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Air Canada Passengers Help Out in Air Sea Rescue Operation

It is quite unusual in this era of modern technology that the untrained eye is used to spot the small dot of a missing yacht on a large ocean, from a viewing platform 2,000 metres above sea level. However, this actually happened this week when a single-handed yacht lost its mast 275 nautical miles out from Sydney harbour in Australia. What was even more unusual was the fact that ordinary passengers on a jet were the ones who spotted the yacht.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) received a signal from an onboard emergency beacon which was activated at 8:15 a.m. local time on Tuesday this week out in the notorious Tasman Sea. To ensure they didn’t waste any time deploying aircraft to search for the yacht in distress they requested assistance to confirm the GPS position.

Sea Rescue

English School

Civilian aircraft that were transiting the area at the time, which included crew and passengers on board an Air Canada flight, were asked to peer out of the porthole sized windows at an altitude of around 2,000 metres, to assist in the location of the yacht, reported to be 275 nautical miles from Sydney. An Air New Zealand flight then joined in the action and flew above the yacht to confirm its location and the actual incident.

Crew and passengers aboard the Air Canada flight were thanked for their help in finding the yacht. Both the Air Canada flight number 033 from Vancouver and a second Air New Zealand jet which was on passage from Auckland, were both on route to Sydney when they were requested to change their course.

AMSA said in a statement that it wished to thank the captains and crew of the Air New Zealand and Air Canada aircraft for their help in the search and rescue operation, and the passengers for being patient in the incident. Once the vessel’s location had been confirmed, both the Air New Zealand A320 and Air New Canada Boeing 777, continued on to Sydney. A search and rescue aircraft then took off to the location, where it made contact with the single handed yachtsman. He said his yacht had been dismasted and would be unable to make land fall, as he was short of fuel.

While awaiting sea assistance, a merchant ship provided shelter and help until the Police ship “OPV Nemesis” from New South Wales arrived to rescue the yachtsperson.

Most sea going yachts these days have aboard what is called a 406 emergency beacon (epirb) which, once its signal is activated, will be picked up thousands of kilometres away by monitoring services such as AMSA, giving the exact location of the beacon and the vessel’s name. It is quite unusual for a maritime authority to require confirmation from anything but another maritime vessel when it comes to confirming the actual position of a ship. The beacons confirm accuracy down to a few metres, but time can’t be lost as the signal will only be emitted for up to 48 hours and once the signal stops, it will become increasingly difficult to locate the exact position of the vessel in distress.

November 15, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

The London Games draws Olympian sized yachts to its waterfront

The 40 metre aging sailing yacht, “The Flying Dutchman,” is one of a number of huge yachts chartered solely for the Olympics by Dutch businessman, Xander Tiedemann, who as well as his charter arrangement is also staging live concerts, a large-screen television and removable hot tubs on the wharf near to the ships.

The Flying Dutchman is not alone in the Thames’ tea coloured waters as twenty tall ships and the more modern super-yachts, with million dollar price tags, have moored alongside the river Thames in London to act as floating hotels for the Olympic Games. Apart from the June boat extravaganza for the queen’s Diamond Jubilee, London has never viewed so much high value floating capital, commentators have said.

The Flying Dutchman

Tim Thomas, editor of Boat International, a yachting magazine covering luxury yachts which, has its base in London said that sometimes boats come up the river, but it’s not a common sight to see any super-yachts.

Most of these super-yachts cruise the Mediterranean, particularly the waters between St. Tropez and Monaco. Dismal, rain sodden London, which is situated far inland from any coast does not feature in cruising itineraries. However, the Olympic summer has meant that super-yachts are queuing up for prime London waterfront space.

The largest of the ships named “Octopus” ranks as the tenth biggest yacht globally, a giant so enormous it shadows a local apartment block. The 130m “Octopus” houses a garage, a helipad and enough storage area for a mini-sub.

Additionally, “Ilona”, which is moored up to Wood Wharf, owns a swimming pool as well as a helipad, and “Seanna” has its own movie hall, gym and spa.

There are at least six giant yachts moored in an area that was only six months a building site and there is no need for the guests to use the grubby, congested underground rail system to get into Central London as there are a team of speed boats at hand to do that job.
The owners of these shows of conspicuous wealth do not freely advertise their presence or announce who they are. It appears that discretion is the order of the day for most. However, the “Dannebrog” is definitely not discreet. Gilded and carved crowns decorate her stem and stern, and positioned at the base of the gang plank is a sailor in a traditional white and blue sailor’s outfit who is standing on guard. The yacht was constructed in 1931 and has 57 crew and it is owned by the Danish royal family.

Usually, the “Dannebrog” spends long summer days sailing along the Danish coast, but this August the Queen and Prince are holidaying on the Thames watching the Olympic Games. No one knows if any of the other yachts have their owners on board, as many of them charter their yachts outs for tax purposes, but often for cash at around $125,000 a week.

London is still a city with its quota of the world’s rich and famous and local residents are quite used to seeing displays of lavish consumption, but super-yachts they are not certainly accustomed to and they have not been a feature of any recent Olympic Games draw card. Britons and thousands of overseas visitors appear to be looking in awe at these glistening, floating pillars of wealth.

August 7, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

World Piracy Threat Down but Not Out

Good news on the piracy epidemic in the Indian Ocean has come too late for some sailors, eager to get home after years cruising the world’s oceans. European yachts in particular have been stranded in South East Asia as the year on year prospect of running the Somali pirate gauntlet down the Gulf of Aden has been a very unattractive prospect. The alternative – to sail right around the Cape of Storms – at the bottom of South Africa, and then along trek over to Brazil through the Caribbean and back via the Azores seemed equally uninviting.

Barbary Pirates Attacking a Spanish Ship

Willem Van De II Velde

For the wealthier, there has been the option of putting their yacht on to a giant yacht transport ship in Thailand which carries the yachts on board in relative safety all the way through to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, minus anything upward of thirty thousand euros for the priviledge.

The International Maritime Bureau has reported that the piracy problem off the east African coast and the Horn Of Africa has eased this years with fewer hijackings and fewer seamen being taken as hostage. The IMB has its own Piracy Monitoring Centre which keeps a track on any pirate attempts anywhere in the world.

The Somali piracy issue has become of very serious significance to shipping passing through from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea or vice versa over the last few years as the ever present pirate attacks became more numerous. The reduction in piracy has been credited to coordinated action by naval forces from several nations, especially the EU, USA, Australia and Malaysia. Some merchant shipping companies have resorted to spending many millions of dollars on hiring private armed security escorts to protect them as they transit the most dangerous area.

The IMB has, however, reported that while the situation off the East Coast of Africa has eased, the opposite has happened in the Gulf of Guinea. The number of ships attacked and hijacked off the coasts of Togo, Nigeria and Guinea has gone up as also has the number of similar incidents in Indonesia.

The number of ships hijacked by pirates in the Indian Ocean was down to 13 this year, and the number of incidents reduced from 163 to 69. The Somali pirate gangs are still holding 11 ships with 218 hostages in isolated and remote communities on the Somali coast.

Piracy itself includes both actual hijackings as well as armed robberies and hold ups. For most ordinary seafarers the prospect of one’s ship or yacht being hijacked and one’s life put up for ransom is a far worse prospect than an armed robbery. There were only 25 actual hijackings last year, but many more armed robberies involving attacks by armed gunmen boarding substantial sized ships. Most commercial ships these days have only very few crew on board and they are certainly not normally trained to defend the ship against an armed attack.

