Imagine this scene: you are sailing a small yacht in big seas, ripping winds of ~ 80 knots (90 mph / 150 kph), and there is ice in the water. At -10°C, every crashing wave sprays your rigging, which then freezes and makes your yacht top heavy and ever more prone to capsizing. There's no visibility, so you have no way of seeing much less avoiding ice. No safe anchorages exist within many hundreds of miles...
Whether it was ice or capsizing we will never know, but three were lost at sea and on my blog version of this posting, you can see the only trace that was left. I saw the image and felt a chill.... the raft is what tears off the deck and self inflates when a vessel goes down. (Image taken from the Sea Shepherd Conservancy vessel - after their great triumph over the season's Antarctic whaling - http://bit.ly/fYXiKe) Know those white barrel-like canisters mounted on the top deck of every ship? These self inflating rafts are what are inside of them.
Antarctica is beauty, glory incomparable, but it isn't humane, doesn't play on our terms.
For the full story (pasted below):
http://explorersweb.com/oceans/news.php?id=19973And for a well-spoken interview with Skip Novak, one of the Southern Ocean's most experienced yachtsmen and a very good fellow and old friend to boot, take a read here:
http://explorersweb.com/oceans/news.php?id=19981
http://explorersweb.com/oceans/news.php?id=19981
Smooth seas to all!
Antarctica: Empty raft found, still no Berserk
http://explorersweb.com/oceans/news.php?id=19973
(By Jon Amtrup) Berserk’s life raft has been found, but still no sign of the three people aboard the Norwegian sailing yacht. The raft was pretty beat up. Sea Shepherd searched the whole area and are convinced that there are no survivors. The skipper and one of the crew are racing towards the coast in two ATV's.
The life raft was discovered 45 miles north of the position where the distress signal was issued and is consistent with the drift and wind.
- The life raft was unoccupied, half filled with water, encrusted with ice and the canopy had been clearly torn half off by strong winds. Sea conditions at the time of the recovery were ideal – glassy waters, no swell, clear skies, and excellent visibility, writes Sea Shepherd in a press release. The Steve Irwin has searched the area for 24 hours with dinghy's, helicopter and the ship. Captain Paul Watson is convinced that the three people on board the Berserk are ”lost at sea sea and the recovery of their bodies is very unlikely.”
- All indications are that Berserk has sunk and that it sank very quickly. The conditions at the time were extremely high winds, extremely low temperatures, very heavy seas, and numerous and very dangerous growlers, says Watson on their homepage.
No other debris from the missing yacht has been found which could be a good sign for the crew. The raft could have been ripped off the boat during the bad weather and deployed in the water.
The three missing are two Norwegians Robert Skaanes (34), and Tom Gisle Bellika (36), and South-African Leonard J. Banks (32).
The Steve Irwin will continue the search Friday but that’s it. They are the only ship searching the area.
Meanwhile Berserk skipper Jarle Andhøy (33) and his crew Samuel Massie (18) are racing towards the McMurdo base on two belt driven ATV’s (All Terrain Vehicle).
The purpose of the expedition was according to Andhøy: "Berserk is under sail towards the South Pole to reconquer the pole 100 years after Roald Amundsen. The expedition started in fall 2009 from the top of the world (Northwest Passage ed.) and will be completed at the bottom by the “Pizzageneration” that are crewing the Berserk. The Berserk crew will try to follow in the footsteps of those who built Norway; war sailors, whale hunters and polar explorers. They all grew up in a much harder reality than our generation is living in today."
Jarle Andhøy and crew sailed down the west coast of America and over to New Zealand before setting off to the Ross Sea in Antarctica. Once there they reassembled the two belt driven ATV’s they had stored on board during the crossing. The plan was that Andhøy and Massie should drive to the South Pole, but they didn’t get far before the news about the missing Berserk reached them.
About charter yacht Berserk
Skipper Jarle Andhøy has been to Antarctica before, then in a 27-foot sailing boat. A high profile sailor in Norway, Andhøy has appeared on several TV shows and in the news. He was fined and sentenced in Norway for trying to ”talk to the Polar Bears” on Svalbard.
Accused of smuggling a crew member who had been sent out of the country on charges of being a Hells Angel, on his last trip through the Northwest Passage Canadian authorities cuffed Jarle Andhøy and flew him back home to Norway.
(By Jon Amtrup) Berserk’s life raft has been found, but still no sign of the three people aboard the Norwegian sailing yacht. The raft was pretty beat up. Sea Shepherd searched the whole area and are convinced that there are no survivors. The skipper and one of the crew are racing towards the coast in two ATV's.
The life raft was discovered 45 miles north of the position where the distress signal was issued and is consistent with the drift and wind.
