VulcanSpirit - Mayday

Mayday

VulcanSpirit

Richard & Alison Brunstrom

Thu 7 Apr 2011 11:23

We are off Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda, having arrived on the fourth. Things have been quite exciting (by the slow moving standard of us retired folks. Firstly, as we approached a 'Mayday' was called by a charter boat in the next bay a couple of miles away. A 71yr old American snorkeller had got into difficulty near their boat (probably a heart attack). They had rescued him, started resuscitation and called 'Mayday' on VHF Ch.16 - the internationally agreed distress & hailing channel. What followed was a shambles. There is no Coastguard here, so the US Coastguard in San Juan Puerto Rico provides some assistance. However they don't know the BVI well, and have inadequate radio coverage. No-one else here monitors Ch 16 for Mayday calls. But the USCG couldn't hear the Mayday yacht properly, nor they the Coastguard, so everything was relayed by a third yacht, and sometimes a fourth when the third couldn't hear. On top of this no-one else stopped talking on Ch 16 (US Coastguard did not order 'Silence Mayday' as would happen in the UK) - requesting fuel, or a berth in one of the marinas, or contacting their friends. Chaos. And the girl at USCG was awful - clearly filling in a proforma rather than managing a rescue.

There is a voluntary lifeboat here, modelled on the RNLI. In the chaos it was not called out (but did self-deploy).

The casualty died; probably he was a goner anyway but in the mess medical assistance was very late getting to him so any chance there might have been of resuscitating him was lost. It made us appreciate the standard provided in the UK by Coastguard, RNLI, RAF and police - and re-emphasised the point that one really does have to be self-reliant when out sailing.

That evening the yacht participating in the rescue moored near us. The crew were fairly well traumatised by the day's events; it was their first day out in an unfamiliar boat, and by the time they had finished making statements with the police it was dark - so they had to anchor in the dark (for their first time ever) in an unfamiliar place in an unfamiliar boat. Not easy; almost inevitably it went wrong, and they ended up swinging into another boat. Roused by the shouting our friend Robbie from Maymio and I went to assist and helped them re-anchor in a safe location, much to their great relief.

The next day, Tuesday, turned out to be the Rescue Boat's weekly team night, and we were invited along to help with the debrief (Robbie was a senior RNLI officer before retirement); I think we made some constructive and well-received suggestions on command and control. As far as we could tell every member of the crew was an expat Brit or American. No true locals - odd and sad.

But that wasn't the end of our adventures. When I got on deck this morning at about 0630hrs I was greeted with this sight behind us:

This boat was not there the previous evening. Clearly is had been wrecked in the night. No-one else was around at that time, so Robbie and I went out to it in his dinghy. The boat was a fully equipped American ketch, lying on its starboard side in about 10m of water. It was really eerie snorkelling over it. We thought it unlikely that anyone had drowned inside but there was no way were were going down to look - far too dangerous. We couldn't raise anyone at all on Ch.16 but then as we were wondering what to do next a German guy turned up who knew what had happened.

The boat had been on land until last week. He was in the process of buying it, so it had been for a sea trial. The American owner had then left it on a buoy for a week while he went back to the States to fetch a few parts. But it has been very windy, and he foolishly left it on an unmaintained buoy:

The American owner had used a feeble thin old rope which has clearly just worn through leaving the boat drifting onto a reef - end of boat. It's much much safer to anchor than to use a buoy the provenance of which you are unsure about - but everybody seems to prefer buoys for some reason - an illusion of safety, I think.

Surprisigly the boat was floated this afternoon by two guys from a small salvage firm. Here it is under tow (note the small size of the floatation bags):