• 20 hours ago
Sailors on two separate vessels were killed when they were struck by a sail boom.
Transcript
00:00And in both cases we believe that the member of crew was hit by a boom.
00:05I have no other information as to how that came about and what the circumstances were,
00:10so I'm afraid I can't elaborate on that today.
00:13When we do find out, we will share that with you.
00:17There are 16 retirements now. There was a total fleet of 104.
00:2216 have retired. Three were dismastered.
00:27Two had mainsail damage.
00:29And the balance, there were various equipment failures that caused them to retire.
00:34But we still have 88 boats that are continuing in the race.
00:41There is one good story that I heard overnight.
00:44On the boat Poco Rosso, a person was swept overboard.
00:52That is one of the most terrifying experiences that you can have.
00:57And this was at 3.14am.
01:00So it was at night, which makes it tenfold more scary.
01:04Fortunately, there are developed systems and procedures
01:09to cater for that situation and to retrieve the person.
01:12They wear a personal location beacon that was activated.
01:16It sends a satellite message to the Australian Maritime Survival Centre, AMSA.
01:25They then were able to contact our race committee and all the procedures were put in place.
01:31The boat was able to start searching for the person.
01:35They had, we believe, been washed about 1.2km away from the boat.
01:40AMSA set out a plane to start searching.
01:44New South Wales Police were ready to dispatch a boat and a helicopter.
01:49And a boat in our fleet was diverted to try and help with the search.
01:53And fortunately, the boat from which the crew member fell was able to retrieve that crew member.
01:59And they are healthy and well.
02:02I prefer not to have the experience, but they're healthy and well.
02:05So that's a good news story.

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