Sometimes being unsinkable is not enough to avoid tragedy. This was demonstrated quite sadly this weekend when an 29-foot catamaran fishing boat CATATONIC capsized in the open Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Vancouver Island, in the vicinity of Vargas Island and northwest from the town of Tofino.
Susan Pickrell, the Regional Supervisor Maritime Search and Rescue, Canadian Coast Guard, was interviewed by local media. A call was received from the boat [presumably by voice radio, but this is never made completely clear, so perhaps by cellular telephone]; Ms Pickrell:
[A person on the boat] said that they were taking on water, that they were sinking, they were going into the water. And we never managed to get a position from him.
In a second interview with other media, Ms. Pickrell added a bit more information:
The initial report was the caller said they were three miles off of Bartlett Island....We didn't get a direction from them; we just knew three miles. We tasked the resources to respond. And then, as we started getting more and more information from friends and family, it brought {the search] down [to] this area, which is five miles off Bartlett Island...There's a [depth] contour line they like to fish, and that's where we ended up locating them.
The boat is variously described as a charter fishing boat. There were five aboard. The distress call occurred about 1:20 p.m. local time. By about 2:50-p.m. local time, about 90-minutes later, all five were recovered from the water by two good-samaritan private boats in the area, after the capsized boat's position was made clear by a sighting from a private plane flying in search for them. The five people were later transferred to Canadian Coast Guard boats which took them to shore for medical treatment. The water temperature of the ocean was said to be around 5-degrees-C, or 40-degrees-F. After immersion in 40-degree-F water for 90-minutes, only three of the fishermen survived the ordeal.
Curiously, the water temperature in the now famous forced landing of an airliner on the Hudson River occurred when the water temperature there was 41-degrees-F. Scientific American magazine interviewed some expert on the topic of survival in 41-degree water:
Q: How long can a person survive in water that is 41 degrees F like the Hudson was when the plane went down?
A: When you first go into extremely cold water there is this weird response called a cold shock response. People start to hyperventilate immediately. For one to three minutes you breathe very fast and deep, uncontrollably. If you go underwater, you could swallow water and die. …I can't tell you how often this occurs but it's certainly a very real phenomenon. Once that response goes away, you're fine…for awhile.
Generally, a person can survive in 41-degree F (5-degree C) water for 10, 15 or 20 minutes before the muscles get weak, you lose coordination and strength, which happens because the blood moves away from the extremities and toward the center, or core, of the body.
There are many factors that determine how fast a person submerged in water cools. People who are obese, who have a lot of soft tissue that provides a lot of insulation, are likely to last longer than lanky people, because the body fat provides insulation. Another factor is how much of the body is actually underwater. (Water conducts heat away from the body much faster than air does, even if the water temperature is 20 degrees higher than the air temperature. So, the more the body is submerged, the faster its heat will be drained, according to Craig Heller, a Stanford University physiologist). If you have a flotation device that you can pull yourself on top of, you are much better off.
Various news reports describe the CATATONIC as sinking, but another news presentation shows the capsized and inverted hull being towed into the harbor at Tofino. About six feet of the bow remained above water. Many boats made today contain enough reserve buoyancy to meet minimal flotation standards, and the boat will remain afloat, usually inverted and aided by air trapped in the forepeak.
In this story there are several elements that are not clear. The notification of the distress was apparently not made by a digital selective call (DSC) VHF Marine Band radio sending a DISTRESS ALERT. The area in which the boat was operating is well inside the Canadian nation's radio coastal region designated A1, which means there is coverage by the coast guard's VHF Marine Band Radio shore stations with digital selective calling facilities. If the distress alert had been made by DSC with the appropriate inclusion of a current position update from a GNSS receiver of their exact location, it is very likely that both the Coast Guard and other local fishermen or sport boaters would have received the alert and known the position of the boat with very high accuracy.
Map showing A1 coastal zone extending 40-miles offshore.
The person on the boat making the call--again not clear if a cellular telephone call or a VHF Marine Band voice radio call--was apparently either not himself very clear about the boat's position or failed to clearly communicate the position (if known), as he cited their location as being off Bartlett Island by three miles. The boat was found closer to Vargas island and about five miles from the initially described location as Bartlett Island. This discrepancy did not help the search and rescue effort find the capsized boat and its occupants. Since the boat was only adrift for 90-minutes, it seems possible it could have drifted 2-miles in the ocean current. According to the map seen in the background in the Canadian SAR Center, the boat and the people in the water were still in close proximity when the rescue occurred.
If the boat were actually a for-hire charter fishing boat, one would expect that it might require some sort of inspection or minimum safety gear, particularly for a boat that sets out into the open Pacific Ocean. An inflatable life raft, an EPIRB, flair pistols, aerial flares, and so on, would be typically required.
Reports also describe the boat as being at anchor and fishing for halibut. Other reports mention the sea state as 2-meters. I cannot imagine riding at anchor in the open ocean in waves of 6-feet or more height. The desire to catch halibut must have been substantial to overcome the discomfort of being at anchor in six-foot waves on a 29-foot boat.
A further discrepancy in many reports is a reference to the Canadian Coast Guard rescue boats being dispatched from COMOX, a Canadian Coast Guard base. That base is on the wrong side of Vancouver Island to get to the area of this distress. Perhaps the order to launch a Canadian Coast Guard rescue boat came from COMOX, but it seems very unlikely that a boat departing from COMOX could have rendered any aid in the search; the by-water distance is more than 275-miles. I seriously doubt there is any boat in the Canadian Coast Guard that could cover that much water in an hour and a half. It is more likely the aircraft involved in the search may have taken off from COMOX. It is just a short flight over land, about 60-miles, to the search area from COMOX.
