Fatal Storm (37 page)

The review committee recommended a number of changes for the race beginning in 1999. These include:

• Compulsory reporting of strong winds (above 40 knots) and high waves by competing yachts
  
• Compulsory assessment and report from each skipper prior to entering Bass Strait as to the boat and crew’s capability of continuing
  
• Broadcast of additional “layman’s” weather forecasts to the fleet
  
• Increase in the requirements for crew experience and an increase in minimum age of crew to 18
  
• Introduction of mandatory offshore qualifying races
  
• Compulsory attendance for at least 30 percent of a yacht’s crew at weather, safety, and search-and-rescue seminars
  
• Compulsory use of the highly accurate 406–MHz Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRBs)
  
• Upgraded personal safety equipment
  
• Improved race communications
  
• Handheld VHF radio carried aboard each boat as a last communications resort during a search-and-rescue operation
  

For this latest edition of
Fatal Storm
the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia listed the changes to race management and safety requirements that had been initiated since the 1998 Sydney to Hobart race.

• Commissioning of Race Committee Chairman responsible to the Commodore of the Club, who constructs a race committee which is approved by the board of directors. The Race Committee Chairman’s role is to ensure the race is run as outlined in the
  Notice of Race, oversee the fair competition for all competitors, and to ensure competitors conform to the rules.
  
• Commissioning of an Emergency Management Team which operates with a pre-approved Emergency Management Plan and Standard Operating Procedures.
  
• Details and photos of all competing yachts sent to AMSA prior to each race.
  
• Improved communication and data infrastructure on board Radio Relay Vessel.
  
• Compulsory skipper and weather briefings conducted by a representative of the Bureau of Meteorology, including one on the morning of the race start.
  
• Competitors required to communicate the true weather and wave conditions if wind experienced while racing is over 40 knots.
  
• Green Cape reporting gate: a mandatory report must be made to Race Management on the condition of crew, yacht and equipment when the yacht is abeam of Green Cape and about to enter Bass Strait. Yachts that do not make this report at the appropriate time are disqualified from the race.
  
• Stability declarations for each yacht.
  
• Proof of Angle of Vanishing Stability for all competing yachts.
  
• Increased levels of crew experience: including a minimum level of ocean racing experience requirement; the setting of a minimum age limit; the minimum number of crew who have various levels of experience, including SSSC (Safety at Sea Survival Course) certification, radio operation, first aid, and yacht master training.
  
• Safety audits must be carried out by a qualified Yachting NSW Safety Auditor.
  
• Physical sighting by race management officials of storm sails hoisted and set prior to the start on the day of the race.
  
• Mandatory radio checks prior to the start of the race.
  
• Spot safety checks conducted by the race committee prior to, and after the race.
  
• All crew members required to have a personal EPIRB.
  
• Only 406 MHz EPIRBs to be used rather than 121 (406 includes an identifier).
  
• All liferafts must comply with construction reg 15 SOLAS.
  
• Changes to the equipment required to be carried in the liferaft.
  
• Batteries are now closed or gel cell type.
  
• Mae West type lifejackets banned.
  
• Personal strobe lights now compulsory (only recommended in ‘98).
  
• Yachts required to have large racing numbers displayed on the hull, and a ‘V’ (distress) sheet aboard so they can be easily identified.
  
• All yachts must carry a barometer.
  
• Additional harness tethers for one-third of the declared crew number.
  
• Only liferafts weighing less than 40 kilograms can be stowed below deck.
  
• One EPIRB per liferaft must be carried.
  
• Waterproof handheld VHF radio required.
  
• Drogues or sea-anchors recommended.
  
• Race Management Manual implemented.
  
• Crotch straps required on Personal Flotation Devices.
  

Many of these requirements have impacted the sport worldwide. The most noteworthy is the Safety at Sea Survival Course, which the CYC established as a direct result of the 1998 race. This has proved so successful that
it has been adopted by the sport’s governing body, the International Sailing Federation, as the global standard.

