Yacht Blessed Be inquest - muddled name delayed search

by Nancy Knudsen on 27 Jul 2010 Two experienced sailors had been dead for up to 12 days by the time a search party was sent to find them, after a radio operator muddled up similar-sounding yacht names, a coroner has found.

Sailing friends Bruce Nicholas Glasson, 58, and Graeme Eric Woodhouse, 60, went missing on Mr Glasson's 42ft yacht Blessed Be, in the South Pacific Ocean somewhere off the coast of northern NSW and southern Queensland in August 2008.

Neither the yacht nor the men have ever been found.

The widow of Graeme Woodhouse says she is disappointed with the outcome of an inquest into the deaths of her husband and crewman.

The inquest in Sydney has heard rescue efforts were hampered by a lack of communication but there has been no finding on how the men died.

Suzie Woodhouse says a recommendation was needed from the court to improve search and rescue coordination.

'The last communication with this yacht was on the 23rd of August,' she said.

'A full scale search did not start till the fifth of September and by then they were well and truly lost. It was just too late... too little too late.'

The last communication from the two friends said they were making slow progress but all was well and they expected to be in Brisbane in about three days. In spite of a wide search, nothing was ever heard of them again.

The search, and what went wrong:
The search, triggered by family who reported their concerns to AMSA, was delayed several days because of faulty information, which had at least ten aircraft scouring waters between Moreton Island and Newcastle between breaks in the weather, which also hampered the commencement of the search.

The AMSA had been led to believe the pair had made radio contact with Southport's Seaway Tower on August 27 from 40 nautical miles east of the Gold Coast.

However, the AMSA spokeswoman said that after listening to that a recording of the communication, it was realised it did not involve the missing yachtsmen. The error apparently occurred due to the name of a yacht very similar to 'Blessed Be' being radioed to the volunteer on duty at the time.

'We've actually got a copy of the tape and believe it was another vessel,' she was quoted at the time. 'We're now working on information that families have provided regarding a satellite phone conversation they had on August 23. 'That conversation said they were heading further north.'

After the error was discovered, on Sunday the three helicopters and 10 fixed wing aircraft shifted their attention to the waters between Brisbane and Bundaberg, an area which had then been amended to allow for drift patterns.

Blessed Be was equipped with a satellite phone, a life raft and a 406 Epirb which was not activated, and they had not answered calls on Channel 16.

By the 13th September the search for the yacht was suspended.

Mr Glasson, a retired businessman, was a father of four who lived on a rural property near the NSW town of Uralla.

'He is an extremely experienced and passionate yachtsman and has done many years of open ocean sailing,' the families said at the time. 'He built his first sailing boat at school when he was 16 years old.'

Mr Woodhouse, a Sydney father of three, was a Qantas 747 captain before retiring in July 2008. 'He straight away left Australia on July 9 with his close friend Bruce, to sail the 42ft Blessed Be from Fiji to Brisbane,' the grieving families said.

Whether the yacht had a collision at sea, or were struck by a sudden rogue wave, or hit a whale or floating container, the fact that these experienced sailors set off no distress signal points to a sudden and catastrophic event. No debris able to be linked to the yacht has ever been found.