Lessons learned??

[Hippocampus]

Know the following.
There’s many places where the fish boats don’t have-AIS, radar reflectors nor even running lights. North of PR comes to mind and they’re fishing at the edge of the trench so quite a bit offshore. At night or worst in rain or a haze takes several sets of eyes to be safe. Even radar on “bird”, bouy, harbor or hand tuned misses them . Once they get under the beam on a sailboat with radar mounted at the spreaders having a zone on alarm is no help at all.
On a small boat you want to miss the ships by a big distance. Preferably miles. We like 2-3 miles from the large container ships or vlcc. Most produce a big enough hole in the water you want to avoid passing close behind as much as close in front. Actions should be done with 5-7 m off in most settings to avoid near encounters and need for major course corrections. This is particularly true under sail where tacking or gybing requires time and effort.
I’ve yet to have a worthwhile conversation with any shipping when on passage. Watchstander usually doesn’t answer. When they do it’s a Filipino, Russian, Korean or other first language speaker I’m not conversant in. The accented broken English is so difficult for both parties as to not be worth the effort. Why ask “state intentions “. Their intention is to stay on course. Why would they turn in the middle of the ocean. Their response to their helm or throttle is so much slower than yours asking them to change course is ridiculous. Better to just spend the time to make sure you miss them.
I used to do single handed races. Courses were outside shipping lanes. You never saw your competition let alone a commercial craft of any sort once you left or regained the shelf. Things are different now. APs can incorporate AI and put the vessel in irons to avoid these events. No sailor would stay asleep with his boat in irons. Time spent needed to sort yourself out after being put in irons could be subtracted from your elapsed time. You would pay some penalty for putting yourself in such a situation but not so severe as to effectively DQ you.

 

[SoWhat]

I think if a race is longer than you can expect the sailor to be awake for, they should require a "virtual watch stander"

We already have it. You can setup proximity alarms in either radar or AIS applications. But if you don't turn them on, or turn off audible alarms, they won't do you much good.

Any technology has failure modes. See 737Max fiasco. Define your personal level of risk tolerance. Accept the consequences. At my age, I won't do offshore overnights without 3 qualified watch standers onboard.

 

[Peter B]

Hippo, yah forgot already...please hit a double space once in a while for paragraphs...like this...

Know the following.
There’s many places where the fish boats don’t have-AIS, radar reflectors nor even running lights. North of PR comes to mind and they’re fishing at the edge of the trench so quite a bit offshore. At night or worst in rain or a haze takes several sets of eyes to be safe. Even radar on “bird”, bouy, harbor or hand tuned misses them . Once they get under the beam on a sailboat with radar mounted at the spreaders having a zone on alarm is no help at all.

On a small boat you want to miss the ships by a big distance. Preferably miles. We like 2-3 miles from the large container ships or vlcc. Most produce a big enough hole in the water you want to avoid passing close behind as much as close in front. Actions should be done with 5-7 m off in most settings to avoid near encounters and need for major course corrections. This is particularly true under sail where tacking or gybing requires time and effort.

I’ve yet to have a worthwhile conversation with any shipping when on passage. Watchstander usually doesn’t answer. When they do it’s a Filipino, Russian, Korean or other first language speaker I’m not conversant in. The accented broken English is so difficult for both parties as to not be worth the effort. Why ask “state intentions “. Their intention is to stay on course. Why would they turn in the middle of the ocean. Their response to their helm or throttle is so much slower than yours asking them to change course is ridiculous. Better to just spend the time to make sure you miss them.

I used to do single handed races. Courses were outside shipping lanes. You never saw your competition let alone a commercial craft of any sort once you left or regained the shelf. Things are different now. APs can incorporate AI and put the vessel in irons to avoid these events. No sailor would stay asleep with his boat in irons. Time spent needed to sort yourself out after being put in irons could be subtracted from your elapsed time. You would pay some penalty for putting yourself in such a situation but not so severe as to effectively DQ you.

