Disaster struck in seconds:

[rufustr]

Sydney Morning Herald.





Disaster struck in seconds: boat skipper



November 22, 2008 - 11:15AM




The yacht skipper rescued by a cruise ship when his prized boat hit a reef between Australia and Noumea says disaster struck within seconds.
Mark Iaconetti, 41, an American, and Rob Cole, 41, the New Zealand co-owner of the $300,000, 14m, cutter-rigged sloop Sambaluka, had no warning the reef was in their path as they sailed in idyllic conditions early on Thursday morning.
"The reef is not on the charts," Mr Iaconetti, told NZPA from the P&O cruise ship Pacific Sun on Saturday after the ship rescued them and their two French crew members from their six-man liferaft.
He said they were sailing in a 12 to 15-knot breeze from behind with full sails and making five or six knots about 3am.
He said without warning the depth sounder showed they were rapidly running out of water.
"We hear a boom! Then we hear another boom, boom!
"Suddenly we were in the middle of a reef. It happened in 10 seconds."
Mr Iaconetti said for the next several hours they kept the engine running as they tried to keep their yacht afloat and send out mayday distress calls.
Even after the engine shut down when the engine room flooded, the batteries continued to power their single sideband radio and VHF radio. That allowed them to communicate with a French military aircraft which dropped a 15-man liferaft and the P&O ship which diverted from its course to Brisbane to rescue them.
The 15-man liferaft was blown to the reef but they could not reach it in the rough conditions.
Mr Iaconetti said they could not anything to stop their treasured yacht and home sinking.
"It was like Titanic when it went down.
"The boat was just sinking and sinking and finally the water was up to the level of the table and we were an angle.
"We raised the sail halfway, thinking maybe that would help push us up onto the reef and we wouldn't sink so fast.
"That seemed to work and the water seemed to stay at table level for a couple of hours."
An emotional Mr Iaconetti could not continue as he described how they watched their possessions float around in the cabin when the boat began to break up.
Rob Cole took over the telephone in their cabin in the Pacific Sun and said no one could imagine the emotion of losing a home.
"It was purposefully built for offshore (cruising), very solid."
Mr Cole said it was insured for about half its value of about $300,000.
Mr Iaconetti said the Sambaluka was a "beautiful, beautiful one of a kind" yacht, made from solid teak in South Africa.
"It was just the most beautiful, lovely boat which sailed perfectly. We had it for five years and now we have lost everything, my whole life accumulation of books and DVDs, CDs and music."
Mr Iaconetti, an American who has lived in New Zealand for eight years, said they saved only some family photographs, a computer containing some photographs and film and some clothes.
He said they were cruising around the Pacific and heading to Brisbane where they planned to work before heading back to New Zealand.
The 1900 passengers on the Pacific Sun were to get another day at least at sea after the rescue delayed their voyage from Vanuatu to Brisbane. The ship was due to dock at Brisbane early Sunday.

[The Bigfella]

Bugger. Still, they are lucky to be alive. Something to be said for forward looking sonar? Not that one would expect a reef 500 miles out that isn't charted perhaps.

[JimD]

How sad. My sympathy.

[Larks]

I wasn't aware that there were any "uncharted" reefs out that way. Is that part of the story fair dinkum???

[The Bigfella]

That's the way I heard it. I didn't here any name applied to the reef. Middleton Reef has claimed plenty - but its a lot further south isn't it?

[Wooden Boat Fittings]

.
And soundings are usually taken in straight lines for easy plotting on a chart. It could well be that soundings taken in the area have never passed near the reef (which might even be just a submerged rock pinnacle anyway,) and hence wouldn't have picked it up for charting.

So Sambaluka might really have been a de facto hydrographic survey vessel, using herself as a lead....

Poor devils.

[The Bigfella]

You'd have thought the Royal Navy would have stuck a frigate on it by now though.... they seem to have found every other reef south of the equator.

Wolf Rock ring a bell?

[paladin]

I've found several unmarked reefs in suthrin Oz waters.....and no lights at night...youse guys call them oil platforms...dog started barking near mifnight one night, looked and looked and saw no lights....I saw the %$#@#$% platform just in time and would not have if the dog had not barked.

[Rational Root]

I wasn't aware that there were any "uncharted" reefs out that way. Is that part of the story fair dinkum???

Presumably, the fact that it was uncharted would mean that neither you nor indeed anyone else would necessarily be aware of it :confused:

[Larks]

Presumably, the fact that it was uncharted would mean that neither you nor indeed anyone else would necessarily be aware of it :confused:

Fair comment Root, what I should have said was that I understood that area to be very well charted, followed by something to the effect of how current were his charts?:rolleyes:

[shamus]

About half way down the NSW coast and maybe 10 miles offshore there is marked on current charts an unconfirmed rock reported 1986. We got a shoal reading about 2 miles north of where the chart thinks it is, and did an immediate tack out to sea. You would think with all the fishing boats and ships which have passed that way there would be zero chance of the possibility that such a thing would not be either confirmed or debunked. A fella I know who has done a lot of sailing in the South Pacific says there are many unconfirmed and rumoured reefs- there is name for them which I forget.
From "World Atlas of Coral Reefs"

On some of these "modern" charts there remain dotted lines showing "possible" locations of reefs, or notes describing reefs as "position unconfirmed". ...

[TonyH]

There's a whole lot of big reefs out in the middle of the coral sea, between north Queensland and Noumea. The westernmost ones are Australian (Federal) territory - Lihou, Marion, Tregosse etc, including the Willis Group, which has an island and a manned weather station. Further out are the Iles Chesterfield, which are French. I guess it's quite possible there are some uncharted outliers. A quick survey on Google Earth would probably turn them up!

[py]

I seem to recall that many of the charts around that area and up towards PNG are still based on surveys undertaken by Capt James Cook in the 1800's. Similarly with the Joseph Banks group in Spencer Gulf-South Australia, a very popular cruising spot, but very old hydrographic data. Some of the charts carry warnings that the data on the charts may not co-incide with GPS-because the data is in fact wrong!

[TonyH]

Sure - I recall sailing in very deep water along the north coast of Ceram, marking our position (from the GPS) onto the British Admiralty chart, which was based on a survey in the 1850s or thereabouts IIRC. We were about 50 metres offshore, the course plotted on the chart showed us about 200 metres inland:D.

[andrewe]

The 53ft that hit a named reef a month or so ago, word is that the reef was not on his chartplotter. Must be a bit of discusion going on about that...
A

[Hwyl]

Yes it's a chartplotter issue, there's a warning out there now that some of those reefs are missing from chartplotter software.

There's usually no case to answer, because you acknowledge on most CP's when you log on that you agree not to use them for nav' (or something)

[John B]

I'd never heard of them ( which is no surprise) but its all well known in cruiser circles apparently ,and certainly is charted. All the newspaper articles here keep repeating the same ' uncharted 'stuff .

Mind you seeing as classicboat mag reckons a few of us have sailed over to Melbourne from NZ in november, Waione, Waitangi, Ngataringa,... maybe I should brush up on it all a bit.