On route from Indonesia to Darwin, Australia this Tayana 37 ran into problems and the decision was made to abandon ship. The 2 crew were picked up by a passing ship and the sailboat was set adrift. It floated around in the currents for5 weeks before being recovered back close to were the voyage began. After a fair bit of hassle the boat was returned to an anchorage on Rote island but then, 2 weeks later in a nasty westerly blow she was sunk on the reef.
I interviewed the man who recovered her and got his side of the story.
Enjoi!

#Indonesia #Learningbydoing #sailing

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Closed Captions (CC) :
There's a story you don't see every day. The boat I just showed you was set adrift four or

five weeks ago now, halfway to Australia from Roti, Indonesia. Two guys who we met left here

sailing to Darwin got in some trouble i don't know exactly i haven't spoken with them but

anyway they decided to get off the boat they got picked up by a i think a coal ship or a

cargo ship of some sort and taken to perth australia and their boat was just set adrift

it didn't sink obviously and yeah four or five weeks later the current we've been watching it

the last week it's sort of brought it up close to roti here the australian border force has been

keeping an eye on it and giving people updates of this location because it's a marine hazard and uh

yeah a few days ago some guys from savu 70 miles from here found it out in the middle of the ocean

pretty hard to find a small boat it's only 37 foot in the big big ocean but they found it and uh

the guy from here dave went over there on a ferry a couple of days ago and they're just

arriving back in here so the owner is probably very very happy i guess he gave his boat up for

lost when he stepped off the boat he probably thought he'd never see it again but yeah it's

going to be anchored here for him he can come and get it again pretty awesome yes well done

bravo

congratulations you arrived under sail yeah engine not working ah that's well done though

that's a good effort you're pretty like you had good southerly winds the last two days

no no it's the next three days of south east even yeah well done everything else

is good not getting water no lots of work oh yeah but it's floating mate it's floating

well done well that is a really cool story they uh

left sabu under sail obviously just arrived here under sail as i showed the water pump

was uh is not working on the engine so yeah they just sailed the whole way here and through the

through the anchor down and uh a fair bit of work to do he said on the boat but

yeah it's saved it's not washed up on a beach it's not hit by another ship pretty awesome

uh story that and i'm guessing the owner's gonna be really really happy about that news

well um we got a phone call on a sunday evening uh that the kanga was about approximately 30

nautical miles off an umbrella so we went on got on to uh search and rescue in in on roti

island and all that and they tried to um assist us and all that they were quite keen to do it

but by the time they got the approval the yacht had already moved on towards savu and then so

with a local friend from sabu living on roti here he had the contacts in sabu and he went along and

got onto search and rescue in sabu and they assisted by navigating uh sabu with two two boats

one going clockwise one going anti-clock rise and they they never found it because the tracking

device which was put on by australian commander force were 10 hour delays from

when they got their tracking to when they actually um gave emails to the owner of the yacht

and in the meantime the yacht's moving at two knots well actually it was in quite a

strong current of um yeah over three knots so yeah so you've got 30 miles of movement

in 10 hours who knows where the yacht is yeah after that yeah and i heard the yacht didn't have

any lights on so you couldn't find it at night and in the day the ais was working but sort of broken

only very short range well um well nothing was working it by then because um all the batteries

were dead okay and that yeah so was no power on the boat so you had to visually sight it so had

to be officially sighted and the luck of um the of the recovery of the of the yacht was that uh

my friend who was coordinating with search and rescue and and lisey and sabu uh

went along and said oh what about we just put on the sabu group facebook so he put it on there and

funny enough when the fishman said um replied and says i saw that this morning on my way home

fishing and that's how um the recovery of the yacht happened and so they didn't go and look at

it because they figured there was probably someone on board or drifting they just assumed someone was

on it yeah doing whatever yeah all right so then then what happened you went over there yeah so the

boat was recovered by the fishermen who spotted it um with coordination with the local policy

from rajduo yeah which is an island south of um sabu and they towed it back to rajua and then

we then had to get a a ferry to kupang and ferry to sabu and then we had to get a local uh

sort of goods ferry boat to rajua and um we recovered the boat but it wasn't

a simple process it had to go through the protocol of um the government policy army

yeah search and rescue there and that so it was quite a quite an effort to try and um doug

for it all to be different levels of bureaucracy and locals and yeah and to legally you just can't

just say oh this is my friend's boat no it wasn't that simple so we then um sold it from um to roti

which is what 70 80 miles yeah approximately 80 80 nautical miles yeah yeah but but considering the

boat was just drifting around the ocean for five weeks and it had been stepped off you know people

have been rescued off it was relatively good nick right i mean it was it was seaworthy still

yeah yeah yeah that the hole and everything was awesome it wasn't leaking in full of water or

anything like that yeah well there was water in it um apparently there were waves which were coming

in through the from the cockpit into the hole and that yeah yeah so there but it was an only

minimal amount of water and it wasn't like it was a life-threatening situation for the boat and that

or us been on it you see in the video i i filmed them coming in it was just by luck that i was on

on shahelia and saw them coming in under sale and putting the anchor down and so we'll sort

of skip over you know the next few days you you actually got it ready and then got it all

running and took it up to kupang which is another 80 miles and yeah and tried to go through customs

