www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1257483896405384&set=pcb.1257474146406359&__cft__[0]=AZXQnRLbJEjm9gh-cxCt_AieiMfkOR3-s_WytHiXkLTDQxb2GofLITUgH3bg2Fk3oWt9Zgssu-7qqBHaWdyfiAxQ6yYicH_-HaikAK-yrbCog7D5gqq9OMpZaWwFmUQtJo3zbguQQCc-ugDuAmYwzwbUWFHj0eLFbBoF00ntdiwJu8RBQCSpdtdK9IluQ3Dvqd_KDijgmukuQUNf1kdNxjVi&__tn__=*b2H-R

It would be great to find out the cause of these groundings.

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tobz said..
It would be great to find out the cause of these groundings.

Lack of water?

I know, I know...hat... coat!

Edit. If I had to take a WAG, one vote for being overcanvassed.
Coulda been enjoying a two sail reach, breeze goes up and you jam the headsail furler.
Or under single headsail, got overcanvassed, hoisted the staysail to dump the heady and then jammed the headsail furler.
The main looks weird being way off the boom like that,
It's easy for sails to overpower rudder. Being overcanvassed just sucks, it just takes away all of your options.
Or someone was just human and screwed up reading the chart!

I was explaining to someone the other day how amazing it is that when you're covering a large distance at not much more than walking pace, things seem to happen incredibly quickly.

One minute you're nipping below to stick the kettle one, the next minute BANG..

Would have been a reasonable bump with all that canvas up!

Lady Elliot resort fb page has updates of the recovery.

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tobz said..
It would be great to find out the cause of these groundings.

I am going to put it down to incompetence. There is no justification for running into a large coral island. If you are too tired, that is your fault, if you got over awed by conditions, that is your fault, if you went below and didn't notice - again your fault, if you didn't plan well - your fault. It really is not rocket science.

Everything that happens on my boat is my fault because I am the skipper. The wonderful thing about sailing or hiking or canyoning or rock climbing is that we have freedom. Freedom to do what we want and also the freedom to be totally in charge of our lives. If we are in charge then whatever happens to us is our fault.

We went out to Musgrave 25 years ago after waiting three days in Bundy because the weather was nasty. We did washing and school work whilst we waited for the well forecast blow to fade. When we got to Musgrave there were TWO yachts on the reef - pushed up there during the well forecast blow. The skippers lost their boats because of their faulty gamble to stay.

I would love to know why there seems to be an increase in single handed boats running up on Queensland shores recently. Maybe age, over confidence or too large a boat for singlehanders. The boat on Double Island point didn't even have its anchor down in the shots I saw of it. I don't get it.

But the reason is - the skipper stuffed up. That is the only thing we know for sure and it is a great thing to be able to be totally responsible offshore - except total freedom is not so good when it goes bad.

cheers

Phil

I think that's a fairly harsh and simplistic view of it all.
Being 'at fault' is probably arguably accurate enough, but none of what you said necessarily makes someone incompetent.
I once came across a grounded boat after the singlehanded skipper had a medical episode. That wasn't his fault (or was it, I didn't know his diet).

sometimes **** just happens.

The second photo is Cook Island and there were a couple aboard.
Beside that most (not all) the groundings we have seen have been single handed.
Even a single hander can heave to or head offshore under trying situations.
Besides the number of people aboard the other common point is age.
They were all over 70.
As an aside, I am over 70 and take these situations as a warning.
gary

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Toph said..
I think that's a fairly harsh and simplistic view of it all.
Being 'at fault' is probably arguably accurate enough, but none of what you said necessarily makes someone incompetent.
I once came across a grounded boat after the singlehanded skipper had a medical episode. That wasn't his fault (or was it, I didn't know his diet).

sometimes **** just happens.

It certainly is simplistic - but I think it the fault part is accurate. It has to do with the swiss cheese model of bad things happening. I can agree the incompetence seems harsh - but that is nothing compared to what I would call myself if I pushed my lovely cruising yacht onto a reef.

In rock climbing, canyoning and sailing accidents, there is always a cascade of issues that cause an accident. It is like having layers of swiss cheese slices on top of each other. Usually it is not possible to push a finger through the stack of slices, but in some cases, all of the layers will have holes that line up for some reason.

