sandworm101
today at 1:43 AM
A few years ago I was part of a national-level rescue chain, the chain that starts with a phonecall and snakes it way up through different first responders. The group I worked with were at pretty much the far end of the chain. I am all for people doing great things, but for every great-thing-doing long distance sailor there are a hundred rich idiots. 50ish, got rich, bought a boat and is out on the open ocean ... and something goes wrong.
Fall off your motorcycle and you need a ride to the hospital, maybe an ambulance. Fall off your horse or a cliff and you need some burly volunteers with good knees and strong backs to haul you to the nearest road. A little more extreme, say you are stuck up a big cliff, and you might get a 90-second ride in a small helicopter to the nearest road.
But when anything goes wrong out at sea, from a broken mast to a broken arm, you are in for the deluxe package. It starts with ships in the area diverting towards your position. Then a fixed-wing airplane the size of a small airliner launches to put eyes on you and coordinate the next bit: the granddaddy helicopter, the all-weather one with a winch, night vision, two pilots, two SAR techs, maybe three turbines and four or more blades the length of a bus. Think you are low-carbon because you are using a sail? Don't ask how many tons of fuel are spent keeping that helo in the air. (They often have to make multiple fuel stops during ocean rescues).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_MH-60_Jayhawk
https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/helicopters/mili...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EADS_HC-144_Ocean_Sentry
https://www.canada.ca/en/air-force/services/aircraft/cc-295....
My point: Don't romanticize the sea to the point that rich idiots start playing around out there. Always take it seriously and do not ever expect help. Always have backup plans for your backup plans.
Buy the EPIRB BEFORE you buy the boat. Buy the expensive one.
At least when Harrison Ford got rich he started buying and crashing light aircraft. He knew to crash on a golf course so the doctors didn't need to walk very far. (Not a joke. That happened.)
https://golf.com/travel/penmar-golf-course-venice-california...
Something I've read on HN once, and that nailed it for me: in the middle of the Pacific you are further away from any possible rescue than if you were on the ISS.
> He knew to crash on a golf course so the doctors didn't need to walk very far. (Not a joke. That happened.)
The link only mentions that he crashed on the golf course, not why he chose it. (Well, other than "can't make it to the airport, golf course is best alternative"). Personally, I suspect "it's got open stretches of flat land with no trees or buildings" was more of a consideration than "doctors are often found there". :-)
Seems like a good role for a drone rescue ship that targets the EPIRB location.
Unfortunately drone companies have a habit of pivoting into defence before realising their initial civil intentions.
sandworm101
today at 2:57 AM
And how fast is this drone ship? I bet slower than the helicopter. And how do you get people onboard? A drone with a robotic arm? Will it be like the claw game, but with wounded people being clawed up?
swiftcoder
today at 5:55 AM
> And how do you get people onboard? A drone with a robotic arm?
Nets. Nets are how you get people on board in basically all emergency scenarios.
Not that drone rescue ships seem like a particularly good idea, mind you.
Claw "game" (scam) machines have deliberately-weak grasps, designed to drop the item they've grabbed whenever the arm is jolted — and then it's jolted at least once, usually twice, in the process of bringing it to the output bin. They are designed to drop their packages, so that people will feed in more money.
I'm not saying a drone with a claw arm would be the right design. But if it turned out that that was the right design, it would be designed not to drop its "packages", as opposed to the claw machines where dropping the package is the intended result.