The IMB says that the Indian Ocean piracy threat, although less than in previous years, was still very serious and would require coordinated action by naval warships for years to come. Part of the problem is that the area in which the pirates have been operating is vast, stretching from inside the Red Sea to the coasts of Yemen and Oman to India, the Maldives, the Seychelles through to the coasts of Kenya and Tanzania. The pirates had become faster and more effective as they had accumulated millions of dollars paid out in ransom demands and the marine electronics and technology they had looted off the ships they had attacked.

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July 23, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Pirate Survivors set off for further Ocean Adventures

Paul and Rachel Chandler, the middle aged couple whose yacht “The Lynn Rival” was boarded by Somali pirates in 2009 and who were kept in captivity for over a year, are about to hoist their sails once again.

The couple are planning to complete the circumnavigation that they had commenced before being kidnapped at gunpoint by pirates when off the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.

Their decision to set out to sea again, it seems, has brought a number of doubts amongst their friends and family who went about raising half a million pounds to get the couple released from their hostages.

Pirates Attacking a Spani…

Howard Pyle

As Mrs Chandler, aged 58, recently stated that their associates think they are crazy but has pledged that their intended route will keep them well away from waters where pirates are known to be present.

She said that the two of them are extremely keen to go out to sea again and that they felt that to forsake sailing would leave them feeling defeated.

La Digue Island, Seychelles, Indian O…

K.H. Hanel

Rachel has recently told a British based magazine that family and friends may be concerned but that they do not want to feel that they have been defeated.

They see that what happened to them was quite extraordinary and the possibility of it ever happening again is too small to even imagine.

Once kidnapped, it took 388 days to free them and most of this time they were physically separated from each other.

Once released, the couple were highly critical of the British Foreign Office’s efforts to get them freed and to render any assistance to their family.

Mr and Mrs Chandler now have voiced their intention to sail around the globe on the 11 metre “Lynn Rival”. The yacht had been pillaged by the pirates after being intercepted on passage between the Seychelles islands and the Tanzanian port of Tanga on the East African Coast. Almost miraculously for the Chandlers, it was found and recovered by the Royal Navy, which had seen the couple being taken by pirates.

Mrs Chandler said that sailing offers them the freedom they love and the intended trip will be all even more significant as it will signify their ability to recover from such a drastic event.

Once the “Lynn Rival” was returned to them, it was fitted out in readiness for their round-the-world voyage commencing this summer.

This time, they intend to head to Morocco and then the Canary Islands, before crossing the Atlantic and sailing along the South American coast and then down to Cape Horn, which will get them right into the Pacific.

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June 11, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Tall Ships from Around the World Steal Limelight in two US Maritime Pageants

Tall ships from several different countries took part in one of New York’s most popular maritime events, held each year in May, and stole the limelight from the other ships and boats taking part in the annual Fleet Week celebration.

The event was only kick-started in 1984, but has become a popular pageant which tends to celebrate different parts of US maritime history each year. This year’s Fleet Week commemorated the 1812 War of Independence between the fledgling would-be independent US and its former colonial master, Britain.

Sailing Ship Docked at To…

Janis Miglavs

Whatever the historical circumstances surrounding the week long flotillas and sailing events, it was the arrival of the world’s giant sailing ships which took most bystanders’ interests despite comments from some that this year’s event was a little downscaled from past years because of the financial crisis.
First to appear off New York’s Hudson River was the Spanish four masted top sail schooner, the “Juan Sebastian Elcano”. This ship has been used by the Spanish navy for decades as a training vessel for its cadets and, like many other countries, Spain uses it to showcase its nation overseas on a series of international goodwill trips, which takes the “Elcano” around the globe regularly.

US Coast Guard Ship, the Barque Eagle

Scott T. Smith

Eight other tall ships also took part in the sail down the Hudson, including those from Indonesia, Mexico, Ecuador and France.

The Indonesian ship is a three masted schooner called the “Dewaruci”. Indonesia has had some previous misfortune with its tall ship fleet. In 2005, one of its navy sailing and training ships blew ashore on a notoriously dangerous part of Australia’s East Coast and the cadets who were unlucky enough to be aboard on the day learned some lessons about being shipwrecked that they would never forget. The ship was eventually pulled off the beach, refloated and repaired.

The United States Coast Guard Ship Ea…

Medford Taylor

The French contingent sported two navy tall ships, which were the “Etoile” and “La Belle Poule”. Latin America supplied navy tall ships from Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico and Colombia.

The local contingent included a complement of US navy warships, 14 in all, which met the international fleet outside the River and sailed past the Statue of Liberty together. Just a little shorter than the “Juan Sebastian Elcano”, the US Coastguard’s own tall ship, the 80 m barque, the “Eagle,” met the flotilla at this point and together they made a transit of the Hudson River and then sailed back to tie up at the New York dockside. Many of the ships then opened doors to curious onlookers for a look down below and on decks.

The “Eagle”, despite its use by the US as a training vessel since the end of the Second World War, was actually originally built in Hamburg in Germany and used to train German seamen during the war. It was captured by the US navy and has been in its ownership ever since.

Just a little further up the US East Atlantic coast, in the state of New England, two separate events have been competing to attract some of the world’s tall ships to take part in their sponsored Tall Ships Challenge events. The OpSail2012 in New London and the Ocean State Tall Ships Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, are both mounting events as part of the Tall Ships Challenge. The Rhode Island event also has to compete both financially and for spectator numbers with the last of the Americas Cup World Series Regattas that is taking part off its waters in June.

Some of the ships that took part in the New York Fleet Week event will sail to New England to take part in either of the two events there, including the “Eagle”. The “Bounty” replica, which has been used in innumerable memorable and not some memorable historical film sets will also be taking part in the Ocean State Festival event.

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June 6, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Swedish Yachtsman Found after 80 days Adrift

If you have ever wanted to sail alone in a small boat around South Africa, then Stig Lundvall’s story of life adrift on the ocean without a mast in a small yacht just might keep you on land.

Lundvall, a 66 year old Swedish sailor left Falmouth in England in July last year apparently “on the way to Australia or New Zealand”. Now, that is a fair way to go by plane, but alone in an 8 metre yacht is epic stuff.

Lundvall was not heard of again until picked up by a Greek ship off the coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in April this year. The rescue coordination centres of at least four countries had been on the alert for him since a friend had contacted them in February worried about his whereabouts.

It appears that he set sail from England in his small yacht with only a VHF radio and a few flares. He expected to get to Australia in February so his lack of communication sparked the enquiry to the rescue centres in South Africa, Reunion, Australia and New Zealand, through whose waters he might have been expected to pass.

Lighthouse at Lake Neusiedl at sunset © Tomas Sereda - Fotolia.com

Most people who set off in small yachts have a long range high frequency radio they can use to contact shore stations, get weather updates and even send emails to and fro on a regular basis. They also normally have an emergency position indicating beacon, or epirb, which can be set off if there is an emergency. All modern epirbs are registered with the ship’s name and owner and transmit information directly by satellite giving the exact position where the emergency is taking place.

