July, 2013
I first noticed the sailing vessel Nina during a December visit to Whangarei. I was struck by how pretty she was with a little Christmas tree on her expansive teak deck and took a picture.
When we came back to Savusavu, there was a lot of talk about a vessel that had disappeared en route to Australia. She left New Zealand the same day we did, going from Opua to Newcastle. She had seven people on board. There’d been search parties out looking for her and now authorities had decided to call off the search, much to the dismay of the parents of the young people helping crew the boat.
Rumors were flying: it’s a wood boat, no it’s fiberglass, no it’s fiberglass-coated wood, it wasn’t sea-worthy, they had no safety equipment, they did have safety equipment and a sat phone, etc. Curly’s girlfriend was one of the crew, and he may or may not (depending on who you talk to) have flown to New Zealand before they left, examined the boat, and advised her not to go out on it. It’s hard to sort out truth from fiction.
We went back and examined the picture I’d taken of Nina, but we couldn’t tell what she was made of or if she had a life raft. We found out later that she was an 85-year-old wooden schooner, and she did have an emergency beacon and a Sat phone. They weren’t using weather routing, but a crew member had e-mailed weather router Bob McDavitt saying conditions were bad and was there any way they could sail out of the bad conditions? He advised them to hove to. A final message from the Nina stated that their storm sails were shredded, gave a heading, and promised an update at 6pm, but Iridium never delivered the message.
Whenever something happens to one of the cruising fleet, everyone is anxious to know what happened. There’s a lot of talk, rumor and speculation along with a shortage of real information as it’s either still under investigation and/or the people involved aren’t talking. Cruisers like to gossip as much as anyone, but in this case we aren’t just a bunch of nosybodies. These are passages we all make or will be making, and when something goes wrong we want to know why so we can try to avoid the same fate or confirm that we are taking measures to prevent that outcome. We tend to point the finger because it makes us feel more in control and less vulnerable, but I have to wonder does any one person do everything right?
We’ll never know what exactly happened, but a message sent states that the storm sails were shredded. This, plus the apparent willingness of the crew to sail in whatever direction they had to for relief, tells us conditions must have been really bad. The fact that they weren’t able to set off their emergency beacon or use the sat phone makes us think that whatever happened, happened very quickly.
A friend who has studied the circumstances surrounding the loss of boats and measures taken by survivors once advised us that it’s not enough to know what you want to grab when abandoning ship. You have to be able to find those things in the dark, perhaps swimming to them if there’s been a catastrophic event and the boat is sinking. It really stuck me when he said this as I’d never pictured being near the bow and having to swim, confused, in shock and in pitch blackness amid floating debris, to find our grab bags, EPIRB, Sat phone and my stuffed Pikachu (ok, maybe not the last one) and then try to get topside to release the life raft. You don’t picture a vessel going down that quickly, but the fact is, sometimes they do.
Maritime New Zealand filed a report based on the issues surrounding Nina’s loss and the search and rescue operations. This news agency printed excerpts from the report, and it’s very interesting reading. Iridium fans be warned: you won’t like this very much.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/10277662/Nina-searchers-praised
Our hearts go out to the loved ones of those lost on the Nina. –Cyndi
