Man rescued from sinking yacht off the Whangarei coastline

[JK 28]

Got to hand it to the navigation skills.

 

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11561151

 

Bad reporting, was actually off Mangawhai Heads, or the whole of Bream Bay away from where he said. Coastguard concerned that he was not wearing a lifejacket, although he had managed to get into a dinghy & at one stage was actually ashore walking along the sand dunes.

 

 

[Fish 0]

"We just can't stress enough the importance of taking and wearing your lifejacket when out on the water. Things can happen in an instant and by wearing your lifejacket you're giving yourself the best chance of survival."

 

Classic life jacket bollocks. Not wearing a life jacket had absolutely nothing to do with that incident or the resultant long search.

Not knowing where he was was the major route cause of the issue. Said he was at Whangarei Harbour, specifically #7 bouy, but was at Mangawhai................

 

The fact that he was able to potter around in a 3 m dinghy, walk around on dry sand and hop back in his dinghy, all over a 4 hour period, indicates that a life jacket would have been about as useful as tits on a bull.

Almost died of hypothermia - should have taken a sweeter, not a life jacket.

 

Having any one of a number of other items would have been very useful:

1) Hand held GPS

2) an ability to navigate / any inkling of basic positional awareness

3) EPIRB

4) VHF radio

5) flares possibly could have been useful, but I suspect no-one would have been looking as he was several 10's of miles south of where he thought he was......

[Battleship 100]

Seems the the Coastgaurd is picking lifejackets as an easy drum to beat. Similar to the way the police use speeding.

Or climate scientists have used carbon emissions for that matter.

[Fish 0]

In reality, I think they use any opportunity for a press release (i.e. topical story of a rescue) to push the message. That is not necessarily a bad thing, as education is required on the topic. My only reservation is they sound very myopic on the subject, and very rarely give any meaningful comment on what actually went wrong. 

 

Same applies to the three guys rolled trying to cross the Manakau Bar at dead low tide with a big westerly swell. One guy actually reported being trapped in the boats cabin by his lifejacket. They actually used a chilly bin to keep them afloat, but there aren't calls to make chilly-bins compulsory.... even though they do regularly feature in people surviving.

In every accident there is always a route cause, and it is never not wearing a life jacket. The life jacket is only part of an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

[MarkMT 68]

Nice that the Coastguard criticises the boatie, but I notice the article doesn't say anything about their own inability to receive DSC/GPS transmissions as discussed here a few months ago - http://crew.org.nz/forum/index.php/topic/11833-best-budget-plotter-for-smaller-yachts/page-3?do=findComment&comment=152798

[ScottiE 174]

be careful what you ask for . . .

[erice 732]

they should have been able to pull his position off the cell phone

 

either by accessing the gps chip or triangulating the towers he was using

 

maybe he should have called the police on 111 instead? 

 

Ms Smith said the man was not wearing a lifejacket when he struck trouble, did not have a VHF radio and was not carrying flares............

the search was made harder by the fact the man had no boating experience and did not know how to use emergency equipment such as the marine radio or EPIRB.???

[madyottie 82]

Not too sure, but haven't the winds been in the southerly quarter for the past few days?

 

So the so-called storm he hit should have helped, unless he broke something.

 

To quote someone who rescued me once...

Does your eight years experience include pushing toot around the bath?

[ex Elly 197]

This is not the first yacht to mistake Mangawhai for Whangarei in the dark.

Space Station (SR26) did the same thing in the 2008 Coastal Classic.

[Clipper 343]

What sort of boat was she?

[Deep Purple 511]

I saw a link to the Facebook page of the person that sold the boat to him just 2 days before. They were incredulous. He told them he was experienced and was going to sail it himself but they had their doubts straight away.

[madyottie 82]

This is not the first yacht to mistake Mangawhai for Whangarei in the dark.

Space Station (SR26) did the same thing in the 2008 Coastal Classic.

 

No doubt. I've done it myself, in a storm, in the dark. The give-away was there was no Marsden flare, and a major lack of nav buoys. I must've spent a good 20 minutes trying to pick up fairway light, then decided that I was in the wrong place.

 

Also, with big winds we had that night, there was no fn way we were going to get close to land we couldn't identify.

 

One other thing. I grew up sailing in Whangarei, and knew, or at least knew of, pretty much all the experienced sailors there during the '80s and '90s. I've never heard his name before, its a small town, with a small sailing community, spread between three clubs. There were, of course, random crew I'd not met, but IF he was a local with lots of experience as claimed, I'm pretty sure I would have heard the name.