Sailboat Adrift at Sunset, Sri Lanka

Flip Nicklin/Minden Pictures

It is still not known why Mr Lundvall decided to take off without adequate safety equipment.

He apparently hit an unexpectedly bad storm several hundred miles from Durban after already passing the two notorious capes off Southern Africa – the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Agulhas.

The storm lashed the yacht in the middle of the night and it lost its mast. Without this, Lundvall was unable to sail and the little yacht was at the mercy of the sea and the currents.

The next eighty days saw the sailor drift around in circles, with an ever diminishing supply of water and other supplies. He did manage to get a jury rig organized after quite a struggle, but it was unable to help propel the boat in the direction of Durban or Richards Bay, the two closest safe ports.

With his mast down, his VHF radio was also inoperable, leaving him with only the few flares to alert any passing ship of his plight.

This he did twice with no success, and he was at low ebb, having lost nearly twenty kilos when he was able to attract the attention of the third ship that he saw with his very last flare.

He said that he was pretty amazed to see the huge ship slow down, then stop as he was almost about to give up hope. The Greek registered ship plucked him off the yacht and took him to Cape Town.

Back on dry land in his home town of Västerås, west of Stockholm, he admitted that he felt as if he was walking like a drunk still and would take quite some time to regain both his normal weight and health.

When asked whether he would take off on the water again, he said that he would, but wouldn’t try to cross another ocean!

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May 4, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

The NZ Volvo Ocean Racer “Camper” is now Short on Time

New Zealand’s Aqueduct marina is now well into the dim distant past as Team New Zealand’s yacht Camper will now not have much time to prepare for the racing schedule in its next official stopover in Itajai in Brazil this coming week.

Sailing conditions have been good for the team of yachtsmen in the last twenty four hour period of the round the world Volvo Ocean Race, and they have only 500 miles left before the finishing line with a good weather forecast predicted for the remaining sail to Itajai.

The yacht had to make an unscheduled stop in Chile for four days after the beating and pounding in the waves and swell inflicted hull damage to the racer which could only be rectified by an around the clock work schedule at Puerto Montt in Chile.

Under official racing rules, Camper had to return to the position where racing was promptly put on hold a few days earlier before it could officially resume.

The expected time at the finish line for Camper in Brazil is on the 17th April late in the day and they will be placed fourth after Groupama, Puma and Telefonica who will have just finished the leg. Abu Dhabi along with Team Sanya have had to withdraw.

Captain Chris Nicholson said the yachtsmen would be in Itajai on schedule but there would be little time to undertake any sightseeing.
He admitted that they would barely have a day to spare in Itajai, which would just be enough time to get spruced up ready for the racing schedule.

The damage and repair to the boat earlier in the leg has meant they have had to work hard to get where they are now.

Chris said the struggle would at least earn them fourth place and they would get some points for it, which would be a just reward for the great effort put in by all of the team.

The leg of the journey is quite a marathon with a month having gone by since leaving Auckland and only two full days of particularly unkind weather, which is good for the time of year.

The expected 20 knots of favourable winds will mean they will be running for most of the rest of the passage. Nearing arrival, they are expecting the wind to die away but are hoping for a sea breeze to get them into port at Itajai on April 17.

There is no monetary prize for being first past the post in the 37,000 mile around the world race but the overall winner of the 2011-2012 race will be honoured with a fine trophy that was unveiled in November 2010. It has been designed in honour of the race, which is in its 37th year and will be completed in Galway in July 2012.

April 15, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Arrival of Japanese Ghost Ship revives Seafarers’ Fears

When the Ryou-Un Maru slowly slipped across the North Pacific Ocean and appeared to endanger the Alaskan coastline the other day, the response from the US Coast Guard was to blow up while it still floated in deep, ocean water.

The ship, a deep sea fishing vessel, destined for the scrap yard was close to the centre of the Japanese tsunami that struck the North Eastern coast of Japan about a year ago, causing reverberations and controversy in its wake.

The ship was set adrift, with about five million tonnes of other rubbish and flotsam, and was slowly blown across the sea towards the US and Canadian Western coastline. With nobody aboard, but unknown cargo and 4000 litres of diesel oil still in its tanks, it was a veritable “ghost ship.”

The great natural disasters like tsunamis and cyclones or hurricanes, are some of the maritime industry’s greatest modern day dreads, damaging more ships and smaller craft than any human activity, including war.

Storm Tide © Daniel Täger - Fotolia.com

Fortunately, in many cases, communications and forecasting help to provide sufficient forewarning of some of the worst natural events. The dozens of pearl luggers that were swept ashore in Australia’s 1899 Cyclone Mahina knew nothing of the great storm that bore down on them, ultimately killing 400 or more seamen. Similarly, it was the lack of a proper tsunami warning system that led to the destruction of hundreds of boats, mostly small fishing boats, which were lost in the 2004 “Boxing Day” tsunami that originated deep below the sea off the coast of Sumatra.

Even modern yachts were caught unawares in the latter event, despite their ultra modern radios and on board email systems. In Thailand’s marinas and sculpted bays and islands, even as far as Malaysia, dozens of yachts were trapped by the triple whammy of great waves that engulfed the Andaman coast.

The only warning that some people had was when the water suddenly retreated, as if the tide was going out. Twenty minutes later, the first of the three large tsunami waves reared up as it approached the coast at speeds of up to 400 kilometres an hour.

In some ways, boats and ships have better luck than those on land when a tsunami strikes. As long as there is sufficient warning, these craft can put to sea. Tsunami waves are only dangerous in shallow water. Strange as it seems, even a large tsunami like the 2004 event only causes an almost imperceptible gentle rise and fall for a boat floating in deep water.

The Pacific Ocean has had a good tsunami warning system for quite some time. It is a boon for boats and ships as long as they are far enough from the epicentre of the earthquake that triggers the waves.

No such good luck for those that are too close, as no warning can ever be long enough when within the range of a nearby tsunami. Such was the fate of the Ryou–Un Maru and many other boats like it in last year’s Japanese tsunami.

Hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons – they are all the same thing, but are given different names, depending on the area that these tropical storms are experienced. The correct meteorological term is a “tropical revolving storm” and can exert its malevolent influence anywhere within the tropics, normally in the hotter, wetter summer months of the western sides of all the great oceans.

These storms can now be predicted with reasonable accuracy, their origins within oceanic thunderstorm complexes and their evolution into deadly systems tracked with the aid of satellites and a legion of weather instruments.

They are now not much of a hazard for large, ocean going commercial ships, more of a nuisance than a danger, as the forecasting service is able to allow a change of plan or route.

Smaller fishing boats, commercial ferries, trading boats and pleasure boats can take shelter, given adequate forecast, but some cyclones are still so powerful that even the best forecasting system can not avoid total destruction.

Cyclone Yasi, last year’s East Australian category 5 storm, blew home close to the 1899 Mahina and caused death and destruction wherever it struck. In one marina, in one of Australia’s most sheltered areas, in what had been thought to be a “cyclone hole”, a hundred pleasure boats were thrown across the water in the cyclone’s storm surge and smashed against the shore like matchsticks.

April 11, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Fate Decided for 150-year Old Clipper Ship

Thomas Dutton Lithograph Clipper Ship, City of Adelaide

The City of Adelaide is not the city of that name but the oldest known clipper ship still in existence in the world. It is actually 5 years older than the Cutty Sark.