to get it back in the country because obviously the previous only had checked out of indonesia

to go to australia yeah yeah that was what it was and then so you then you came back here with it

we'll skip over those details that's indonesian customs bureaucracy yeah but basically the boat

had two months time here it was given two months a window before it had to depart indonesia again

and that was enough time to get the motor running get the electrics fixed up patch the

jano all that sort of stuff and get it basically seaworthy and then figure out who was going to

take it to australia then skipping ahead a few more days we had a a westerly wind and this is

open to the west this harbour here in umbrella so we in shahali and we took off to another anchorage

on another island and then four days later came back and i didn't see the kanga anymore

and i was only an hour so later i was looking around i saw a huddle sticking out of the water

this hull you see here in these shots and it came came round in the dinghy to have a look at it

and i saw the kanga and i was just like oh my god after all of that you know like all of the hassle

of the people getting rescued it was floating around you you going over there dealing with

all the bureaucracy actually sailing it back here going to all of that getting it all ready and it's

like the guy in australia is going to get his boat back and then i came back to see it on the reef

so yeah take us from that stage what happened there well um there was a short swell running

and that uh the boat was on anchor and the anchor did hold the anchor didn't drag and

i think what had happened was on the deck the um the snub rope which wasn't a proper snub but

it was the best we could do was just tying a knot to the chain well that had snapped and um

the whole anchor body came off from the surface of the deck okay so once the snubber rope broke then

the full the boat was going up and down the shorts as well yeah then the whole the jerking motion was

on the winch itself and that pulled it right out of the deck yeah yeah okay so um it shared the

bolts which were quite large bolts um it broke the casing of the of the winch and stuff so

yeah so then the the anchor winch broke yeah and the boat basically just went back yeah that was

that all it's changed yeah and it's right so so it wasn't free but it was just going backwards on the

chain yeah it just everything everything extended yeah out on on on from the boat so instead of

having 30 meters of chain or 40 meters of change we had out it was you know up to around 80 odd

meters yep so and as you can see from these drone shots we are in between we're basically in a reef

channel here like in a lagoon channel so there's reef on both sides they surf on both sides and

and it's just what it is so basically just pull back all the chain

and hit the reef with the stern yeah and put a hole in it and sank right there yeah exactly

so it's a write-off boat's the boat's finished everything's been um salvaged off it that can

be salvaged off it pretty much yeah um so there's some lessons for you for your viewers anyway like

i'm getting a boat for 20 30 grand and thinking oh yeah i'll just sort of fix it up as i need to

works fine if you're just staying around your harbor and you're learning and you're doing this

but setting off on international crossing you've got to take it seriously yeah i think i think the

whole point of what i'm trying to say is that a cheap boat is not necessarily a deal because

um you know if you're buying a boat and it's probably under the fifty thousand dollars even

a hundred thousand a month you gotta be prepared to spend another twenty to thirty thousand dollars

yeah and end it together and don't spend that money on a nice paint job and some you know new

uh paddle boards in a dinghy like actually the the most important things are the standing rigging the

anchor system the engine the rudder that's the other thing the rudder fell out of this thing

right the rudder when i saw it before you left the rudder was wobbling like this it was about to fail

as well which which could lead to a crashed boat anyway yeah the paint job's not going to save your

life the stereo system the the fancy spinnaker the the drone to film yourself none of that's

going to make any difference but the well making sure the keel and the rudder are going to just all

the structural things as i um look back on it now i'm i'm sort of glad we didn't send somebody else

on the boat to take to australia because there are going to be a lot of risks

in doing the trip again even though the weather this time of year is quite good for the journey

back to but it would have been motoring and that motor wasn't really yeah the motor wasn't up to

it um trying our best to uh to to get it and getting parts in indonesia for that terrible

perkins motor yeah it's difficult and uh the boat had now auto pilot that was another thing

which which made it hard to to do yeah he was you know going by someone by themselves yeah

i'm sure the owner of the boat in australia went through some emotional rollercoaster

days and nights thinking lost the boat but i'm safe i got rescued five weeks watching the boat

watching the tracking all of that and then when you found the boat you've been gonna get my boat

back here even more wahoo and then to get how did he say how did he feel when you sent him

the first message saying the boat sunk oh he's obviously devastated and and that um it was a

pretty short conversation he had to go to work of course but um but then he did contact me a couple

days later and he says look i know you tried everything you could and you he appreciates it

yeah and all that and he's got to hold against me even though it wasn't my fault but um i sort

of feel a bit saddened that you know this has all happened after the end of the year wow it's never

nice to see a boat sink that's that's for sure yeah anyway good stuff thanks very much yeah and

um yeah hopefully we only tried like like every person who does a lot of sailing and that is to

help other sailors yeah that's probably the reason well that's what i got here in rotty too there was

that all of the guys here they've all a lot of them have got sailboats all the little trimarans

and everyone was very concerned for that five weeks and plotting it and looking oh how can we

get it and all that like everyone and it wasn't for any other reason than to help a fellow

sailor that had just had a had a whoopsie you know so yeah i mean that that's a good

good feeling it ended up in a bit tragedy but the thought was there and the effort was there

from everyone and then money from from you and uh joel was it joe yeah oh yeah local guy

so yeah props to you guys for giving it a try and um yeah yeah we did that all right cheers

you