TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands CYOA Helia 44 missing

There is a rumor a CYOA Helia 44 went missing in CGB last night. Any details?

Saw on FB it was found...low on details

Which Facebook page?

It was found floating off the north shore of St Thomas according to CYOA staffer I spoke with.

BVI Abroad

I'm assuming CDB is a typo for CGB, but if not, please tell me. I can't think of a way a vessel could ghost un-manned from CGB to the north shore of St.Thomas.

I'll wait with the rest of us to hear the back-story on this one.

I did mean CGB. Not sure why they would be in CGB with the swell. Could have yanked out the sandscrew but I would expect it to get beached in that case.
G

Something does not sound right. Swell coming in and the boat floats against it over the reef down to STT. Not likely. More like someone stole it and abandoned it off STT.

Thank you George for confirmation. Got to be a story behind this.

Baardj

Any word on the crew? Safe?

The crew was ashore in cgb. They dinked out to find the boat missing.

There’s always the possibility it disconnected from the mooring and drifted with an outgoing current.
The seas going into CGB have to be able to escape somewhere or the beach would be flooded.

Found and recovered. Mooring broke free.

This is a lesson on why you don’t want to be on a Mooring with a swell running in shallow water. The swell can bring the boat up tight against the mooring and put tremendous stress on the entire mooring. Repeat a couple of hundred times in the course of a evening and something is bound to fail. Be interesting to know where this mooring failed.
G

Also saw a Sunsail mono break free this morning in CGB. Fortunately they were on board and so were the people on the boat they drifted into. Didn't appear to be any damage and they just dropped the broken mooring and motored out.

re the two balls that broke free, we’re either of them fcfs balls?

Winds were gusting to 30+ kts last night wirh steady 20+ kts today from 70 degrees (ENE).As long as it didn't get caught up in the reef at CGB entrance, this would have put it on a very quick drift towards north shore of St Thomas. It's 14 nm to Mandahl Bay just south of Hans Lollick. That's my guess where it was headed. Of course the ebb and flood currents through Pillsbury Sound could have pushed it north or south.

Yes, both.

Serenity is back at CYOA.

Did it drift out the channel and not sustain damage? Very lucky if that was the case. Did the boat clear itself out of the BVI and into the USVI? The above is tongue in cheek but I am stunned people are going into White Bay and CGB in these conditions. This was a well forecast event. No surprises here!
George

Lack of education?

Heard it was a White Ball. (BUT unlikely the ball's fault). Is the crew back on Serenity? Heard there were "at least" 10 others moored there last night.

Rumor has it the boat was found with the generator, ac and watermaker running.

It was on a white ball and there were a decent number of other boats here that night. I just went back to my webcam history and there were 14 boats before the CYOA boat arrived.

OUCH. Did they(15 boats) not see/hear the forecast for huge north swells? I arrived Sunday, but had hear the prediction days before.

I do not want to get into he said she said back on forth on this incident. There are lessons to be learned from this incident. Do yourself a favor and learn from this expensive mistake. I do not want to bash the clients as they fully understand what they did right and wrong in the incident. They accepted full responsibility and paid for the recovery of the vessel.

The takeaways are this. The clients were on a schedule. They planned to be at Cane Garden Bay and pushed how much ground they could cover in the available daylight. Our boats are contractually required to be moored an hour before sunset. The guests pushed this and did not arrive in Cane Garden Bay until a half-hour after sunset. This was the first of two major mistakes that were made. The reason for the stipulation is to give you time in the daylight to get moored or anchored. Then to give you enough daylight to inspect the mooring or set. Given their timeline, this was not possible in the twilight. The second major error made goes back to timing and limited visibility. The mooring they chose was not a normal mooring. It was a private mooring of very questionable construction and condition. This would have been clear in the daylight. It was not at dusk. It failed shortly after they went ashore for dinner. Almost all marine accidents are of a cascading effect. Then somehow the boat drifted through the mooring field without anyone seeing or saying anything. More than one thing usually has to go wrong.

There are lots of other mitigating factors but these two items, coupled with the bad luck of no one noticing the vessel drifting was the root of the incident. One of the challenges for all of us in the industry is to overcome clients' complacency. Overconfidence in one's abilities will sooner or later catch up to you. Fortunately, this case ended with no injuries and only minor damage to the vessel. It was still a very expensive mistake in that the recovery bill was substantial and the client's responsibility due to negligence.

thanks for very much for the lessons Capt Jay...that is very helpful

Appreciate the write up. I think however the biggest failure was attempting to go to CDB with that forecast in the first place. Certainly not unique to your client with 15 charter boats in CGB that night. The Moorings 4000 that was slamming around its mooring is a internet star!
George

Sorry, just have to jump in here. When we started sailing in BVI there was no internet, and fewer sailors to give advice. However, there was the "Cruising Guide to the Virgin Islands" by Scott. We devoured this guide, and, among other things, it was very good at naming all of the harbors to avoid when there were Northern Swells. I know a current guide has been published. Does it still include that type of info? We were novices (cc captains before the term was created) and even we could manage with the wealth of knowledge in this book.

We sold our boats (thank you Moorings for many years of sailing) and have returned only once since Irma, and even then I took an older Cruising Guide with us since many navigation aids were still missing at that time.

Isn't there someone on Travel Talk who sells this book? It is currently not available on Amazon. I highly recommend this old fashioned way of learning about new sailing grounds since apparently the newer ways are not all that effective.

Of course we also had Davey Jones on ZBVI radio who in no uncertain terms would tell you when to avoid CGB, Cooper, White Bay etc.

Sorry, to jump in but like many of you I could not believe that there were boats in CGB during this last week.

You can find it on this site:
http://angelinacat.com/

I bought the post Irma cruising guide on Amazon. There was something wonky going on in the way I had to order it, but I got it! Our BVI adventure begins on Thursday aboard Arun from Bviyc. Looks like winds have calmed down a bit and looking forward to some smooth sailing.

Still amazing the boat drifted through the mooring field and out the channel without hitting anything.

In my mind equally important is to allow enough time that one could get to "Plan B" before sunset if "Plan A" doesn't work out for any reason.

I'm also amazed that no one noticed the drifting vessel. In my years sailing the BVI we've boarded no fewer than three drifting or dragging vessels. One of them in CGB. Particularly that time of day, we're usually having some drinks, hanging out and watching all the beauty around us.

It gets dark early and quickly here, it was reported they arrived after sunset to CGB so it was likely dark when the boat broke free and so it would not have been so obvious that the vessel was adrift to anyone on another vessel. Certainly a stroke of bad luck not to be noticed, but the incredible good luck of not going up on the reef there or any other destructive hazard until it was found is a miracle indeed.

"Our boats are contractually required to be moored an hour before sunset."

If only I had a dollar for every boat that came in after dusk! I often sit on the patio counting them (passes for entertainment in the islands). Some of them are owned, not chartered, so they're not subject to the same requirements. But they have a much bigger incentive to be careful.

Attribute it to carelessness, stupidity, ignorance. Paid captains may also be to blame: I have come to believe their behavior is so motivated by tips that they will do almost anything.