Awesome news!

This is excellent news (for once!).

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Father's perspective interesting at the end...

I just don't like the fact that others have to now go out and risk thier lives to save hers. And of course the added cost of saving her now.

I read that the inability to communicate was due to a mast mounted antenna. While I recognize that antenna placement on a sailboat is complicated due to the effects of the mast, it would make sense to have a back-up radio mast in the event of a dismasting. Rig failures are very common and a frequent cause of abandonment of such efforts. Someone didn't think through what would happen if the rig was lost.

I also heard that a commercial plane spotted the boat, so I question how effective the EPIRB was. Ideally, her coordinates should have been known once the distress beacon was activated.

I'm glad she is O.K.

The range is limited when're not using a mast-mounted antenna. She's half way between Madigascar and Australia, so that means she's far from everything. The only way to communicate with her is using her radio with a lower height antenna is over a much shorter range.

The"commercial plane" was one that was chartered by her family or friends to go find her, using the information from her EPIRB. The EPIRB is what made finding her possible, so, yeah, it's effective.

glad to hear she has been found but it will be another 30hrs before they will be able to help her out of the situation.

for those of you that think this was to risky a situation for a 16yr old to do...what were you doing at that age? what would you be doing in 1910...1810...1710...1610 at 16?

some of use applaude the attempt to push the boundries of human endurance.
i would have loved to have had these oportunities at 16. my sister was backpacking in europe with friends at that age. i worried more about here over there, than my own experiences backpacking in the wilderness at at the same time.

Jim,

Thanks for the info. Now it makes more sense re: EPIRB.

Now regarding the radio, I thought she was using Sat phone?

Send her parents the bill.

She must've had damaged or lost overboard when her boat was knocked down on its side a number of times. That's all I can think of.

IIRC, her family chartered the Airbus that flew out over the ocean to locate her. They have some money, I think.

thats what chartered means

When they said "near Madagascar" my first thought was that she is on the southern edge of Pirate territory.

That thought made me sick to my stomach. She would be out of luck on a boatload of Pirates.

Really, really glad she's OK.

She can't attempt again and beat the age record.

Was hopeful because the beacon that only goes off when 15' underwater had never gone off. That didn't allay my Pirate fears, though.

What a great thing for her to be doing with her young life.

Nope the Australian Maritime Safety Authority chartered the Airbus, not the family.




Titanic was called UNSINKABLE and we know that isn't true.

Only thing unsinkable is the oil pouring out from the ocean floor.

you're right on all points, ruf. :)

Well, it looks like the French picked her up.

What about those boats made from fiberglass with a foam sandwich liner? (Boston Whaler?)

Turned out well...lovin' that part of it. :D Too bad about the loss of the yacht, tho.

They don't just abandon the boat do they? Can't it be towed back of something?

Depends on how well the pick up boat is equipped...but yes, in many cases like this, the yacht is simply abandoned. Sea conditions in "The roaring 40's" can be awesome...just picking her up can be perilous. Not sure, she may have even dipped into the 30's (lattitude)...even nastier the further south you go.

Do they even try to salvage the electronics?

holy crap! She should have waited for the pirates...

:D

If the boat is damaged enough for salt water to get in the cockpit, the electronics probably as good as gone anyway. The sea is a cruel environment for electronics.

But really, it's back to the sea conditions in that part of the world...takes good seamanship to get her cute little buns off that yacht without damaging your own vessel...especially when she has a broken mast dragging...

(edit) Trying to put this in car guy terms...imagine the big quake happening in L.A. with everything shaking, you pulling a young lady from a GT3 sliding into the abyss...will you take the time to remove parts from the car that is doomed, greatly risking your own neck doing so?

Wait for the pirates...HOOT! Being a French vessel, there is probably a young crew aboard willing to give help and loving comfort...;)

Even with nothing salvaged, this is a very happy ending.

They will put a " hazard to navigation" notice out to mariners. Eventually someone will find it, if it doesn't sink, and it will become their legal property.
When I was off the coast of Haiti in the early 90's, we would rescue the Haitians then sink their rafts or boats.

