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Sortie en mer – A trip out to sea

sortieenmer.com

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Re: Sortie en mer – A trip out to sea

#61

Post by satori99 »

dognotdog wrote: post #46
shiggerino wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DSC (digital selective calling), which that radio uses to transmit distress signals with coordinates, is an excellent but sadly under-used technology. Everyone should be equipped with it and be familiar with all the menus and options on their transceivers, and regularly test that the equipment is working by making routine calls. The problem with DSC is that the transceivers are really badly designed and downright use…

I agree that the DSC situation is terrible. And particularly around Italy, people play music on CH16, so whichever radio one has, DSC or analog, it's a tough call. Then again, the mediterranean isn't very cold, so it's not a matter of minutes, unless you fell into a swarm of jellyfish. Also, an AIS PLB, if the boat is equipped with AIS, is great, it's no bigger than a radio, and theoretically also triggers an alarm o…

I have had a tow line break, and lost an entire tender in a calm sea. As soon as you lose eye contact, it's almost as good as gone.

And everytime I have sailed in a blue water race, the entire crew wear self inflating harnesses that also contain a radio, gps, knife, dye, etc.... and often also a high vis swimmers cap. And the harness never comes off. Even while sleeping.

Re: Sortie en mer – A trip out to sea

#62

Post by jordigh »

jordanlev wrote: post #53
Animats wrote: post #41

All I get is a black screen with an intro logo, and an endless loop of ocean sounds. Won't play in a reasonably secured Firefox 35 on Linux. "This operation is insecure" - main.js:6 Because a huge function is on one line, it's hard to diagnose the problem.

Perhaps you have cookies or localStorage disabled? I browse that way by default and it is unfortunate the number of sites that just plain don't work (without any kind of message to that effect).

Cookies disabled here, Iceweasel on Debian. I only get the intro on loop. And I can't full-screen. Once I allow cookies, the thing loads.

Why does a website need cookies in order to show me a video?

Re: Sortie en mer – A trip out to sea

#63

Post by mrbonner »

ekidd wrote: post #14

Very nicely done, technically. And the marketing message is both true and useful: Swimming at sea is surprisingly hard, and life jackets make a huge difference. I was once a very strong swimmer, and back then, I tried swimming 60 feet to shore in water with choppy, 6-inch waves. I wound up repeatedly inhaling water and choking. To combat this, I tried to keep my head high above the water, which was exhausting. After…

| Swimming at sea is surprisingly hard, and life jackets make a huge difference.

I can confirm this. When I was about 16 - 17 yo (and I was very fit at the time) we went sailing with 2 of my friends on a 8 ft sailboat in Nha Trang, Vietmam. About a mile out from the shoreline the boat capsized.

We were very foolish not bringing any life-jackets. After 20 - 25 minutes trying to swim back to the shore in the afternoon's high tide and high wind one of my friend had a leg cramp. We were so lucky that we had an Igloo watercooler to tether to and relied on the wind to bring us ashore. My friend died 6 months later from cancer in California.

The other guy clung to the capsized boat and also relied the wind to bring him ashore. He ended up 5 miles from the original spot we launched the boat.

Re: Sortie en mer – A trip out to sea

#65

Post by girvo »

Swizec wrote: post #48
ekidd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chop thing was really surprising to me at the time, which is part of my point. I'd been swimming in the Gulf of Maine for years without any problem, and I didn't anticipate trouble. But the wind was really screwy and I kept aspirating salt water, and things turned bad much faster than I expected. I do agree, however, that better rough water swimming technique would have helped. My wetsuit is good but relatively l…

I've never felt it was particularly difficult to swim in the sea. I wonder why that is. Two reasons come to mind: 1) Since I was a kid, sea-side vacations in the summer were common-place to the point that I actually learned how to swim in the sea. I still remember how surprised I was at the difficulty of swimming in a pool where you are much less buoyant. No salt in the water and all that. And 2) Maybe I just haven't…

I'm the same as you, but that's because I literally grew up on the beach in New Zealand, and swum nearly all year round. When I was older, we moved to the Gold Coast, Australia and I surfed nearly every day for my entire teenaged years; work gets in the way but I still surf as often as possible.

