In Distress...Or?.... EPIRB use & discussion

[Anton]

Maybe it's just me...but it seems very frequently...almost always!...there's footage of a CG rescue of a "sailboat in distress" during a bad storm, the footage shows a sailboat that seems to all appearances to be riding well in a chop and NOT decks awash and desperate people clinging to a liferaft.

Incidentally, the boats never seem to be boats like Buccs or (gasp) Hunters that the upper echelons of "boating society" always decry as unseaworthy...but they always seem to be large, expensive, capable boats, if not "uberyachts".

I often joke that "running into a bit of muck has made a stockbroker late for his desk Monday morning" when I see these clips.  But am I just suffering from selective memory? 

[s/v Faith]

Good topic.

  I believe that there are a couple things to keep in mind when looking at these stories.  There have been a few well publicized incidents lately that have gotten lots of attention.

  First, of course, the Capt. is the ultimate (and only) one who bears the responsibility for the safety of his vessel.  Yes, his vessel.. and his crew.   It is easy (all too easy on the internet) for folks who were not present to second guess the decisions made in the heat of the moment.

  Most folks cite the old adage that you should only ever 'climb up into the liferaft'.... that to stay with the vessel is much safer.  This advice is supported by the many boats found floating after their crew has been rescued... seemingly undamaged.

  I have personally experienced wx underway that caused me to wonder if I would make it through.  I was thankful to not be the Capt to have to make the decisions about what to do.  One of the common problems to develop in conditions like these are that the crew suffer bruises, broken bones, and head trauma from being tossed around inside a wildly picthing boat.

  One bit of safety gear aboard Faith that may seem strange is bicycle helmets.  No, they are not aboard right now, but will be for passages.  This might sound like overkill (as in FEAR = GEAR) but is really a nod towards my decision not to carry a life raft. 

  I am rambling off topic here...  :P

  I think that there are probably a lot of rescues that come from the trend towards folks of means buying boats and going cruising without taking the time of gaining experience.  That and the calvary being a mere 'flick of a EPIRB switch away.

   Even though I do believe that there are many unnecessary 'rescues' I will also say that I have a real hard time with some folks rush to judgment when examining what happend while sipping their beverage of choice sitting at a keyboard.

[s/v Faith]

Sorry, had more to ramble on about....  ;D

  I know of at least one captain who refuses to carry an EPIRB.  His reasoning is that he would not ask a rescue crew to endanger their lives to come save his.

  I can appreciate this, but I currently have an old 121.5mhz EPIRB (now illegal) aboard Faith, and will probably have a new 406mhz unit aboard soon. 

  I see it as an absolute last resort.  I have a well found boat.  My Ariel will withstand much worse seas then I ever want to see.  My approach to seamanship is that there is no point where you know 'enough' and I want to learn all I can to help prevent needing to be rescued. 

  Today I had my boat inspected by the USCG aux. Not that I am not capable of looking at the items myself, but what is the harm in opening yourself and your vessel up to someone eles's objective eye?

  I am recovering from a virus, so was not able to do some of the 'projects' I have going on, but spent the remainder of the afternoon playing around with a new brand of waterproof epoxy.... so I will better be able to use it if an when I need it.

  Silly things like oversized deck hardware, backing plates, and ground tackle are part of the equation.  I believe much of the decision to flip the switch on the EPIRB is made well before one ever leaves the dock.

[Captain Smollett]

My objection in these types of cases are not the call for rescue itself, but the coverage by the media - especially the sailing media.

Often, ocean sailing is depicted as a fool's game.  Even within the sailing media, there is often an undertone of "it's just bad luck" or "ain't nature a drag sometimes;" gear failures are not usually analyzed as overreliance on non-essentials.  A notable exception here, imo, is Ocean Navigator, which generally presents very critical analysis of events described in the articles. (Note, this is usually self-criticism by those that were there).

The Ken Barnes event in recent memory is a good example.  My beef is not with Ken, but with how his story was reported.  The entire reporting was from a tone that NONE of the need for rescue was because of choices or actions Ken may have made, but it was all the fault of the storm and various gear failures.  Maybe Ken made ALL the right choices and took ALL the right actions under the circumstances, but I'd like to at least hear the questions asked.  This is important because I would like to learn from his experience as much as I can; with the discussion focused on what happened TO him, I cannot easily gauge what ACTIONS he took that were right or wrong.

And yes, I agree that for some, the decision to activate the EPIRB is made before they leave the dock.

BTW, does anyone have any stats on cases where an EPIRB, that holy grail of at-sea safety nets, has not helped?  I know of one case: when the Fantome was lost off Honduras in hurricane Mitch, no EPIRB signal was ever detected.  31 people were lost with her, including one man I knew briefly from my trip to Grenada (Second Mate Onassis Reyes).  Others?