Water is rough there in Winter!

One of the rescue boat crew was tossed overboard during the rescue, so they had to rescue him first.

Glad she's OK.

It's OK. They won't be driving a Renault.

Yeah, but Polansky might be on board. :eek:

Unless you are able to cut the various cables (so that the mast slides overboard and sinks) a de-masted mast can cause an enormous amount of damage to a fiberglass hull in 40 foot seas. Sometimes that's almost impossible—depending on the rigging and the manner in which the mast broke. In that case, not only is the whole frigging mess almost impossible to tow, but inherently unstable and dangerous.

The boat was rolling 90 degrees, or close to it, and a wave buried the mast underwater. Snapped it off.

So I read.

You'd have water in the cabin, everywhere, in/on everything.

Latest:

Not all that long ago...after retirement, one of dad's friends became a rock hound. Told of remembering seeing "apache tears", a teardrop shaped black obsidian prized as jewelry when he was 10 years old...so went back to that spot when in his early 70's and found them.

What was he doing at age 10? Driving a herd of horses his dad bought from Reno back to the ranch in Adin, California.

So yeah..it all depends on the 16 year old.

Here's the last pic, taken recently of the boat... almost 10 years after the 'event'... it has since disappeared... possibly sunk...
Abby is in her mid 20's now... a 'former sailor'...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/03/teens-round-the-world-yacht-wild-eyes-found-floating-eight-years-after-boat-abandoned

Reminds me of this:

“The yacht that skipper Alex Thomson abandoned in the Southern Ocean in the 2006-2007 Velux 5 Oceans Race has been discovered on a remote South American beach”

“To get to the coast of Chile, the ‘Hugo Boss’ had to travel more than 20.000 km adrift, pushed by the wind and the currents, crossing the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and going [to] the south of countries such as Saudi Arabia, India, Australia and New Zealand.”

http://www.ybw.com/news-from-yachting-boating-world/alex-thomsons-first-hugo-boss-yacht-found-after-10-years-17409


http://i2.wp.com/segelreporter.com/w...570b64db14.jpg

http://i2.wp.com/segelreporter.com/w...c6bb6ad98e.jpg

http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger.../HUG_BOSS1.jpg

hmmmm… it stays afloat for 10 years and NOW it sinks?

That's amazing... Kangaroo Island is close to me! :eek:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1546564401.jpg

Somehow I missed this back in 2010... I was about to become a new dad back then and was frantically trying to get my house finished up in addition to work and racing...

At 17, I was the skipper of my dads 37’ salmon troller / shrimp trawler. I fished off the west and north coasts of Vancouver Island at the time. 3 years later, I nearly sunk it off Torino on opening day of salmon season. We had taken the boat back from a crew that had leased it. We later discover d that they were using it for smuggling because an access panel had been removed underneath a checker which allowed it to fill with water in fairly light seas... a flotation compartment filled with water and it started to sit low in the stern. I was 20 at the time. I was rescued as well as the boat and 10 days later was back fishing again (my deckhand quit).

My experience was nothing like Abby’s but my point is that young people can do this, provided they aren’t raised on video games and non reality.

Oh and here is the other thing that shocks me... how were we able to find a 40’ boat adrift back in 2010 but not 2 much larger lost aircraft with much more sofisticated electronics in 2014?

Also why didn’t the beacons continue to locate the boat after the rescue? Were they just turned off when it was abandoned?

We had an epirb on one of our boats but at the time (late 80s / early 90s) these were pretty old technology.

Actually, now, they think it's drifted away and they can't find it again...
So probably didn't sink...

Occurs to me that the boat is just trying to get back home... it was designed and built in Australia.

I'm not sure of what incidents you reference, but consider the following.

Lost aircraft generally are involved in a crash, the aircraft integrity is compromised.

The design parameters of the two objects are different, the boat is made to survive the ocean, the airplane is made to survive wind resistance.