This is when bad stuff happens, when the universe lines up. So if I ever get down to the last layer of defense before bad stuff happens, that is on me for being stupid. If someone drags on me - did I check them anchoring, did I move when someone anchored poorly, did I get up when the wind changed, did I anchor somewhere crowded when there were other places, did I do all the potential ways of saving my boat from being hurt. Avoiding bad stuff is still on me.

I really believe that good seamanship is about predicting how bad things could happen on your boat - a crewman with standing to leeward of a boom, or sailing by the lee, putting a hand near a kite sheet block being trimmed, plotting a waypoint on the GPS without sufficient room for errors, staying in the cockpit with poor visibility when closing the land, designing a dodger for your boat that limits your visibility, having a roller furler that is stiff, or an engine that doesn't start at first push. The better we are as sailors, the better we are at re-arranging the slices of swiss cheese so that they cannot line up. These boats didn't end up on the beach because of one thing, they all ended up on the beach because the owners didn't stop the cascade of bad choices they made when the choices were easier - way before the last slice of cheese.

I've heard of the "Swiss Cheese model" but never had a decent explanation. That was good.

What should be borne in mind is that the phenomenon here is not that there is a large number of groundings.

The phenomenon is that thanks to modern technology every single grounding all over our entire country is delivered to your mobile phone screen before they've even pulled the boat off the beach.
Thanks possibly to the social media policies of the people involved in either the rescue, who want public money, or the recovery crew who are running a business.

50 years ago these were potentially far more common, but even had they made the local paper it is unlikely we would be reading about them in Melbourne, for example..

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JonE said..
I've heard of the "Swiss Cheese model" but never had a decent explanation. That was good.

What should be borne in mind is that the phenomenon here is not that there is a large number of groundings.

The phenomenon is that thanks to modern technology every single grounding all over our entire country is delivered to your mobile phone screen before they've even pulled the boat off the beach.
Thanks possibly to the social media policies of the people involved in either the rescue, who want public money, or the recovery crew who are running a business.

50 years ago these were potentially far more common, but even had they made the local paper it is unlikely we would be reading about them in Melbourne, for example..

In years gone by there was far less traffic & far less tech to rely on

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Kankama said..

Toph said..
I think that's a fairly harsh and simplistic view of it all.
Being 'at fault' is probably arguably accurate enough, but none of what you said necessarily makes someone incompetent.
I once came across a grounded boat after the singlehanded skipper had a medical episode. That wasn't his fault (or was it, I didn't know his diet).

sometimes **** just happens.

It certainly is simplistic - but I think it the fault part is accurate. It has to do with the swiss cheese model of bad things happening. I can agree the incompetence seems harsh - but that is nothing compared to what I would call myself if I pushed my lovely cruising yacht onto a reef.

In rock climbing, canyoning and sailing accidents, there is always a cascade of issues that cause an accident. It is like having layers of swiss cheese slices on top of each other. Usually it is not possible to push a finger through the stack of slices, but in some cases, all of the layers will have holes that line up for some reason.

This is when bad stuff happens, when the universe lines up. So if I ever get down to the last layer of defense before bad stuff happens, that is on me for being stupid. If someone drags on me - did I check them anchoring, did I move when someone anchored poorly, did I get up when the wind changed, did I anchor somewhere crowded when there were other places, did I do all the potential ways of saving my boat from being hurt. Avoiding bad stuff is still on me.

I really believe that good seamanship is about predicting how bad things could happen on your boat - a crewman with standing to leeward of a boom, or sailing by the lee, putting a hand near a kite sheet block being trimmed, plotting a waypoint on the GPS without sufficient room for errors, staying in the cockpit with poor visibility when closing the land, designing a dodger for your boat that limits your visibility, having a roller furler that is stiff, or an engine that doesn't start at first push. The better we are as sailors, the better we are at re-arranging the slices of swiss cheese so that they cannot line up. These boats didn't end up on the beach because of one thing, they all ended up on the beach because the owners didn't stop the cascade of bad choices they made when the choices were easier - way before the last slice of cheese.

