Letter to the Editor, Globe and Mail

from Pintal, Hamilton, Ont

In The 1998 Sydney Hobart race only forty four yachts completed the race out of a hundred and fourteen starters. Six yachts were abandoned with the loss of six lives and fifty one crew members rescued . Because of the human tragedy angle the world wire services carried the story and the Globe and Mail which never reports yacht racing ran the story, and wrote a singularly misinformed editorial about thrill seeking. Ocean yacht racing can be dangerous, just as motor racing, climbing and skiing are. However a look at the statistics and compare the number of offshore yacht races held and numbers competing, with the injury and death toll. It is extremely low, considering the extreme conditions that can be met. Ocean racing doesn’t rate as an extreme sport in insurance terms, and is run under very tight safety rules, Special Regulations Governing Offshore Racing drafted by the Offshore Racing Council (ORC).

After the tragedy of the Fastnet race in 1979 where nineteen sailors lost their lives, the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) set up an inquiry to find out why so many life rafts failed, boats capsized and were abandoned then to be recovered still floating after the race. I was one of the eighteen odd that were swept over board but was fortunate in that my safety line held. From that storm life rafts were completely redesigned, weather forecasters learnt about the storm centers within a storm. Safety harnesses, clips and anchorages were redesigned. Stability rules were redrafted for yachts. Search and rescue services learnt about hypothermia caused by the way people were taken out of the water and laid in the helicopter (the angle of the helicopter caused the cold blood to rush down to the head and kill the casualty, so people who were alive in the water died on the way to safety). All these lessons were learnt from the results of the RORC inquiry, also techniques of how to handle boats in heavy weather were reappraised.

This is the purpose of the inquiry set up by the organisers of the Sydney Hobart. It will hopefully yield similar data that can be used to update techniques and reassess safety gear. Prior the Fastnet storm life rafts were disintegrating but no one survived or saw the results to report back. Even the loss of the Titanic benefitted safety by causing the International Ice Patrol, sufficient number of lifeboats and proper watertight bulkheads.

But the lesson the media hasn’t learnt is to run headlines such as “the sea littered with life rafts” causes undue stress on anyone who knows or is related to some one on the race, this isn’t like an air disaster that the casualty list can be derived in a matter of hours, even with modern communications which weren’t available in `79, it still takes a couple of days to assess the damage.

As for who’s responsible the best summary I have heard on this matter is Mark Rudiger navigator of the winning yacht SAYONARA and ex Whitbread Round the World race veteran in an interview with Stephen Pizzo of Quokka Sports, “Even though there is a lot of flack coming out against the race organiser’s here at the Sydney Hobart from what I can see in my opinion and a lot of years in ocean racing I think they did everything they could do, their standards are very high and had excellent communications set up and the rescue efforts were very well organised, its just the nature of ocean racing, things are going to happen like that you can’t really hold anybody responsible other than yourself ”.

7 Jan 99
Not published