Report into fatalities in 2018

 Howdy,

May interest some here though relates to the incident involving the yacht Finistere loosing her keel off Mandurah in 2018 and the resulting rescue of four and recovery of two bodies. 

Interesting reads about the safety gear which apply to what most of us do.

cdn.revolutionise.com.au/site/fkktc6uzzkfj2eqf.pdf


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 interesting reading if u

Wed, 2022-08-03 18:50

 interesting reading if u depend on a PLB, the error in position transmission seems to be the big contributing factor to the deaths- search was started in wrong area etc.

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AIS Beacon not PLB

Fri, 2022-08-05 17:03

It was the AIS beacon that gave limited inaccurate information and caused the nearby vessel to start searching in the wrong area.

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 I must admit that I find the

Thu, 2022-08-04 08:01

 I must admit that I find the lanyard on the PLB thing an obvios thing that you wouldnt think about unless you're in the water struggling to hold onto an upturned boat and a PLB at the same time. 

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  The other one I have never

Thu, 2022-08-04 14:21

  The other one I have never considered was the spray hood.  It's going to be hard to breath getting lots of spray in the face in bad weather. 

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When i was in oil and gas we

Thu, 2022-08-04 20:34

When i was in oil and gas we had to use them during the helicopter shit fit training. Makes sense but you dont see too many of them in the market. 

I guess the vast majority would never put a life jacket on. Those who do training do it in flat water. When the shit hits the fan an you step off the boat in 30 knots of shit at midnight, you really see how worthwhile your PPE is. 

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  The other one I have never

Thu, 2022-08-04 14:21

  The other one I have never considered was the spray hood.  It's going to be hard to breath getting lots of spray in the face in bad weather. 

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Holy shit, so terrible and it

Thu, 2022-08-04 14:41

Holy shit, so terrible and it all happened so fast. I just went out and bought a lanyard for my PLB and a water activated strobe beacon to attach to my jacket for night fishing.

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 I have been looking at new

Thu, 2022-08-04 20:35

 I have been looking at new plate boats and one i saw had the EPIRB fixed to the inside of the cabin beside where the skippers feet are.

Left me thinking how hard it would be to get if the boat was upside down. 

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Mine was inside the cuddy

Fri, 2022-08-05 13:05

Mine was inside the cuddy cabin and I moved it behind the passenger seat. I'd love a water activated release but $$

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Water activated strobe beacon

Sat, 2022-08-06 19:13

Old habits die hard Frosty....:) 

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 My wife understands why I clean my rods n reels in the shower....

 

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 This is one of things that

Fri, 2022-08-05 10:52

 This is one of things that really needs to question the erms of reference and what is required. the coroner seems to be investigating the cause of the boat failure as a cause of death, the organisers their management of the race and the families why it all happened.

There are some elements not being shown in the race organisers investigation so far that seem to be missed? 1. the health & fitness of competitors.  2. The registration of the vessels for the race as fit for purpose?

I was some years ago presented with an investigation into a diving accident and when the investigation was completed they could not find a cause as they believed the diver and employer had complied with all policy and procedures and they were wanting to sign off. I pushed it back to them and directed them to investigate the policy and procedures. Bingo. They did not do a health & fitness check on the diver (he did have a tcket) on investigation of this it was found that the diver had a hole in their heart. Policy and procedures updated. Diver survived.

On another investigation into a vessel fire again they believed they had followed policy and procedures with nothing about to change. Pushed back and it was found that hydraulic lines were now rubber hydraulic hoses not as first installed by the manufacturer which was stainless and in doing so did not update to change out as recommended by hose manufacturers. Rubber hose fatigue failed after 18 months and oil leak onto manifold. Yet daily checks of equipment showed all completed.

I had caused a lot of grief for workers working offshore when I challenged workers wearing slip on boots with the argument they are easier to get off if they fall in the water. So I asked for their employer to prove that? Show me where you have tested that employees ability to get those boots off while treading water? Show me that employee can swim? 

ToR are so important in investigations.

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Tom M

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Agreed on the TOR

Fri, 2022-08-05 17:03

With regard to your two noted concerns:

1.  It's a recreational race conducted by a club of volunteers.  I'm not sure where you would actually go with trying to assess health & fitness of competitors.   That implies creating a standard and assessing individuals against it; who is going to do that?  Furthermore it implies that some peope would be excluded from racing.  I don't think any volunteer sporting organisation is going down that path.  Finally there was nothing in the report that suggested that a lack of fitness contributed to the outcomes.

2.  Not sure what you mean by "registration of the vessels for the race as fit for purpose"?  Do you mean they should be assessed against some criteria set for ocean racing yachts?

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 The boats undergo annual

Fri, 2022-08-05 18:21

 The boats undergo annual safety inspections to ensure compliance to the different category of races. Fremantle to Mandurah is category 3 so requires such things as life lines etc whereas longer category 2 such as Freo to Gero races need safety harnesses, storm sails, life rafts etc. Now a certain percentage of crew need to complete safety and survival at sea training too. 

