Life stories

 

An untold story of 9/11

September 11, 2012   

Pretty amazing documentry check out the largest boat evacuation in history even larger than Dunkirk.

Back to the books

June 27, 2012   

I am back home without my seabag as American Airlines sent it to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific and lost it.. with my expensive sailing kit in it. They just called to say they would deliver it to JFK which of course is a fat lot of good. Then they said they would deliver to SFO I told them they would deliver it to my house NOT the airport!!

So why the picture above? Well that is to do with my USCG Masters License.

Basically long story short USCG won’t accept my MCA 200 ton license and when I did the exams in 2008 for USCG the paperwork was messed up so I have to do the process all over. It has now taken 2.5 months to get to the stage where hopefully in the next week I will have a letter allowing me to take 7 exams and get my license before it is too late to take the job on the Baylis. I have had to have drugs test, fill out multiple sea service forms and have people that I sailed with in 1991 to sign them (so I had to track them down!), I have had a full medical, had to get a Transport Workers ID card and last but not least do a CPR First Aid course. The last is where the towels come in….

No disrespect to Emergency University but an online course that takes 25 minutes and then a skype video with an instructor is a bit worrying. That is all the training that a captain needs apparently! The towels are meant to simulate a maniquin so I can show the instructor on video skype that I know how to do CPR. The instructor was quite cool and figured out quickly that I didn’t need the training as BAS medical unit does a far better job and instead we chatted about the new methods of teaching CPR and about AED’s and their usefulness on a boat in the middle of the ocean etc.

My book that I have been reading continuously for the past month and half. Do you think if I sleep with it under my pillow the knowledge will seep in 🙂 I am at a disadvantage as the questions are all multiple choice which having been educated in the UK is a new thing for me. I have to get 90% in the COLREG exams and 70 in the rest so I am a busy bee for next three weeks.

Not only am I busy with that book but I am happily busy writing permit applications to return ‘home’ to the south onboard a 27m yacht. Getting excited about sailing into KEP and then down to Rothera and Ryder Bay in Dec – Feb.

Moutain play

May 20, 2012   

We attempted to go out on the Extreme 40 this morning but came across a few problems that made it impossible to go out, despite getting out to the turning basin and hoisting the main. After an hour of working on the boat so it would be prepared for going out next weekend, I went off to the mountain play.

I jumped on the shuttle but it turned out to be the wrong one so I ended up at Muir Woods instead of the top of the mountain with only 15 minutes before the play started – oops. So I hitchhiked with some very nice people from Boston with two kids in their car who drove me to the top of the mountain- very kind of them as it was a 15 minute drive. I arrived only 10 minutes late.


Tara and myself at the play! I enjoyed hanging out with the Davis and their son Tyler.


This years play is The musicman and it was a beautiful day for it with a stunning view of the bay. The musical was as well done as usual. This evening I watched the eclipse of the sun and it is time to do some more studying for my coastguard exams. Hope you all had a great weekend.

Happy Mothers Day

May 13, 2012   


Happy Mother’s Day to my mum who shares my love of travel despite the rain in Peru we had a great time!


And supports my brothers and I in all our sailing capers around the world.

Love you mum you are the greatest… xx

Sky crane picks up the boat off the island

April 23, 2012   

Impressive salvage of LSC off the island and amazing how intact the boat is after lying on the rocks for just over a week.

Fitting memorial

April 22, 2012   

Devil’s Teeth

April 16, 2012   

I have had many calls this morning from fellow racing sailors and journalists all trying to come to terms with what happened asking me questions about it all. I wasn’t there so everything I have to say is conjuncture based on my experience sailing offshore along this coastline.

The press should call the SFYC who has a person handling the media and I do not wish to be quoted or have anything I have written in my blog be quoted. I have been asked to provide pictures of the people and will not do that either. I am fielding these calls due to the business I am in and I am writing this purely for friends to read and for my own feelings.

This picture came from FB of the islands where the accident happened on a nice day. As you can see there are breaking waves around the whole island. Once a yacht is in the surf zone it would be suicidal for anyone on another yacht to try and assist. I am very sorry for a friend of mine who has the image of the accident etched in his mind right now and was powerless to assist – he was on a yacht further out to sea running parrallel to LSC.

Had they been tethered to the boat with the initial wave and been on the end of their tether hanging overboard very quickly the other people on the boat might have had to untether to attempt to assist. It would have been very hard for the people remaining on the boat to have pulled 4 or 5 people back onto the boat even on a flat calm day it is very hard to pull one person back aboard never mind multiple. I have been overboard at the end of my tether at night in the Fastnet race but I was lucky as I was prompty delivered back aboard by the next wave. If you are hanging outside the lifelines on the end of your tether it would take immense strength to get back aboard without help from sailors still on the boat.

