Disaster averted - Crew post-mortem on rescue & lessons learned

Ocean Sailing Podcast

This episode is about sharing the lessons from an initial mechanical failure that occurred in the middle of the Tasman Sea, that set off a chain of events over the course of 520nm, resulting in the Coastguard rescue of a 45-foot Beneteau yacht and its crew of 6.

As a sequel to episode 88, skipper David Hows conducts a full post mortem with the crew, who share their thoughts on what they would do differently, how they would prepare and what they got right in this multifaceted, near disaster story that took place 4 days after departing Hobart, Australia to sail 1,250nm across the Tasman Sea to Picton, New Zealand. The crew of the Ocean Gem had to face a steering cable failure in the early morning hours, followed by two crash gybes that snapped the boom preventer and broke the boom in half. What followed 500nm later was the failure of the steel emergency tiller and then the autopilot, causing total steering loss and ultimately a call for a rescue tow from while mid Cook Strait and 53nm from Nelson.

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