alkira
Well-Known Member
If crew are unable to function properly due to fatigue with a complement of 8 ...there's a lot wrong with the watch system. They should all be getting plenty kip !!
VOR yacht aground!!
- Thread starter roblpm
- Start date
If crew are unable to function properly due to fatigue with a complement of 8 ...there's a lot wrong with the watch system. They should all be getting plenty kip !!
dom
Well-Known Member
Yeah OK, but then they were racing flat out! There is however, something about your post which irks me a bit and that's...
...your location! I stayed in the Calabash a few years ago and would love to swap London's damp miserable 3.5C for a day on that beautiful island - lucky sod
Resolution
Well-Known Member
Angus
Thanks for providing some real info. Interesting to learn of newer tech products.
But I still think thirty seconds in which to receive an alarm out of the blue, digest its contents and then react, is nothing like enough in practice.
bbg
Well-Known Member
Agreed. And the only reason to have a forward looking depth-sounder switched on would be if you thought there might be something ahead that you were afraid of hitting. They didn't seem to think so. It might be useful in the ice of the southern ocean, but who would switch on their forward-looking depth sounder mid-ocean?
pyrojames
Well-Known Member
Which is rather the crux of the situation. Race it until you win or it breaks? (Or someone's dies?). If you are lucky, you win, if not...
It doesn't just apply to yacht racing, it applies to cars, bikes, marathons etc. Racing can be fun, but at the very top level, is it fun? Or is it only fun if you happen to be the winner who got lucky?
I can see no justifiable excuse in "we crashed the boat because we were racing" argument, sleep deprived or not. There is a lot of questioning on the legality of single handed racing on the basis of keeping watch and tiredness. Fully crewed boats shouldn't have tiredness as an excuse, racing or not.
Hambler Rambler
Well-Known Member
There is a full time media crewman who is not allowed to do any sailing - I assume he is not included in the 8. But the navigator is included in the 8.....
If the navigator was out of the watch system, that would leave an odd number of crew, which makes one wonder whether he is in fact part of the watch system? If so then he has a bit of a tough deal!
pyrojames
Well-Known Member
I would expect that the skipper and the navigator/tactician didn't form part of the watch system, leaving 6 to share the watches.
dom
Well-Known Member
Not sure fun is always the applicable word, but it's an awesome experience for sure. As for the winner being lucky, luck has no more to to do with it than a motor car race, a tennis match, or a snooker competition - e.g. every shot Federer plays is implicitly playing the percentages.
As a matter of interest why do the owners and crew need any excuse at all if they smash up their boat, justifiable or otherwise? It is after all their money, their freely chosen careers and and the free choice of viewers to watch. From time to time someone objects, such as the the Oz Coastguard, and new rules are negotiated to comply with their wishes. I can't see where the problem is.
bbg
Well-Known Member
I would expect that they both form part of the watch system, which is somewhat supported by the fact that the video shows 4 people on deck at the time of the grounding. That isn't conclusive as the skipper might have been on deck but not part of the watch system (we know the navigator was sleeping), but on a boat like that it would not be surprising to have 4 on deck for a watch.
Each team could, of course, have their own system.
pyrojames
Well-Known Member
I'd consider that playing the percentages is much the same as luck. You might have a 80% chance of making something happen, if it doesn't you were unlucky, however if you play 80% too many times you will loose, on percentages. If you are lucky you make it. At the top level, to win, this is were you are at.
As far as smashing up the boat goes, if it is only the boat, fine, but employed crew, are they then expendable if the percentages don't play out?
As far as smashing up the boat goes, if it is only the boat, fine, but employed crew, are they then expendable if the percentages don't play out?
AngusMcDoon
Well-Known Member
I agree, but that's the worst possible case - heading perpendicularly to an underwater cliff. However, it appears that on their track the depth shallows to approx 50m 2 miles from the shore. Perhaps even a bog standard straight down depth sounder with an alarm set at an appropriate level would have caused the crew to at least look at the depth, and seeing it at 50m think "Hmm, that doesn't look right for the open ocean". But I'm not going to criticise, because there but for the grace of god (and the diligence of my electronic instruments' software engineers), sail I.
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fireball
Well-Known Member
Have you ever raced flat out?
