Ship Wreck - long version
Detailed Account of events (as per the captain log):
Some day in July in 2006...
Double reefed main for the night as we are going through regular squall passages. 15 knots of wind. Beating at 4-5 knots. Course 350 degrees N. Sunny days, calm seas. About 450 miles off the Big Island, 500 miles off our starting point, Kanehoe Bay.
10am boat time (PST): I go off watch after 4 hrs on deck and get ready for a well deserved rest. 10 minutes later, James (crew member on watch) comes below and tell us that whale were spotted about 1 mile ahead of the boat on starboard. I go out in time to see spouts of water. We alter our course to stay clear off the whales. 10 minutes later, James calls again to get us to see a pod of 4 whales behind the boat on port side, about 3-4 boat lengths. I take a look at the whale, we take a few pictures and I go back below to sleep. James and David (watch captain) bring the boat back on course.
10:30am boat time (PST): I am dozing off when I hear a big "BANG" and feel the boat shake. My first thought is that we have hit a submerged container. I hear that 10,000 of them are lost at sea every year and they take a while to sink. Watch crew looks up thinking that something is wrong with the rigging (mast, forestay, etc...) - in their peripheral vision, they see the fin of a whale disappearing under the boat. I jump out of my bunk to check it out.
I go to the bow which is where the noise was coming from. I see a crack in the hull at floor board level (below the water line). I call out "we have a leak". This looks repairable with epoxy. I try to bring the two sides of the cracked hull together and press against it to try to plug it. The water flow doesn't seem to stop. I push aside the lines that were dangling off a bungee in this area. I then face a 3x4 ft (or more) hole in the hull. We are taking on water. I call out "we have a hole in the boat". The skipper comes to the bow to check this out. The hole extends from just underneath the foredeck all the way down to the floor board at our feet.
The skipper gives us orders to contain the leak, goes to the radio and issues MayDay calls every 5 minutes. We start the engine in neutral to charge up the hand held radio and the satellite phone (as well as use the engine water system to pump out water). No one is picking up the Mayday calls, which probably means that no one is within VHF range.
I am pressing a sail bag against the hole to try to limit the water intake from the inside. I secure this with bungees and lines. We have the bilge pump going and James is activating the manual pump. The watch captain (David) and I bring the jib #4 (small headsail) on deck and try to patch the hole from the outside of the boat. We attach the head of the sail to the rail on the starboard side, have the sail go under the boat, in front of the hole and tie it up at the mast/stanchion on the port side. This is not water tight but helping a little bit reduce the water flow. James abandon the manual pump, and join David and myself for a bucket line to bail out water. The owner is still trying to contact someone on the VHF single-banded radio. He also sets off the EPIRB, the emergency beacon. This sends a signal via satellite to the coast guard with the name of the vessel and the last recorded position off the boat GPS.
After about 30 minutes of battle against flooding, we have water at knee level, and it is still rising. Our plugs don't seem to be very effective. The skipper decides to get the liferaft ready and order us to bring water and food up on deck, near the transom (stern).
We bring up two cases of MREs (emergency food), and all the gallons of water. The skipper has the liferaft ready to go on deck, a handheld GPS, and our communication equipment. He orders us to put on our foul weather gear and get our grab bag (IDs, medication, cameras, etc...) - everything else needs to be left behind as we won't have space for it in the liferaft. I shout regular update on the water level. My last message is that the bow is now covered in water.
11:30am Boat Time. We inflate the liferaft and transfer food and water into it. We transfer our bag and board the raft. We have a line attached to the boat. The bow of the boat is about 3-ft under water.
11:45am Boat time (PST): we cut off the line tying the liferaft to the boat as we watch the yacht sink. We have officially abandoned the ship. It is now up for grabs if anyone wants to salvage her. We organize watches to check for passing vessels. We have flares ready just in case any one comes within sight. We have a drag to keep the entrance of the liferaft off the wind (and waves). The liferaft feels like a water bed. The canopy keeps us cool. We are all wet and salty. We make one phone call to the Pacific Cup race committee on the satellite phone as well as friends/family. The mast of the yacht is still visible and is the only part of the rig that remains above water.
13:30am Boat Time: we hear a Coast Guard plane, a C130. The Coast Guard drops a water-tight canister with radio and sponges which James swims for and keeps us on a half hour schedule for updates. There are 3 vessels within 100 miles of us. A container ship (90 miles), , a fishing vessel (40 miles), and a second fishing vessel (60 miles). All distances are given in nautical miles. The first fishing vessel has a vietnamese crew who does not speak English. We are left with the other two.