In its heyday, it transported emigrants seeking riches overseas, from the northern reaches of Scotland to the southernmost continent of Australia. It has been estimated that one quarter of a million of Australia’s ancestors sailed as passengers on the City of Adelaide.

After many years rotting at a Scottish boatyard and 150 years since she was built, her fate has finally been decided. Now, she is being prepared for her final voyage back to Australia. The intention is to fully restore her and she will then become the focal point of maritime history in the Port of Adelaide. The total cost of the project will exceed ten million pounds.

Wind and Sun

Montague Dawson

She is certainly in no condition to sail to Australia so a massive cradle is being constructed in Irvine. The clipper was launched in 1864 in Sunderland. It sailed 10,000-mile voyages between the two countries for nearly 25 years, but her sailing days have long gone as her last ocean voyage was in 1893.

At one point, the 53-metre ship was bought by Southampton council after a cholera outbreak and was used as an isolation hospital for infectious victims.

Later, in 1924, it was turned into a training ship at Irvine in Scotland, and a name change to HMS Carrick followed, however, unfortunately, in 1991, it sank in Glasgow and remained in Davy Jones’ Locker until it was salvaged by the Scottish Maritime Museum.

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There has been much debate over its fate with some wanting it to return to Sunderland to its birthplace but in the end, the owners decided, after much soul searching, that interested parties in Adelaide would be the new owners and restorers. The view being that in earlier days there was a strong association between South Australia and this link will prevail and be reinforced once the City of Adelaide has been restored and put on show.

The City of Adelaide is certainly no lightweight as metalworking engineers in Australia have now built a unique cradle designed to carry 100 tonnes and with a cost of almost three quarters of a million pounds.

Belem

Philip Plisson

The hope is that the aging clipper will not crumble when it is slid into the cradle but the cradle is going to be thoroughly checked by Lloyds of London inspectors before the ordeal of fitting the City of Adelaide into it. Interestingly, twenty different locations in Australia were used to construct the cradle so bringing it altogether in Irvine will most certainly be a test of cooperation. The designers all from Australia will be overseeing the whole project.

The final date of the whole procedure has not been finalised yet as there are still some final checks to be made along with the necessity for the right tide.

March 21, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Turanor Planet Solar confronts pirates in the Gulf of Aden

Türanor Planet Solar © Dr. Karl-Heinz Hochhaus

The annual yacht migration from South East Asia through the Gulf of Aden and on to the Mediterranean does not have many takers this year as the notorious pirate ally along the sea route via the Gulf of Aden remains a constant threat to any seagoing vessel.

Many vessels remain in ports scattered throughout the Asian region or foot the hefty bill to load onto a container ship for a safe transit to the Med. However, Turanor PlanetSolar, the biggest solar-powered boat on earth and attempting to be the first to complete a solar or sun assisted circumnavigation has just conquered this, the most dangerous stretch of water from a pirate point of view, and is well on its way home.

“Thoughts of Home” Saturd…

Norman Rockwell

Turanor is a specially equipped catamaran that is powered entirely through its hundreds of solar panels. The power stored in its batteries can keep it going for about three days if the sun becomes hidden by clouds and allows the boat to move at about 7 knots. As pirate skiffs can skoot along at about 20 knots, the solar boat could be a sitting duck, even if it had full power.

It seems they had been quite aware since 2006 that this part of their journey would be the deciding factor in the completion of their epic trip around the globe – the first by any solar powered vessel. As they approached the Arabian Sea just a few weeks ago and on arrival in Abu Dhabi they realised that they would have to seriously prepare Turanor Planet Solar if they wanted to get through unscathed. Solar boats do not have the same speed as big ships or even sail driven yachts if extra effort is required to escape the clutches of pirate kidnappings.

Türanor Planet Solar © Dr. Karl-Heinz Hochhaus

In the end, they decided that they would have to employ an armed security team to maintain a 24 hour security watch as they manoeuvred through the 1800 nautical mile area. On board were six ex soldiers from the French Army. However, this was not enough for them, as they also surrounded the perimeter of the boat with barbed wire to evade boarding pirates.

Once on the journey, they moved at night unlit, as they not only did not want to be seen but they also had to maintain a reserve of battery power in case they had to move faster in order to evade any potential attack. Two armed men were steadfastly on duty night and day scanning the horizon for potential threats.

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They could have risked arrest if they had not remained a reasonable distance off the coast of Oman and Yemen, as armed ships are not permitted in the waters of these two countries.

However, the heavily guarded Turanor did have one suspected encounter with a pirate skiff and that was on 16th February. Fortunately for them, the boat turned away when they saw the well armed security men positioned around the boat.

It took Turanor 20 days to navigate the pirate infested water between Abu Dhabi and Djibouti and their current position is now abeam of the Egyptian coast heading slowly northwards in to the reaches of the Suez Canal and back home to the Med. Monte Carlo is their final destination. They have so far covered 55,379 kilometres in 330 days and they do not have too far to go to achieve the prize of the first solar boat to circumnavigate the Earth.

March 12, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Maritime GPS Navigation at Risk from Jammers and Spoofers

Marine navigation all over the world has increasingly become reliant on global positioning systems or GPS for short, and its Russian, European and Chinese equivalents. So much so, that it would be hard to imagine the vast number of commercial vessels, let alone smaller fishing and pleasure boats being able to go anywhere on the sea without their GPS system working properly.

However, reports are now coming in which point to an increasing and very real risk to GPS systems and therefore, the whole of marine navigation by “jammers” and “spoofers” who, for a small cost, are able to upset the way in which satellite positioning is received and processed.

GPS is a more sophisticated version of earlier satellite navigation (satnav) systems that surfaced in the nineteen seventies. It had its origin in the US military’s need to deploy “seek and destroy” cruise missiles that could locate and blow up an enemy target using a GPS aided detection system buried in their nose cones. The US military kindly allowed its many orbiting position indicating satellites to be used by civilian devices. These were quickly developed for use at sea and, a little later, adapted for widespread use on land as well. From the tiniest fishing dinghy to the largest oil tanker, from family cars to taxis and buses, and from gliders to passenger aeroplanes, the GPS system lets people know wherever they are on the surface of the planet.

Lighthouse © Stuart Monk - Fotolia.com

In the early days of GPS, the system was used with some caution and mariners still learnt the traditional craft of navigation with compass and sextant. The fear was that the US military would switch off the signal from the satellites in the event of perceived conflict, making all navigation immediately inoperable. The fears were, for the most part, unrealised. Apart from a few scares, no collisions or shipwrecks are known so far to have been caused by a disappearing signal, although many vessels have gone aground or sunk as a result of too heavy a dependence on electronic GPS navigation without the use of a corresponding use of common sense.

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Now the danger lies in simple technology which apparently almost anybody with a head for electronic communication coupled with a few hundred euros could devise or simply buy online.

“Jammers” are already widely available on the internet and can be bought quite legally, although their use is illegal. Pranksters and gangsters alike have used these jammers to disrupt navigation systems at airports and on busy highways. Criminals have been known to use jammers to deliberately disrupt the GPS systems in trucks in order to be able to hold them up for their valuable contents.

