VOR yacht aground!!

I think the bottom line is that people are fallable and mistakes happen. There probably were a number in this incident as there always are but that is no reason to pillory the crew. An 'honest' mistake was made and owned up to. Hopefully something can be learned from it that reduces the chance of a recurrence. Perhaps it is possible to programme software in an intelligent way to warn people that there are serious obstructions not being shown at the level of zoom they are using. don't know how the VOR'ers do things but as a skipper I would expect to know about and review the basic navigation and any major obstructions even if I didn't plot the course. It might be different in such situations and there might be something to learn about fatigue and watch keeping.
 
dom said:
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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Not so. If you string together a sequence of 'n' 80% success chances, the long term chance of not having a failure is 0.8^n. It is the Swiss cheese analogy to risk assessment. If you consider it in terms of tennis then over a game or set, you are likely to be ahead, because a single failure does not mean the end of the game, if you do it yacht racing it might well do.
 
flaming said:
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.
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That point of view was indeed also expressed. And I agree - those who defended him on the basis that he was racing - like those who claimed he didn't cut across the HK's bows at all - were clearly misinformed.
 
Surely it was an "accident".

Can't be bothered to look up the dictionary definition but surely something to do with combinations of events amd something someone hasn't thought of.

However good regulations and skills are surely accidents sometimes occur. The skill is minimising them??!!

Its a parallel at the business i run. We fill in thousands of forms a year (tax and accounts). Its not possible that no-one ever makes a mistake. The key is to reducing errors as much as possible and not repeating them.

I find the people who criticise never stick their neck out and create or do anything new, original or adventurous.

No-one got hurt and it gives us something to talk about.

I just zoomed out on navionics on my phone and all the islands on the forth disappear!
 
roblpm said:
Surely it was an "accident".

Can't be bothered to look up the dictionary definition but surely something to do with combinations of events amd something someone hasn't thought of.

However good regulations and skills are surely accidents sometimes occur. The skill is minimising them??!!

Its a parallel at the business i run. We fill in thousands of forms a year (tax and accounts). Its not possible that no-one ever makes a mistake. The key is to reducing errors as much as possible and not repeating them.

I find the people who criticise never stick their neck out and create or do anything new, original or adventurous.

No-one got hurt and it gives us something to talk about.

I just zoomed out on navionics on my phone and all the islands on the forth disappear!
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Well, I agree that it was an accident and accidents can happen to anyone.

But - as to not sticking my neck out, doing anything new, original or adventurous - I have to partly disagree.

They weren't doing anything new or original (other than perhaps hitting a reef full on at 19knots), they were careless with their navigation.

So I think, short of the reef moving itself into their path, they (or an individual on board) were to blame for their demise.
 
pyrojames said:
Not so. If you string together a sequence of 'n' 80% success chances, the long term chance of not having a failure is 0.8^n. It is the Swiss cheese analogy to risk assessment. If you consider it in terms of tennis then over a game or set, you are likely to be ahead, because a single failure does not mean the end of the game, if you do it yacht racing it might well do.
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This elementary logic only applies to a game of chance where the gambler repeatedly engages in bets each of which have a 20% chance of catastrophic failure; a ridiculous model to deal with the question in hand.

From a risk perspective racing sailors are in a similar position to a naval architect, stock investor, or racing driver. The naval architect designs his ship to withstand any wave it could reasonably expect to encounter within its design brief. Organisations such as the GKSS Forschungszentrum GmbH research centre in Germany monitor the incidence of freak waves, like the one which hit the old QEII in 1995, and which the captain estimated could have rolled his ship had it caught him broadside. We cannot infer from this that the old QE II was simply “lucky” to survive the many waves it encountered in its working life.

A racing driver is in a similar position; enter a corner too fast and he faces a whole spectrum of risks ranging from burning a bit of rubber to a fatal accident. Stock investors also face many risks, but few as serious as the risk of catastrophic loss faced by depositors with greater than £85K held in a UK bank. The process of formally modelling all of this starts with some sort of probability distribution, a bit like the well known “bell curve”.

The maths gets tricky from here, but we’re all intuitively familiar with how it works – indeed we make similar risk calculations every time we drive a car around a corner. Some choose to mitigate these risks by driving slower, some buy a safer car and others buy a sportier model. It is simply ridiculous to stand at the scene of an accident predicting that “all drivers are going to die according to the law of averages”.

Returning to the Vestas boat: nobody died or was seriously hurt (thank goodness), the environment has been protected, it’s not your money so there is no problem – none at all.
 
To Dom,

The case of f(P^n) works equally well for gambling or risk, as long as you are aware of of how to apply the Probability function.

The maths is not complex and your racing and driving analogies are quite suitable. A racing driver takes calculated risks, and not infrequently pushes the risk too far and spins or crashes. The same applies to race car design both on engineering and rule compliance. Drivers and designers push the envelope and are "lucky" IMHO when they win. Enough drivers have been seriously injured and designers penalised for pushing too far.

As far as driving goes, you are more likely to suffer an accident the longer you drive and the more miles you do, hence higher insurance premiums for more miles per year.

Equally your QEII example is suitable, she was designed for a particular wave, and was lucky not encounter a beam on wave, although the probability is very low, there remains a chance that she could get caught beam on, which would be "unlucky". Equally other ships have been lost with all hands for pushing the risks too far. I regard being unlucky as getting a situation outside the probability to which you have designed.

I don't think this instance was bad luck.
 
pyrojames said:
The case of f(P^n) works equally well for gambling or risk, as long as you are aware of of how to apply the Probability function.

