At the rate of rescue lately, no one over 55 will be allowed to sail offshore soon. Bumping into islands, constantly hitting Fraser Island, why are old men doing such dumb stuff?
45kts wind, 5m seas, yacht sank by the time of this video footage: Sailors rescued after yacht takes on water at Lakes Entrance off Victoria's coast - ABC News
If your boat and crew can't handle such conditions then it shouldn't be in that part of the world.
Would be interesting to find out the boat name and make, history etc.
RE: Would be interesting to find out the boat name and make, history etc.
The 6.5m yacht is believed to have sunk.
Pretty small boat to be out in those conditions.
Also, very smart/lucky to be carrying a liferaft on such a small boat.
I too would like to know more.
gary
My money's on it being a Mini-transat (they're 6.50)
Could happen to any of us - with the possible exception of those with a steel hull.
This one was for sale in Melbourne earlier this year: web.archive.org/web/20250320050555/https://yachthub.com/list/yachts-for-sale/used/sail-monohulls/mini-transat-6-5-carbon-canting-proto-classe-mini-in-cat-3/325314
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-17/sailors-rescued-from-yacht-off-victorias-coast/106151752
Looks like a Mini.
Select to expand quoteJonE said..
My money's on it being a Mini-transat (they're 6.50)
Could happen to any of us - with the possible exception of those with a steel hull.
This one was for sale in Melbourne earlier this year: web.archive.org/web/20250320050555/https://yachthub.com/list/yachts-for-sale/used/sail-monohulls/mini-transat-6-5-carbon-canting-proto-classe-mini-in-cat-3/325314
Is there any evidence that a steel hull is actually demonstrably safer, apart from situations where its impact resistance comes into play? Funnily enough when I was Googling to try to find out more about this incident I came across one where a yacht called "Spirit of steel" was rescued in the Strait...
I'm not sure "it could happen to any of us" since we don't know what happened. Googling incidents and personal knowledge indicates that many of the rescues (or losses) are of boats that don't use proper storm sails, which IMHO are vital in that area. Looking at the footage of rescues indicates that people are getting picked up in quite benign conditions (ie where boats are lightly heeled with sails reefed to about No. 4 and double reef size, which isn't harsh by Bass Strait standards) with no reported damage to the yacht, so certainly some of them appear to be making mistakes.
ABC footage screen grab, looks like a Mini 6.5 or similar, had a storm jib at the time.
I know several steel hulls when surveyed had pitting and less than 1mm effective thickness.
As it happens, about 3pm Saturday afternoon, I downloaded a grib file (GFS WW3) that covers that area. For 8pm Sunday, East of Bairnsdale (38S 149E), it was predicting 36 knots gusting to 43 knots (Beaufort 8) from the South West (235 degrees) with 4.5m significant wave height. Mostly 4m+ wind blown waves (from 231 degrees), with a residual half metre swell running at 8 to 9 seconds against the wind from ENE (from 71 degrees).
