I happen to "know" the captain of the boat that got into trouble. "Know" meaning I have been reading his posts on a cruising related forum.
This guy and his wife knew what they were doing, he is one of the more knowledgeable posters on the website and I pay attention to what he has to say. They have been cruising for almost a decade and have been in Mexico waiting to cross to the south Pacific islands.
Their boat is more than big enough to cross oceans. One of the
The Books on Storm Tactics at sea is written by a couple who had been sailing since the 70's. The boats mentioned in their books were between 25-29 feet and they have spent a lifetime sailing around the world. A couple of times and they have been in some very bad storms that most cruisers will not experience. They built a boat at one time and it was the one around 29 feet. I would have built larger but larger is not always a good thing on sail boats since it can get harder to handle more and larger sails.
If I won the Lottery, I would buy an passage making power boat from the Dashews.
SetSail ｻ FPB 64
I can't afford the boat since I have read it costs around $3 million. :shocked::laughing::laughing::laughing: I have been reading their website because it has some very good boating information and they have some very interesting videos on YouTube. I would guess that Steve and Linda Dashew are in their 60s or 70s. There are movies on YouTube where Steve's father bought/built a wood boat, loaded up the family and went sailing. In the 1950's. There are pictures of Steve at the age of 7 learning how to use a sextant and navigate. Steve and Linda raised their children on boats as have many others. I wish we could sail of with the kids but that is not in the cards.
I would bet, that as a percentage, far more children are killed/hurt in cars than when cruising the oceans. Furthermore, I bet more kids are hurt/killed with tractors than when cruising. Lets not even talk about lawn mowers.
From the reports I have read the kid got sick and it sounds like measles or chicken pox. We do not have the whole story because the actual participants have not been able to talk. All information is third hand and mostly filtered by the press and we know how "accurate" the press can be. I would have expected the family to have been carrying antibiotics on the boat but what they had may not have been working. The boat issues in the press may have been overblown. The question regarding loss of steering may have been the auto pilot but people who know the family and were living in the marina in Mexico with them said they had a very good auto pilot on board. Loss of the auto pilot is a PITA but not the end of the world.
Water leaking when running the engine could be a few things but may or may not have been a big deal. In any case, they are a sail boat with limited fuel capacity so they could not power for long. It sounded like they were running the engine into the trade winds to get closer to North America since they would have had a tough time beating into the wind under sails.
Anything can fail and the only people that know what failed, why and how critical, are on a ship at the moment.
Some of the information is from the wife's onshore family but take it with a grain of salt. The wife and at least one of her sisters were molested by their father. Two of the sisters went public with this information while other family members wanted to keep this secret. This has created a split in the family and one of the brothers criticizing the wife/mother on the boat seems to have been against the family secrets being made public. He did not go see his sister and family off when they left port in the US which is telling.
This cost the taxpayer nothing that was not already budgeted. The PJ's unit would have spent the fuel practicing and instead they got to do it for real. Though why they had to jump FOUR PJs is interesting. That is a small boat for six adults and two kids. Lets talk about Heros for a second. People use the H E R O word for people who play ball games. Those PJ's jumped out of a perfectly fine aircraft which is bad enough. But they jumped into the WATER which aint real safe. Why? To help out someone else. They risked their lives and they are Heros. Frankly, I could jump out of the perfectly working aircraft and I am dumb enough to do it into water. That would be fun. But after watching how PJs train which involves running around poking each other with needles and IVs, tain't no way I can be a PJ. Too many needles being jabbed into me and other people. :laughing::laughing::laughing:
The only government "loss" might be the Vandegrift depending on what she was doing but the pittance spent on the rescue is nothing compared to the huge waste in Government. This is one place were our tax money is well spent.
The people on the cruising web site/community are something else. They have started a fund to help out the family financially and there was a group of people organizing an effort to get the boat if it was abandoned. Turns out the boat was sunk/scuttled.
If we had the money and our kids were YOUNGER, we would head off to sea in a heart beat. They kids would learn a great deal about the oceans, fishing, weather, geography, navigation, stars, other cultures, languages, etc. The kids would learn how to handle a boat, sail, and mechanical skills. The confidence they would build helping plot courses, navigate and pilot the boat is nothing compared to what I can give them on land. What we would experience boating around the work simply cannot compare to what we can do on land.
I feel sorry for the Rebel Heart crew. They have lost their boat which is their home and their way of life.
Later,
Dan
