SOMETHING NEW IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: Weems and Plath SOS Distress Light

At some point this spring on my checklist of things I will check on the expiration date of the emergency flares I have on board. Though the flare testing I did on a few of the expired flares two years ago has me a little apprehensive as to how safe they are to actually use in an emergency situation. Here is a link to the post on that experience. That's why this year I am planning on buying a Weems and Plath Emergency SOS Distress Light  in my on board safety kit. There are a couple of real good reasons to have one on board. For one thing it will flash for 60 hours (2.5 Days) so it can be left on constantly as opposed to having to a limited number of flares that one has to think about rationing. Another reason is it requires no further action other than turning it on.  So it can be quickly left on deck so that one can go back and hopefully deal and correct whatever emergency situation caused one to call for help in the first place.  Someone has to be on deck to launch a meteor flare or hold a handheld one. A problem when one is sailing alone or with inexperienced passengers. It also floats which is an important consideration if one has to enter the water. Plus it's portable so you could take it with you and use it in the dingy too. It would be real handy should your outboard fail in the night on the ride back to the boat. Best of all it does not expire. Though it is recommend the three C batteries that power it be replaced every year. Considering that the cost of replacing one set of expired meteor and handheld flares is more than half of what the Weems and Plath Distress light costs. It seems like much better deal. In addition it comes with a bight orange distress flag so your boat is covered for both day and night emergency situations. Here is a little more on the light:

I probably will still carry flares but, I will probably use this Weems and Plath SOS light as my primary signaling device as it seems safer, constant and more convenient than dealing with emergency pyro technics onboard.

RETHINKING MY LIFE JACKET CHOICE

I've been wearing an inflatable Life Jacket on board BIANKA for decades. Happily, I've never had to use it.  Since it has automatic inflation I've always thought it would save me if I ever went into the water in an unconscious state. I thought it was the best lifesaving device I could wear until I saw...

HOT FUN IN THE SUMMER TIME: EMERGENCY FLARES

Looking through my emergency signalling canister this spring I found four handheld Handheld Signal Flares. Since it was the Fourth of July I thought it might be a good time to dispose of them by lighting them off on the shore. Seems to me learning and lighting about emergency signal flares is best tried with out being under an emergency situation. So soon after sunset I took the dingy to shore along with a large metal can that I would use to hold the flares after I set them off. It was an eye opening experience. While these flares are meant to be handheld the flame is extremely hot. They can also sputter dropping hot flaming particles about. How hot are these flares? Hot enough to melt through the metal can that I put them in:

That's pretty hot! If a handheld emergency flare can melt the metal can. Imagine what it will do to a fiberglass deck or the pontoon of an inflatable!
LESSON LEARNED: If you need to light an emergency handheld flare make sure you hold it far enough over the side so that it won't cause a fire on deck or damage your life raft.

SHOWTIME ON THE BEACH

You never know what will happen when you head down to the boatyard to work on the boat. You might get distracted in an extended gam with another boat owner talking about various boat projects or other such boat related items. Sometimes a little local knowledge or scuttlebutt piece of info might come your way. That's what happened recently after I had finished the first phase of my stove conversion project. I was putting the ladder away in the car when another sailor asked me if I was going to head over to the beach to see the seal release. I had not heard about this event but, since it was taken place just across the road from the boatyard I thought why not stop and check it out:



 The seal named Steve was rescued and released by The Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research & Preservation

Gabriel García Márquez and the Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor.

The death of Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel García Márquez at the age of 87 has reminded me of one of my favorite books of the sea. The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor written in 1955 as a series of newspaper articles by  Márquez about a twenty year old Colombian Navy Sailor named Luis Alejandro Velasco. He and seven other sailors were washed overboard along with some cargo on their severely overloaded ship. The search for the sailors was called off after four days. Velasco was lucky enough to find a raft and was the only one who survived having washed up on shore after ten days at sea.  Márquez spent twenty six hour days interviewing Velasco about his ordeal. Taking copious notes and asking trick questions to expose any contradictions in the sailors account. It was so detailed that it still makes an impression on me today and I think about it every time I hear about a rescue at sea. I recommend it.

NEVER GET OFF THE BOAT

"Never get off the boat!" are the words spoken by the patrol boats cook in the movie  Apocalypse Now. Always good advice.  The following video shows why. It was taken during the recent Clipper Race and shows how difficult it can be to get a person back on board even with a number of crew available to help. Imagine how difficult it would be with one or two people on board:

ANOTHER GOOD REASON FOR HAVING AN AIS TRANSPONDER

I installed an AIS transponder on board BIANKA two years ago. It seemed like a good idea to me. At times when sailing I've been surprised by a tug and barge sneaking up behind my at certain choke points like Execution Rocks on Long Island Sound. Situations that had me wondering now where did he come from?  Having AIS gives you a heads up of where those BIG boats are and what they are doing. Having an AIS transponder lets those other boats know what you are doing or at least your name so they can call it out on the VHF. Instead of saying "white sailboat sailing southwest by buoy X.  Also when navigating places like New York Harbor or the Hudson River it really comes in handy for both boats to make and see the subtle changes in course that eliminate the possibility of a collision. In short it gives everybody some piece of mind.
Recently on a foggy winters day off Long Island another very good reason for having an AIS transponder on board became clear. A tugboat named SEA LION was sinking rapidly off of Long Island coast in a thick fog. Captain Bjoern Kils of NY Media Boat was in the area on the boat APERTURE when he heard:

"MAYDAY. This is the ‘Sea Lion’. We’re sinking. Men in the Water.
Water in the wheelhouse. This is our last transmission. We’re going down." - NYMEDIABOAT

The Coast Guard rebroadcast the Sea Lions coordinates but, somewhere things got broadcast, copied or heard wrong:

"I wrote down the numbers and plotted the coordinates. The location showed close to Lake Champlain in upstate New York, about 180 miles to the north, making it unlikely that I was able to hear the actual radio transmission from the ‘Sea Lion’ so clearly. I deemed the given coordinates as improbable and started working my on-board navigation system pulling up a list of close-by ships. Most commercial vessels are outfitted with an AIS transceiver as part of an automated tracking and collision avoidance system, so chances are that they were still transmitting.
There she was! SEA LION — right on top of that list with a position only about two nautical miles to the south of my location. Putting down the throttle, we made it to the scene in just a few minutes, running 35 knots in 6-foot seas and less than 200 feet visibility."  -NYMEDIABOAT

As Captain Kils said after the rescue:

“I think it's fair to say that the AIS system saved these guys’ lives,” Kils says. “The coordinates broadcasted by the Coast Guard were 180 miles to the north of the sinking vessel — I’m not sure why. By working my AIS system I was able to mark the Sea Lion’s actual location. Realizing I was only 2 nautical miles away from her position enabled me to respond, resulting in a rescue, not a recovery.”- SOUNDINGS

The crew of the Tugboat were very lucky to have been rescued so quickly in those frigid waters. While mistakes can happen when humans try to get out location  coordinates in panicky emergency situations working electronic systems like AIS are dispassionate and will keep broadcasting the GPS coordinates until the power is lost. In this case it saved four lives. Thanks to Captain Kils and another boat in the area and having an AIS transponder on the sinking boat.
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AMEC CAMINO-101 Class B AIS Transponder
Garmin AIS 600 Automatic Identification System Transceiver w/ Programming
Raymarine AIS650 Class B Transceiver - Includes Programming Fee

A LITTLE HELP FOR MY FRIENDS

The other day I awoke from an extended nap after have spent several unsuccessful hours trying to get the new GoPro Wi-Fi BacPac remote to work.  I sat in the cockpit thinking about the lack of the days productivity. Then I noticed an older couple on the shore rigging up a Sunfish to go for a sail. It was blowing hard because the area was squeezed between hurricane Leslie passing to the east and high pressure moving in from the west.  Winds were 15 to 20 gusting to 27 knots. I saw the older gent start to sail. A few minutes later I saw the boat had capsized. The guy eventually was able to right it but, obviously he had had enough. He lowered the sail but, the winds were still driving him and the boat out further into the harbor. He was having a difficult time removing the mast as the boat continued to drift. Then I noticed the woman on the shore had jumped into the water and was now swimming to toward the man and the drifting Sunfish. After she reached it both she and the man were hanging on to a nearby sailboat to avoid drifting further out into the harbor. This was not looking good. So I got on the radio and called the Harbor Master who luckily was still around. I let them know about the situation and directed them to the scene and a few minutes later had rescued the couple and got them and their boat to the shore. So it turned out it was not such an unproductive day after all and I felt pretty good.

REMEMBERING THE TITANIC

The hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic has me thinking back to BIANKA's time in New York. I was living on board BIANKA in New York back in the 1990's while working in that city.  The piers that once lined the Hudson River were for the most part in various forms of decay. Some were nothing but, bare pilings poking up from the water at low tide. They were remnants of the golden days of transatlantic passenger travel and bulk shipping. Some of the piers had been converted to other uses which is how BIANKA came to be docked at Pier 59.  Pier 59 is now part of the Chelsea Piers Sports complex which includes a marina which was where I docked BIANKA for five years:

Pier 59 was also going to be the destination of the Titanic when it completed it's maiden voyage across the Atlantic. It never made it. But, parts of it did. When the rescue ship the Carpathia bought the survivors of the Titanic to New York it first stopped at Pier 59 to drop off the Titanic lifeboats that it had acquired in the rescue efforts.

I also often walked past Pier 54 where the rescued passengers of the Titanic disembarked from the Carpathia. New York City actually has quite a few sites which are linked to the Titanic tragedy. You can see a very good tour of them here and here.