The boats need to be built to a ABS or DNV standard and have stability measured to make sure that if it gets knocked over, it can right itself....trusting the keel remains of course.

Insurance companies demand a huge amount of maintenance and annual inspections beyond an age and you cannot enter a race without insurance.

Post this incident, I am pretty sure that DOT or whomever they are now call for annual inspections of keels and an inspection after each grounding.

It is the skippers responsibility to ensure the crew is fit and able enough to operate the boat and the boat is safe and capable of undertaking the task. 

 

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Good info

Sat, 2022-08-06 08:07

I was unaware but makes perfect sense for vessels in organised races.

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 Good to know and hard to

Sat, 2022-08-06 12:11

 Good to know and hard to know how people will react in life threatening situations.

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Tom M

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 You raise good points with

Sat, 2022-08-06 12:06

 You raise good points with volunteer organisations indidividuals might want to consider themselves teh "what if" situations arise. Not unlike the average family on boats they are great fun but when things go wrong it rarely is without panic.

It appears that race catagories dictate certain requirements and standards but are these developed to apply under normal conditions. Not unlike companies up North that developed cyclone procedures and when tested they worked great during work hours for day workers. 

Its a great conversation to have we all have views and hopefully there are learnings that people can relate to.

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Tom M

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yacht

Fri, 2022-08-05 11:50

Not so sure about that assessment Tom. The vessel in question was skippered by the vice commodore of the freo yacht club and the vessel had successfully completed 3 sydney to hobart races.

Seasoned veteran vessel and skipper, is it his age you question?

Im a commercial diver and do annual medicals and they dont test for hole in heart or Patent Foraman Ovale (PFO) which occurs naturally 1 in every 4 people.

Even the Navy dont test their submariners for PFOs and they have the potential to do a free ascent from 180m if it all goes bad.

Wearing lace up boots on deck is a recipie for disaster! Slip on only for me and my crew, who can all swim.

A lanyard on a PLB and sprayhood on life jackets are the good points I took away from this.

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 My thoughts only but I would

Sat, 2022-08-06 12:29

 My thoughts only but I would think that there would be a route cause the the vessel failure and a route cause for the deaths and I say this with respect to all those involved but some survived in the water and others didn,t I would be asking why.

The vessel itself while completing many races appears to have a history of failures as pointed out above.

My employer moved to include checks on our divers as their duty of care once it was highlighted they could not ignore under the WH&S act.

Boots was interesting we made sure our focus was on preventing people falling into the water because we didn't know if they could swim the RAN wear lace up boots as do all Navy's I introduced lace up with zipper boots into our safety gear made it more acceptable.

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It is worth noting that the

Fri, 2022-08-05 13:21

It is worth noting that the report is the finding of the Yacht clubs investigation and there is no such coronial investigation report just yet. Google tells me that there was a DOT investugation but I am unable to find any details of that.

The boat was on its third keel. The first keel was shaped like Australia 2's and nearly broke off in the early 90's. The second keel was L shaped and suffered major damage sailing back from Hobart and the boat needed to be lifted out of the water in Albany and have the keel removed. This one was a copy of the second one, or a rebuild as per the report...but I dont know how you could rebuild such a structure. I recall it looking like it had been smashed against rocks half way up it (which couldnt have been the case due to the location of the damage) this was a long time again.

Rob owned the boat from early/mid 2000's if i recall correctly and certainly did a lot of miles on it. He was very active and it should also be noted that the boat was now semi - retired and in racer cruiser mode so they werent doing freeze dried food etc. It was a 'leisurely' cruise.

There are no health requirements to go sailing. We did a Geraldton race back in 2007 and had two first timers onboard. We copped 64 knots off Jurien when the weather turned real bad with 10 out of 12 very sea sick and one (the owner - Dad) throwing up blood. Two never sailed again. I did one more ocean race after saying i was done, which was a Bunbury race, where we copped 30 knots in the face the whole damn stupid way.

 

 

 

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A good read

Sat, 2022-08-06 19:17

If you want to cringe google " Cheeki Rafiki " I'd never step foot on a boat with a bolt on keel, period. My plb is on my life jacket at all times. Just need to be wearing my jacket at all times for it to be effective. 

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There was another one over

Sat, 2022-08-06 20:13

There was another one over east a month back. Two ladies doing a shake down run in boat 1 of a new design. They sat on the upturned hull for 15 hours and got spotted by chance.

 

Two days ago, a Class 40 lost its keel and the solo sailor sat inside and waited.


That Cheeki Rafiki was the culmination a known fault...

 

Yacht designers must be a little slow on the uptake.
 

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 know where ur safety gear

Mon, 2022-08-08 17:02

 know where ur safety gear is, makes sure its accesible - a boat tunred turtle on us in QLD all safety gear was stowed in wheelhouse, took almost 20 mins to get it out- numerous duckdives

know how to use it - in the dark as well

wear u r safety gear, insist on your crew wearing it - even on good days

know the limitations of your safety gear - eg epirb should be in the water for maximum efficiency