Yacht Crewed By Family Hits Growler Near Falkland's

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Just what I was thinking.

If you read some threads on this forum you would be fooled into thinking that EPIRBs are not worth bothering with.....

Bet this family will be pleased they have one.
 
Glad they seemed to have coped with the crisis well, but I doubt anyone here would take flares rather than an EPIRB if they were sailing the south Atlantic!
 
I note the quote about growlers from an MCA spokesperson:

"You can track them by radar or visual lookout, but you can't see them all."

Presumably quantum icebergs ?
 
nct1 said:
Just what I was thinking.

If you read some threads on this forum you would be fooled into thinking that EPIRBs are not worth bothering with.....

Bet this family will be pleased they have one.
Click to expand...

Sometimes events can happen at a speed which makes it impossible to use normal alerting devices.

The one thing an EPIRB does is not only activate and send a signal automatically but guides search and rescue vessels towards you.

Which can make the difference between life and death..

I am defiantly thinking of getting a personal one, does anyone know if there are any preferred manufactures?
 
activesail said:
The one thing an EPIRB does is not only activate and send a signal automatically but guides search and rescue vessels towards you.

I am defiantly thinking of getting a personal one, does anyone know if there are any preferred manufactures?
Click to expand...

Decide what features your EPIRB needs to make you confident with it then look at manufacturers.
Price is not the defining feature on any life saving device, performance first everything else second.

Our EPIRB's are GPS 406mghz made by Macmurdo(sp) and have never been used (fortunately) but they have all the features we decided on.

Mark
 
sarabande said:
..... Presumably quantum icebergs ?
Click to expand...

It would appear that a Growler or a bergy bit are the smallest size of ice bergs but have various sizes. Some pictures of growlers.

As an a side I was slogging away tonight on a treadmill while watching a science programme about relativity for dummies. I wonder if they thought it was just too slow to be a problem. ;)
 
I was under the impression (and I may be wrong) that a Growler is small ice that has rolled over and has an overall smooth shape like a sphere or an egg and that a Bergy Bit is also small ice but with ragged edges ? All my Met Textbooks are packed so I'm not sure.:o
 
Yacht hits Growler

I have been following this yacht's blog for several months, having met them some years ago.
Sad to hear that their inspiring voyage has had such an abrupt end but glad to hear that they are ok.
 
A titled couple and their two daughters have been rescued by a warship after a collision with a Titanic-type iceberg in the South Atlantic halted their round-the-world voyage.

Lord and Lady Hollinsclough, from Derbyshire, ran into trouble north-east of South Georgia after they hit a low-lying, mostly-submerged iceberg, known as a "growler".

The pair, Carl Lomas and Tracey Worth, from the village of Chelmorton, were on the "Hollinsclough" yacht with their daughters, Caitland and Morgause Lomas, believed to be in their teens.

Falmouth Coastguard helped the Falkland Islands authorities locate the vessel, which had taken on some water and suffered engine failure.

The family now face a 1,000-mile journey to the Falklands after the British warship HMS Clyde picked them up. They should arrive there by the middle of next week, the Coastguard estimated.

Prospects of saving the yacht are understood to be poor.
 
All icebergs are mostly submerged. To me, the difference between iceberg, growler and bergy bit has to do with size. Icebergs are the size of islands, growlers the size of houses and bergy bits the size of cars.
 
nct1 said:
Just what I was thinking.

If you read some threads on this forum you would be fooled into thinking that EPIRBs are not worth bothering with.....

Bet this family will be pleased they have one.
Click to expand...

I think you misunderstand the point of view. No one says that you don't need an EPIRB if you have flares. What people say is that owning an EPIRB does not make flares redundant.

I'll bet the yacht had a flare pack as well as the EPIRB.
 
Woodlouse said:
I think you misunderstand the point of view. No one says that you don't need an EPIRB if you have flares. What people say is that owning an EPIRB does not make flares redundant.

I'll bet the yacht had a flare pack as well as the EPIRB.
Click to expand...

I'll bet flares have been of no use, and I suspect if all they had to rely on was flares their prospects would have been pretty grim.

I agree, owning a single EPIRB does not mean you should not have backup communication devices, however with cheaper and more reliable and testable communications solutions, the ability to build in redundancy (i.e. own several devices some automatic some not), and the risks and costs of maintaining flares becoming greater, means that for a growing number of sailors not bound by archaic codes, electronic devices are the backup and flares are now redundant.

Cue scare stories about communications equipment failing.
 
Don´t think I´d feel too comfortable down there in a plastic boat. Not sure steel would help much to the fear, almost all of the few boats I´ve met who have been in the southern ocean were either dismasted or did a 360. Big boys stuff down there.

Can radar detect growlers? I didn´t think they showed up, especially if you have gain turned down a bit in big seas. Anyone been there?
 
mandlmaunder said:
Decide what features your EPIRB needs to make you confident with it then look at manufacturers.
Price is not the defining feature on any life saving device, performance first everything else second.

Our EPIRB's are GPS 406mghz made by Macmurdo(sp) and have never been used (fortunately) but they have all the features we decided on.

Mark
Click to expand...

Thanks for that advice, it is really useful.

Cheers Martin.
 
nct1 said:
I'll bet flares have been of no use, and I suspect if all they had to rely on was flares their prospects would have been pretty grim.

I agree, owning a single EPIRB does not mean you should not have backup communication devices, however with cheaper and more reliable and testable communications solutions, the ability to build in redundancy (i.e. own several devices some automatic some not), and the risks and costs of maintaining flares becoming greater, means that for a growing number of sailors not bound by archaic codes, electronic devices are the backup and flares are now redundant.

Cue scare stories about communications equipment failing.
Click to expand...

IF I was a betting man,I'd bet they fired some flares off to pinpoint their position for the warship,or orange smoke for the chopper if that's how they were picked up.
 
I was down there fishing 20 odd years ago, did the Falklands to Cape Town run.

Radar would pick up big bergs at up to 12 miles away, but we found they disappeared off the screen at about 1 to 2 miles away, you trust you did plot well at that point. Some of the big bergs would drift at around 5 kts at times and could be a couple of square miles in size.

We tended to hope that growlers didn't really exist as we couldn't spot 'em........... Ostrich syndrome in hindsite! Also the vis' was always poor a sort of smokey hazy thing, that did nothing to help with actual sighting of bergs.

Not a nice place to be.
 
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