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