PFDs, SAR training, hunt for a missing catamaran—World Cruising news

by David Schmidt, Sail-World Cruising Editor on 19 Jun 2015 As a one-time junior sailor learning the lines aboard a small Blue Jay dinghy, I wore my yellow Omega foam life jacket with pride. At our yacht club, only the sailing kids wore life jackets, and who the heck wanted to be seen with a tennis racket when you could instead be carrying a spinnaker or a centerboard? Certainly not this one-time junior sailor! As I got older, my trusty yellow Omega was traded in for a variety of auto-inflating Personal Floatation Devices (PFDs), which relied on a dissolving lozenge (which deteriorates when exposed to water) to control the PFD’s CO2 inflation cartridge, and which sported a harness for tethering-in when conditions grew snotty, or when the moon usurped the sun in the sky.

Just two weeks ago, while sailing in the first leg of the Race to Alaska aboard a 24-foot Proa, I had an experience that tested the limits of a PFD’s ability to “sense” when it is submerged and thus needs to inflate. Conditions out of Port Townsend, Washington (USA) were “nautical” as we rounded Point Wilson, our bows aimed for Victoria, British Columbia (Canada), with 40 miles of cold and open water separating us from a dry dock. At first the pounding wasn’t bad, but when we got into big, wind-against-tide seas, we soon started shipping walls of green water over the bow and into the cockpit.

Out on the ama, a trampoline net and two crossbeams separating us from the waka (main hull), our world was the definition of wet. Each time we fell off a wave, a massive torrent of water would come raining down, testing our dry suites and pressing our PFDs to the edge of inflation. At one point, we were even placing gentlemen’s bets on whether we would reach Canada ahead of an accidental inflation, but-ultimately-all of our jackets performed flawlessly.

While we enjoyed our little game of gentlemen’s bets, the situation gets considerably more serious in a real-life MOB situation, particularly if the sailor is disabled, or if there is an injury involved. This question was recently posed by the Royal Yachting Association, which ran a pool-based session with disabled sailors in order to test the different PFD designs. The session, which was led by Richard Falk, RYA Training Manager and Chief Examiner, focused on how different lifejackets could benefit disabled boaters.

“Despite the day being conducted in a heated pool, a controlled environment with safety swimmers and divers and with all participants well prepared to enter the water a number of them found the reality of being supported by a lifejacket very unnerving and claustrophobic and exhibited some degree of panic,” wrote Falk in his report, which is inside this issue. “Lifejackets with no thigh or crutch straps were at best useless and in some cases dangerous.”

“Whilst their automatic lifejackets provided buoyancy in an instant, whether or not they ended up face up or down in the water depended almost entirely on how they entered the water rather than the inflation action of their lifejacket,” continued Falk.

Ultimately, however, the test emphasized a key finding that’s germane to both able-bodied and disabled sailors. Falk again: “The results of the day really highlighted that with the great range of lifejackets on the market, the most important factor is actually about ensuring the lifejacket you use is well suited to you, is properly fitted and secured and that you are familiar with its operation.”

Be sure to check out this important report, inside this issue, and be sure to regularly inspect your PFD. And if you have access to a swimming pool, it’s never a bad idea to test-flight your PFD in a controlled environment, so that you are fully aware of what it feels like to float and swim while wearing the jacket.

And speaking of PFDs, MOBs and rescue scenarios, the Marine Rescue Specialists from Australia’s New South Wales (NSW) Mid North Coast are hosting a practice and training Search and Rescue (SAR) session on the waters off of Australia’s Port Macquarie this coming Sunday (21 June) in an effort to bolster their readiness and training.

“These exercises are staged along the coastline each year to hone marine rescue search and rescue skills and cooperation between agencies,” said Marine Rescue NSW Deputy Commissioner Dean Storey. “This weekend’s event is a major component of our ongoing professional training program for our volunteers from this busy boating region.”

“This is essential to ensure that we have the best possible chance of finding and rescuing someone in the water as soon as possible in an emergency, when time is always of the essence,” continued Storey.

Get the full scoop, inside this issue.

Meanwhile, in the Indian Ocean, the search has been on for a missing South African catamaran since January, and now the families have launched a crowd-sourced fundraising effort (“Lost Catamaran and Crew At Sea”) to try and locate their loved ones. A possible break came in late May when a passing ship reported seeing a catamaran’s upturned hull that’s believed to be the missing South African-flagged cat, but there are still more question marks than answers at this point.

“We are very grateful for everything that the maritime authorities are doing – and have done - for us over the past four months,” said Diane Coetzer, spokesperson for the family group and the sister-in-law of one of the missing cruisers.

“However, we cannot sit back and wait – not when we still hold onto the hope that Jaryd, Reg and Anthony have somehow made it through this nightmare and are alive in the hull,” continued Coetzer. “We urgently need to establish if this is indeed the hull of the catamaran our loved ones were sailing to Phuket, if anyone has survived in the hull, and whether the life-raft has been deployed… We will do anything we can to find our guys.”

Get the full story, inside this issue, and learn more about how you can help fund this search-and-rescue effort.

Also inside, learn more about the “Sports England” campaign to get more girls out sailing, find out about the Salty Dog July Fourth Rendezvous, which is set to take place in Bristol, Rhode Island (USA), and learn more about the dangerous conditions that have been hammering the coast of Australia’s NSW.

May the four winds blow you safely home,