Henry the Navigator at th…

C.l. Doughty

Some jammers have much more signal strength than the low level signals emanating from orbiting satellites. A research experiment in the English Channel in 2010 used a low level jammer and discovered that it had remarkable effects on ships traversing the busy waterway between France and England. Reports came in of ships veering suddenly off course from the use of the jammer. Most commercial ships use an automated system to link their GPS with their steering by autopilot, so jammers can potentially have a devastating effect.

Perhaps more potentially dangerous than jammers are the “spoofers”. These are able to create a false GPS signal that can be used to fool anybody reliant on GPS to provide accurate time and location. The technology that makes spoofing possible has only just become available and is not yet widespread, but reports indicate that the components to construct a home made spoofer would cost less than a thousand euros.

Spoofers could be used in all sorts of devious ways to create false positions for illegal fishing boats and even motorists who want to evade fines from traffic infringements to havoc, even in the financial world. Stock exchanges depend now on precise timing for the exchange of stock.

Although, no serious incidents have yet been ascribed to the use of spoofers, an Iranian engineer is reported to have claimed that a US spy drone had been brought down over Iran by a home made spoofer. The report has yet to be confirmed but experts in the field say that is “in the realms of possibility and that is the scary part of the story.”

February 23, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee welcomes Tall Ship

It has recently been announced that the tall ship “Tenacious”, will be taking part in the celebrations for Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee on the 3^rd June on the River Thames in London. The ship is quite unusual as it has been specially designed and constructed to be operated and sailed by a mixed gender crew of physically able and disabled individuals, including those who are users of wheelchairs.

The Jubilee Sailing Trust which operates “Tenacious” will be amongst a flotilla of 1000 vessels making up the biggest assembly of boats on the river Thames in recent times. The “Tenacious” will be accompanied by rowing boats, work boats and recreational craft of all makes, forms, and sizes. They will all be brilliantly attired with flowing, colourful bunting and Union Jacks. The contingent will be spread out over approximately twenty five kilometres.

Approaching London

Trey Ratcliff

“Tenacious” is 65 metres in length and will be one of the biggest vessels to take part and will make up part of an avenue of sails that the smaller boats will pass through, as they make their way up the Thames.

Big Ben in London © Gary - Fotolia.com

All the people who have a relationship with the Jubilee Sailing Trust are extremely happy that “Tenacious” has been chosen to be a part of the Diamond Jubilee. CEO Alex Lochrane commented that the trust came into being in 1978 and was partly financed by money from funds provided by the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and so the trust was eager for “Tenacious” to be a representative of this heritage and become a part of the Diamond Jubilee festivities some thirty four years later. It signified a lot to them to be given the opportunity to provide support for this royal occasion with this stunning tall ship.

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“Tenacious” and “”Lord Nelson”, the second ship administered by the trust, are just two tall ships from around the world that have been designed and built for both physically able and disabled individuals to be given the opportunity to experience sailing alongside one another as equals.

Throughout the thirty four years of existence, the Trust has been able to take more than 35,000 people out to sea to engage in a life altering experience. More than 13,000 were classified as disabled, which included 5,000 who needed the assistance of a wheelchair.

Queen Elizabeth II

One of the crew members, who will be on board throughout the spectacle, is Nick Pilgrim who is forty years old. Nick was unfortunate to contract meningitis when he was at nautical school learning to take up a maritime career. He thought he may never have the opportunity to go out to sea ever again. However, twenty five years ago he was initiated into the Jubilee Sailing Trust.

A Tall Ship in the Lower Reaches of t…

John S. Smith

As the years have passed he has completed nearly 60 sailing voyages with the assistance of the Trust, which has included crossings of the Atlantic, and he has sailed a total number of nautical miles that would be equivalent to circumnavigating the world twice.

Tower Bridge and River Thames at Nigh…

Richard I’Anson

Nick, alongside other disabled and physically able members of the crew will humbly take their position aboard Tenacious in the fleet next to the Queen and members of the her family who will be seated on the “Spirit of Chartwell”, a barge assigned to the Royal Family.

February 7, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Dutch Teenager Breaks World Single Handed Sailing Record

Dutch teen Laura Dekker has just become the youngest sailor ever to undertake and complete a single handed circumnavigation of the globe.

The sixteen year old finished her single handed round-the-globe voyage when she finally sailed into the harbour of St Maarten in the Caribbean, which is jointly administered by the French and Dutch governments.

It looked at first that she would not be allowed to start the intrepid voyage at such an early age when the Dutch social affairs department considered that she was far too young to take on the challenge. The court case that involved her and her family, who were behind the project, reached world attention two years ago.

Dekker sailed from the island less than a year ago, beating the last record by 8 months.

Laura Decker © Savyasachi Creative Commons Wikipedia

As she reaches the age of 17 on the 20th September, she had to finish her voyage before the 16th September in order to claim the record for the youngest sailor to complete a world trip without any assistance.

Miss Dekker’s ketch, named Guppy, arrived in St Maarten almost a year after her voyage started.

“I can’t really absorb what I have just done,” she said to journalists once she had her feet firmly planted on dry land.

“The sailing was at all times really good and I often viewed dolphins along the way” she said when interviewed at the dockside after arrival.

She said that she would be spending the coming days on the island cleaning up the 12 metre boat before she returns to school.

Her parents, of course, were there amidst a crowd of 450 onlookers who were there to welcome the teenager. Scores of people cheered as Dekker waved her arms to them, cried and then went across the dock along with her mum, dad, sister and grandparents, who had met her out at sea earlier in the day.

Dekker finally made her arrival in St. Maarten after fighting high seas and strong winds on the last, 40-day section from Cape Town in South Africa.

The starting point of her trip became St Maarten instead of the original plan of Gibraltar.

The previous holder of the record was Australian teenager Jessica Watson, who gained this achievement in May 2010, just 3 days before she reached her 17th birthday.

But the Dutch girl’s achievement and challenge was not quite the same as Jessica’s, who went around the world non-stop while Laura sailed from one port to another and was not at sea for longer than 3 weeks.

Dekker was born in the port of Whangarei in New Zealand to sea going parents while they were completing a six year circumnavigation of their own, and said she did her first solo sail at the age of 6. By the age of 10 years old she said, she started to dream about sailing around the world. She celebrated her sixteenth birthday while at sea, consuming doughnuts for breakfast after having spent a bit of time in port with her father and some friends the previous night in Darwin on the north coast of Australia.

The teen sailed more than 26,000 miles on a journey that included places that sound like a scan through an online travel brochure: the Canary Islands, the Galapagos, Panama, Fiji, Tonga, Bora Bora, Australia, South Africa and St. Maarten.

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January 24, 2012 | Alison Williams

SV Egret, Rudderless, arrives safely in St Lucia

Sunset in Marigot Bay, St Lucia © Fanny Reno Fotolia.com

There are many ordinary people who go to sea and do brave and amazing things, which the world never gets to hear about. This is a story of two such quiet heroes that ended safely and happily only two weeks ago.

The couple, on an adventure of a lifetime, had set off on what is often only a routine 2000 mile crossing of the Atlantic from the Cape Verde islands to the Caribbean but soon they became confronted with a situation that all sailors hope would never happen to them. Their rudder snapped clean off the stern of their 12 metre yacht, slap bang in the middle of the ocean.

