Sometimes, nothing ever goes right

Searush said:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-21782297

Normally your insurance cover salvage recovery, but I suspect they either don't have any or it paid up as a total loss when they abandoned it in mid ocean.
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They reckon they were going to pay the salvage costs by selling the boat, so presumably if they'd been paid out the money for a total loss, they'd be able to afford the bill. Guess it's more a case of uninsured or restrictions on that insurance.
 
Agree with the idea of sinking it ...
Simply cut the water inlet hose to the bog and she will go down in a day or so..

But under the circumstances of a storm and being pulled from the boat ... would you remember to scuttle it just before you were winched to safety? Come to that would you want to scuttle it whilst waiting for a pick up... just imagine if the rescue failed and yu were left on a now sinking boat...
 
It has been known for the rescueing ship to deliberately run down an abandoned yacht after rescueing the crew.

Some ships have even recovered the boat aboard & carried it with the crew to safety - but that was in the days when people sailed the oceans in 20 footers.
 
Tomahawk said:
Simply cut the water inlet hose to the bog and she will go down in a day or so..
[...]
would you want to scuttle it whilst waiting for a pick up... just imagine if the rescue failed and yu were left on a now sinking boat...
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Surely at that point you'd just go and close the bog inlet seacock? As you say, it will take quite a while to sink through a 1/2" hose, it's not like a submarine flooding drill.

Not something you'd expect people to remember to do, though. Certainly wouldn't be at the forefront of my mind, and your mind tends not to be working at its best by that point anyway.

Pete
 
Of course the "how to scuttle her" question is a bit academic for those of us with Etaps. :) (These smilies are rubbish.)

Going back to the OP, it is not clear why they abandoned. They had suffered a knock down, but there's no mention of dis masting, and the hull was obviously not leaking significantly.
 
This is old news, on the ' Liveaboard ' forum.

It's quite common for abandoned boats to survive, even racing crews have been known to get off into a liferaft or ship quite often so one shouldn't be too judgemental on a retired couple.

I hope they recover her.
 
Seajet said:
It's quite common for abandoned boats to survive, even racing crews have been known to get off into a liferaft or ship quite often so one shouldn't be too judgemental on a retired couple.

.
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I'm not being judgemental, merely seeking clarification of a situation which, based on the information supplied, makes little sense. To "lose everything" by voluntarily abandoning must have involved a perception that the boat was doomed. It is not clear why that was so.

If it helps, I have once, many years ago, called a mayday. At the time I had over a foot of water in the cabin, rising faster than I could bail, I couldn't find the leak, wasn't carrying a dinghy, and the boat was definitely not unsinkable. I then knew precisely why I probably needed help (wrongly as it happened, but that's another story).
 
DaveS,

I certainly wasn't accusing you of anything, just pointing out that being in a yacht in a serious gale is enough to frighten the willies out of anyone !

The book ' Left For Dead ' is well worth a read, when a strong tough Fastnet crew had enough and went for the liferaft, leaving behind one chap dying and another unconscious but very much alive...

I'm of the ' never leave a friend behind ' mentality so cannot condone that particular act.

In the excellent Yachting Monthly demo's they rolled the boat by crane, and even in a staged exercise the chap presenting remarked how frightening it was and he'd rather be elsewhere like in a raft !

I do hope that couple recover their boat from the beach in Australia.
 
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About seven years ago I stood to in the Sound of Jura as point boat for a blazing yacht which had put out a Mayday. The owner's (who had managed to reach a small adjacent island in their tender and were unharmed) were a Welsh couple who had just refitted the boat and were getting accustomed to it before setting off on a circumnavigation. Their boat was a total loss.

I can't remember their names but they looked similar to the couple in Searush's link. I hope to god they're not the same.
 
when I was about 7 years old in my first boat ( Caricraft 10 ) my Dad and I heard a big bang, looked and couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, looked a minute later and there was a 20'ish power cruiser on fire, flames 50' high and loads of black smoke.

We got there ASAP but the crew had already bailed out and swum ashore - it turned out it had been a gas cooker fire then explosion.

It was the boats' maiden trip and she was uninsured, I may joke about mobo's but I'll always feel sorry for the owner.
 
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