Catamaran aground on Niue

[Heg]

Saw this on Facebook yesterday.
Not sure how this happened. The cat is apparently a write off. Both onboard are ok.
Seems odd, as the mooring field is on the other side of the island...http://https://www.facebook.com/821671687931080/posts/2260616107369957?sfns=mo

[JPA Cate]

That's a sad picture, there. I wonder if we'll ever learn how it came about....

Ann

[Heg]

Yes, I will be interested to find out more. The folks onboard were very lucky indeed. That side of the island is very difficult to access from land. Steep cliffs and jagged rocks . The rescuers did a great job.

[Jim Cate]

It has been a long time since we were there, but as I recall, the whole island is steep to and inaccessible. It is an uplifted atoll so that the perimeter looks like, well, a coral reef! The only access was (in 1990) via a concrete wharf on the leeward (western) side where the so called "anchorage" was... depths near to 90 feet on coral boulders. Not nice!

Anyway, considering that the call came at 0300 local time, I suspect that they just plain ran into the unlit island. I too hope that more info will emerge, and have great sympathy with the owners.

Jim

[Paul Howard]

When we were sailing the Pacific, we would hear of one or two boats per year that went ashore at night. The cause was sailor error.
There are lots of variable currents around island groups, sometimes it flows around the island one way, sometimes the other. There may be current arrows showing the dominant direction, but that does not take into account all circumstances of wind and seasonal variables.
The couple probably set the autopilot, one of them may have been asleep and another on watch, but were not logging/monitoring their track.
A couple hours of inattention and the boat is off course enough to hit the island rather than going around it.

The (digital) charts may also put the island slightly out of position and if the skipper planned his course too close to the island, he essentially drove his boat onto the beach. We found some islands could be a mile or two off position on some charts.
Vigilance, good watch keeping and heaving to during the hours of darkness waiting for dawn to approach any island without good navigation markers is prudent seamanship.

[stormalong]

It is also possible that they were tied to a Niue mooring and it broke loose. IIRC you have to pick up a Niue Yacht club supplied mooring and there have been issues before.

[B23iL23]

I hate to see this. It's someone's home, their plan, their dream and all gone in an instant.

Not good.

[Cpt Mark]

Islands can be several miles off where your gps says they are. Look at the cartographer and I've seen charts in use today drawn by Captain Cook.

On Christmas Island where I was living we had a couple come in at night asking for harbor patrol. there is no harbor patrol or any assistance what so ever. They had no charts or knowledge of the atoll but did have gps coordinates and the plan to anchor inside the bay which is exactly where you never want to anchor.

Gps is great but it's truly only one small tool available to be used in the overall scheme.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Paul Howard

When we were sailing the Pacific, we would hear of one or two boats per year that went ashore at night. The cause was sailor error.
There are lots of variable currents around island groups, sometimes it flows around the island one way, sometimes the other. There may be current arrows showing the dominant direction, but that does not take into account all circumstances of wind and seasonal variables.
The couple probably set the autopilot, one of them may have been asleep and another on watch, but were not logging/monitoring their track.
A couple hours of inattention and the boat is off course enough to hit the island rather than going around it.

The (digital) charts may also put the island slightly out of position and if the skipper planned his course too close to the island, he essentially drove his boat onto the beach. We found some islands could be a mile or two off position on some charts.
Vigilance, good watch keeping and heaving to during the hours of darkness waiting for dawn to approach any island without good navigation markers is prudent seamanship.

We don't yet know the situation in this case, and I don't want to jump to any conclusions about the cause, but if they were underway the most likely cause, in my opinion, was (obviously) navigation error. Either they plotted an incorrect route to follow (or none), or they deviated from that pre-planned route.

Of course other possibilities would be engine and sail power failure in a location too deep to anchor, or lost off a mooring (but from the other side of the island? not likely), (or watch stander fell asleep?)

When I review wrecks of underway vessels the most common cause is failure to plan a safe route ahead of time, or subsequently, failure to follow said route. Too often a pilot or watch-stander is, at best, monitoring a moving chart display without a pre-planned route and misjudges whether or not their position and heading was safe. I'll repeat: Virtually every underway wreck I've investigated has been caused by failure to plan a safe route ahead of time, or subsequently, failure to follow said route.

Create your route in a zoomed out mode then zoom in and inspect it in detail for small errors or dangers which might have been masked by the level of zoom. You will need the capability to adjust waypoint positions after you have created your original route. It is safest to do this at a nav station seat in a quiet and dry environment, and more difficult to do it on a MFD at the conning station on a rainy or windy night.

Then this route must be displayed on a screen visible to the helmsperson and the ship's position and path constantly monitored to ensure that winds or currents or anything is nor carrying the vessel away from your planned route. In the case that a route cannot be followed due to wind or sea conditions or any other reason a new or changed route must be created with utmost care, certainly if you are in the vicinity of islands or will be in the near future. Plotting a compass course and then simply staying on that heading is not enough. Sitting on a cockpit seat with a tablet in your lap and looking at it occasionally is risky.

[Ferrari]

Very unfortunate accident. They do seem to have found a semi comfortable place to beach though and there are not many of those on that Island. In our experience at Niue in 2013 our digital charts were extremely accurate.

[chouliha]

Originally Posted by stormalong

It is also possible that they were tied to a Niue mooring and it broke loose. IIRC you have to pick up a Niue Yacht club supplied mooring and there have been issues before.

Confirmed Not on a mooring

[BobHorn]

Wouldn't the use of radar be more accurate than just a chartplotter?

[Sand crab]

It's a Lagoon 400 S2.

[JPA Cate]

Originally Posted by BobHorn

Wouldn't the use of radar be more accurate than just a chartplotter?

Good pointed question.

Some people have radars but don't know how to use them, although there are good, free online tutorials.

It is easy to use radar to keep a given distance off something. Sailors who have come after those who used celestial only tend to go closer to hard things than I want to.

Ann

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by BobHorn

Wouldn't the use of radar be more accurate than just a chartplotter?

Two different tools that supply different info. In the area of Niue there are no offlying dangers, except perhaps the major number of whales. The electronic charts are fine in the area. If the boat was not disabled, then it pretty much had to be a navigation error.