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Mystery of abandoned Sea Nymph<\/p>\n
BY ADMIN \u2022 MARCH 26, 2018 \u2022 BREAKING NEWS, FEATURES, HOMEMOSAIC \u2022 COMMENTS (0) \u2022 91<\/p>\n
Screen grab of the Sea Nymph, four months after being abandoned. Credit: Turn the Tide on Plastic\/Volvo Ocean Race<\/p>\n
Many will remember the media attention given to Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiava when they were rescued in October 2017 from their 50ft yacht Sea Nymph after nearly six months at sea.<\/p>\n
The pair claimed their boat was sinking as the reason for their need to be rescued. Yet the boat was found by one of the teams in the Volvo Ocean Race, Dee Caffari\u2019s Turn the Tide on Plastic, more than four months later, having been drifting around 1,000 miles south-east of Japan.<\/p>\n
While the circumstances around Appel and Fuiava\u2019s situation may have been unusual, theirs is by no means the only occasion on which a frightened crew has abandoned a boat that subsequently turned out to be viable. There have even been cases of yachts abandoned during an Atlantic crossing that have then made their own way slowly across to the Caribbean, many of them sadly being driven ashore on beaches that they then litter, instead of being salvaged and subsequently repaired.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s natural that a scared crew, in challenging conditions and faced with equipment breakages may wish to escape, abandoning the boat in deep ocean waters is often not a guaranteed route to safety. In particular, any transfer between a yacht and a ship is fraught with danger \u2013 with the two vessels moving several meters up and down relative to each other the risk of being squashed between the two vessels, or simply falling off the pilot ladder is very real.<\/p>\n
When a yacht is rolling in a heavy sea it doesn\u2019t take a huge amount of water sloshing around inside the vessel for it to lap over the bunk tops \u2013 a scary prospect. However, unless the ingress is fast and sustained over a long period the boat may be far from sinking at this stage and pumping\/bailing out may not be as futile as it might first appear.<\/p>\n
However, potential sinking is not the most common reason for abandoning a boat at sea \u2013 it\u2019s far more likely to be a result of equipment failure. A broken rudder may seem like an unmitigated disaster. Yet it\u2019s not all that long ago that many ocean voyagers didn\u2019t have today\u2019s sophisticated communication systems and EPRIBs and so would have to contend with such eventualities without outside assistance.<\/p>\n
Given that most ocean passages are predominately downwind it\u2019s not hard to make slow progress in very roughly the right direction \u2013 a speed of two and a half knots will give you 60 miles a day, sufficient to cover half the distance from the Cape Verde islands to the Caribbean in 20 days. All you need then is enough food and water \u2013 the latter can often be caught in rain squalls \u2013 plus a tow into port at the end of the voyage.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s much better than littering the ocean with many tonnes of used plastic yacht. And if you genuinely have to abandon ship, open the seacocks to allow it to sink before leaving \u2013 that way it won\u2019t be a collision risk for others.<\/p>\n
Sadly, Caffari\u2019s team were unable to undertake salvage, but they were able to use a drone to confirm the identity of the yacht, and that the crew had therefore already been taken off. In reporting its position, it also leaves open the possibility of a salvage team recovering the vessel.<\/p>\n
via Mystery of abandoned Sea Nymph | Yachting News Update | The Business of Boat Ownership and Marina Berths<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" YACHTS YACHT MAINTENANCE DESTINATIONS RACING FEATURES NEWS REGATTAS NEWSLETTER Mystery of abandoned Sea Nymph BY ADMIN \u2022 MARCH 26, 2018 \u2022 BREAKING NEWS, FEATURES, HOMEMOSAIC \u2022 COMMENTS (0) \u2022 91 Screen grab of the Sea Nymph, four months after being … Continue reading