I'll agree they weren't certain. However, as I've previously stated (possibly on other forums), the Maersk photo showed that the air pocket would have been too small for the crew to be out of the water, hence they would have been dead from hypothermia even if they had air to breathe. A liferaft search turned up negative (and they searched very thoroughly). With the keel missing, they was an entirely likely scenario that the boat had capsized rapidly, and no credible alternative scenario.

life raft was still thatched to the boat and not deployed - it is deployable in 15 seconds so it must have flipped over almost instantly - maybe at night, everyone tied on by safety lines ...........

very sad

RIP to the 4 sailors. Tragic.

B Fraser. How exactly would we do that??!!

Will the hull be recovered/sunk or left to drift?

Rip guys, such a sad loss, but they went out doing what they loved.

It is a sad conclusion, but I'm still wondering how any of it is relevant to any thread other than JB. This is a civil issue, SAR for MPA is, and always has been, a secondary role.

It seems this thread was opened with an agenda in mind...hey, I have no problems with agendas, but it could well have been titled "Another thread bemoaning the lack of long range maritime surveillance aircraft in the RAF".

Fair cop, too, but really how many Nimrods would have changed this situation?

Your hindsight is a truly wonderful thing.

Hempy

How many "Nimrod" equivalents did it take to save the French Yachtsman ?
(and you could say helped Tony Bullimore)

5 Aircraft, 6 crews.


I am not pushing an Agenda like maybe some Ex RAF people (which is fine as I think they have a valid point) but lets say it was a RAF C-130 that went down or some other aircraft or a yacht right at the western edge of the UK's SAR area. Then what ?

JY

Very nice thank you:ok:

Matelo

Since I am an ex SAR captain rotary, plus have flown as pilot of an MPA (a modern glass cockpit one, not a prehistoric nimrod) many times, I think I have a reasonable handle on what an MPA brings to the table, yes.

You are banging on about taking the coastguards' word for it, but at the same time as this sad scenario was playing out in the North Atlantic there was a counter example in the North Sea. The UKCG abandoned the search for 2 fishermen in an open boat after 48 hours, but they were then found by chance some hours later 46 miles offshore by a transiting fishing vessel. The fishing vessel took the crew on board and towed their boat inshore. They then handed them over and the life boat carried on towing the boat but managed to sink it!

Keels break away from yachts pretty regularly sadly. But the events have mostly proven survivable. Until they knew the liferaft had not been deployed there was a chance.

"Until they knew the liferaft had not been deployed there was a chance."

That's the way I see it as well.

And once the life raft was found, fine, call of the search but isn't a life raft
designed to keep people alive once abandoning ship until rescued - or found ?

Thanks for bringing up the other case L-J, as I think it reinforces the point I'm trying to make. The coastguard were searching, based on their extensive experience,in the areas most likely to effect a rescue. Despite the search conditions, they continued until they were certain the boat was not in that area, and the eventual rescue proved them correct.
The argument I am making is that beyond a certain point, further attempts at rescue become uneconomic, based on the cost to rescue the next unfortunate. There's no point spending all your budget on a few rescues if you then have to sit on shore watching others drown because you've no money left. That would certainly apply if the search for every small boat was extended up to 46 miles offshore.

Looking at the story, there is so much wrong with what the fishermen did navigationally. Professional fishermen?No
Lost fishermen got by on biscuits - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

Fox3

Well it seems the you and maybe the US and Canada have a different view of costs of SAR than Aus.

On numerous occasions when the cost of SAR has been brought up over here in Aus the Aust Gov't has just said they take the SAR bit very seriously and that is that.

if cost was an issue, then Australia would not have rescued - or tried to - numerous people.

Your point is valid 500N, but does not weaken my argument. It depends what budget level a nation is happy with, and how they react to overspends. Both the US and UK Governments have historically not increased the SAR budget if they overspend going after the expensive rescues.
In general, the Canadian Government is like the Australian one. It goes on for longer, and absorbs the extra costs. A friend of mine used to be i/c SAR for Atlantic Canada, so I'm sure of this. Rescues here normally involve a lot of local help. The SAR guys and local volunteers generally stop at the same time, when hope is lost. That said, there are still some cases where people turn up days after the search stopped.

Yes, each country has to do it's own thing.

