Monthly Archives: May 2015

BFSSmackTalk, Product Reviews, Smack's Writing

Waterway Guide Beats ActiveCaptain

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Disclaimer: The following post contains a minimal number of screen-grabs and/or quotes from both web-based products being reviewed. Furthermore, these screen-grabs/quotes show only the information that is immediately and publicly available via the application. The purpose  and intent of this post is education, criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research. It is intended to be a truthful, non-deceptive side-by-side comparison of the products for the benefit of the sailing public – including my opinion regarding the strengths and weaknesses of each. Neither I nor bfsshop.com, nor any other entity with which I am affiliated, are being compensated in any way by any party for this review. Furthermore, I have no affiliation whatsoever with the organizations behind these applications. Therefore, I am claiming Fair Use on these screen-grab images and quotes.

As some of you know, I publicly asked the owner of ActiveCaptain (AC) to nuke my account after witnessing some of his actions on my favorite forum: Sailnet. I wanted nothing further to do with it. Continue reading Waterway Guide Beats ActiveCaptain →

BFSSmackTalk, Smack's Writing

Cheeki Rafiki. Lesson Learned.

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The MAIB Report on the Cheeki Rafiki tragedy just came out a couple of weeks ago. There is a lot of talk on the forums (SA especially) about precisely what happened to the boat to allow the keel to separate and take four lives.

But that’s not the real lesson of this tragedy as far as I’m concerned. How you get in the water is not relevant. What happens when you’re there is. Here is one of the more sobering aspects of the MAIB:

RCC Boston calculated the estimated survivability of the crew members based on their average descriptions, assuming that they were dressed in full foul weather sailing gear, immersed to the neck in water and wearing a personal flotation device (PFD). Using these criteria, the estimated functional survivability and survival times were 12.3 hours and 15.5 hours respectively.

Using similar parameters but assuming that the crew members had been submerged  to the waist in water, sitting in a liferaft in heavy weather, produced estimated functional survivability and survival times of 14 hours and 21 hours respectively.

RCC Boston also calculated the probability of success (POS) of finding the following objects based on the probability of containment (POC) for the areas searched, and the probability of detection (POD) from searching those areas:

POS for a person in the water with a PFD: 6%

POS for a swamped/capsized boat: 95%

POS for an upright liferaft: 82%

POS for a capsized liferaft: 92%

Think about that while planning your next trip. Please.

We will.