One of the most acclaimed initiatives implemented by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia immediately after the events of the 1998 Hobart was the establishment of the SOLAS Fund. It was a pertinent and valuable move by the CYCA, one which in some ways was a gesture of recognition and thanks to the search and rescue organisations that had given so much during the race, and also recognition of what other similar organisations across Australia mean to the community.

The club established the CYCA Sydney Hobart Yacht Race Safety of Life at Sea Trusts (SOLAS), with three principal aims:

• To assist the immediate needs of family of those lost at sea during Australian Yachting Federation sanctioned races
  
• To provide assistance to search and rescue organisations across Australia
  
• To foster research and training for the improvement of procedures and equipment for use at sea
  

The trust has also supported families directly impacted by a loss of life in the 1998 race.

Ironically, the SOLAS Convention, which in its successive forms is generally regarded as the most important of all international treaties concerning the safety of merchant ships, was first adopted in 1914 in response to the
Titanic
disaster.

In 2000 the CYCA’s commodore, and chairman of the club’s SOLAS Trust, Matt Allen, revealed that the
fund had raised $430,000 since its inception and made donations to marine safety organisations and programs across Australia.

“For example, we have just donated $9000 to the NRMA Careflight helicopter service in New South Wales for the purchase of three sets of night vision goggle helmets,” Allen said. “These helmets provide the ability for Careflight to stage search and rescue efforts at night in low light conditions. They also assist with landing and taking off in difficult terrain at night.”

Allen also revealed that the next CYCA SOLAS project was the establishment of a “Medical Management for Mariners Course”, which was being developed in conjunction with the highly respected St Vincent’s Hospital, in Sydney.

“Senior first aid is generally designed to keep people going for 20 minutes or so, because it’s assumed paramedic help will not be far away,” Allen explained. “Because it often takes considerably longer to get paramedic assistance to mariners, this course is being designed to teach crews how to keep injured or seriously ill people alive for hours, or even a day.”

L
ooking back a decade to when he was commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, and to where, in an instant, he was confronted by a sporting tragedy of enormous magnitude, Hugo van Kretschmar says today it was an experience he would not wish on anyone.

“Being the public face of the club and the race at the time of the tragedy, then having the consequences of the tragedy drag on through my life for the next four years, was extremely tough,” he says. “It was a baptism by fire; one that I wasn’t completely prepared for. Now, though, if I look for the plus side, I actually think that I did benefit personally from the experience in terms of learning a whole bunch of things about myself and how to deal with a crisis. Tragedy that it was, I know I dealt with it to the best of my ability.

One contentious issue that surfaced after the race was a claim by many people – most of whom did not appreciate the fundamentals of the sport – that the race should have been called off. Van Kretschmar, like the vast majority of ocean racing sailors, strongly disagrees. “Calling the race off was not a logical thing to do. I’d argue just as strongly against it today as I did then. I think that once you’ve started the race there is no basis whatsoever to call it off. In any event it’s up to each individual yacht owner to decide if they want to continue racing.

“Admittedly there have been plenty of races postponed for whatever reason since 1998, but I think that’s equally a path that’s fraught with danger. However, a postponement is a decision that’s got a lot more arguable merit and logic to it than one where things are called off in the middle of a race. That’s something I would never advocate.

“I’ve done five Sydney to Hobarts since 1998 and I can say from those experiences that the sport is now safer – and the attitudes of the crews towards safety far stronger – as a result of what happened 10 years ago. Whether they are a skipper or crew, everyone takes a far greater interest in their own safety. You can see it these days when it comes to guys putting on harnesses. Prior to ‘98 you’d basically have to force people to put harnesses on, whereas now, all of a sudden half the crew is wearing a harness, and it’s only because it’s getting dark, or that the weather might be turning bad. They just do it automatically, and you’re not seen as ‘being a girl’ by your crewmates when you do it. In fact, those who aren’t wearing harnesses at that time have the others on board saying, ‘You’re a dope’. Guys now take the effort to make sure that they’re kitted up with all the necessary bits and pieces before they go on deck.

