Tall ship Astrid lost in Oysterhaven Cork today

michaelchapman said:
The Stadamsterdam full rigged clipper ship (which is considerably bigger than Astrid) has a 750KW engine (about 1000HP). This is enough to propel the ship at 11 knots. I would also expect that ship to be able to make headway under engine power alone directly into a force 6 wind.

Therefore I think a Severn class lifeboat should be more than enough to tow Astrid in against the force 5 conditions which were present at the time.

The Arun class has about 900HP. I would have thought that would be sufficient as well.
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You can't equate the engine powers because the lifeboat's propeller has a pitch and diameter suited to its normal operations.

The other issue is that it would be very dangerous to the lifeboat to have a very large and heavy ship attached on a tow in a big sea. The ship, with far greater weight is going to pull the lifeboat around like a toy.

I'm sure everyone involved did their best to avoid losing the ship while firstly focussing on the priority of saving lives. When you think about it, the lifeboat wouldn't have been able to go around picking up survivors while undertaking a tow.
 
prv said:
Suggesting that the RNLI are "not insured" to attempt dangerous rescues is absurd.

If the reason not to tow was that it was too dangerous, it will have been a simple judgement of the worth of the vessel against the life and limb of the rescuers. And the RNLI's purpose has always been to rescue people, which they did. Recovering property is a bonus which they will undertake if convenient.

Note that the US equivalent absolutely never recover property, as a matter of policy to discourage people from calling them except in dire emergency. They'll rescue you, but you'll lose your boat.



I can believe that Mariner's half-hour could be abbreviated somewhat in an emergency, especially if the tow vessel was pre-prepared en route to the scene and the casualty vessel was prepared to accept some minor damage (tow wires wiping off ventilator stacks etc). But he's dead right that towing a five or six hundred ton ship is not like chucking a warp to your mate on another yacht - or even a rubbish barge.

Pete
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Ahoy there PRV; I did not imply that the RNLI did not have Insurance to cover Dangerous Rescues! Just queried if they had Insurance to Salvage / Rescue tow a Ship of that size!

Just might be that the Coxswain has to obtain approval if attempting to Salvage / Rescue tow a vessel over certain size or in certain conditions!

I assume the RNLI do have Insurance for Saving Lives in dangerous rescues, which I understand is their Primary Role / Business :D

From the Video shot, it would appear that the smaller RNLI RIB etc were quite plentiful at the scene :)
 
savageseadog said:
The other issue is that it would be very dangerous to the lifeboat to have a very large and heavy ship attached on a tow in a big sea. The ship, with far greater weight is going to pull the lifeboat around like a toy.
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Towing changes a the rules...

Yes an over-sized tow may over power the tug and stop it making headway in desired direction. An experienced skipper should be able to use the tow line to control his own vessel, then hopefully get a handle on the tow. Given the situation often the longer the towline the better, it helps stop shock loading.

I am not entering the debate to say if they should of attempted to tow or if they would of been success full.

As for Mariner69's comments, if you are ever in a situation to take a boat into tow time how long it takes on a yacht. Not on a vessel with gear considerably bigger, 30 mins is not slow...
 
Capt Popeye said:
Just might be that the Coxswain has to obtain approval if attempting to Salvage / Rescue tow a vessel over certain size or in certain conditions!
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And who is he going to "obtain approval" from? He is the experienced expert in the subject, right there at the scene, and master of his own vessel to boot. Who possibly would be in a better position to decide what to do than he is?

Capt Popeye said:
I assume the RNLI do have Insurance for Saving Lives in dangerous rescues, which I understand is their Primary Role / Business :D
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I have no knowledge on the subject, but it wouldn't surprise me if I were to learn that the RNLI are not comprehensively insured. Perhaps some third-party stuff in case of very expensive damage to something else, but they're a large and well-funded organisation and they may well find it cheaper overall to absorb their own costs than to insure against them. In the same way, my employer does not insure its vehicles, even third party. The company is big enough to simply pay for any valid claims out of its own pocket, and this works out cheaper than funding an insurance company and its shareholders.

Pete
 
The RNLI is there to save lives at sea. Nothing else. There were 23 youngsters on the Astrid, and quite rightly the master, crew and lifeboats were all concerned with saving their lives. Many of them were in a liferaft being blown onto a rocky leeshore in six foot seas. The operation was a total success.