If you have ever seriously imagined how hard it would be to steer a car without a steering wheel then perhaps you could try to imagine steering a rudderless yacht on an ocean, with thirty knot winds and four metre waves, a thousand miles from the nearest “garage”. Amanda and Patrick on the “Egret” certainly did not have any instructions hidden away in their emergency grab bag, but they were quietly determined not to abandon their yacht.

Sunset in Marigot Bay, St Lucia © Fanny Reno Fotolia.com

The morning after the disaster, as their yacht rolled and yawed helplessly in the Atlantic swells, kindly voices on the morning’s regular yacht to yacht high frequency radio sked soon had them sorted out. An old sea dog-cum-author called Fatty Goedlander, who had been sailing the seas for almost 60 years, was quick to relay down the radio detailed instructions on how to make and deploy an emergency rudder that would, at least, get them underway and moving, albeit slowly, in the right direction.

Amanda and Patrick quickly got to work using a long rope, their second anchor and some additional long mooring lines. The anchor was thrown off the stern attached to some chain and a thick long rope which they attached to a stern mooring cleat. Two more lines had been attached to the anchor as well which were led down each side of the deck and through some blocks and back to the steering wheel area and these would then be used as steering lines.

Of course, now the sails had to be set in such a way that they would be filled by the wind that was coming from behind. This, with some trial and error, they managed successfully.

This amazing feat was accomplished, it seems, with a minimum of fuss. After all, no one wants to finish their voyage of a lifetime, let alone their adopted, floating home at the mercy of the great Atlantic.

Just to brighten things up, they certainly weren’t alone on the high seas as there were some nearby yachts – meaning 50 odd miles away – that immediately diverted to give moral support and sail along with them. One tailed them in rough conditions for almost a week before bravely launching their yacht’s tender and rowing alongside the stricken “Egret” to deliver 50 litres of diesel in conditions that a surfer might only appreciate. Not only that but some freshly baked bread and other culinary goodies were tossed in to their cockpit, but the Good Samaritan apparently decided against hopping aboard for a friendly swig of whisky.

With more than a thousand miles to go to St Lucia and an electronic auto pilot somehow managing to steer the jury steering rig, they happily arrived on the shores of St Lucia to welcome in the New Year.

There is no moral to this report or even lessons to be learned, it was just one of those unavoidable incidents that ended happily aided by initiative, skill and determination.

January 13, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Sea Shepherd’s New Anti-Whaling Vessel Damaged in the Southern Ocean

Two Humpback whales and a shark swim among ancient city ruins © Catmando - Fotolia.com

The Southern Hemisphere summer heralds the annual confrontations in the Antarctic of the Japanese whaling fleet and the anti whaling organisation Sea Shepherd, but last week disaster struck in bad weather.

The recently launched state-of-the-art vessel the “Brigitte Bardot” was damaged by a rogue wave while pursuing a Japanese whaling vessel in 6 metre seas 1500 miles from Fremantle in Western Australia.

Fortunately, the lead vessel “Steve Irwin” only took eighteen hours to reach the crippled vessel. Despite the damage both boats managed to maintain a speed of more than 7 knots on their way to Fremantle.

The Sea Shepherd fleet depends on volunteers and the 10 member crew hail from America, Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa and Belgium. They are well aware of the conditions that could be encountered in the Southern Ocean. It is not only the Japanese whaling fleet but the weather conditions that create havoc for ships plying these waters.

It took about five days to escort the distressed ship back to Fremantle and seven of the crew were evacuated onto the “Steve Irwin” for the journey.

Fortunately, the “Brigitte Bardot” was constructed so that it is virtually unsinkable but any damage could prevent successful motoring.

This is the eighth mission that Sea Shepherd has undertaken in its quest to stop the whaling industry forever.

This incident did not stall Sea Shepherd’s activities, as while the ships were making their way to Fremantle, a third vessel the “Bob Barker” was tailing the Japanese whaling ship called the “Nisshin Maru”.

In February 2011, Japan shortened its whale pursuit one month early after only securing a third of its normal catch. They put the blame on Sea Shepherd for their action.

Meanwhile, less than a month ago Japanese whaling overseers were in the process of attempting to sue the environmental group for obstructing the yearly whale hunt.

The process of commercial whaling was halted under a 1986 international agreement, unless done for research purposes only. Some nations, and a number of environmental groups, claim that Japanese “scientific whaling” is simply concealed commercial whaling and not research. There is no secret that whale meat can be sourced in restaurants throughout Japan.

The Sea Shepherd environmental organisation is not short of money for its activities as might be guessed from the names of its vessels. TV and film stars from “Star Trek” and The “James Bond” series are regular sponsors amongst others from the film industry.

Furthermore, the Southern Ocean is not the only place in the world where whale hunting still exists. The village of Lamahera on Lembata island in the Indonesian archipelago conducts its annual whale hunt off its own doorstep but only small traditional sailing boats and hand crafted tools are used and the carcass has to be hacked to pieces in the water as it is too big to fit in the tiny boats. This is an age old activity but it is slowly coming into the limelight as concerned organisations have been alerted to its continued existence.

January 6, 2012 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Filipino Mariners Caught Up in Piracy

Tug boat taking out the ship from the harbor © Grecaud Paul Fotolia.com

Recent news reports have revealed that there are many Filipinos caught up in ship piracy in the Indian Ocean. A Captain of a ship registered in Liberia and crewed entirely by Filipinos was kept in captivity by Somali pirates for four months this year while his wife and newly born child waited in earnest back in the Philippines.

The ship had been hijacked by Somali pirates as it entered the Gulf of Aden, even though the ship is substantial in size there was no way it could overpower the Somali speedboat which was heavily armed.

This particular captain and his crew are not the only Filipinos affected by piracy. As they commonly crew ships for big companies, they inevitably form parts of the crew.

Statistics reveal that since 2006, almost 750 Filipinos, working on more than 60 freighters, have been captured in this way.

Filipinos are not being particularly singled out by the pirates; it is just that so many people from the Philippines work in the maritime industry.

Capt Caniete’s torment started on a tranquil clear day in the middle of December. He first spotted the pirate boat when it was a long way off from his own ship, and stared with fear as it gathered speed and became close.

“I was extremely nervous and my total body was trembling,” he recollects. “They were continually shooting at the ship. They got on the radio and said Captain, you have not stopped so you will be killed.”

After more than five hours of a cat and mouse pursuit, the pirates then hauled themselves up onto the ship, and holding up their AK-47’s they soon overcame the captain and crew, making them take the ship to the coast of Somalia.

The Filipinos on the vessel were held on board, with hardly any food, while dialogue was underway.

Capt Caniete was forced to make a phone call to his company to inform them that he would be shot if a ransom was not paid.

He was severely beaten by the pirates as they were suspicious that a coffee pot he had brought along with him onto the ship was really a satellite telephone. But it was a present from his wife that he cherished.

In the end and after four months, the pirates departed without a word. And Capt Caniete assumed a solution had been found enabling their release.

With this increase in involvement of Filipinos as pirate fodder, The Philippines does not have the money for extra security for their crews but they are conducting anti piracy exercises. Every Filipino seafarer goes through compulsory anti-piracy lessons before they go out to sea.

Several hundred Filipinos have been held by Somali pirates in recent years and in spite of the increasing danger of piracy, there never seems to be any lack in the number of Filipinos wishing to enlist in a crewing job in the maritime trade.