The reason I ask is that to me, at least, such cases emphasize that you cannot "rely" on even an EPIRB to guarantee your safe return to land.  I'm not suggesting that everyone who carries one has the view that it can, but I would bet that there are a few who do.  I still have not decided about carrying one; I probably will eventually.  I'm curious to see how long it is until they are mandatory equipment.

[AdriftAtSea]

There was a catamaran lost off the Oregon coast last year during a delivery... the EPIRB was in a locked cabinet in the cabin... and was never used.  The delivery crew and captain are still listed as missing, presumed dead.

My question is this... if the crew and captain don't of a boat trigger an EPRIB, but it malfunctions and they aren't rescued... who is going to be around to report that it didn't work properly???  Kind of like asking about liferaft inflation problems... if you need the liferaft and it doesn't inflate, it's a bit late to be calling the manufacturer about the problem...and you probably won't be around to get it fixed under warranty.

[Captain Smollett]

It's a good question.  In the case of the Fantome, it has never been resolved.  The ship carried several EPIRBs; notable was the one attached to the deckhouse in a fashion that was supposed to make it "automatic" - automatic deployment and activation.  It's signal was never detected.

One theory is that the ship was catastrophically destroyed - a transmission by Captain March was cut-off right after he reported an unusually large wave - and all EPIRBs went down with her.  Under this theory, the crew had no time to deploy and even the automatic one didn't get activated until completely submerged.

If the crew is lost overboard and the EPIRB remains on the boat, of course the EPIRB won't help in that case.  I'm sure we could brainstorm other scenarios for which a beacon is useless.  There is no holy grail, and there is no true safety net.  Belt-n-suspenders, 'security in depth' is a sound approach, but having the attitude "well, if I get into trouble, I'll just activate the EPIRB" is not.

My $0.02.

[Fortis]

The story I tell when illustrating the merits and lacks of Epirbs is the story of Tony Bullimore. His boat got trashed and capsized by a wave in the Southern Ocean, effectively beyond the rescue range of anything that could actually get to him.
Any sort of rescue was going to be a major operation of the navy....and frankly, the problem with epirbs is that they keep sending whether you are alive or dead. The powers that be were pretty much saying "effective survival time int hos conditions is measured in two hours if he was in his survival suit, about 10 minutes if he wasn't. Chances are that he is already dead and it is just the automatically activated beacon that we will find, even if he isn't dead yet, the very fastest we can get there is about 3 days, maybe four. He will most definately be dead by then. An operation to get a frigate out there will cost in excess of $2M and put at risk more then 100 crew on board the vessel, and the vessel itself"...etc

Bullimore, who is a whily bastage, even if he is a poop sailor, meanwhile was running similar scenarious in his head and decided that just sitting there was not likely tobring the cavalry.

So he turned OFF the EPIRB for five minutes. Then he turned it on for five minutes. Then he turned it off for four minutes, then he turned it on four four minutes, then for three. then two, then repeat. Then he let it run for about 6 hours while he tried to sleep, then he repeated the 5,4,3,2 sequence every 4 hours.

Now the thing with epoirbs is that they are either on or off, they certainly never do anything like what was happening on automatic. So the guy had to be alive, and since the cycle was playing out four hour after hour, he had to be somewhere safe enough and life preserving enough that the possibility of him still being alive in 3 days time had to be a solid possibility.

So the rescue was launched.

It did indeed cost around $3M to pull one idiot off a boat, the frigate got badly damaged in trying to maintain speed in the seway conditions and the bow effectively needed to be cut off and replaced when the ship came home. But the guy got rescued, and he likely would not have been if the EPIRB had just been left to run as a dumb beacon.



Alex.

[AdriftAtSea]

EPIRBs are supposed to float... so even if the ship went down, in theory , the EPIRB should have floated free...

I fully agree that being properly prepared, in your training, skills and attitude, is the most important part of setting off in a small sailboat.  Having the mindset of "If I get into trouble, I'll just set off the EPIRB" is really not a good idea.... and puts both you and your possible rescuers at far more risk.  Also, whether to use an EPIRB is really a situational thing... at least in my opinion.  I can see some situations where I may have an EPIRB, but decide not to use it. 

[Captain Smollett]

EPIRBs are supposed to float... so even if the ship went down, in theory , the EPIRB should have floated free...

Okay, so why was an EPIRB signal never detected from the Fantome?  She was 282 feet long and did not "just disappear."  The EPIRB was SUPPOSED to float free and automatically activate - which was entirely my point.  Such a thing is false security at worst, or of dubious security at best.

Satellite Phone Transcription 16:30, 27 October, 1998  (taken from The Ship and the Storm by Jim Carrier):

Captain March: "That was a big one."
Michael Burke (Miami): "Is it falling off?  Is is shedding?"
March: "Yes, that's not the prob...."

