Guest Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 Ballsy move by Mapfre to step out east when leading. Holding the faith and it might just be starting to pay big. Link to post Share on other sites
tennisraindelay 1 Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 maybe the Vestas crew misunderstood the term 'shake out a reef' Link to post Share on other sites
Black Panther 1,586 Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 In today's news the skipper reported that the grounding was a mistake. Good to know it wasn't intentional. Link to post Share on other sites
Island Time 1,235 Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 Yep, my understanding is that they are (trying to) blame the nav software not displaying the island and reef "except on some scales". It is the navigators responsibility to check the route and surrounds in detail. Paper charts are the same - if you only use the trans-ocean charts, you can, and likely will, be unaware of some dangers. Link to post Share on other sites
Black Panther 1,586 Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 I know what they mean, it's easy to make entire islands disappear in the Pacific by zooming in and out. But wouldn't people at that level be aware of such things? Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 Do the weather routing routing smarts not integrate with the navigation systems? It may be fastest sailing direct from A to C based on wind, but surely any routing is going to take into account that you have to go via B to get to C and start waving flags? One of the other boats - AD, Brunel ? was saying they'd been thinking about the shoals for the week prior. I can understand a cock-up - we screwed up, we were knackered, we lost track of things, we tried to cut too close - but if they do say they didn't zoom in and didn't know the lumps were there..... Link to post Share on other sites
Island Time 1,235 Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 At this point NONE of the weather routing programs I have seen will avoid small bits of hard stuff - I know that this is in the development phase for a few though, so maybe someone has it. I'm just going through the latest product training for B&G, so if you give me a few days I'll come back and report where they are with that.... Link to post Share on other sites
Black Panther 1,586 Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 Probably best to wait until a full debrief, but it sure is fun to speculate. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 I guess where I was going was that I would have assumed these lumps/waypoints along the course were identified pre-race and any weather routing provided took these into account. Can understand that weather routing on it's own is just that and isn't going to find things for you. But I assume for things like the iceberg boundary they must be able to set a fence on any routing and say 'find me an alternative route' [as per 'stay off motorways' on Googlemaps] if proposed course takes them past the boundary. Surely they don't just say - oh well, it's suggested we go into forbidden territory, we'll have to turn it off and figure it out by hand. Lots of assumptions here of course. Massive sympathy for these guys on a number of levels and they were one of my picks for the race. Link to post Share on other sites
philstar 61 Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 Crew has now left the island for Mauritius. Whats the bet when they get back to salvage what is left of the boat she will be completely stripped by the locals. All 46 of them. I hope they've made contingencies for this. You'd think they could get a tug out there and remove the keel and pull her off the reef. Link to post Share on other sites
Island Time 1,235 Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 RC, in the routing software I've used, you can set boundaries, but pretty simple - Lat/Long for each edge , with a start and finish point. Theirs is likely to be a bit more sophisticated... With the Nobeltec one, or the OpenCPN one, if you used the leg start and finish points, or interim waypoints, with N and S boundaries, it would run over any small land features. It's a routing package, NOT a navigation package.... Link to post Share on other sites
Chewing Gum 17 Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 I can remember coming fairly close to Simpsons rock off the Mokes while heading from Cape Brett to Barrier. The rock didn't show on the chartplotter at higher zooms (Navionics). Basic error really and no one to blame but ourselves. Luckily I took a peak at the paper chart and spotted the rock a couple of miles before we got to it. Those chart plotters can make you a bit lazy. Having said that it was a lesson well learnt and during our round NZ trip we had no close calls despite relying mostly on the same plotter but with occasional checks on the paper charts. I know you can plot a rhumb line on the paper chart and we sometimes do but often you deviate from that line especially on the wind so the answer is eternal vigilance and no complacency. It is surprising that this has happened to Vestas given their level of experience. Link to post Share on other sites
Clipper 343 Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 the footage has been released. Quite gentle (but shocking). they clearly had no idea anything was out there. Bad language warning. Link to post Share on other sites
Island Time 1,235 Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 Yep. Boat is *'?*¥Ed. Will be interesting to see if we get to hear what went wrong, but it really can't be other than a complete navigation failure. ALL The electronics, either broken or off, AND the skipper and Navigator. I hope there is a reason I have not thought of, but it looks ugly! Link to post Share on other sites
Island Time 1,235 Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 Check out the Damage! Interesting the Keel is still on - shows how strong a modern canting keel root is! Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 Don't think they'll be able to buff that one out. Link to post Share on other sites
Black Panther 1,586 Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 New design for a self draining cockpit? Link to post Share on other sites
Island Time 1,235 Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 Yeah BP, BUT - It only works when the tide is out! Link to post Share on other sites
John B 106 Posted December 5, 2014 Share Posted December 5, 2014 There go I for the grace of god and all that, but I do notice on google earth that St Brandons shoals are 25 miles North south by about 12 east west ,and show up rather well from an elevation of a kilometre above the earth. Its quite big. Waiheke is about 10 long , Great Barrier is 20, Rangitoto roughly approximates the area of Minerva reef ( North) at 3 miles across. I'm not so sure about the plotter zoom theories now. I wonder if was sailing to a waypoint , sorta like Witchdocter sailing to motuketekete light a few years ago. Link to post Share on other sites
Island Time 1,235 Posted December 5, 2014 Share Posted December 5, 2014 either way, still breaking THE fundamental rule of Navigation - NEVER rely on one source of data. If GPS/plotter is your primary, confirm with radar, sonar, mk1 eyeball etc etc. If they had been running a radar guard zone, had depth alarms set, or even if all boats were transmitting AIS, this almost certainly would not have happened. Link to post Share on other sites
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