AngusMcDoon
Well-Known Member
Yes, it is relevant, so they can take short cuts near reefs - if they know that they are near a reef.
VOR yacht aground!!
- Thread starter roblpm
- Start date
Yes, it is relevant, so they can take short cuts near reefs - if they know that they are near a reef.
Tradewinds
Well-Known Member
What good will that do you at 19 knots heading for a near vertical wall?
Maybe, as PRV says, if you were tooling about in a bommie strewn anchorage - even then you shouldn't be doing it in the dark!
I wouldn't have been remotely near the place in the dark (unless at anchor in the safety of the lagoon
). And I did enter Suva through the reef at night (remember Troutbridge?) - never again.
Neil_Y
Well-Known Member
The current forward looking depth guages would work as Angus has said but they weigh 36-38Kg and use 120W. With ranges now of up to 1000m. At 10m/s not a lot of time but enough.
These systems are designed for vessels traveling at 25knts now and could be mounted in the front of the keel bulb, as they are forward facing, so maybe weight wouldn't be such an issue there? the power consumption I guess would be the biggest obstacle.
19knots 300m range = 30 seconds warning
These systems are designed for vessels traveling at 25knts now and could be mounted in the front of the keel bulb, as they are forward facing, so maybe weight wouldn't be such an issue there? the power consumption I guess would be the biggest obstacle.
19knots 300m range = 30 seconds warning
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dom
Well-Known Member
Like this? http://www.bandg.co.uk/de/Product-Groups/ForwardScan-Category/
But it's worth bearing in mind:
1. If it did exist, the display would almost certainly have been confined to the nav station below, which is not constantly watched.
2. In my experience one gets totally immune to the endless "beeping": boat sailing outside its envelope, foam under the boat causing depth to ping, alongside the assorted other alarms crew members have forgotten to disable!
3. These one-design boats were built down to a price (EUR3.5m I think), which sounds a lot, but which can be chewed up amazingly quickly. The identical nature of the boats meant that common parts dropped the price further as it ended the nonsense of containers chock full of spare parts being shipped from stop to stop and then chucked/given away for a song at the end! My hunch is that for cost and weight reasons forward scanners weren't fitted, but I've no idea what I've heard or seen to make me think that.
Aside form all of this given that the reef was where it was supposed to be and listening to what the crew are saying it sadly sounds more and more like a giant (and quite possibly fatigue induced) F* up!
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AngusMcDoon
Well-Known Member
The latest are not that heavy and power hungry, but don't have a 1000m range.
AngusMcDoon
Well-Known Member
That's the leisure market one.
That is true, but it should put out an alarm on the network.
That is also true and a known problem. There is development ongoing for important boat-threatening alarms for a voice to state what the problem is. This is already done in aviation.
They still have the full B&G kit.
Quite possibly so.
pyrojames
Well-Known Member
Even with 30 seconds warning, what would their response have been? They clearly had no idea they were close to reefs, so why would they have a forward sounder on? If is was on, which way would be the safe way to turn doing 19 knots towards an unknown shallow patch? Is it an isolated bommie? Is it lying to port, starboard? Resolving that issue is likely to take longer than they might have had.
I use depth sounders to fine tune where I am and how deep it really is, compared to what the charts are telling me. These guys seems to have been so focused on speed, that they forgot to consider where they were.
I use depth sounders to fine tune where I am and how deep it really is, compared to what the charts are telling me. These guys seems to have been so focused on speed, that they forgot to consider where they were.
dom
Well-Known Member
Yes sorry, I was really only using that image for the illustration!
I know these systems are standard in aviation, but I've never heard of them in the yachting world - absolutely marvelous idea IMHO.
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Neil_Y
Well-Known Member
Interesting Angus and what's the lowest power/range you can get now? I saw the big ship far sounder at a trade show.