The wages paid out by the shipping corporations offer a favourable quality of living, and offer one of a small number of paths out of poverty for numerous Filipino families. In the last year, Filipino seagoing workers were able to send nearly two and a half billion pounds back to their homes which make up a crucial component of the country’s economy.

December 26, 2011 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Narrow Gap Separates Yachts in the World’s Toughest Ocean Race

The six competitors in the Volvo Ocean Race 2011 / 2012 are only eighteen nautical miles apart just off the South African coast tacking in light head winds on the second leg of what is arguably the world’s toughest and longest ocean sailing race. Camper / Emirates Team New Zealand is in the lead, although Team Telefonica holds a slender, overall, leading margin on points.

This year’s race started in the Spanish Mediterranean port city of Alicante and ends in Galway, Ireland, next year. The route this year has taken them via Cape Town and will lead to Abu Dhabi, Sanya in China, Auckland, New Zealand, Itajai on the Brazilian coast, then back across the Atlantic to France and finally Ireland.

The second leg is just over ten thousand kilometers long and will, for the first time put the Volvo fleet in potential pirate waters. Special measures are being taken to protect the six boats from pirate attack as they cross the Arabian Sea after rounding Madagascar and head for Abu Dhabi in the Arabian Gulf.

The Volvo Ocean race has a long history. It all started with a whimsical race called the Golden Globe, created by Britain’s Sunday Times which was a challenge for the fastest single handed non stop round the world race under sail alone at a time when hardly anybody was sailing across the world’s oceans slowly, let alone racing. This was the race that was won by Robin Knox-Johnston in a 10 metre leaky wooden ketch built in India and the same race that Bernard Moitessier, in the lead across the Pacific, famously gave up and sailed to Tahiti instead. The interest and fascination that this pioneering race garnered gave rise to the first of the Whitbread races in 1973, so called because of its sponsorship by Whitbread breweries. In those early races, yachts were more modified cruising boats than racing boats with keen amateur sailor / adventurers paying for the privilege of racing around the world. Accommodation was in comparatively comfortable cabins, food and alcohol was not in short supply and only the skipper got paid while navigation was by dead reckoning, compass and sextant.

The races were designed to follow the old square rigger ship routes around the capes leaving from Europe, round South Africa’s notorious Cape of Storms and then through the Southern Ocean to Cape Horn and back to Europe via the Atlantic.

This, the 11th Volvo Ocean race is a direct descendent of the Whitbread series. The boats themselves are a far cry from those of the Whitbread era, however – they are all of the same design – Volvo Open 70’s with 11 crew apiece from 15 diverse nations. The boats are sleeker, faster and are crewed by professional athletes, many of them Olympic gold medalists and veterans from the America’s Cup. Accommodation on board is sparser and more spartan with an emphasis on the desire to win.

One of the boats in this race, Team Sanya, is the first time a Chinese yacht has been entered and is named after the Chinese port city that is one of the staging posts of the race while Abu Dhabi Racing is the first entry from the United Arab Emirates.

The race has changed over the years from one that has favoured yachts that can move fast down wind to one that requires much more tactical skills. The race now crosses the equator not less than four times requiring the crews and their skippers to sail in all types of conditions from the steady trade winds of the North and South Atlantic to the fluky equatorial doldrums and the tempestuous and stormy waters of the Southern Ocean.

As the yachts make their way up into the Southern Indian Ocean and the dangers of the southern hemisphere’s cyclone season, they will be watched by TV satellite hook up by an estimated 60 million spectators.

December 13, 2011 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Atlantic Rally for Cruisers 2011 Experience near Perfect Weather

ARC departure from Las Palmas, Canary Islands. November 2005

The traditional Atlantic sailing rally (the ARC) from Las Palmas in the Canary Islands to Rodney Bay on the Caribbean Island of St Lucia, some 2800 nautical miles, has experienced near perfect sailing conditions as the first yachts arrive in Rodney Bay. Last year was dogged with unfavourable and light winds but this year the classic north east trades pushed the yachts in record times towards the finish line. December 2nd saw the arrival of the first yacht in the racing division. The twelve metre “Vaquita” ploughed its way across the Atlantic arriving in less than twelve days. The owner had engaged an experienced mixed gender crew to make the passage and it was completed five days earlier than in 2010.

ARC departure from Las Palmas, Canary Islands. November 2005

The crew reported that Vaquita attained speeds of 23 knots at times as she surfed down the backs of waves and she regularly marched along at speeds between 18 and 20 knots. The crew admitted that the fast speeds made living conditions down below somewhat uncomfortable as the sound of the water rushing by was at times phenomenal.

The ARC rally is not just the domain for racers and winners but the cruising division also includes at least twenty or more children under the age of sixteen who are not skippering, crewing or sailing solo but are part of family groups that make this transatlantic voyage every year, many of whom go on to complete a circumnavigation.

This years rally has attracted twenty one children from nine different nationalities. The ARC rally committee did not leave these children at limbo while in Las Palmas, but organized outings and social activities so that they could get to know each other. It seems they were all pretty smart at communicating with each other despite the language barriers.

The oldest sailor in the rally is 78 years old and is the owner of the Peruvian registered yacht “Nandina”. He is not only the oldest sailor but it is the first time there has been an entry from Peru. The 78 year old was so keen on taking part in the rally that he had Nandina shipped over the Atlantic especially for the event.

Meanwhile as at the time of writing this article the ARC rally events in St Lucia officially get under way commencing with a welcome beach cocktail party. Yachts are still arriving one by one into St. Lucia, even though the wind has died in the Caribbean for a while. Forty five yachts have officially crossed the finish line, with a further eight more expected to arrive today, and twenty one more have radioed to say they will arrive tomorrow. This is quite a contrast to last year’s ARC rally which was one of the slowest on record and only two boats made landfall in St. Lucia within sixteen days. The first was the motor yacht “Wind Horse”, which simply motored across the Atlantic in just over ten days. “Berenice”, a large Swan design, was the only sailing yacht last year to complete the passage in less than sixteen days.

December 8, 2011 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

Satellite Communication saves French Yachtsmen in Mid Atlantic

Satelite Orbiting Earth © anibal - Fotolia.com

Being stranded out in the mid Atlantic is not everyone’s cup of tea but in more than 45 knots of wind and with seas reaching eight metres the aluminum ketch Roule la Billie was savagely knocked down by these enormous seas and as a result lost its mast and rigging. This occurred more than fourteen hundred miles out in the Atlantic in September. The group of four was on their way home to Europe, in the thirty six foot ketch, from the Caribbean when this misfortune occurred.

In the past if such an incident had taken place so far from land, the occupants of any stricken vessel could only hope that if they jumped into a life raft or even a dinghy with a bunch of flares they might have had the faintest possibility of being spotted and rescued. But more likely they would have been recorded as another statistic of sailors lost at sea.

In this era of satellite communication and the waterproof gadgets that go with it, there is a great chance that sailors being capsized far away from land will be saved even though it might be a costly exercise requiring a quick response from the closest country.

