Waiting to head out to Opua

The Schooner Maggie B is still in the Viaduct Marina in central Auckland, waiting out a big blow. The forecast for the route between here and Opua in the Bay of Islands is NW 35 gusting 45. We will be heading NW. No hardship to sit things out here. After frontal passage, it is due to freshen to 40 with gusts to 50 from the SW, then reduce to 25 by Sunday. Our plan is to stay up late Saturday night for the first race of the America’s Cup, cheering on the Kiwi boat.

We had hoped to watch The Race at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, which is having a supper with big screens all around, but they decided that it should be Members Only and guest yachtsmen weren’t welcome. Too bad.

One area of critical interest for every Blue Water sailor is “man overboard.” The best strategy, of course, is not to go overboard to begin with. As has been mentioned before, we have excellent life vests with integrated harnesses and super strong jack lines fore and aft to hitch into. The life vests have strobe lights on them, and we have a MOM8 (Man Overboard Module) with additional goodies. But there is lots of other stuff, mostly electronic, that we have been looking at.

Several suppliers have little necklaces that are keyed into a central alarm board and if one of the active necklaces gets more than 50 feet away, an alarm goes off, and it can even (if the system is properly integrated) drop a mark in the GPS system to show where the “event” took place. They cost about $2000-3000. But you don’t really know where the person is, nor can you communicate with them.

Some experts suggest carrying one of the new miniature digital 406 EPIRB’s (about $800 each), which, when switched on, send a GPS position and identification to satellites, enabling the initiation of a rescue in minutes. We have a big 406 EPIRB on board, but the problem of having the small ones is that in most instances we will be in a “self-rescue” situation and we would have to telephone a rescue center, get the lat/long of the little transmitter, and then navigate to that position. You know just where they are, but can’t communicate with them and are dependent on effective communication with the rescue center.

Another suggestion is to carry miniature “old fashioned” analog 121.5 EPIRB’s ($200 each) and a direction finding system (about $2500). That way we could home in on the beacon, either ours or anyone else in distress with a 121.5 EPIRB. Note: you can’t home in on the 406 beacons because they are digital and their message is too quick to be homed in on. Also, again, you can’t communicate with the person in the water.

With all these pros and cons, we have purchased two new miniature waterproof VHF radios and four day/night flares. We are having pouches made to integrate the radios and flares into the life vest/harness system. We always listen to Channel 16 at sea and if someone went over, they could immediately call the Maggie B to alert shipmates. The flares would be used to locate the person. We have the advantage of keeping a continuous ship’s track on the course plotter, so it is easy to go back over our course and know that we are within 30 feet of where we had passed before.

This assumes that the person in the water is conscious. Unfortunately we all know that an unconscious person in the water has essentially no chance of survival. So all our efforts are focused around keeping people on board and in promptly rescuing a shipmate who can be saved.

All is well.