06 April 2013
There were 4 folks in an ocean going research rowing vessel when approximately 380 Nautical Miles North of San Juan, Puerto Rico they ran into disaster. 0615 watch shift commenced and 02 of the persons were settling into the sleeping quarters on the 29 Foot "James Robert Hanssen." One other crew member was taking care of those lovely morning rushes in the toilet area, and the other crew member (and the Captain) was rowing and keeping course. Seas were normal for them, 5 - 6 feet, when all of a sudden 2 odd sets of waves (5-6 feet also) came in. The first wave tipped there row boat forward and as the boat was getting corrected the second wave come down and capsized the vessel.
The design of the boat is to have it self-right (basically flip upside down and pop back up right). However, the 2 crew members settling in for sleep had not quite shut the door at this time and the compartment filled with water and kept the vessel from coming upright. This is when their SHTF. All four crewmembers were able to escape from the boat and they activated their PLB's (Personal Locator Beacon) at approximately 0628 local and I received the report at 0630. Their PLB's were registered in the NOAA database which assisted me in getting in touch with people who knew them quickly and confirmed that they were taking a rowing trip across the Atlantic Ocean for scientific research purposes. As I was calling and talking to people, more PLB's registered to the vessel kept coming in and I knew that there was definitely trouble without actually having a true confirmation of distress.
It was then about 10 minutes after the initial PLB went off that I directed my crew to broadcast a distress broadcast to mariners of HF 2182 KHz (High Frequency voice channel) and I sent out a type of text message to all mariners within 200 NM's (Nautical Miles). I also launched a fixed wing aircraft that we had at our Air Station to get there ASAP. With this in place I also got to work contacting vessels in the area seeing who was closest and sending them to the area to assist with the pick-up of survivors should they be located. I also coordinated with an Air station in Clearwater, FL. to receive a HC-130 long range aircraft to relieve my HC-144 so I could have constant air coverage.
At approximately 1300 my aircraft was overhead and located the James Robert Hanssen capsized and a liferaft about 75 feet from the boat with 2 survivors present. At 1400 the C-130 came on scene as the HC-144 had to depart and dropped them a survival can with radio, survival rations and water. The survivors came up on the radio and confirmed that all persons were safe. At 1800 local (12 hrs and 20 minutes after initially going in the water) the survivors were picked up by the M/V HEIJIN that I initially sent to the location and made their way back to San Juan, Puerto Rico where they hit dry land at 2000 local on the 7th of April.
Now, I usually give survivor debriefs over the phone or by e-mail after a case has happened, but this was quite a unique case and my Command knew it would get some (now a lot) of media interest and asked me to conduct a debrief with the survivors in person. Come to find out, these guys were prepp'd beyond belief.
They 04 PLB's, all registered which made communication easy and finding particulars on their vessel easy.
They had a life raft in which to survive in.
They had multiple means of Communications on the boat - VHF, Satellite comms, GPS tracking, AIS tracking.
They had food rations to last them 100 days on the boat, and at the time of capsizing had 40-50 days of food available and easily accessible even though the vessel was upside down.
Moral of the story? It's better to have it and not need it than not have it and need it. Make sure you KNOW how to use your equipment, make sure your equipment works, and if it has any way to attach contact information, ADD IT. It saved these guys lives and got them help quickly even being in the middle of the Atlantic. We're off of Search and Rescue mode now for the case, but I'm sparing my personal time now to help these guys retrieve their boat and locate it. Today they're taking a charted jet up and are going to attempt to locate it and then within 2-3 days try to have another boat on scene to retrieve the vessel. We'll see how that goes. I've worked a lot of cases in my 8 years so far, but this one by far has been one of the best for some reason unknown to me at this point. Below is some pictures taken of the guys during the rescue and afterwards.
- Capsized Boat.jpg (13.08 KiB) Viewed 3267 times
- Boat and life raft.jpg (20.58 KiB) Viewed 3267 times
- Survivors.jpg (121.49 KiB) Viewed 3267 times
Congrats and attaboys all around!