- The life raft was unoccupied, half filled with water, encrusted with ice and the canopy had been clearly torn half off by strong winds. Sea conditions at the time of the recovery were ideal – glassy waters, no swell, clear skies, and excellent visibility, writes Sea Shepherd in a press release. The Steve Irwin has searched the area for 24 hours with dinghy's, helicopter and the ship. Captain Paul Watson is convinced that the three people on board the Berserk are ”lost at sea sea and the recovery of their bodies is very unlikely.”
- All indications are that Berserk has sunk and that it sank very quickly. The conditions at the time were extremely high winds, extremely low temperatures, very heavy seas, and numerous and very dangerous growlers, says Watson on their homepage.
No other debris from the missing yacht has been found which could be a good sign for the crew. The raft could have been ripped off the boat during the bad weather and deployed in the water.
The three missing are two Norwegians Robert Skaanes (34), and Tom Gisle Bellika (36), and South-African Leonard J. Banks (32).
The Steve Irwin will continue the search Friday but that’s it. They are the only ship searching the area.
Meanwhile Berserk skipper Jarle Andhøy (33) and his crew Samuel Massie (18) are racing towards the McMurdo base on two belt driven ATV’s (All Terrain Vehicle).
The purpose of the expedition was according to Andhøy: "Berserk is under sail towards the South Pole to reconquer the pole 100 years after Roald Amundsen. The expedition started in fall 2009 from the top of the world (Northwest Passage ed.) and will be completed at the bottom by the “Pizzageneration” that are crewing the Berserk. The Berserk crew will try to follow in the footsteps of those who built Norway; war sailors, whale hunters and polar explorers. They all grew up in a much harder reality than our generation is living in today."
Jarle Andhøy and crew sailed down the west coast of America and over to New Zealand before setting off to the Ross Sea in Antarctica. Once there they reassembled the two belt driven ATV’s they had stored on board during the crossing. The plan was that Andhøy and Massie should drive to the South Pole, but they didn’t get far before the news about the missing Berserk reached them.
About charter yacht Berserk
Skipper Jarle Andhøy has been to Antarctica before, then in a 27-foot sailing boat. A high profile sailor in Norway, Andhøy has appeared on several TV shows and in the news. He was fined and sentenced in Norway for trying to ”talk to the Polar Bears” on Svalbard.
Accused of smuggling a crew member who had been sent out of the country on charges of being a Hells Angel, on his last trip through the Northwest Passage Canadian authorities cuffed Jarle Andhøy and flew him back home to Norway.
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ReplyDeleteThank you for making this point....
Which, incidentally, is amply evident simply from the charts (and would be even to a sailor who is not familiar with the vagaries of ice invading any anchorage -- somewhat regardless of orientation -- which is not protected by a shallow bar, nor with the tendencies of katabatic winds at unheard-of strength to come from the nearby glaciers, nor with the sketchy holding which makes the unduly deep bottom in Horseshoe Bay even more problematic...)
Neither Backdoor Bay nor Horseshoe bay is ANYONE's idea of a safe anchorage, which is why private yachts never stay in McMurdo.
... and yet Jarle Andhøy persists in insisting that Horseshoe Bay is such an anchorage, and that it was "Unlogic" for Berserk to leave the anchorage.
Armed with this startling premise, and overlooking the likelihood that they were forced out by the conditions, he adds another unsupported premise: that the yacht was considered "unwelcome" by the NZ navy ship which was in the area on sea trials.
Once again, he simply ignores the description of the interactions with the ship. In brief: At the time, Lieutenant Commander Simon Griffith described their contact with Berserk to the Sunday Star:
The ship was called up on radio by the Berserk, to ask if they had any cigarettes. The captain didn't, but a boat went over anyway with all he had, a cigar. (secret stash? !)
He described them as follows:'The yacht seemed a very sturdy, oceangoing yacht and they were three cheerful Norwegians."
Doesn't seem very unwelcoming - but even if the Berserk had not been welcome, that would have been entirely due to their having gone out of their way to make themselves unwelcome all over the world, most recently in NZ.
So armed with these two non-facts, or full-blown fantasies, Andhøy leaps to the following hypothesis (and doesn't have the integrity to confirm that he is suggesting it, but prefers to resort to waffle, innuendo and insinuation rather than deny it):
The HMNZS Wellington ordered the yacht to leave, and is hence responsible for the loss.
I don't agree with all the criticisms by Skip Novak, and I don't think he had all the facts, but I fully understand why the activities of Andhøy are not just disturbing, but deeply infuriating for the people like him who have built and have to maintain a relationship with the land-based "locals", and with the powers that be.