The one thing though, is that even with that time in the water, not having a lifejacket on a boat is absolutely foolish. The cold water really does shock your body into immobility, no matter how good of a swimmer you are. It's scary as hell.

Re: Sortie en mer – A trip out to sea

#66

Post by endgame »

shiggerino wrote: post #54
endgame wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia, to call the Rescue Coordination Centre on HF, you HAVE to use DSC: http://www.amsa.gov.au/search-and-rescue/distress-and-safety... > If a vessel wishes to conduct a radiotelephony communication with the network, it is necessary to make initial contact via a DSC call. For safety or routine messages a shift to a working frequency is normally required. When I did my training, they pushed DSC very hard. Nit…

Yes, that is true, 16 is also for urgency and safety messages, but ideally channel 70 should supersede 16 as the routine calling channel. Of course, for that to happen the equipment has to be made actually user friendly. It would be trivial to implement the software to let the OOW simply click an AIS target on the ECDIS to have that target's MMSI entered into the transceiver and a call initiated. If ships were runnin…

Not everyone's got AIS and ECDIS though. The places where I trained really pushed DSC for fishing and recreational use, by making it relevant to the little guys too: "If you'd just found a good fishing spot or a nice quiet place, why would you go blabbing to everyone about it on ch16? Call your mate up on DSC instead." They also made a point of telling people to spend that bit extra to get a radio that doesn't suck. Buying a cheap transceiver and having to input a MMSI using up/down/enter/back is really annoying and doesn't help take-up at all.

Speaking of AIS, did you see this thing from a couple of years back: http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/v... ?

Re: Sortie en mer – A trip out to sea

#67

Post by tootie »

a3_nm wrote: post #47
tootie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bet I could cheat it with WebDriver or something, but I'm not that industrious.

I simply did: sleep 5; while true; do xdotool click 4; sleep 0.01; done (The sleep 5 at the beginning is to have time to switch to a different window and put it fullscreen.)

Did it work? Does he get rescued? Is bash better than a life jacket?

Re: Sortie en mer – A trip out to sea

#68

Post by WillNotDownvote »

joshontheweb wrote: post #31

When I was a boy scout we were taught to take off our pants, tie knots in them and fill them with air either by blowing or by throwing them over and down on the water. You can create a makshift life jacket this way. Wet fabric can hold air. It isn't perfect, you have to keep refilling air as it leaks but it does work. I was in a swimming pool and not high seas so not sure how effective it would be in that situation.…

This was also part of the Survival Swimming course that used to be mandatory at Georgia Tech back in the olden days. At some point in the class, we had to jump off the high dive, use our pants as described, and remain floating in the deep end of the pool for some length of time (30 minutes I think?)

Fun class, but I shouldn't have taken it in a poorly insulated gym at 8 am Winter Quarter. Brrr.

Re: Sortie en mer – A trip out to sea

#69

Post by froo »

This is exactly why my girlfriend and I always use our PFD's with harnesses when passagemaking and alternating watches. It's a simple thing to strap into the jacklines and all but eliminates our fears about this sort of thing happening.

Re: Sortie en mer – A trip out to sea

#70

Post by 6t6t6 »

mrbonner wrote: post #63
ekidd wrote: post #14

Very nicely done, technically. And the marketing message is both true and useful: Swimming at sea is surprisingly hard, and life jackets make a huge difference. I was once a very strong swimmer, and back then, I tried swimming 60 feet to shore in water with choppy, 6-inch waves. I wound up repeatedly inhaling water and choking. To combat this, I tried to keep my head high above the water, which was exhausting. After…

| Swimming at sea is surprisingly hard, and life jackets make a huge difference. I can confirm this. When I was about 16 - 17 yo (and I was very fit at the time) we went sailing with 2 of my friends on a 8 ft sailboat in Nha Trang, Vietmam. About a mile out from the shoreline the boat capsized. We were very foolish not bringing any life-jackets. After 20 - 25 minutes trying to swim back to the shore in the afternoon'…

For anyone reading this.

First rule: If the boat didn't sink, never abandon it. It is relatively easy for a rescue helicopter to find a capsized boat. Not so easy to spot someone swimming. Also, you can probably manage to stay out of the water on top of the hull.

If the boat sank, stay all together next to the biggest piece of floating debris.

Source: sailing license exam. :P

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