All day: waiting in the liferaft through a couple of squalls and rising seas, although still mild/calm by Ocean standards. We update the coast guards flying around the liferaft (then relieved by a second airplane) every half hour with our new position read off the hand-held GPS. The Coast Guard are guiding the rescue ships to the EPIRB signal. The Coast Guard spot whale 2 miles off our current position. We hope that they won't come near our precarious raft. We also hope that any sharks in the area will have enough food with our 5 loaves of bread, 2 kgs of peanut butter and strawberry jam and 5 bags of sneakers that sank with the boat.
10:30pm Boat Time: the container sh arrives on site, drifts next to the liferaft and launches a lifeboat.
11:30pm Boat Time: lifeboat reaches us.
Midnight Boat Time: We board the lifeboat and dispose of the liferaft (so that no one will try to go after it thinking that there might be people on board)
1am Boat Time: we are on the container ship. They feed us a full (and nice meal) and give us water. They are en route to Yokohama, Japan so will hand us off to the fishing vessel. 3.5 hrs later, the fishing vessel arrives on site. The inital transfer attempt (directly off the side of the container ship) inflicted $50,000 worth of damage to the fishing boat. We launch the lifeboat and are transferred onto the fishing vessel in a nerve-wracking jumping exercise. We were bouncing around a lot, and we had to jump, catch the rail of the fishing vessel and hoist ourselves up over it.
We go back to Honolulu as the fishing vessel is done with their fishing trip. We catch two fish along the way. It takes us a few days to get back to the island.
All 4 people abord the yacht which sank 500 miles off Hawaii are back on land and in one piece 4.5 days after the wreck.
the type and angle of the hole rules out a sharp-edged container. The force with which the boat was hit seems to suggest that it was an intentional strike. Other elements that corroborate this assumption. We were going only 4-5 knots. If we had hit a whale from the bow, the damage would not have been on the side, just forward of the mast. If we had hit a whale on the side, there would have been scratches along the boat, not a big impact in one place. The whales that we could spot were motionless in the water. It is possible that one of them was sick, or a calf and that the whale reacted in a protective manner.
Whales are a protected species so we couldn't strike back - it is also illegal for boats to get near them. Ideally this should be a reciprocal rule. We have recommended an education program for whales off of Hawaii as they don't seem to be aware of this rule.
Some day in July in 2006...
Double reefed main for the night as we are going through regular squall passages. 15 knots of wind. Beating at 4-5 knots. Course 350 degrees N. Sunny days, calm seas. About 450 miles off the Big Island, 500 miles off our starting point, Kanehoe Bay.
10am boat time (PST): I go off watch after 4 hrs on deck and get ready for a well deserved rest. 10 minutes later, James (crew member on watch) comes below and tell us that whale were spotted about 1 mile ahead of the boat on starboard. I go out in time to see spouts of water. We alter our course to stay clear off the whales. 10 minutes later, James calls again to get us to see a pod of 4 whales behind the boat on port side, about 3-4 boat lengths. I take a look at the whale, we take a few pictures and I go back below to sleep. James and David (watch captain) bring the boat back on course.
10:30am boat time (PST): I am dozing off when I hear a big "BANG" and feel the boat shake. My first thought is that we have hit a submerged container. I hear that 10,000 of them are lost at sea every year and they take a while to sink. Watch crew looks up thinking that something is wrong with the rigging (mast, forestay, etc...) - in their peripheral vision, they see the fin of a whale disappearing under the boat. I jump out of my bunk to check it out.
I go to the bow which is where the noise was coming from. I see a crack in the hull at floor board level (below the water line). I call out "we have a leak". This looks repairable with epoxy. I try to bring the two sides of the cracked hull together and press against it to try to plug it. The water flow doesn't seem to stop. I push aside the lines that were dangling off a bungee in this area. I then face a 3x4 ft (or more) hole in the hull. We are taking on water. I call out "we have a hole in the boat". The skipper comes to the bow to check this out. The hole extends from just underneath the foredeck all the way down to the floor board at our feet.
The skipper gives us orders to contain the leak, goes to the radio and issues MayDay calls every 5 minutes. We start the engine in neutral to charge up the hand held radio and the satellite phone (as well as use the engine water system to pump out water). No one is picking up the Mayday calls, which probably means that no one is within VHF range.