I think Australia (Gov't) is just resigned to the fact we have a huge area and it's a case of just do it. Plus we at least have a Defence Dept that is capable of doing it (and beats picking up dead beat Asylum seekers :rolleyes: :O)

I still think they should have found and checked the hull before stopping the search (and found the life raft), then I don't think anyone would have complained but hey, it's over now.

Loss of the Cheeki Rafiki
 

Absolutey,100% correct in yr post,....if only it had been possible to see,at that first sughting by the Maersk vsl,whether the raft was still aboard....anyhow,God Bless and thanks to all the Nations that have helped with the search after the original sighting....awesome----and it shows that money is secondary,as it should be....

The news said that the hull had been tagged so it could be tracked but that the Coastguard would not take part in a recovery. It would be interesting to know if they plan a salvage or will just wait till it drifts sufficiently close to a shoreline for it to be brought ashore.

The coastguard don't get involved in salvage. They just ensure that the wreck is not a danger to other vessels - hence the report that they "tagged" it - but what with? An AIS? Or a small GPS transmitter? Neither are ideal as the hull could still be a danger to other small vessels which are not necessarily equipped with AIS receivers or Navtex (which would be needed to know the position of the hazard if GPS tagged). I'd have thought the better option would be to take a lot of photos for the MAIB, then try to sink it. Perhaps they decided that it would be too difficult to sink, since without the keel on it the hull will be buoyant even entirely full of water.

The damage to the hull as shown in the USN photo on the BBC site is perplexing. The hull appears to have delaminated extensively on the starboard side, and there is a small dark patch in the middle which could even be a hole. In a collision severe enough to cause that much damage, the crew would have known about it instantly, and would have reported it in one of their earlier satellite calls - but it was reported that they were taking on water but were not sure from where.

The keels on Bendytoys are bare cast-iron (or optionally lead on some of the Firsts - including probably on Rafiki) and are not laminated to the hull - so the keel would not likely have torn away as strip of keel with it. Possibly a chunk of GRP remained stubbornly bolted to the keel as it fell away, and this tore away a layer of laminate with it. But GRP does not normally fail like that, and the damage looks like abrasion damage, rather than tearing.

You can also see from the photo some rust stains around some of the remaining keel bolt which is not at all healthy. The heads of the bolts which are swilled with water in the bilges are usually a horrible rusty mess on most boats of similar construction and design, but if the bolts are drawn, the threads should be dry and rust-free. There appears to be signs of long-term corrosion on those threads. You can also see from that photo how few bolts are used to attach keels on the Bendytoys due to the narrowness of the keel head - though having said that they don't have a reputation for losing keels.

The only scenario that I can dream up that matches the storyline is that the keel started to work loose causing the slow and (to the crew) perplexing water ingress, then the keel fell away leading to a rapid capsize, and then the upturned hull was later run down by another vessel.

I think that a more experience crew would have survived this. If a boat of that construction (GRP, external bolted ballasted keel) has a leak, once all the usual and easily traceable possibilities are eliminated, you have to assume you have a keel problem. Then it is everybody on deck in lifejackets, boat trimmed to reduce keel pressure to a minimum (turn downwind, sail reduced to a minimum to make-way, or even lie a-hull), and liferaft readied for immediate launch (not buried in a locker which is the norm for regatta boats). It is actually possible to sail downwind in a beamy boat like that without a keel - Mike Golding once famously completed the Vendee Globe after his keel fell off a couple of hundred miles from the finish line. If the capsize does come, it will be slow enough to have a decent chance of launching the lifeboat and getting into it. It appears in this case that they didn't realise they had a keel problem and were diverting to Azores possibly under full sail and beating into an unfavourable wind.

I have been thinking overnight about the reported "broken cabin windows"

Your rundown idea might explain that.

El G.

Having experienced a knockdown, and weather as they experienced, objects flying around the cabin during the capsize could explain the broken windows. I nearly got a knife in the head once.

I agree with Trim Stab's excellent analysis. The liferaft has to be ready to go immediately even if there's a capsize, But the vast majority of yachties do not place it so, mainly because the support frames would hamper racing sail changes (and this boat was used for race training), and putting it in the cockpit means you are tripping over it the whole time. With no impact experienced, leaks are likely either through-hull ports or the keel. It's quite possible the young skipper had never been on any 'old' boats, so wouldn't be that experienced with leaks.