Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Major who?

Sailing Anarchy has received a letter about the Team Vestas Incident. It says what everyone else has refrained from saying till now: It was a fuck-up of the highest magnitude.
Major F*ckup
Read about it here: Letter to Saling Anarchy.

Daylight? Currently the sun sets at 1837 near Mauritius. They reported the crash at 1510UTC. As far as I can figure, Mauritius is UTC+4. Assuming they didn't report the crash immediately, they would have crashed less than a half hour after sunset. Meaning: It wasn't even dark. Scroll down for details and photos.

So we're looking at a pretty well known set of islands. It's around sunset. There is a lighthouse. There are houses and trees. Obviously the navigation failed somehow. The lookout also failed. How about the standard precaution when sailing in unknown waters: Depth alert!?
Indsendt af kl.
Etiketter:

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous02 December, 2014 14:44

    Here is a similar experience by one of our SL skippers while off shore racing in RL and her comment. The sailor is Rei and it is the seventh post down.

    http://www.virtualworldsailing.com/index.php?/topic/329-vor-news-team-vestas-wind-has-grounded-and-plans-to-abandon-boat/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Noodle02 December, 2014 15:13

      Thanx Justin. I've read it, and yes it is true that inshore navigation can be hard when it is dark. These guys get flack because they were offshore, gambling with the safety of the crew. That's no-go even for pro racers. BTW: It wasn't really dark. It was right after sunset.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous02 December, 2014 19:16

    Agree Noodle, and I wonder if more will be said about it.

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    Replies
    1. Noodle03 December, 2014 08:55

      They're gonna have to produce some kind of official story about what happened. So far Vestas claim the root cause was human error. What's even more interesting is that they are looking at reentering the race.

      Delete
  3. Anonymous05 December, 2014 09:25

    Quite unbelievable incident, considering the high-tech boats and the big crew...

    ReplyDelete

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