Missing message might have led to Nina, farewell to Nancy Knudsen

by Rob Kothe and the Sail-World team on 18 Jul 2014 US based Satellite telephone company Iridium Communications failed to give New Zealand rescuers details of a dramatic final message from a missing yacht Nina until the US State Department intervened, a detailed review of the search effort has revealed.

The report, released this week into the search for the vintage American yacht Nina, which disappeared in the Tasman Sea in June 2013 with six Americans and one Britsh sailor aboard, said the entire dynamic of the rescue operation would have changed had the message been delivered earlier.

The critically important message was a text sent on a satellite phone by crew member Evi Nemeth to NZ meteorologist Bob McDavitt on June 4 revealing Nina had shredded her storm sails after being caught in 60 knot winds.

One can only imagine how family and friends felt when the implications of that undelivered and then unvolunteered message sunk in.

Chilling reading in our story today and if you want to understand more David Baird's 131 page Independent Review SAROP sv Nina ( the full PDF is attached to our story today. )

From a Sail-World Cruising perspective the biggest story by far this year is that our founding editor Nancy Knudsen is moving on.

After over eight years at the helm Nancy Knudsen will be no longer editing our Sail-World Cruising sites and our world-wide e-magazine, which goes to 53,000 subscribers weekly, both in the northern and southern hemispheres.

'I have treasured the many connections I have made in the sailing world,' she said today, 'loved the stories that people brought me, and enjoyed the communication with many readers who expressed their views, both positive and negative, about the articles they read.

'The cruising sailor's skills, those of good seamanship and survival skills, the ability to take off onto the remote waters of the earth knowing that it is only by your own careful hand you will make it to your destination, go largely unrecognised by everyone except others who have had the same experiences.

That is why the cruising sailing world is such a close-knit and collaborative – not competitive – one.

'It's time to seek out unknown new horizons in different seas, but I will never forget the wonderful people I met and the colleagues I had the pleasure to work with. Thank you to you all.'

So We are all turning a page today. Nancy has made an immense contribution to Sail-World Cruising and we can't thank her enough. We saw her enterntaining blog on the adventures of the sv Blackwattle and she joined us back in 2005 midway through her cruising circumnavigation and she filed sailing the Med, the Atlantic and the Pacific on the way back to Australia.

Nancy has always been a great communicator, she proved that in her early career in the televison industry and I still chuckle when I think over some of the lines in her wonderful book Shooting Stars and Flying Fish which is on the shelf next to me as I write this editorial.

The Sail-World team wish Nancy and her husband Ted, all the best and above all fair winds.'

Stepping into Nancy's boat shoes, is a sailor with 20,000 cruising miles under his belt.

David Schmidt is our Sail-World USA editor, as welll as the Editor-at-Large of SAIL Magazine, Technical Editor of the SAIL Buyer’s Guide.

David Schmidt grew up sailing in Connecticut where he enjoyed summer cruises DownEast and to the Canadian Maritimes, the Chesapeake Bay and to points throughout the New England coast.

Schmidt's cruising career began on his family's Catalina 27 before his Dad upgraded to a C&C 37, and then again to a custom-modified J/44, which his family still actively sails.

Along with his racing interests, Schmidt, now 37, has now sailed in many of the world's great cruising destinations, including the Caribbean, Europe and the Pacific Northwest, racking up some 20,000 cruising miles along the way. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife, and they enjoy cruises to the San Juan Islands and across the border to Canada's Gulf Islands.

You will hear from him next week and and he will lift the curtain on a major expansion of our Cruising content. Watch this space.