There would have been no time to recovered the people who were over the side and get the boat out of danger once the boat was disabled and waves were pushing them towards shore. With mast carnage in the water starting the engine would have resulted possibly in a wrapped prop had the engine been in working order after the boat took the pounding it did. The engine might not have had the power to get out of harm way either. If they didn’t have crotch straps on their lifejackets with the power of the waves there is a real possibility the jackets would have been torn off them.

The white shark season is August through January so they are unlikely to have to deal with this horrifying prospect indeed the coastguard saw no sign of sharks during their search. Liferafts would not have made a difference as this would also have just be pummelled by the waves and thrown onto the shoreline. My Personal Locator Beacon has a 12 hour battery capacity and sinks unless it is in a neoprene pouch I don’t know what Jordan’s EPIRB model was. In that type of wave action after setting it off it would have to be tethered so as not to float away.

The ocean is very powerful and a lee shore a scary place to be. The whole thing is frustrating and very saddening. We all take these risks every time we go on the water. It is an amazing sport to be involved in and the community is strong and supports its own. There should be no blame pinned on organisers of the event only lessons to be learnt. Learning lessons is the best way to remember our friends who died. The emergency contact information you give out should be someone who is not likely to be racing in the same event with their cell phone off. Friends should have a way of reaching your family without having to search too hard for that information.

I gave Jeff a few ideas when I saw him at the club last night… maybe they are useful maybe not.

All in all a sad time to return to the bay area but also I am glad I wasn’t the other side of the world hearing of this piecemeal.

Weird but wonderful

April 11, 2012   

I am going through a mound of twenty months worth of mail at the moment – not fun believe me. However, today I met my friends 9 month old baby Tristan so that was a great distraction. Another funny thing was walking through Mill Valley square and being stopped by a gentleman who asked if I had lived on base in South Georgia! He had been on a cruise over a year ago and remember me. What are the odds.

So one of the many items in my mail was a clipping my mother saved from the newspaper entitled ‘Penguin returns to closet’… See below

A gay male penguin has caused uproar in San Francisco by leaving his long-term mate for a female. For six years, two male birds, Harry and Pepper. lived happily together at the city zoo, raising chicks from eggs that had been abandoned by other birds. Now, however, Harry has moved into a neighbouring nest with a female called Linda.

Harry Edell, curator of birds, revealed that he had received outraged message of protest from supporters of gay penguins rights. “People think we seperated them on purpose, but whenever there’s a single bird on the island, there’s always a dash to find another mate or lose their burrow,’ he said. ‘There’s no explaining love.’

All I can say is only in San Francisco!

And right across from this is another short entitled ‘Fatal Attraction’

Let this be a lesson to you, chaps; a randy sea lion has died from exhaustion after a lengthy mating session. Mike, from the animal park in Nuremberg, enjoyed such an exhausting time with his three mates – Farah, Tiffy and Soda – that staff had to help him out of the pool. Three hours later he died from heart failure.

Mike wouldn’t have lasted long in SG where the fur seal harems are normally considerably larger than three females and the bulls have to defend their territory!

Home sweet home

April 6, 2012   

I got home on Tuesday and it has been several days of moving boxes, doing chores and two dinner parties so far. The weekend seems to be set to be more boxes a birthday party and hopefully some hiking to take advantage of the beautiful weather we are having.


I am definantly going to head to Muir Woods to breath in the smell and listen to the quiet amoungst the redwood trees. Have a great Easter weekend everyone.

Verutti Family Fund

September 19, 2011   

Just after I came down to South Georgia I learnt that Joel Verutti one of the Moore 24 fleet ‘elders’ died from a brain tumour. My brother and I have raced in the Moore fleet for the five plus years on our boat Flashman (the blue boat in my blog header). We have not been that competitive and unfortunately with my work schedule and Daniels growing family we have not been sailing with the fleet in the last two years however, the Moore ‘family’ is a pretty tight knit group. Joel was always more than willing to give Daniel and I advice about how to get more out of our boat and really was a truely corinthian sailor a pleasure to race against and get beaten by!

In an attempt to help Joel’s wife and young daughter to build a new life without him the fleet have got an auction going at http://www.moore24.org/auction. Many of the items are Moore 24 specific however, there are quite a few fun things whether you are a sailor or not including diamond earrings, travel luggage, dinner at a fire station, beach houses to stay in, tech support services etc. I scratched my head for a while to think about what I could possibly put up for auction and the end result is a talk about living and working in South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. So go to the site and see if there is anything that appeals to you it really is for a great cause. Thanks for reading.