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15 January 2012
GOR Leg 2 MOB details
In the closing stages of Leg 2 in the double-handed Global Ocean Race (GOR), a harsh lesson was learnt on Class40 Cessna Citation through quick thinking; instinct and training when Conrad Colman and Sam Goodchild dealt quickly with a Man Over Board (MOB) off the west coast of South Island, New Zealand. Now that both skippers have discussed the MOB with their families and Maritime New Zealand and the Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand are aware of the incident, the GOR can now publish details of the MOB as a valuable illustration of the importance of training and safety at sea for all offshore crews, short-handed or fully-crewed.
Colman and Goodchild had been leading the GOR fleet for 20 days as they crossed the Tasman Sea and closed in on the northern tip of South Island with under 160 miles reindexing to the finish line in Wellington after a total of 31 days at sea and 7,500 miles of high latitude sailing through the Indian Ocean’s Roaring Forties. Remarkably, 28 year-old Kiwi, Colman, and his 22 year-old, British co-skipper had met just days before the Leg 2 start gun and while both had logged many miles offshore and on Class40s, their union for Leg 2 produced astonishing speeds – setting the GOR Class40 24-hour run at a new record of 359.1 miles – gaining the respect of the other, seasoned crews in the fleet and repelling continuous challenges from the highly-experienced, Kiwi father-and-son duo of Ross and Campbell Field on Class40 BSL.
In the late afternoon (local) on Tuesday 29 December, as their Akilaria RC2, Cessna Citation, closed in on the western coast of South Island, 57 miles south of Cape Farewell at the entrance to Cook Strait and 33 miles west of the Heaphy River’s mouth at the northern end of the Karamea Bight, the youngest team in the GOR held a 56-mile lead over the Fields on BSL and thoughts of victory, fresh food, steak, hot-water showers and the forthcoming reunion with friends and family were foremost in the minds of the two crew.
A cold front had just swept over Cessna Citation leaving in its wake a big sea and breeze of around ten knots. Colman was on watch at the helm wearing lifejacket and harness: “Conditions were probably three to five metres of swell and we had been beating into wind of around 26-33 knots with fog and rain, so pretty shocking visibility and conditions in general,” Colman recalls. Goodchild was below, cooking food during the lull. “Conrad was driving and I was sitting in the cuddy chatting to him,” adds Goodchild. Conrad Colman describes the quick change in conditions: “The wind went very quickly from 10 to then 26 then 30, so we had one reef in the index and it was clearly time to change from the Solent to staysail,” he confirms.
Goodchild left his reindexing food and prepared for the sail change: “I put on my jacket and went up on the foredeck and dropped the jib,” he remembers. “I was a bit overconfident and, in retrospect, crazy not clipping on or wearing my lifejacket, but it was a job that had to be done quickly.”
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