 

[High Wire]

Why not just stop, drift with engine off, normal running lights on. You are not moored, anchored or aground. I can't see anyone running into a lit stationary vessel unless they are also asleep but running.
I know, but they're in a race. Too bad. No special privilege because you choose to be delinquent. I don't think you can choose to be NUC.
Its a rare boat under 40 ft that even has RAM or NUC lights available to display. Maybe bigger power yachts. Even more rare for a sailing vessel of any size.

 

[BruceK]

The Covid cancelled 2020 Sydney Hobart included a two handed boat category. Many a Hobart race would easily exhaust 2 crew in the first 2 days. No way would they pause sailing, it would be press on,and on. Some potentially exhausted thought impaired crews were inevitable. Not sure it`s a good idea.

 

[Jeff F]

The Covid cancelled 2020 Sydney Hobart included a two handed boat category. Many a Hobart race would easily exhaust 2 crew in the first 2 days. No way would they pause sailing, it would be press on,and on. Some potentially exhausted thought impaired crews were inevitable. Not sure it`s a good idea.

Watch for much more of this in the future. It's in the next Olympics and there's lots of interest. There is pressure on race organizers all over the world to open to open up to double handed. Lots of buzz in North America.

https://www.sailing.org/news/88920.php#.YBZYd1OvA0E

 

[ssobol]

... You are not moored, anchored or aground. I can't see anyone running into a lit stationary vessel unless they are also asleep but running. ...

I was anchored out with the anchor light on. I was awoken in the morning by a loud noise from the stern and some shaking of the boat. Since there were some rocks not far away (I knew this when I anchored) my first thought was the the anchor dragged overnight and I had hit the rocks.

Rushing out of the cabin, I found a rower had merrily rowed right into the side of my boat. His words: "I didn't see your boat there."

 

[dbaoter]

Required

 

[Monty]

Regardless on who is to blame and that all single-handed-sailors are stupid…(amusing posts here on speculations...so I want to speculate too…) I think the issue here is SLEEP.


It is a topic that is very often ignored when talking about long distance travelling, no matter what vessel you use. Here in this forum I have seen several posts concerning long distance travelling and the need for a sufficient number of people standing watch.
If you look at many of the investigations in maritime incidents you’ll often find crew resource management, bridge management etc… as one of the reasons. Often that means the standing watch was not able to judge the situation right, use the information at hand and take the right action. But why? Many clues point to fatigue. A person being in a boring watch rhythm for a long period of time will be simply tired. I have been part of a study done by the German navy as a watch officer on lack of sleep and what happens to tired bridge-teams. Amazing results – you should seriously not take a shift longer then 6 hours. After that, you are mentally and physically (because of stress OR because of boredom) not able to react half (50%) as well! I had shifts over 24 hours…basically you can’t spell your name then, but since being a team you can somewhat watch out for each other. Now if I imagine being on a high tech sailboat ALONE for 3 Month…HOW do they do that? Sleep management can let you survive that trip, but after a few days you are nothing more than a sailing zombie. I did some single-handed sailing myself and my rule of thumb was to sleep only as long as the sea-area that you can safely scan for traffic and other hazards allows you to. If you were traveling 5 knots you can usually visually confirm that in the next 30 Minutes (2,5-3nm) you are safe (Radar and AIS are only to help your eye-judgement!). Then you can sleep 30 Minutes (And I was back in port after a maximum of 14 days). Going well over 20 knots in these sailing-machines…well…you could not sleep very long could you!
Therefore, I totally agree that those extreme single-handed sailors are getting way too depended on their electronic equipment, but I also think that the lack of sleep problem concerns everybody who makes single- or short-handed trips over 12 hours at a time (Even on trawlers). Most can think of a time where they were really tired and nearly (or actually) made a mistake because of lack of sleep. (On the road or on the water).