Newport to Ensenada Tragedy

A 37-foot boat and its crew are lost.

A 37-foot boat and its crew are lost in the Newport Beach-to-Ensenada regatta.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sailboat-accident-20120430,0,4459970.story

Lots of bogus info.

The Spot Tracker shows them motoring in a laser-straight line at 6.5 knots for over three hours straight into the northern cliffs of North Coronado. This doesn't mesh with the supposed eyewitness reports of a ship strike (which was never reported via radio and no rescue effort was made), or other misquotes and crap the media has published. Some stuff doesn't make sense, and there are conflicting, but unsubstantiated stories, but it looks like Otto did them in. My guess is the keel will be found 100 feet down, five feet from the cliffs.

It seems they either zoomed in too close on their plotter to set a waypoint near the finish line--and that resolution obscured the tiny islands, or they set a waypoint on the friggin' island. Hard to imagine since the skipper did this race several times--and won his class once. But if the Spot Tracker information is accurate, and there is no reason to believe otherwise, they were motoring full speed ahead, and Otto was aiming for the island.

As I noted in the Hunter thread, Mark seems to be absolutely right !



-Sven

Sven said:

As I noted in the Hunter thread, Mark seems to be absolutely right !



-Sven

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For a really sobering view, click on the satellite view and zoom in.

Ouch

If you look at the track, their SOG and COG were constant for over three hours. There was minimal wind, so obviously motoring to maintain that speed.

What's baffling then, is why an experienced crew wouldn't program an offset. Perhaps it would make sense for a cruising division boat that was motoring to cut the islands close, to minimize course over ground. Or maybe a few hours of motoring were enough to put people to sleep on the Hunter?

rgscpat said:

What's baffling then, is why an experienced crew wouldn't program an offset. Perhaps it would make sense for a cruising division boat that was motoring to cut the islands close, to minimize course over ground. Or maybe a few hours of motoring were enough to put people to sleep on the Hunter?

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Or maybe they got a compass course set and did not take into account drift due to currents. In other words the autopilot was sailing the compass course, not towards a waypoint. I would assume that the look-out was not doing much looking.

It's all very sad no matter how it happened.



-Sven

Mark,

MarkA said:

If you look at the track, their SOG and COG were constant for over three hours. There was minimal wind, so obviously motoring to maintain that speed.

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I let Mike Anton Mike.Anton@latimes.com at the LA Times know about this discussion. He might want to follow up with you since I told him I have no more info than what I've posted. It probably would be a good idea to get the story straight before some innocent big ship captain gets accused of the accident.



-Sven

Sven said:

Mark,



I let Mike Anton Mike.Anton@latimes.com at the LA Times know about this discussion. He might want to follow up with you since I told him I have no more info than what I've posted. It probably would be a good idea to get the story straight before some innocent big ship captain gets accused of the accident.



-Sven

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Good Idea, There's a follow up article in the LA Times today that still seems to speculate it was a Ship.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0501-yachting-death-20120501,0,787538.story

We have now learned that the tragic loss of the Aegean was not the result of a collision with a ship, but that they simply ran the boat up onto the North Coronado shore. The tracker shows this clearly.

Our thoughts go out to the families of those lost, and we must all take note of the importance of good navigation practice and keeping a good watch on deck.

Safe Sailing,

S

Jeff Asbury said:

Good Idea, There's a follow up article in the LA Times today that still seems to speculate it was a Ship.

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Yes, that was written by Mike and that's why I thought this thread might be useful to him.



-Sven

This is a long thread, and the signal to noise ratio is getting pretty low, but there is far better and more current information here than anything being reported: http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?showtopic=134430 Sift through the speculation and little sh*tstorms, and there is some solid information.

MarkA said:

This is a long thread, and the signal to noise ratio is getting pretty low, but there is far better and more current information here than anything being reported: http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?showtopic=134430 Sift through the speculation and little sh*tstorms, and there is some solid information.

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S.A. does tend to be mainly noise and attitudes.

BTW, where did you first get wind of the Spot track ?



-Sven

Sven said:

S.A. does tend to be mainly noise and attitudes.

BTW, where did you first get wind of the Spot track ?



-Sven

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The initial reports indicated that the race committee knew the boat was missing because the Spot track stopped tracking. Eventually, after a day and a half of bogus speculation about a ship collision, the freaking track was posted on the front page of Sailing Anarchy yesterday afternoon.

This is part of what is so confusing: If this track were known to everybody on Saturday night, then why all the noise about a collision? Why were the officials steering reporters wrong? We have a woman who supposedly heard the Aegean radio somebody. A woman heard somebody ask, "do you see us," to which she irresponsibly said, "yes." We reportedly have a woman who "saw" a collision. We have conflicting reports of two or three crew tethered to wreckage, or ambiguously "tied" to the debris field. We have somebody who swears the wreckage could only have come from being chewed by a ship's prop, with no evidence of prop marks. People are investigating a tanker that sailed from Rosarito, across the race track, but south of the Coronados. If the Spot track is accurate, Aegean never made it south of the north tip of the north island. Now people are debating whether smashing into a vertical cliff at 6.5 knots in 6-8 foot swells could actually cause this damage. Blah blah blah. So much speculation, but it's fueled by what seems to be bad information given to reporters, and them running amuck with that info.

Here's some more speculation (mine); if they were motoring, maybe they were incapacitated by carbon monoxide and had no way of knowing what was happening. Kinda similar to the airplane crash that killed Payne Stewart in 1999. Cabin depressurization caused hypoxia that killed the crew and passengers but the plane continued on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed.

mherrcat said:

Here's some more speculation (mine); if they were motoring, maybe they were incapacitated by carbon monoxide and had no way of knowing what was happening. Kinda similar to the airplane crash that killed Payne Stewart in 1999. Cabin depressurization caused hypoxia that killed the crew and passengers but the plane continued on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed.

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I wondered about that, but I think the coroner's report said the cause of death was blunt force trauma for one, and blunt force trauma and drowning for the other two bodies that were found. No mention of asphyxia or CO poisoning. Of course, that could have incapacitated the skipper while the other slept. Who knows?

We'd been talking about getting a watch alarm or helm alarm or whatever the term is, before this incident. Because of this sad accident we went ahead and asked our favorite chandler to find one and give us a quote. It is supposed to be a bit brutal to be enslaved by an alarm that goes off every 15 or whatever minutes but with only one person on watch at a time at night it seems like a worthwhile torture.



-Sven

This is still just spectulation. All that the track shows is that the tracker hit the island. It is unlikley to me that the boat would break up that fast, into that small of pieces just by going aground on the north island. We sailed through the slot at about 7:30 or 8 sat morning. The swell was not that big. When "low speed chase" hit the rocks it was blowing 30 with very large waves and the boat remained mostly intact. My opinion is just spectulation aswell. All I know is, the most important thing is to be respectful of the skipper, crew and there loved ones.
On a brighter note, The Cimarron was first to finish and best corrected time in PHRF G for the 2nd year in a row!

Well, there is likely to be a sampling error that skews the perception of the wreck. If the boat sank on the cliff face, only small buoyant pieces would float away to be found in the debris field. The bulk of the boat may well be intact below the wreck site.

In my experience, and in the experiences as expressed to me by the few expressive and candid nails-tough fishermen in my past, you might be surprised how often it jerks you awake. Many people doze and recover without ever knowing it. I know many proud people who claimed they NEVER fell asleep, only to confess that the watch alarm proved them wrong several times. People usually get away with it--but not often enough.