The fate of the boat, comes way, way down their list of priorities.
 
I heard from a local source here (can't recall what) that one of the non-RNLI RIBs attending did attempt a tow to prevent the grounding, but simply didn't have enough power. Any subsequent attempt would probably have ensured that she sank in deeper water. We saw the Courtmacsherry lifeboat and the Spirit of Oysterhaven offloading the rescued onto the Kinsale pier - and the remaining few being towed in on the liferaft by the local RNLI RIB.

By all accounts, the rescue was a textbook example of co-ordination and skill - hats off to all concerned.

As a postscript, the Astrid was due to berth on the marina pontoons - berthholders had been advised that there was to be chance to have a look around her, and we were all set to go.....
 
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Kinsale Atlantic 75 arrived on scene when the vessel was aground. Therefore towing by her or Courtmacsherry's Trent (~1000hp) which arrived 20 mins or so later was not feasible. ALBs have been known to take not-so-small tankers in tow, either stopping or slowing rate of drift, until heavy bollard pull arrives. One of the most famous was the Thurso Arun towing a 4,000 tonne chemical tanker around a headland.

Astrid was the largest vessel in the cruise, and the engine failure happened a couple of hundred yards off a lee shore in a Southerly 6, with some sail up as can be seen from early pics of the event. Nobody had time to take a tow, even if they had the grunt to make it effective (which they didn't).

There were 4 lifeboats (2 Trent, 2 A75s), 2 Helos (S92 and S61) tasked to the scene, a further S92 standing by to transport Maritime Ambulance team, 5 ambulances and a trauma team dispatched to Kinsale.

The Kinsale boys got 18 off on the first pass and took them to the Spirit of Oysterhaven, filled a liferaft with the remainder and towed them out just as Courtmac arrived on scene - so all the extra firepower was thankfully somewhat redundant!
 
ribrunt said:
Kinsale Atlantic 75 arrived on scene when the vessel was aground. Therefore towing by her or Courtmacsherry's Trent (~1000hp) which arrived 20 mins or so later was not feasible. ALBs have been known to take not-so-small tankers in tow, either stopping or slowing rate of drift, until heavy bollard pull arrives. One of the most famous was the Thurso Arun towing a 4,000 tonne chemical tanker around a headland.

Astrid was the largest vessel in the cruise, and the engine failure happened a couple of hundred yards off a lee shore in a Southerly 6, with some sail up as can be seen from early pics of the event. Nobody had time to take a tow, even if they had the grunt to make it effective (which they didn't).

There were 4 lifeboats (2 Trent, 2 A75s), 2 Helos (S92 and S61) tasked to the scene, a further S92 standing by to transport Maritime Ambulance team, 5 ambulances and a trauma team dispatched to Kinsale.

The Kinsale boys got 18 off on the first pass and took them to the Spirit of Oysterhaven, filled a liferaft with the remainder and towed them out just as Courtmac arrived on scene - so all the extra firepower was thankfully somewhat redundant!
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Thank you ribrunt for this information, great info and answers all the questions about the ability of a larger Lifeboat to take on such a hazard and the time line gives reasons why it was not possible in this case :)

Good to see that so much RNLI 'firepower' can be mustered at such short notice :)
 
http://afloat.ie/sail/tall-ships/item/23241-tall-ship-astrid-back-from-the-deep-dutch-vessel-successfully-raised-in-kinsale

For once a good reason to raise a thread from the archives...

astridmontage.jpg
 
I was aboard the Astrid as a local liaison officer on a recent tall ships race. She was an unhappy ship; the reasons being the owners run her as a commercial business and not a trust to provide training for youngsters. The crew (mainly from Cork) were miserable and my time was spent mainly in dealing with morale issues.

A couple of small examples to give you a flavour: The owner's wife acted as cook and she went to the local supermarket for shopping. £400 worth of cheap 'own brand' rubbish was purchased including 10 bottles of diluting orange juice at 25p per litre.... this was then sold to the youngsters on board at 50p per glass! On arrival onboard, I presented the Master with a bottle of finest malt whisky as a gesture of goodwill, this gesture was returned with not even an offer of a coffee or a nibble over the course of 3 days.

To top it all, and most culpably, the Master and Engineer asked me to take them to a chandlery so that they could get charts to cover their voyage to the Caledonian Canal. No problem, I took them to the chandlery (10 miles in my car) and left them to it while I browsed about. I was curious that they left without buying anything, but my colleague later explained all; she had seen them taking photos with an i-phone, of relevant pages in a pilot book and off an Imray chart!