That's it.  No other comm from her.  None of the EPIRBs activated, including the one on the deckhouse designed to go automatically (might it have been moved or otherwise rendered unfunctional?).  Very little debris was later found - some lifejackets, a piece of wooden railing.  Nothing was found that provides insight into what happened to her.

[CapnK]

Case in point, perhaps: Satori, the Westsail 32 which was made famous in The Perfect Storm movie as the sailboat people were rescued from when it was 'in danger'. When post-TPS she was found washed ashore in Massachusets, lying unsecured on deck was the owners ditch bag, which had been left behind during the rescue.

Ray decided to obey the Coast Guard's order and abandon his vessel. He unhooked his safety harness, headed below and packed his passport, money, camera, and the valuables he could grab into a waterproof orange bag which he tied to the front of his lifejacket. Knowing that he was turning over all responsibility to the Coast Guard, Ray opened the liquor locker and toasted a farewell to Satori, tucked his prized bottle of Gossling's Bermuda rum into his foul weather jumper, and then proceeded back on deck. He noted Satori's position and course so he would know where to search for her.
Back on deck Ray unharnessed the crew, placed life jackets on them and himself and arranged everyone on the outer rail of the leeward side. Ray directed Karen and Susan to jump backwards into the water. As Ray jumped into the water the waterproof orange bag caught in the rigging, was torn off his life jacket, and landed on deck. Satori's four foot freeboard and the waves made it impossible to get back on deck. The bag would apparently be washed overboard with the next boarding wave.

That bag - and the boat it rested on - made it through "the perfect storm" just fine, even after the people were taken off.

While the specially equipped plane searched for Satori 25 miles off shore, another smaller plane Ray had hired was combing the nearby beaches. The smaller plane spotted her on the beach at Maryland's Assateaque State Park. At the same time State Park rangers also found Satori. The orange waterproof bag of personal belongings, which had been torn off in the evacuation, was still on the deck.

To the skippers credit, in my mind: it was *not* he who triggered the EPIRB, and in fact he says it was done without his consent - he'd been through similar storms, and knew that his boat would make it out fine. But when the USCG shows up to a distress call, you have no other option but to leave with them.

Satori

[Captain Smollett]

But when the USCG shows up to a distress call, you have no other option but to leave with them.

Is that really true? Didn't Neal challenge that idea?

Thoughts:

(1) Neal was not an American citizen at the time was he?  If not, would he fall under the same jurisdiction in International Waters?
(2) I've seen some discussion of the possibility of losing your ticket if licensed (even OUPV) if you disobey ANY order of the CG.  Wasn't Ray licensed at the time, and could that have factored in his ultimate decision to abandon?  What about non-licensed skippers of ANY nationality in International Waters - have to abandon if requested?

[CapnK]

Dunno about your #2, but though the USCG was in contact with Neal via radio, he had not triggered an EBURP, had not otherwise asked for rescue, and they had not gone out to the scene via boat or chopper.

They were demanding that he allow them to come rescue him as I remember, but I think he basically told them he didn't *need* rescuing, and wouldn't allow it until he absolutely *did*.

At the time he was a SA citzen; he only became an o-fficial, card-carrying, full fledged US citizen last year, IIRC.

[Captain Smollett]

Dunno about your #2, but though the USCG was in contact with Neal via radio, he had not triggered an EBURP, had not otherwise asked for rescue, and they had not gone out to the scene via boat or chopper.

EBURP? Is that like Internet reflux or something?   ;D ;D

Okay, I gotcha.  You were saying if you "ASK" for rescue (explicit May Day call or indirect by activating an EPIRB) ya gotta go.  That makes perfect sense.  I assume in the case of accidental EPIRB activation, the issue can be settle by radio before they 'arrive' on scene?

[CharlieJ]

Ray's version of the story was on the net for a long time, but has now been taken down.

Yes- he was afraid he would lose his captains ticket if he didn't abandon- In fact, he claims he was told that, which is why he finally went.

He KNEW the boat was doing fine- it was two paniced crew who done the deed and he couldn't "undo" it.

The real Satori was here in our marina for quite some time a few years ago with her new owners aboard. I believe she's now in Corpus Christi. VERY solid, well equipped boat.

[cgoinggal]

Had some personal exeperience in this department in the last week of November/first week of December '06 during a bad Northerly in the Sea of Cortez, MX.  Crossing singlehand aboard my Westerly Nomad from Puerto Escondido to San Carlos when I got 16 miles outside the SC entrance when the wind went from a Southerly component to a fierce Northerly preventing me from making port.  The weather did not take me by surprise, however, I was expected in San Carlos so I radioed in to relay to a friend that I was 16 miles out, but was deciding to run off shore to heave to for the duration.  So far so good. 