The maths is not complex...
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I think you completely miss the point, but it's possible you are way ahead. And if you have truly discovered the Holy Grail of risk, you will by now either be a fabulously wealthy man, or a Nobel Prize candidate in stats/finance.

If neither of these apply you might ask yourself why you are so keen to twist any argument in order to point the finger of blame at racing sailors who have broken no laws, damaged no habitats, entertained many, hurt nobody and damaged no pockets other than their own. Either way I'll take my leave of this particular strand of the thread now to avoid drifting it too much.
 
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dom said:
If neither of these apply you might ask yourself why you are so keen to twist any argument in order to point the finger of blame at racing sailors who have broken no laws, damaged no habitats, entertained many, hurt nobody and damaged no pockets other than their own.
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"Blame" is probably too emotive a word here. I think it's probably better to think about "responsibility". If the crew could have done something which they didn't do or (general confession of faith time) failed to do something which they could have done, and the boat went aground as a mistake, then they are responsible. That doesn't make them bad people, or incompetent people and it doesn't make the consequences disastrous ... but neither does it make it just one of these things which happens, and it's of general interest to know why it happened. Partly because accidents have a grisly fascination and partly because we can all learn something from them. Some nugget of information from this case may stop some poor sod from taking his rudder off on the Brambles Bank next year.

So let's ask and speculate, but let's not think that those responsible are also at fault, because while there may well turn out to be responsibility, there may not turn out to be any blame.

Here endeth the lesson. Go forth in peace.
 
Surely the best use of these forums - and the whole point - is to learn, and pass on lessons learned ?

I for one have made a complete dick of myself on many an occasion, but if I can relate it on here, once people stop laughing maybe they can avoid the same.

Though I or a berk like me might be standing around with a camera and an account on Youtube...:)
 
flaming said:
Interesting statement from Chris Nicolson in that longer video. To paraphrase "I'm the skipper but I can't be everywhere at once, you have to trust the guys to do the tasks allocated to them. It's one of those things that has failed"

Thanks for posting the video. I had not seen it.
The full statement is a little less clear than I am the skipper and ultimately responsible.
I still respect him though. Its true.
As a skipper you have to put your trust in those bellow you in the hierarchy.
The important part is in how you set up the hierarchy, how you instruct it and how monitor it.
In other words how did the Skipper manage the boat, its crew and in this case particularly the navigation and deck watch.

I don’t race very often and have never crewed on a serious racing yacht certainly not any boat in this league.
How the crew is set up on a racing yacht and tasks divided I have no idea.
Although I know a bit about navigation I have never navigated for a race other than on my own boat.

If I wanted to find out how this happened.
I would start by asking each of the crew starting from the bottom up. To tell me their version of events in their own words.
I would expect them all to be a bit different.

Others like to start at the top, I find I miss things if I start at the top. Even the Skipper or the Navigator can only really see things from their point of view.

After hearing each crew member I would ask questions based on what each said.
From this I would start by creating a time line working back from the grounding.
My time line would have to go back to the original planning of the voyage and crew training possible even the design of the vessel and its equipment. If I wanted to come up with a realistic version of events and make reasonable recommendations.

So in some ways yes the Skipper is only one of those who is responsible that responsibility cannot be delegated. But responsibility can also be given to others. All the way down to the cook. ( responsible for making sure the crew are well fed) Right up to the managers and organisers ashore for the individual team and the overall race.

All of them will have something to learn from this.
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fireball said:
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.
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I couldn't agree less with you Fireball...... ......i haven't raced yachts but i have sailed my small boat around UK and cross Atlantic with my wife and kids 4 and 6 yrs ......believe me i know about tiredness and having to navigate under pressure .......8 grown men on a boat should not be blaming fatigue in fairly benign weather ( ok they said there was a storm that day but look at the flat seas)

Also when I was racing my motorbike and i wrote it off at high speed and nearly killed myself my mates didn't say well done mate you were very good at crashing and surviving how about we applaud you............they said you are a **** and your **** at riding ....which i am and i was!
 
alkira said:
I couldn't agree less with you Fireball...... ......i haven't raced yachts but i have sailed my small boat around UK and cross Atlantic with my wife and kids 4 and 6 yrs ......believe me i know about tiredness and having to navigate under pressure .......8 grown men on a boat should not be blaming fatigue in fairly benign weather ( ok they said there was a storm that day but look at the flat seas)

Also when I was racing my motorbike and i wrote it off at high speed and nearly killed myself my mates didn't say well done mate you were very good at crashing and surviving how about we applaud you............they said you are a **** and your **** at riding ....which i am and i was!
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Quite frankly the difference between cruising and racing is immense - especially in navigating - it's not just a case of putting a way point in and hoping for the best - even if you were looking at the weather systems you'd not be looking in as much detail as these guys have to - gaining a boat length or mile - it's all important.

I don't know how you were racing your motorbike, but if you weren't reading the road ahead then you weren't doing it right. The difference here is that these guys are doing it 24/7 - I'm not saying they're perfect as clearly they weren't. My plaudits are for their actions since the accident.
 
I tend to think the phrase " ..i haven't raced yachts " may be relevant here.

Must remember to always wear my Racing Hat, to bless me with bionically enhanced abilities, never suffering the fatigue of mere mortals.

Never actually tried it, but I'm sure a Racing Hat would let me see through concrete, smooth out gales with just a stare, and pull every pretty girl within forty miles.

Age shall not weary them, nor 24/7 sailing knacker them, those who go to the sea in tall ships, wearing Racing Hats.
 
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