For a look at what happened to the ship that night on the Atlantic one hundred years ago:

and some what it looks like lying on the bottom:

SCENES FROM IRENE PART 2 WITH A HAPPY ENDING

An anonymous reader of the BIANKA LOG BLOG posted a link to a rescue of a wayward sailboat in a mooring field in Winthrop Massachusetts during Hurricane Irene. Unlike the previous SCENES FROM IRENE this one has a happy ending. Thanks to  a lot of luck as the boat seems to have missed hitting many other boats as it traveled through the mooring field:
WARNING: Thar be salty language in the video:

 

THE SQUALL RULES!: Anatomy of a sinking.

Recently I was listening to reports on VHF radio from the Coast Guard of a sunken vessel north of Ellis Island in New York Harbor. I was wondering how that vessel got there. A post at Learning To Sail  I think has the answer to my question:

"Yesterday evening a squall rolled through the harbor with terrific force. The anemometer aboard Willy Wall, our floating clubhouse, registered a peak of Force 9--that's a "Fresh Gale" on the Beaufort Scale, meaning up to 54 mph of wind.  The Manhattan Sailing Club's Wednesday round of racing was caught squarely in the middle of it, as well as some other sailboats in the middle of what was otherwise supposed to be a splendid sunset sail."

What could go wrong here? Julian at Learning to Sail has the photos and story of the sinking along with some really good advice that all sailors should think about before and after heading out on the water like:

"Whether you are planning a long car trip, an aircraft flight, or a sailing trip, risk assessment and risk mitigation are important parts of the go/no-go decision. Weather is one of those risks that applies to all souls on the road, in the air, and on the mane. Apps abound to watch it from afar, but looking up and around is free, and there's always Hal on WX-1."

"It's better to be on the dock wishing you were out sailing, than out sailing wishing you were on the dock."

"We lost one boat last evening, and it would have been more if some frisky, on-the-ball sailors hadn't been able to STRIKE SAIL, NOW! Can't do that if your halliards are thrown down the hatch in a ball instead of figure-eight coiled on your winch. Can't do that if you hung 'em backwards."

The sinking of the Grand Republic also dramatically makes the case of why you and your crew should always  be wearing a PFD  when getting on the boat. 

COLD WATER AND SURVIVAL

The waters here around the Isle of Long have gotten too cold for swimming. At least for most people including me. But, that has not stopped me from sailing but, that becomes more dangerous with each passing day as the water temperature drops. If I should happen to fall overboard the chances of survival start to diminish rapidly as time ticks away. Ex Coast Guard rescue swimmer Mario Vittone has some very good tips on cold water survival at his blog. Here for example are the three phases of what happens when you are suddenly immersed in cold water:

Phase 1: The cold shock response – accidentally falling into cold water (say, under 59° F) is an assault on the body’s senses. Characterized by uncontrollable gasping and disorientation, the first moments can be the most dangerous. So for that first minute (1), do nothing but keep your head above water, try and stay calm, and control your breathing. The gasping will stop and then you’ll be able to work on getting yourself safely out of the water.

Phase 2: Swim failure – or the loss of muscle control – happens to everyone who stays in cold water long enough. If you’re not wearing a life jacket – regardless of how strong a swimmer you are – you will drown long before you ever become clinically hypothermic. The longer you stay in, the weaker you become. So after that first minute of just staying calm, you have about ten (10) minutes to try and self rescue. If you haven’t gotten out of the water by then, you’re not going to. Conserve your energy to delay phase three.

Phase 3: Hypothermia – core body temperature of 95° or less – takes a surprisingly long time to happen. The point here is not to panic. Depending on variables like air and water temperature, no matter how uncomfortable you are (and trust me – you will be) you will have an hour (1) or more before you lose consciousness from hypothermia.

So for cold water survival just remember 1 – 10 – 1. That’s one minute, ten minutes, one hour – and always wear your life jacket when out in cold water.

There is more info on this at Vittones Blog  it's worth reading and may save your life.

DROWNING: TV vs. REALITY

Back on land for a day. I came home to see if the stainless steel tubing cutter I ordered had arrived so I can start on phase two of my solar bimini project. But, damn it did not show up. Alrighty then! I'll spend  some time checking up on some of my favorite blogs including Capt. Brucato's NY TUGMASTER. When Capt. Brucato speaks I listen up and I'm not even a member of his deck crew! Today he is saying to check out former Coast Guard rescue swimmer Mario Vittone's blog and especially an article he wrote on drowning that he published about what signs to look for in the drowning victims behavior. Here is one of the money quotes:

So if a crew member falls overboard and every(thing) looks O.K. – don’t be too sure. Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning. They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. One way to be sure? Ask them: “Are you alright?” If they can answer at all – they probably are. If they return a blank stare – you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them. And parents: children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.

Vittone's article does contain some very important information for both boaters and those on the beach. It is aptly titled DROWNING DOES NOT LOOK LIKE DROWNING and yes, it is a must read.