Two people have died in separate incidents during the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, one sailing on Bowline and another on Flying Fish Arctos. Police say both were struck by sail booms overnight. Police identified the two deceased sailors as a 55-year-old man from Western Australia (on Flying Fish Arctos) and a 65-year-old man from South Australia (Bowline).
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Just before midnight last night, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority received the first
00:07May Day call from a vessel, from a yacht, named Flying Fish Arctos, and it requested
00:15urgent assistance as one of the crew members had been struck in the back of the head by
00:19the boom.
00:20The boom is a part of the vessel that attaches the sail to the mast.
00:24It was moving violently through the night with challenging sea conditions, and a crew
00:29member suffered a significant head injury.
00:32Port Kembla Water Police was deployed to that vessel to assist them, and then overnight
00:37has escorted that vessel back into Jarvis Bay this morning.
00:41Unfortunately that male person is now deceased.
00:45The second incident occurred at 2.30 this morning from another vessel.
00:53The vessel was called Bowline and was positioned 30 nautical miles east-north-east of Batemans
00:58Bay.
00:59It had suffered a similar incident to the first vessel, where a crew member had again
01:03suffered a head injury caused by the moving boom from the sailing vessel.
01:08It again had struck that crew member in the head, and that vessel was requesting urgent
01:14assistance.
01:15The New South Wales Police Vessel Nemesis was in short range to that vessel and deployed
01:20immediately to that location.
01:23The crew did a pretty substantial job of doing CPR, trying to keep that crew member
01:28alive, but their efforts were unfortunately met with the death of that person in the early
01:34hours of this morning.
01:36It is a tragic accident, especially having two tragic accidents in one ocean-going race.
01:42We believe at this stage of the early investigation that those vessels may have been changing
01:46sails at the time, so they weren't actually sailing with the wind.
01:51That creates a different set of circumstances.
01:53The hull moves, the sails are moving, the booms are moving, it's a technical change
01:58of sail at sea.
01:59So that may have impacted or contributed to the deaths of those people today.