VOR yacht aground!!

That's a good point about the shore crew knowing where they were as well. These baots are constantly tracked and a decent gps position would be known by the shore crew.
Something is not adding up here. It's a betting conspiracy...they took a dive in the second
 
The report will certainly be interesting, but my instinct is not to jump on anyone just yet; something tells me events must have conspired against them, usually one little thing goes wrong, which has a side effect, and so on...the latest mention that the shore team could / should have spotted impending disaster ( do they have someone keeping watch 24/ 7 though ? Seems a good idea, plenty of crew can fit on shore and no weight / stores consumed penalty ! ) seems to point even more to major systems snags, plural...
 
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Neil_Y said:
Clearly mis use (lack of understanding) of the technology they had, like the sat nav and lorry stuck in the Devon lane scenario we see every year.
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Maybe, but Navionic's Webbapp clearly shows the islands at 500m res. Here's the kind of thing I'd consider more plausible, albeit a total guess!

These boats will have been course setting based upon five principal parameters: weather routing, boat polars, "sailselect tables", wave patterns and navigation hazards. A few wasted miles can matter big time - so should a hazard occur on the desired route the navigator will optimise his calculations to shave it if necessary.

Now imagine that the navigator had planned to leave the islands to starboard but that a wind shift meant he was forced (based upon his polars, etc) to come onto a course closer and closer to the shoal. Had the wind kept shifting he might have decided to leave the shoal to port instead. If you look at the chart the 30m depth alarm runs roughly parallel to the Cargados Carajos Shoals at anout 2m off, so this would have been the perfect course - subject to confirmation that the islands were in fact in their charted position (which they were). At say 20kts, a small fatigue induced error like a someone being distracted from watching the depth, plotter, or whatever and Ouch! :(
 
I seem to remember reading in the original posted link (which now appears to have been removed!) that there was mention of loosing both rudders. Perhaps they hit something in the water prior to the grounding which caused the loss of the rudders and rendered the boat uncontrollable on a lee shore (the reef).
 
Giblets said:
I seem to remember reading in the original posted link (which now appears to have been removed!) that there was mention of loosing both rudders. Perhaps they hit something in the water prior to the grounding which caused the loss of the rudders and rendered the boat uncontrollable on a lee shore (the reef).
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Boat on Starboard, keel canted away from the reef that is steep to, and they probably hit at an angle, not straight on. More than possible that the rudders hit before the keel. And in any case, there's no way the rudders wouldn't have hit the reef in short order anyway as the boat was pushed further up and pounded up and down - and there is no way they could possibly survive that.

There's been no mention of anything other than human error for this, and I'd be very surprised if anything else was the cause.
 

There's been no mention of anything other than human error for this, and I'd be very surprised if anything else was the cause.

Flaming,

give the guys a chance to speak please !

I suspect the reports will show a set of circumstances causing or leading toward this; accidents don't happen in ones.
 
Giblets said:
I seem to remember reading in the original posted link (which now appears to have been removed!) that there was mention of loosing both rudders. Perhaps they hit something in the water prior to the grounding which caused the loss of the rudders and rendered the boat uncontrollable on a lee shore (the reef).
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Wot like the tyre burst before leaving the road Gov, Honest
 
"It’s clear that human error is responsible for the shipwreck, there’s no avoiding that. And as skipper, I take ultimate responsibility."
Chris Nicholson
 
affinite,

you haven't got the faintest clue what happened, nor have I or anyone else on these forums, we might discuss conjecture about possible causes - like the MAIB apart from the rather valid point they have all the evidence going - but pointing blame is I would suggest right out as you and I don't know WTF led up to this, I doubt it was simple.

Translation to affinnite speak,

Give them a break and keep your unuseful trap shut.
 
I just got new plotter and have found this in the manual. Now wish I bought PLatinum chart card...............
autorouting.jpg
 
Seajet said:
affinite,

you haven't got the faintest clue what happened, nor have I or anyone else on these forums, we might discuss conjecture about possible causes - like the MAIB apart from the rather valid point they have all the evidence going - but pointing blame is I would suggest right out as you and I don't know WTF led up to this, I doubt it was simple.

Translation to affinnite speak,

Give them a break and keep your unuseful trap shut.
Click to expand...

Bit harsh, that's a direct quote from the skipper.
"It’s clear that human error is responsible for the shipwreck, there’s no avoiding that. And as skipper, I take ultimate responsibility." http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/news/8107_A-tale-of-escape.html
 
I was trying to say, don't go finger pointing yet, give the guys - including the skipper - a break.

They have been through a huge trauma, are still in severe shock - a truly horrible, insiduous thing, I've tried it and didn't like it, more to the point I was useless to say anything sensible for days afterwards - ( or ever according to some on here :) ) and I suspect the skipper especially might have a version of ' survivor guilt ' which is completely unwarranted but hits very hard.

Give the guys a chance, we all sense there's a lot more to this story than someone spilling coffee on a chart, a lot of systems have failed to get that result.
 
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