AngusMcDoon
Well-Known Member
They use about 30W of power, about the same as a chartplotter. It's significant enough power consumption that on a sailing boat if you thought you were in the middle of an ocean and the depths were abyssal you'd switch it off.
alkira
Well-Known Member
this grounding proves what I have been thinking for a long time ........the racing sailors go to sea in unseaworthy boats.....well i could live with that ....just ...but to go to sea without the very basic skills of seamanship ......i'm sorry to say but it's a disgrace.
the saying " all the gear and no idear " fits here perfectly
the saying " all the gear and no idear " fits here perfectly
FWB
N/A
See my post #128
AngusMcDoon
Well-Known Member
I would take a different slant on it. I would say that unless a team is prepared to take risks and push boats and bodies to the limit they won't win, because even if they don't take the risks, the other teams will. The winner is the team that takes all the risks, and gets away with it. It's the same in other sports too, like motor racing. You may not approve of this approach to risk, but I don't think there's a lack of skill in the crew. Also, in this case, there's no evidence that the boat failed in any way.
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bbg
Well-Known Member
That is probably what happened. Although to be fair to those on deck, it is not their job to know where they are. When I am helming I focus on boat speed and the course I have been told to steer. When trimming I trim the sails for the maximum speed based on wind shifts, gusts, lulls and how the helmsman is driving. When I am snacktician I focus on getting food to the crew. It is the navigator's job to see where the boat is and how to get to the finish line without putting the boat on the rocks.
One possibility I see is that with reduced crew numbers, there may be no dedicated navigator. So someone is given the role of navigator but will also have a crew role such as trimming or driving. That gives them less time to navigate. And when they do come off-watch, they sleep instead of navigate.
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alkira
Well-Known Member
I looked at google earth which the navigator also said he did and that beautiful reef sticks out like sore thumb .....its the only thing for a long way you can't hit . it wasn't like they were trying to scrape past it ....they had no idea it was there at all .....total muppetry
dom
Well-Known Member
Just seen the skipper's self-serving interview where he lays the blame squarely on his crew who he had "trusted to do their job" and claimed that his "ultimate responsibility" was no different to the boss of any company or business where staff had made a mistake.
By his measure it is of course the CEO of Vestas, not him who carries "ultimate responsibility". That aside, I personally thought it was pretty distasteful to smugly and publicly dob his crew in the doo doo like that. Somehow I bet Vestas and future employers will too.
Richard Shead
Slipped Anchor
FWB
N/A
There was a navigator. His comments are on post #128.
bbg
Well-Known Member
But is he a dedicated navigator? In previous editions of the race, someone was designated full-time or nearly full-time navigator, with no (or few) other duties. With so few people on board, whoever is designated as navigator (and it is clear someone will be) will also probably be taking a normal watch on deck, leaving much less time for actual navigational duties.
dom
Well-Known Member
Most human progress is built on the ashes of failed attempts and I very much doubt the navigator will ever hit anything again! And I don't mean because he'll be out of work, but because he's so brutally honest:
"I did check the area on the electronic chart before putting my head down for a rest after a very long day negotiating the tropical storm, and what I saw was depths of 42 and 80m indicated. There is a very good article posted here which highlights some of the zooming problem in the vectorised charts that we used."
His account is worth reading in full:
http://sailinganarchy.com/
IMHO and from personal experience I can see telltale signs in his words of a chap who fell into a state of fatigue induced tunnel vision - a sort of survival mode. Has the reduced 8 crew format anything to do with this? only time will tell. But for now, as SA point out, a few supportive comments on his Facebook page would not go amiss.
https://www.facebook.com/WouterVerbraakSailing
"I did check the area on the electronic chart before putting my head down for a rest after a very long day negotiating the tropical storm, and what I saw was depths of 42 and 80m indicated. There is a very good article posted here which highlights some of the zooming problem in the vectorised charts that we used."
His account is worth reading in full:
http://sailinganarchy.com/
IMHO and from personal experience I can see telltale signs in his words of a chap who fell into a state of fatigue induced tunnel vision - a sort of survival mode. Has the reduced 8 crew format anything to do with this? only time will tell. But for now, as SA point out, a few supportive comments on his Facebook page would not go amiss.
https://www.facebook.com/WouterVerbraakSailing