A very good explanation. In a past life I had a role in Navy aviation which included authorising guys to go flying. Sometimes it involved less experienced aircrew in poor conditions doing difficult flying e.g. landing a helicopter on the back of a destroyer in marginal weather.
We had to think through the risks using Swiss cheese thinking. What were the consequences if the train of possibilities lined up, what was the likelihood of them lining up. What could be done to stop them lining up to mitigate the likelihood of it happening and how do we mitigate the consequences if we couldn't stop the events lining up.When I started sailing the same thinking was appropriate. In my view it is the skipper who is responsible for thinking things through and stopping the trail of events before bad things happen and, if you can't stop things lining up, how do you mitigate the risk.

"The key to safety is being aware of each decision from a forgiveness perspective and the compounding effect of all of these decisions aggregated together." John Harries

Our first night out on our recent cruise we arrived at Double Island Point about 10.30pm, plan was to anchor and go over the bar in the morning. Just as we arrived a squall came through and the wind went from SE 12 knts to NE 20knts. It was pitch black and I decided to stand off, tbh I didn't know what to do, I thought we may have to stand off all night. I just wasn't prepared to go into a new anchorage on a lee shore in the pitch black with little chance of escape should something go wrong.

It's nice to think it was smarts and good seamanship but really it was fear, fear of something going wrong and ending up on the beach. As it turned out the squall went away and the normal wind returned so we motored in carefully and dropped anchor and all was well.

I think the quote at the top is a good one.

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JonE said..
I've heard of the "Swiss Cheese model" but never had a decent explanation. That was good.

What should be borne in mind is that the phenomenon here is not that there is a large number of groundings.

The phenomenon is that thanks to modern technology every single grounding all over our entire country is delivered to your mobile phone screen before they've even pulled the boat off the beach.
Thanks possibly to the social media policies of the people involved in either the rescue, who want public money, or the recovery crew who are running a business.

50 years ago these were potentially far more common, but even had they made the local paper it is unlikely we would be reading about them in Melbourne, for example..

30 to 50 years ago there were still agencies looking for publicity, there were news syndicates, there was a national press, there were national boating magazines reporting on groundings, and a little snippet of syndicated news about a yacht that grounded hundereds of miles away was just the sort of thing to fill a small gap in a newspaper page.

i just put "yacht aground" in the Trove newspaper archives and found a bunch of well-reported incidents from that era that show that they were not hidden away and were actually widely reported. The third response was about slight damage to a powerboat that grounded apparently inside Newcastle harbour - and it was reported in Rockhampton! The fourth response was about an apparently undamaged yacht that went aground at Moreton Bay and the report was from the Broken Hill newspaper. A grounding in the Great Sandy Straits made the Hobart news, a yacht that was towed off the Sow and Pigs undamaged made page 6 of the SMH, etc etc etc.

So incidents involving far less damage and danger were making the papers, and not just locally.

See pages 11 and 12 of this pdf file for Apollo running up on a reef near Lady Elliott Island during the 1980 Bris to Glad race - that was all over the press whether printed or idiot box.................numerous persons on this forum will have far more insights........old mate Jack was barking left right and centre at others who supposedly ran his team astray..................

cyca.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Offshore-Jun-Jul-2020-Low-Res.pdf

Main incident text as below;

Jack took his first steps into ocean racing in the early 1970s after buying the Bob Miller (later Ben Lexcen) design sloop Apollo from Alan Bond. When the yacht was lost after foundering on a reef near Lady Elliot Island during the 1980 Brisbane to Gladstone Yacht Race, Jack commissioned Lexcen to design a second Apollo. This version was distinguished from the first by its nickname "The Gherkin", inspired by its dark green colour. But before this, Jack's dream of joining an even bigger league got the better of him and in 1973 he commissioned Miller to design the 76-foot maxi-yacht, Ballyhoo. The campaigns he sailed throughout the world earned him - and the teams that sailed with him - a prominent place in the history of Australian sailing. It is fitting that a replay of a 1980 TV ad for Tooheys Draught........

The Dufour at double Island point was on he maiden voyage.