“And just as there is this new willingness and desire to wear safety equipment, there’s also a new attitude towards how you handle situations on a boat when the conditions get rough. Rather than the gung-ho attitude that was so prevalent in the past, where a guy would say, ‘I’ll just race up to the bow and do it’, you now hear the crew discussing how best to carry out the procedure. It’s all about safety, and I think that’s a seriously good thing.”

S
ince the 1998 Sydney to Hobart race yachting meteorologist Roger “Clouds” Badham has become one of the world’s best known and most successful men in his field. He went into the America’s Cup arena where, in more recent times, he has been the in-house meteorologist/forecaster for New Zealand’s America’s Cup campaigns. He has also planned paths for yachts contesting the Volvo Ocean Race round the world, and in 2000 was the weather router for the record-breaking run across the Atlantic by the giant catamaran
Orange.
He has also been involved with three Olympics.

Badham says that the 1998 Hobart race has become a benchmark for maritime meteorologists worldwide: “It’s seen as being the classic case study because of the uniqueness of the storm, and what data was gleaned from it.

“Ten years down the track the forecasting just keeps getting more accurate, thanks primarily to the refinement and improvement with computer modelling. In the ‘80s things were a bit hit and miss; in the ‘90s the models, even while in their infancy, got better all the time, and now they are very accurate.

“Being able to forecast the sea state still leaves a little to be desired; in essence we are waiting for that next generation of wave modelling where things will be more accurate. We need to deal with the situation where the sea state is not so much a function of the wind, but with
the swell that propagates from one place to another. Basically, if you’ve got a tight low somewhere then that’s very easy to model, but if you have a lot of complex situations where there’s a lot of different things going on – waves propagating from one place to another – then the forecast is still not perfect.

“Today a lot more confidence can be placed in forecasting for the ensuing one to five days, especially in terms of the wind. Still, you can’t guarantee a forecast will be 100 per cent correct. Much the same scenario as we saw in 1998 can still happen – a situation where you know a low pressure system is going to develop off the east coast of Tasmania, or down near Hobart, but you’re not exactly sure where. It will decide for itself, just like it did in that Hobart race. Suddenly there it is unfolding in Bass Strait and you say, ‘Oh no, that’s not good’. While such a development might not be a big thing in the global scheme of things, it is when you have a yacht race out there.”

Badham says he is all too aware, as a meteorologist, of another by-product that can be directly attributed to the events of 1998. “The ocean racing scene has certainly changed a lot in terms of race directors! They’re much more nervous these days, primarily because they’re all too aware of the litigation that can come with running an ocean race. Since 1998 a number of races have been cancelled because of the forecast, and that never happened previously. It’s actually happening overseas as well; race directors are no longer in fear of putting a race off for 24 hours due to the forecast.”

Badham also agrees with a widely held belief that general weather forecasting, particularly for open waters, has become far more conservative and broad-based since the 1998 Hobart race.

T
he experience that the Australian Maritime Safety Authority gained as coordinator of the massive search and rescue operation for the 1998 Sydney to Hobart race has become part of the organisation’s ongoing evolution of its systems and practices.

An AMSA representative explained that during the past decade the organisation has seen a major upgrade and refurbishment to its Emergency Response Centre (ERC) at its head office in Canberra, so it could stay aligned with advancing technology.

This new centre was purpose-built to provide the best possible environment for incident response. The previous facility was primarily for responding to search and rescue incidents, but the new ERC incorporates the Rescue Coordination Centre – Australia (Search and Rescue), emergency towage and emergency pollution response. By allowing all specialists to work out of the one operational area when an incident occurs, all operators can be kept fully informed of developments. There is also a Crisis Management Team facility adjacent to the centre which provides capacity for discussion during an incident. Additionally, if ever there is a need to evacuate the head office during an incident, AMSA has a purpose-built Disaster Recovery Facility sited in another part of Canberra that replicates the ERC.