes we think that they should have kept searching, There are a lot of sailors out there who feel that they were looking in the wrong place. We have been trying to get them to search further NE but we feel that they decided that the Nina sunk on the 4th of June so there is no point in looking any further. As you can imagine this is heartbreaking.
 
Uricanejack said:
The New Zeeland and Australian search and rescue organisations are among the best in the world. They know their patch better than anyone else.
They will continue the search as long as there is a realistic probability of finding something. They will conduct the search based on the best information they have available gradually expanding the search area to cover all probable areas based on several possible routes.
The loss of communication just gives a place to start.
Click to expand...
It would be nice to believe this. They are amongst the best in the world. As I have told other people they stopped searching on the 4th of July, I don't understand why people did not know this.
The other thing is that Australia has not got involved at all, so although they might well be the best its no good unless they help. The Nina could have washed up in a remote area of Australia but as no one is looking for her (except family) there chances of survival (if they are still alive) are diminishing by the day.
 
Uricanejack said:
The New Zeeland and Australian search and rescue organisations are among the best in the world. They know their patch better than anyone else.
They will continue the search as long as there is a realistic probability of finding something. They will conduct the search based on the best information they have available gradually expanding the search area to cover all probable areas based on several possible routes.
The loss of communication just gives a place to start.
Click to expand...

I agree that the NZ and AUS rescue service are the best in the world, so its a pity that the Australians did not get involved. The Nina could have washed up on the Australian coast in an area that is not inhabited but as no one has looked they may never be found. They have not conducted any searches since the 4th of July and as far as a lot of experienced sailors are concerned they did not expand the search far enough.
 
oldvarnish said:
Interesting. That would suggest that the TEST function does, in fact, radiate a signal. Never heard of the requirement to test in a 'container', nor ever read it in a manual.
Click to expand...

You are correct ..... partially anyhow. Some more modern EPIRB units do transmit a test message that can be picked up by the satellites, but that message must take less than a second to transmit. It seems unlikely that such a test message would be picked up and relayed to a ground station for later owner verification. I am trying to get more expert opinion on this.

However, with regards to Nina's EPIRB, I understand that it was of the older type that do not transmit a signal and hence the self test certainly wouldn't guarantee that it will function in an emergency.

This thread is one about Nina's lack of comms since 4th June. I am still convinced that NO COMMS DOES NOT MEAN NO SURVIVORS ......

Any more thoughts would be very welcome.
 
TradewindSailor said:
This thread is one about Nina's lack of comms since 4th June. I am still convinced that NO COMMS DOES NOT MEAN NO SURVIVORS ......
Click to expand...

Agreed. But no sightings in eight weeks since then doesn't suggest survival, at least within any reasonably likely area. Of course, if they decided to sail off around Cape Horn without telling anybody, then maybe they are still out there somewhere.
 
As far as I can find out the searches have failed to find any wreckage. I would have thought that if a 70 foot schooner had gone down, particularly if it broke up, or was rolled and dismasted, there would have been a fair amount of floating stuff.
 
Norman_E said:
As far as I can find out the searches have failed to find any wreckage. I would have thought that if a 70 foot schooner had gone down, particularly if it broke up, or was rolled and dismasted, there would have been a fair amount of floating stuff.
Click to expand...
It only takes one hole to sink a boat. In bad weather everything is stowed or lashed down so relatively little debris would be expected unless the boat broke up before sinking.
 
I would expect fenders, liferaft, pfd's, oars, life rings, jerrycans .... to make it to the surface. The liferaft may have been on a hydrostatic release.

I am inclined to think that they haven't found anything yet because they haven't searched the right areas in enough detail.

With all the resources that the USA has on hand down here, I would have thought that they would be seriously involved ..... it might even prove to the World that they do have superior technology.
 
TradewindSailor said:
I would expect fenders, liferaft, pfd's, oars, life rings, jerrycans .... to make it to the surface. The liferaft may have been on a hydrostatic release.

I am inclined to think that they haven't found anything yet because they haven't searched the right areas in enough detail.

With all the resources that the USA has on hand down here, I would have thought that they would be seriously involved ..... it might even prove to the World that they do have superior technology.
Click to expand...
The only things that should float free are the life raft and life rings but its not guarenteed. Certainly on any boat I've sailed in rough weather everything else would be lashed down very firmly or else stowed below.

I'm wondering what you think the US can do. Certainly they have a lot of resources but I doubt they have much in the area that can do anything the Australians and New Zealand SAR effort didn't do.
 
I wasn't aware that the Australians were involved. If they had been the issue of searches on the Australian side would have been carried out sooner and more thoroughly.

I am sure the Americans have the resources down here .... and that they are supposed to be superior. However I have no special knowledge here. Hopefully they are running some targeted training .......

As for things that float free ..... nothing is guaranteed. The important thing is that it is almost a certainty that something did float free if Nina sank ..... and it hasn't been found. If Nina sank, then the life raft could still be out there drifting with the whim of nature's forces with survivors. I don't think we should stop searching because there is no guarantee of finding anything.
 
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