Posted on 11/09/2006 3:46:33 PM PST by Clive
HALIFAX (CP) — A Canadian destroyer was heading to a yacht that was taking on water on Thursday evening, after successfully rescuing three sailors from their boat as it was tossed by heavy winds and high seas off the U.S. coast.
Capt. Harry Harsch said he used a Zodiac from HMCS Athabaskan to ferry the passengers from the boat as it bobbed in five-metre swells about 360 kilometres southeast of Yarmouth, N.S.
“It was a bit tense for a while,” Harsch said in an interview from the destroyer moments after the rescue.
“Any time you rescue someone at sea, it’s a dramatic thing, but in this case nobody was dying and there wasn’t an urgency to get them off.”
The two men and one woman on the sailboat, a 11-metre yacht called La Pierva and registered in Quebec, were said to be cold and wet, but unhurt. Harsch said they were all in survival suits as they were transitted from their boat to Athabaskan, where they were hoisted aboard with special collars.
“They’re very happy to be off their sailboat,” he said. “They were cold and wet and looking forward to a hot shower.”
He said they were surprised to see a Canadian vessel coming to their aid after spending a frightening night bobbing on the sea without power.
The vessel ran into trouble days ago after a lightning strike knocked out their global positioning system and led to an engineering problem, leaving them helpless when the weather deteriorated. The crew also lost its main sail.
They issued a call for help late Wednesday and Athabaskan, which was en route to a training exercise in North Carolina, was diverted to help and arrived on scene at about 3:30 a.m. Thursday morning.
After the operation, Athabaskan began heading to another rescue about 400 miles southeast of Cape Cod. Officials said The Rochelle 4, reportedly crewed by a couple from Yarmouth, N.S., and out of nearby Shelburne, had lost engine power and its sail, and was taking in water.
A spokesman with the U.S. Coast Guard said a Hercules out of Canadian Forces Base Greenwood was hovering over the yacht and providing air support to other vessels that were headed to the area.
Petty Officer Christopher Evanson said one passenger had a broken arm and a civilian Bahamian ship was en route to try to get the four people off. The 40-foot vessel was thought to be heading toward Bermuda after leaving Nova Scotia on the weekend.
U.S. officials had been fielding calls for help all day as the weather worsened along the eastern seaboard.
A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter rescued four people from a New Brunswick-based yacht off Bermuda early Thursday morning.
An official with the Bermuda search and rescue office said the Magique lost its rudder early Wednesday. A tanker crew tried to rescue the sailors but were hindered by rough seas.
The four sailors, who were not hurt, were eventually picked up by the coast guard and taken to Bermuda.
Meanwhile, Harsch said it wasn’t clear when they would rejoin the training operation, a $19-million exercise involving an amphibious assault on a beach in North Carolina. 17:16ET 09-11-06
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If the sailboat is Kerry's Scaramouche, sink it!
Sight in the guns right about the waterline, and fire the entire battery.
Great training exercise.
Lot of folks don't carry standard navigation gear any more and have no idea how to use a sextant or a chart, or even take a bearing.
And modern diesel engines have all the electronic ignition, metering, etc. and will be knocked out cold by a good jolt of lightning.
I read about a family back in the 80s who had a very near run thing while in the Agulhas Current on the SE coast of South Africa. Bad front, very bad seas, lightning strike, did keep their engine running but had to zig-zag back and forth between the breakers and the edge of the current until daylight. If they'd lost their engine they would never have been heard from again.
"Yachters are so dependent on electronics now that a lightning strike can be an all-out disaster.
Lot of folks don't carry standard navigation gear any more and have no idea how to use a sextant or a chart, or even take a bearing."
Then they are idiots! I've made runs up and down the East coast from NS to The Keys and the Bahamas and more under sail for over 40 years. We always have compasses (plural), sextant, books of logs, dividers, parallel rulers, a chronometer (and an old $3.00 Bullseye pocket watch)charts and tide and current tables and a battery powered rdf. We've seen some bad stuff but never needed rescuing because of equipment failure or otherwise (I wonder how they lost their mainsail?).
All the old hands know better, but a lot of these new guys think that backup is a second GPS. I crewed for my sister and ex-BIL back in the late 70s/early 80s, just up and down the Intracoastal in a little auxiliary sloop, but he was an old sailor and didn't really believe in all that newfangled stuff. I was a private pilot for years, so I can do all the basic navigation stuff . . . smart pilots learn how to manage with a mag compass and a protractor, too.
If just the main sail was knocked out, but the mast was in place, they should have been just fine using either a smaller sail on the main mast or a jib up front. If the mast was gone, just a small jib would have sufficed to let them limp home.
And they definitely should have had something other than a GPS, either celestial navigation knowledge or just a compass and mechanical knotmeter (tow behind type) so that they could plot their position with dead reckoning.
Please send me a FReepmail to get on or off this Canada ping list.
> Yachters are so dependent on electronics now that a lightning strike can be an all-out disaster.
I wouldn't float a rubber ducky in the bathtub by myself, but I am also very dependent on that navigation thingy in my car.
My mom 'n' dad were US Power Boat Squadron members way back in the day, had a Chris Craft they built themselves in the garage. But then they started having babies, and their seafaring days were more or less over.
I still have dad's copy of Chapman's Seamanship and Small boat Handling, though.
. . . and apropos of youthful sailors, have you ever read any of Arthur Ransome's Swallows & Amazons series? Just fun stories about "kids messing about in boats" in England in the 30s, but wonderful children's books.
ectually, it's DED (as in deduced) reckoning.
Now that I would like to see. I imagine Lockheed would be fascinated by this new capability as well.
Journalists...what a bunch of maroons.
But the Herc does have the ability to stay over a rescue scene for a very long time and it has a small enough turning radius that it can stay in visual contact.
Perhaps they mean hovering like a mother hen, rather than a helicopter. Ever have chickens?
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