In this case, the first indication of the yacht’s predicament was a phone call that the captain made to his father using his satellite phone. This message was then relayed to the US coastguard and the Rescue Coordination Centre in Canada. The tricky situation now is that the stricken yacht will not stay in the same place but will drift with wind action and currents. This is when the 406 MHz Emergency Position Indicator Radio Beacon (EPIRB), once deployed and activated, comes in handy as it relays a distress message via satellite to the closest emergency command centre. In the case of Roule La Billie they did just that and 10 minutes after the command centre in Boston had received the message from the skipper’s dad, they received the EPIRB signal. This confirmed the location with the exact position of the stricken yacht. This signal from the EPIRB will continue relaying the position of the yacht up to forty eight hours after activation, giving hope that rescue authorities will be able to physically locate and monitor the yacht while a rescue vessel is dispatched to the position.

Once the actual location had been established The U.S. Coast Guard along with the Canadian Joint Rescue Coordination Centre dispatched, a Canadian Hercules and two merchant ships, and they managed to co operate to bring about the successful retrieval of the French sailors.

The commercial ships were members of Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue System (AMVER) so they were both prepared and well trained in diverting from their original course to help out in maritime incidents such as this one. AMVER is a vital link in aiding coastguards from around the world as it means the ship closest to the incident simply diverts preventing the need to deploy a specialist emergency vessel. In this situation while awaiting the ships the crew of the stricken yacht were dropped a life raft and other supplies from the Hercules, to ensure their survival. while the ships were making their way in unfavourable sea conditions to take the sailors on board.

Mission accomplished with the minimum of fuss with the great assistance of satellite communication. Not all yachts carry satellite phones due to the costly airtime rates but most trans ocean yachts carry the 406mhz EPIRB and now the SPOT commercial locator is being marketed which, as a convenient palm sized device, when activated sends a signal to a commercial station who then interpret the message and inform the local search and rescue authority. This device transmits the exact position of the boat in distress and even has the ability to send text messages as well.

All these pieces of technology mean that large tracts of ocean do, no longer, need to be flown over by fleets of planes with the faint hope of finding the speck of a stricken yacht on an enormous blue expanse. As long as sailors keep their devices well maintained, well charged and protected from inadvertent submersion in water then the ocean can seem an almost safe place to transit.

October 6, 2011 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

MS Türanor Chases the Sun

The world’s largest and most successful solar powered motor vessel has powered in to dock in Singapore recently its round the world voyage strangely receiving almost as quiet a reception by the world’s press as the noise from its electric engine.

The 31 metre long MS Türanor is certainly a strange sight, looking more like a gigantic glistening spider from outer space or a UFO than a conventional motor vessel – but conventional it certainly is not.

Built in Germany and launched in 2010, the boat is entirely powered by the sun via its over five hundred square metres of photovoltaic cells – solar panels to the non technically minded. The project was designed to use technology that was already readily available and to demonstrate the feasibility of a solar powered marine transportation system in these days of fossil fuel induced global warming and the steady and seemingly inexorable decline in the environmental health of the world’s oceans.

The boat is a catamaran that is designed to slip through the water with minimum effort and is part of the Planet Solar project that is the brainchild of Swiss former ambulance driver and solar inventor Raphaël Domjan and built by a yacht club in Kiel, Germany at a cost of around 15 million euros. It is owned and operated by a joint Swiss and French company.

The boat’s rather weird shape is due to the fact that it needs as much horizontal space as possible dedicated to exposing its hundreds of solar panels. The boat actually has two huge side flaps or wings that have additional panels that can be slid out of the way when the sea is particularly rough. The total maximum power capability of the panels is around 120 kilowatts, which are captured in the day time only by a massive lithium ion battery system which can power the 20 kilowatt electric engine day and night.

The voyage so far has taken the Türanor and its six permanent crew three quarters of the way around the world taking them across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific Ocean to Australia then up through Indonesia to Singapore. The last leg of the trip will see them motor across the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and up into the Mediterranean.

Because of the need for good levels of sunlight the Türanor’s navigators are in constant touch with weather forecasters in France who advise of the best routing taking into account areas of clear skies and maximum solar energy.

The boat is capable of a cruising speed of around 7 to 8 knots – the speed of an oil tanker and can motor for three days and nights at that speed in the absence of any solar recharging or for much longer at slower speeds.

As part of PlanetSolar’s stated desire to spread the message of alternative technology and pollution free marine transportation the Türanor has docked in many ports along its route. At each place the boat has captured the attention of the local inhabitants and has been used for educational and promotional trips in the vicinity for which it is able to carry up to 40 additional passengers for a short time.

The name of the solar powered craft is taken from a term used in Tolkien’s epic “Lord of the Rings” meaning “Power of the Sun”. To sum up the peculiar needs of this possible transport option of the future, the Türanor was christened at its launching by a young girl who, when smashing the traditional bottle of champagne against its hull, commented that she hoped that it would always have enough water under its keel and sunshine on its deck!

October 1, 2011 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events

America’s Cup World Series faces Strong Winds in Plymouth

Plymouth Hoe © ian woolcock - Fotolia.com

The supersize 45 foot multi hulls, in the America’s Cup World Series challenges, gave the massive crowd in Plymouth a great surprise as several of these flyers capsized in the gusty 35 knot winds that swept in front of Plymouth Hoe last Sunday. It is not the sort of thing any owner would want to happen to their yacht if it is worth in excess of three quarters of a million dollars as these are.

Of the three that capsized only one of them actually managed to complete the course. It was the Team Korea yacht that after an incredible nosedive managed to right itself and sail to the finish line. Green Comm was not quite so lucky as it was pushed so hard that even attempting to get some wind into the sails, it flew upright at such a force that it simply crashed over again on the other side losing their chance of completing the race in the ten minutes of time they were given to get underway again.

Fortunately, in both cases there were no serious injuries to crew members just injured feelings for not completing the race successfully even though they were initially doing well. Righting lines to assist with getting the boat the right way up are not compulsory but Team Korea had them in place which most likely saved the day for them.

The series is nearing the semi finals stage after the spectacular event last Sunday and there were a couple of surprises in store when both the two Oracle yachts were beaten by contenders today. Oracle Racing Spithill was to see its last day on the water when Team Korea grabbed the opportunity to take the lead when one of the crew members was attempting to release a jammed jib. Once passing Spithill there was no turning back as they raced to the finish line to take a position in the coming semi final round where they will perform in three races against Artemis Racing. Team Korea had earlier in the day scored three straight wins against the China Team so things are certainly looking good for them

Team New Zealand and Oracle Racing Coutts brought two team captains, who have a long history as former team mates, into the limelight as they raced in the first of the semi finals. This was another knock out for Oracle as Team New Zealand in the third race broke the tie to win outright.

These massive multihull racing yachts are certainly putting on an interesting show for spectators as they line the Hoe in Plymouth to gain good vantage points to watch the yachts going through their paces.

The experience that the yachts and crews are getting in the unpredictable seas that the North Atlantic can brew up is helping to prepare them for the larger million dollar multihull versions that will be sailing in the Louis Vuitton knock out and the final in San Francisco in 2013.

America’s Cup lead up races and challenges are becoming a very popular spectator sport attracting such large crowds that it is providing a much needed boost to host cities’ economies. Hundreds of jobs are expected to be created around the America’s Cup when the challenging boat will meet the defending boat in San Francisco in 2013. More strong winds are expected this weekend and the race organizers are contemplating a course change so that the multi hulls can make the most out of the conditions out on the water,

September 17, 2011 | Alison Williams

Maritime News and Events