Man, can you imagine how many scary moments preceded this photo? The remarkable thing is that all 21 crew members of Rambler 100 survived her capsize in rough and foggy conditions just after rounding Fastnet Rock on Monday evening. The yacht -- which I gawked at as Speedboat in Newport last fall -- purportedly turned turtle just 30 seconds after her keel snapped off, leaving several crew caught inside and upside down. EPIRBs and PLBs had something to do with the 100% successful rescue, though it's hard tell which and how...
When I came across the New Jersey Star Ledger's finely reported series on the sinking of the scallop dragger Lady Mary, I didn't stop until I'd finished all five chapters, watched the video, and done some further research. It may not sound like a story in the holiday spirit, but aren't we about to gather during the darkest days of the year to celebrate light and love? You're not apt to forget the loving extended family at the center of this dark tragedy. And you'll certainly be reminded about how so many SAR gadgets and systems might and might not work...
I'm generally quite reluctant to fault fellow boaters when things go wrong, because I've made about every mistake possible myself at some point, and probably will again. But what I hear about this scene, captured in part on YouTube, is a bit disturbing. That big beautiful trawler didn't actually drag onto the rocks around Northeast Point, but that's probably only because crews from from Wayfarer Marine, Yachting Solutions, and the Harbor Master's office worked hard to hold her off, in pouring rain and lots of wind. A local hero even managed to squeeze his way through a pilothouse window, figure out the complex starting procedure, hoist the anchor, and put the boat safely on a dock. But the owner, who showed up after the storm had passed, was apparently somewhat casual about what happened, though most boaters would know that a salvage claim was a possible road not taken by the rescuers, and...
Yeah, yeah, yeah; the new iPhone 4 was announced and it looks pretty cool. And if its GPS and background apps processing are good enough, maybe it can track as well as my Droid Incredible ;-). That track above especially exemplifies the value of easy tracking as it documents my five-month-old granddaughter's first boat ride, a row around Camden Harbor in search of my bird buddies. Though I simply fired up Google My Tracks and stuck the phone back in my pocket, the accuracy is excellent, even in my truck as I drove home, as you can see here in a Google My Map (which I was able to create from the phone with a couple of clicks). That's why My Tracks is a favorite at the moment, though I have so many tracking options my head spins, and sometimes the memories captured are a lot less pleasant...
I'm going to get personal here, but I just can't stop thinking about Mark McClellan, seen above with his son Thomas on their schooner Simplicity five summers ago in Camden. This morning I learned that he was the damn fool who went solo ice boating on Lake Chickawaukie during yesterday's snow and wind storm, setting off what seemed like a successful rescue operation after he broke through the young ice. But Mark didn't make it. And "damned fool" sounds much more judgmental than I'm really feeling...
So Gizmo's nifty, and now semi-permanently installed, PC charting system could have perished abruptly in a nasty mix of saltwater and glass. But it didn't. In fact we were tied up on our float before the slow shatter of tempered glass became evident. And it was really me, not the boat, at fault. On Memorial Day, soon after we set out for home from Pulpit Harbor on North Haven (note the link: it's great news that MyTopo has revived the old Maptech mapserver), the running port windshield wiper went overboard with a bang. It was blowing 20 knots Northwest right on our nose with short, sharp seas, and we were taking serious bow spray even at 6 knots, but none of that broke the window...
AIS is great, but it’s just a tool to help a skipper mind the rules of the road, including the “tonnage rule” being violated above in San Francisco Bay last week. I came across the “Starboard!” story at Yachting Monthly, Peter Lyons’s photo sequence is here, YachtPals has more info on the collision, and this Kiwi site claims that the mighty Maltese Falcon has had to issue the 5 blast danger signal “on far too many occasions” around SF. Oh, and my Sail mate Kimball Livingston was aboard.
Interesting that an intrepid Boston Globe reporter figured out that AIS transponders might have prevented two Boston ferries from hitting each other in thick fog yesterday morning. This is the sort of thing that promotes public awareness of a valuable safety technology, and perhaps will encourage the FCC, USCG, etc. to move expeditiously on approving Class B and mandating its use on such vessels (or argue that Class A is worth the cost). On the other hand, operator error can not be ignored. Heck, these two boats both work for the MBTA. Wouldn’t you think that they’d know where each other was and be in VHF contact? Not that we all aren’t capable of mistakes. I’ve often thought that running ferries must be a particularly hard gig as the tendency to get lax must be major. (Thanks for the head’s up to Doran, who can, on a good day, float you over bustling Boston Harbor.)
Big thanks to John G. for a head’s up about the MAIB’s recent report called “Performance Investigation of Marine Radar Reflectors on the Market.” The full PDF is available on this page, along with a typically MAIB meticulous report on the tragic sinking that prompted it. Three sailors died after the big ferry Pride of Balboa apparently ran down the 26' yacht Ouzo early one morning near the Isle of Wight. At any rate, the graph above plots the average Radar Cross Sections of most available reflectors. You won't like those results once you understand them. The testers concluded that only the Sea-Me active reflector delivers a strong enough radar return to even meet the ISO 8729 standard, and some perform so poorly that they aren't worth carrying because they'll only give skippers a false sense of security! None of this real news; in fact I discussed similar findings here almost two years ago. But it's a good idea to be reminded that even good passive radar reflectors have limited abilities. Plus I was surprised that the MAIB didn't mention Class B AIS in their recommendations about collision avoidance. Did I miss something?