To make a long story short the individual that I made contact with ended up wanting to maintain contact so I agreed (my mistake) and kept in contact as long as I could which was about a day and a half.  Here is where it goes wrong.  After I fell out of radio range, despite the fact my transmissions indicated that everything was going well, the community in SC panicked and called the US Coast Guard (who refused help thank goodness) and eventually the Mexican Navy who eventually found me (even after having me call them off twice) and who forceably made me abandon my boat after about an hour and a halfs arguing. 

Here is my point:  Even if the Captain/Crew is ok, in good physical and mental health, and the boat is doing well in bad conditions, others still have plenty of control over your situation and you may have none.  It is just another aspect of being out on the water.  Just know that it happens and, like other on the water hazards, take precautions to mitigate it happening to you.

[s/v Faith]

CgoingGal,

  Glad you are here.  Welcome aboard.  I am very sorry to hear about that happening.

You have a rating of two grog, and have made a total of one post.....

...probably has to do with the content.

Maybe it raises another advantage of small boat sailing... the smaller radar crosssection makes it a little harder for the 'authorities' to find you to make you abandon ship against your will....  :P

  Althought with a 22' boat you were not very visable....  ???

I would like to hear more about this, and I look forward to your future posts.

Had some personal experience in this department in the last week of November/first week of December '06 during a bad Northerly in the Sea of Cortez, MX.  Crossing singlehand aboard my Westerly Nomad from Puerto Escondido to San Carlos when I got 16 miles outside the SC entrance when the wind went from a Southerly component to a fierce Northerly preventing me from making port.  The weather did not take me by surprise, however, I was expected in San Carlos so I radioed in to relay to a friend that I was 16 miles out, but was deciding to run off shore to heave to for the duration.  So far so good. 

To make a long story short the individual that I made contact with ended up wanting to maintain contact so I agreed (my mistake) and kept in contact as long as I could which was about a day and a half.  Here is where it goes wrong.  After I fell out of radio range, despite the fact my transmissions indicated that everything was going well, the community in SC panicked and called the US Coast Guard (who refused help thank goodness) and eventually the Mexican Navy who eventually found me (even after having me call them off twice) and who forceably made me abandon my boat after about an hour and a halfs arguing. 

Here is my point:  Even if the Captain/Crew is ok, in good physical and mental health, and the boat is doing well in bad conditions, others still have plenty of control over your situation and you may have none.  It is just another aspect of being out on the water.  Just know that it happens and, like other on the water hazards, take precautions to mitigate it happening to you.

[David_Old_Jersey]

I too would be very interested in how the Mexican Navy "encouraged" your rescue.....what happened to your boat?

[cgoinggal]

>Maybe it raises another advantage of small boat sailing... the smaller radar >cross-section makes it a little harder for the 'authorities' to find you to make you >abandon ship against your will....

One of the things that I discovered in the fiasco was that my boat showed up on radar on the small Mexican "Go Fast"  in 25 foot seas (which is what they were at more or less when I was picked up) for a little over 7 miles.  I was impressed tho saddened as I watched my 'blip' dissapear and along with it my life, my home, my dreams, and my accomplishments.  

I would like to point out about what you said about the 'authorities'.  In this case, the 'authorities' were a helicopter crew of two and a 'Go Fast' crew of four young men.  If I could have I would have made it possible for them to find me a minute after leaving port as opposed to the two days it took them in reality.  When the small aluminum go fast finally found me 3 out of the 4 crew members required serious medical care which I administered to them for 2 hours after being picked up (I work as a medic as well).  They had no business being out in those conditions in the boat they were in which was not designed for those kind of seas-steep, close, breaking sets to 30 feet and winds sustained at 65 k for 4 days with gusts to 80 k.  That is one of my main problems with what happened, that the people that took it upon themselves to call in the MayDay had no clue what the consequences of something like that can be and/or are.  

I do everything I can to show up on radar, if not for my safety, then for that of other's.  I realize that you were saying that in jest and am taking it so, but feel that the reality of the situation is important to understand.   :)

[cgoinggal]

And, for the record, Andunge was on her own for a mere 13 hours and traveled less than 13 miles in that time.  She was picked up by a Mexican Navy Gun Ship and towed 300 miles south to Topolobompo (to go North would have been into the seas which they correctly deemed a bad idea).  Did I mention that it was a 76 meter Gun Ship.   

I have some great photographs of Andunge behind the behemoth when I went south to pick her up. 

Ultimately the story has a happy ending!!!!  I am truly blessed!    :D

[AdriftAtSea]

Recently read an article about radar reflectors, and it pointed out that even though a higher-mounted radar reflector will increase the distance you are visible at, it may not work as well as they approach you.  The article seemed to indicate that the most effective height for a radar reflector is about 16' above the water, due to the physics of the radar signal propagation.

cgoinggal-

I'm glad it worked out for you... you could have easily lost your boat, which would have been a real shame.  I like the westerly boats, but they're a bit rare on this side of the pond.