In all my impression was that they were all out to exploit young people for profit and neglected any duty of care for them.

Astrid is not a historic ship. As a barge, she was torched on the south coast when an attempt to smuggle shed loads of cannabis into the UK failed. Only after years of being a hulk was she converted into the quasi tall ship she is now.

It would not surprise me if the recent events at Kinsale were an 'insurance' job.
 
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Seatrout said:
I was aboard the Astrid as a local liaison officer on a recent tall ships race. She was an unhappy ship; the reasons being the owners run her as a commercial business and not a trust to provide training for youngsters. The crew (mainly from Cork) were miserable and my time was spent mainly in dealing with morale issues.

A couple of small examples to give you a flavour: The owner's wife acted as cook and she went to the local supermarket for shopping. £400 worth of cheap 'own brand' rubbish was purchased including 10 bottles of diluting orange juice at 25p per litre.... this was then sold to the youngsters on board at 50p per glass! On arrival onboard, I presented the Master with a bottle of finest malt whisky as a gesture of goodwill, this gesture was returned with not even an offer of a coffee or a nibble over the course of 3 days.

To top it all, and most culpably, the Master and Engineer asked me to take them to a chandlery so that they could get charts to cover their voyage to the Caledonian Canal. No problem, I took them to the chandlery (10 miles in my car) and left them to it while I browsed about. I was curious that they left without buying anything, but my colleague later explained all; she had seen them taking photos with an i-phone, of relevant pages in a pilot book and off an Imray chart!

In all my impression was that they were all out to exploit young people for profit and neglected any duty of care for them.

Astrid is not a historic ship. As a barge, she was torched on the south coast when an attempt to smuggle shed loads of cannabis into the UK failed. Only after years of being a hulk was she converted into the quasi tall ship she is now.

It would not surprise me if the recent events at Kinsale were an 'insurance' job.
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Are you sure they were out to earn money or only having severe trouble covering their costs?

I once went through the exercise of trying to cost out running a tall ship as a trust.
No way could I ever get the sums to add up......

For sure it is not an easy way to earn any money and it seems to be all to easy to lose a fortune or two.
 
michaelchapman said:
Are you sure they were out to earn money or only having severe trouble covering their costs?

I once went through the exercise of trying to cost out running a tall ship as a trust.
No way could I ever get the sums to add up......

For sure it is not an easy way to earn any money and it seems to be all to easy to lose a fortune or two.
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That may well be the case with Astrid, but introducing inexperienced youngsters into the recipe of cutting the cloth short is IMO culpable and exploitation.
 
Will All come Out In The Wash?

Seatrout said:
That may well be the case with Astrid, but introducing inexperienced youngsters into the recipe of cutting the cloth short is IMO culpable and exploitation.
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Strong words - no doubt the inquiry into the recent accident will lay all bare but in the meantime surprise that H&S would permit culpable negligence?
 
A couple of comments on Seatrout's post. (I'm Irish but have no inside knowledge of what happened.)

It seems as if Astrid stayed very close to a lee shore under diesel power so that she could participate in a "parade of sail" of some kind for a tourism promotion ("Gathering").

I find it hard to believe that the skipper chose to put his vessel in this position - commercial pressures I expect?

But the suggestion that the (paying) crew were miserable doesn't fit well with the live interviews with the rescued crew in Kinsale.

They seemed elated and relieved but none were quoted as making any negative comments about the skipper or paid crew.

But there has been a complete absence of informed comment on the sinking here, a combination of swingeing libel laws and a reluctance among the well-informed to "look under stones" for fear of what might be revealed.

The fact that Astrid was involved in an organised tourism event was certainly under-reported.

The rescue services, ICG, RNLI etc did an excellent job which distracted the meeja from asking pointed questions...
 
michaelchapman said:
Are you sure they were out to earn money or only having severe trouble covering their costs?

I once went through the exercise of trying to cost out running a tall ship as a trust.
No way could I ever get the sums to add up......

For sure it is not an easy way to earn any money and it seems to be all to easy to lose a fortune or two.
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The Jubilee Sailing Trust is properly run and charges around £80 pppd. That charge only covers about 1/3 of the running cost; the rest is met by charity fundraising.
 
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