I am pressing a sail bag against the hole to try to limit the water intake from the inside. I secure this with bungees and lines. We have the bilge pump going and James is activating the manual pump. The watch captain (David) and I bring the jib #4 (small headsail) on deck and try to patch the hole from the outside of the boat. We attach the head of the sail to the rail on the starboard side, have the sail go under the boat, in front of the hole and tie it up at the mast/stanchion on the port side. This is not water tight but helping a little bit reduce the water flow. James abandon the manual pump, and join David and myself for a bucket line to bail out water. The owner is still trying to contact someone on the VHF single-banded radio. He also sets off the EPIRB, the emergency beacon. This sends a signal via satellite to the coast guard with the name of the vessel and the last recorded position off the boat GPS.
After about 30 minutes of battle against flooding, we have water at knee level, and it is still rising. Our plugs don't seem to be very effective. The skipper decides to get the liferaft ready and order us to bring water and food up on deck, near the transom (stern).
We bring up two cases of MREs (emergency food), and all the gallons of water. The skipper has the liferaft ready to go on deck, a handheld GPS, and our communication equipment. He orders us to put on our foul weather gear and get our grab bag (IDs, medication, cameras, etc...) - everything else needs to be left behind as we won't have space for it in the liferaft. I shout regular update on the water level. My last message is that the bow is now covered in water.
11:30am Boat Time. We inflate the liferaft and transfer food and water into it. We transfer our bag and board the raft. We have a line attached to the boat. The bow of the boat is about 3-ft under water.
11:45am Boat time (PST): we cut off the line tying the liferaft to the boat as we watch the yacht sink. We have officially abandoned the ship. It is now up for grabs if anyone wants to salvage her. We organize watches to check for passing vessels. We have flares ready just in case any one comes within sight. We have a drag to keep the entrance of the liferaft off the wind (and waves). The liferaft feels like a water bed. The canopy keeps us cool. We are all wet and salty. We make one phone call to the Pacific Cup race committee on the satellite phone as well as friends/family. The mast of the yacht is still visible and is the only part of the rig that remains above water.
13:30am Boat Time: we hear a Coast Guard plane, a C130. The Coast Guard drops a water-tight canister with radio and sponges which James swims for and keeps us on a half hour schedule for updates. There are 3 vessels within 100 miles of us. A container ship (90 miles), , a fishing vessel (40 miles), and a second fishing vessel (60 miles). All distances are given in nautical miles. The first fishing vessel has a vietnamese crew who does not speak English. We are left with the other two.
All day: waiting in the liferaft through a couple of squalls and rising seas, although still mild/calm by Ocean standards. We update the coast guards flying around the liferaft (then relieved by a second airplane) every half hour with our new position read off the hand-held GPS. The Coast Guard are guiding the rescue ships to the EPIRB signal. The Coast Guard spot whale 2 miles off our current position. We hope that they won't come near our precarious raft. We also hope that any sharks in the area will have enough food with our 5 loaves of bread, 2 kgs of peanut butter and strawberry jam and 5 bags of sneakers that sank with the boat.
10:30pm Boat Time: the container sh arrives on site, drifts next to the liferaft and launches a lifeboat.
11:30pm Boat Time: lifeboat reaches us.
Midnight Boat Time: We board the lifeboat and dispose of the liferaft (so that no one will try to go after it thinking that there might be people on board)
1am Boat Time: we are on the container ship. They feed us a full (and nice meal) and give us water. They are en route to Yokohama, Japan so will hand us off to the fishing vessel. 3.5 hrs later, the fishing vessel arrives on site. The inital transfer attempt (directly off the side of the container ship) inflicted $50,000 worth of damage to the fishing boat. We launch the lifeboat and are transferred onto the fishing vessel in a nerve-wracking jumping exercise. We were bouncing around a lot, and we had to jump, catch the rail of the fishing vessel and hoist ourselves up over it.
We go back to Honolulu as the fishing vessel is done with their fishing trip. We catch two fish along the way. It takes us a few days to get back to the island.
All 4 people abord the yacht which sank 500 miles off Hawaii are back on land and in one piece 4.5 days after the wreck.
the type and angle of the hole rules out a sharp-edged container. The force with which the boat was hit seems to suggest that it was an intentional strike. Other elements that corroborate this assumption. We were going only 4-5 knots. If we had hit a whale from the bow, the damage would not have been on the side, just forward of the mast. If we had hit a whale on the side, there would have been scratches along the boat, not a big impact in one place. The whales that we could spot were motionless in the water. It is possible that one of them was sick, or a calf and that the whale reacted in a protective manner.
Whales are a protected species so we couldn't strike back - it is also illegal for boats to get near them. Ideally this should be a reciprocal rule. We have recommended an education program for whales off of Hawaii as they don't seem to be aware of this rule.
posted by Finance Monkey at 10:52 AM
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