I have, on both dinghies and on bikes (pedal variety, not motor) - in order to get the best you have to be constantly on the go - bike is hard work, you're navigating, providing the trust and sat in a relatively uncomfortable position - about an hour is my limit right now - although I know those who do much longer TTs and they get external support to pass them food/drink - they're shot at the end of it and have to be caught before they fall off.
Dinghies are hard work too (if you want them to be) - constantly triming & navigating - again, it's relatively short, a couple of hours of hard work then you're finished.
These guys are racing 24/7 - with limited number of crew (6 split on a watch has been mentioned - that means 3 on each team which is nothing -heck it usually takes 2 to sail a racing dinghy effectively so 3 on a huge boat that you're trying to push as fast as possible is going to be hard work - even with a skipper & navigator taking the tactical workload off you. The Navigator should've seen the reef, but seems to have missed it due to fatigue - it's not an excuse, it's a reason - if you'd read other reports you would've seen that there was a significant course change around the start of this leg and the navigator didn't get or make the time to fully examine the course - that's the mistake - and the skippers mistake is probably not having checked that it was done.
It's clear that it's a navigational error - unfortunate, most errors (and they'll occur loads of times each leg) will not incur such a high penalty because it'll be that they missed a good tactical move and not because they ran aground.
I think the skipper and crews actions have been very commendable - it would've been easy for them to abandon the vessel and just sit around awaiting rescue, leaving the boat and content to the mercy of the elements and for someone else to deal with. They could've blamed an electronic system for failing straight away - but they haven't, they've shouldered the responsibility for the grounding. They've continued to provide images and video which make for astounding viewing - not only the shock of seeing a vessel in that situation, but also from the "what if I was there" perspective too.
Well done Team Vestas Wind - you seem to be making the best of a bad situation and I for one applaud you and wish you the very best in getting back into the race.
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
+1. There were a couple of posters who vociferously defended the skipper of Atalanta of Chester in her little mix up with Hanne Knutsen (the 124,000 tonne tanker came off rather better than the yacht) on the basis that he was racing so it was OK to try to cut a corner. It wasn't convincing then and the equivalent isn't convincing now. Throwing the crew weight onto one side of Swallow to get over the spit at the entrance to the Amazon river is one thing - heading flat out for a charted reef in the hope that the sea pixies will magic it away would be quite another if it happened, which it probably didn't.
dom
Well-Known Member
The generally accepted definition of luck is, "success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.". A skilled surgeon who saves a patient's life following an operation with 60:40 odds of success could not be described as lucky. Incidentally the notion that one inevitably loses on percentages when repeatedly taking odds-on bets, whilst intuitively appealing, turns out to be a logical fallacy.
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JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
"II's a funny thing, but the more I practice the luckier I get"
-- Arnold Palmer (and others) (attrib.)
-- Arnold Palmer (and others) (attrib.)
prv
Well-Known Member
It especially wasn't convincing because even if he'd successfully squeaked past the bow of the ship he'd have been disqualified for entering the Moving Prohibited Zone. So he had nothing to gain by trying it.
Pete
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
And yet he did try it, which is baffling.
Seajet
...
I'd love to be ' forum loon ' Angus but meanwhile to your apparently neverending irritation my boat is not clapped out - PBO and Sailing Today seemed to agree - and while I have a NASA depth sounder - the only bit of kit I think that company has done properly - she also has a Garmin fishfinder on the main bulkhead for use as anchor* watch.
*I'll have to keep the radar going if you come my way, on wanchor watch.
She's also most stable when upright, the 180 degree opposite of your thing !
I suggest you keep the personal insults to PM's.
Andy
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AngusMcDoon
Well-Known Member
Oh it's only a bit of fun. You've been remiss at posting pictures of your boat recently though. Any more you can share?
flaming
Well-Known Member
No there wasn't. Nobody ever said that, what some were saying was that racing had sod all to do with his mistake. As was proved by the fact that all his alterations took him away from his next mark.
And quite what that has to do with this incident I don't know. World of difference between a bunch of Solent warriors and Vestas.
The Nav has already said it was his mistake, and he simply wasn't aware that they were in any danger at all. That he commends an article that discusses the issues of zoom shows that he thinks that might be why he made the mistake.
Very little difference between that and a cruiser, other than the pressure of the race situation and pace of advance.
I understand though that for some on here any mistake made whilst racing is an excuse to sharpen the knives...