The Melbourne to Port Fairy yacht race is a 135nm race through Bass Strait and into the Southern Ocean \u2013 as the season turns from Summer to the Winter storms. In 2012, with the forecast for mild north winds and a SW change, the fleet set off \u2013 the yacht Inception, a Beneteau 50 amongst the fleet with many of the crew heading to their home town of Port Fairy.<\/p>\n
When an un-forecast second front hit the fleet on the evening of Good Friday, the fleet was in dis-array. With winds gusting beyond 65 knots and waves recorded at more than 14 m (45-50 feet) the fleet were in survival mode. On board the yacht Inception, things took a rapid turn for the worst. With the loss of the liferaft, and then the rapid development of a large source of flooding, the crew were forced into the malestrom, in the PFDs alone. Tethered together they armed their ACR ResQlink PLBs (and the boat EPIRB) \u2013 providing GPS locations to the rescue authorities and the rescue vessel \u2013 a fellow competitor.<\/p>\n
Without their PLBs, it is reasonable to expect that the crew would have been left to survive the storm until daylight some 6 hours later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Melbourne to Port Fairy yacht race is a 135nm race through Bass Strait and into the Southern Ocean \u2013 as the season turns from Summer to the Winter storms. In 2012, with the forecast for mild north winds and a SW change, the fleet set off \u2013 the yacht Inception, a Beneteau 50 amongst […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"template":"","survivor-category":[11],"terrain":[22],"survivor-event":[133],"survivor-cause":[126],"survivor-rescue":[2300],"class_list":["post-17270","survivor-stories","type-survivor-stories","status-publish","hentry","survivor-category-boating","terrain-ocean","survivor-event-rogue-wave","survivor-cause-weather","survivor-rescue-other"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-stories\/17270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-stories"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/survivor-stories"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"survivor-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-category?post=17270"},{"taxonomy":"terrain","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/terrain?post=17270"},{"taxonomy":"survivor-event","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-event?post=17270"},{"taxonomy":"survivor-cause","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-cause?post=17270"},{"taxonomy":"survivor-rescue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acrartex.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/survivor-rescue?post=17270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}