This week we have a couple very different videos. The first one, courtesy of the Volvo Ocean Race Turn The Tide on Plastic, absolutely screams irony. Remember the two women and two dogs that were rescued amid the fawning morning shows back in October? Well, while they have spent the intervening months trying to explain why they drifted for seven months in a seemingly sound enough boat eating oatmeal and pasta, their boat has been happily bobbing around the Pacific. Apparently neither they nor the US Navy saw the sense in scuttling the boat (which for the safety of other mariners should be done) or thought it was so close to sinking it would take care of its own sinking. As is often the case, the boat held together. The mast (which they felt couldn’t be used) was still standing, and other than some obvious water in the boat, Sea Nymph seemed quite intact. Certainly intact enough to sink a boat hitting it in the open ocean. As Tide‘s skipper Dee Caffari puts it: “We are asking you not to litter the oceans with plastic and here we have a whole yacht floating aimlessly in our oceans!” Caffari’s entire post follows the video. Talk about unnecessary plastic in the ocean…..
What should you do when you see a yacht floating with no of signs of life? Well that question was asked onboard Turn the Tide on Plastic yesterday.
We were sailing within sight of Brunel and to weather we saw another yacht close to our track. We looked through the binoculars as there was no sign on the AIS software and we contacted race control. We called on the VHF with no response and race control confirmed there was no active SAR in the area. We sent up the drone with James, our on board reporter, for a closer inspection and to get some identification for the vessel.
We collected some images and sent them back to race control and they confirmed the vessel was the abandoned vessel, Sea Nymph. Many may remember a big news story in the US, last autumn, regarding the rescue of two women and a dog from the vessel on their way to Hawaii. Well this was that vessel all these months later. She was sitting pretty low in the bow and her mainsail was washed over the side but the rest of her looked like she would make a nice cruiser.
We discussed salvage rights for a while and estimated that the race director would not give us redress if we towed her to Auckland while racing. So there she sits a hazard to shipping, a risk to islands, reefs and atolls and slowly not going anywhere.
We are grateful we saw her during the day as this could have been a very different story had we come across her at night. She was floating stern to us with no lights or signal being given out, there is no way we would have seen her. ]
I just hope now we have given authorities her position there is a chance for salvage or for scuttling her to prevent a far worse disaster in our oceans. We are asking you not to litter the oceans with plastic and here we have a whole yacht floating aimlessly in our oceans!
Dee and Team Turn the Tide on Plastic
The second video was on the exceptionally sunny and somewhat chilly Sunday past. The kite boarders were giving Meadow Point beach walkers quite the show, so I pulled out my phone. Some were foiling boards, some were not. You can get a close look at their gear and setup right there, and of course get some close views of takeoffs and landings when the waves are just right. It’s not too often placid Puget Sound serves up kiting conditions, but when it does it’s quite the spectacle.
Kurt grew up racing and cruising in the Midwest, and has raced Lasers since the late 1970s. Currently he is a broker at Swiftsure Yachts. He has been Assistant Editor at Sailing Magazine and a short stint as Editor of Northwest Yachting. Through Meadow Point Publishing he handles various marketing duties for smaller local companies. He currently is partners on a C&C 36 which he cruises throughout the Northwest. He’s married to the amazing Abby and is father to Ian and Gabe.