Boat left on autopilot ends up in a dark place
The dangers of falling asleep while on watch end up with a one-in-a-million cave rescueUS water rescue services had a unique call-out last month when they were asked to help recover a flybridge recreational fishing boat that had somehow managed to drive itself 60 metres inside a La Jolla cave.
San Diego lifeguards rescued the two people on board the boat in what has been branded a one in a million incident – “if the vessel would have hit just a few feet north or south of the opening, we believe the outcome of the boaters would have been gravely different”, TowBoat San Diego said.
TowBoat US San Diego’s report of the incident said two men were returning from a fishing trip when the boat ended up inside the cave.
Photos posted on social media show the boat inside the cave, and the field of debris after it was smashed to pieces.
At the time the boat was on autopilot, and both men – including one that was supposed to have been on watch – had fallen asleep.
“San Diego lifeguards showed that they are the best lifeguards on the west coast once again by getting into the dark cave, swimming the crew out to a rescue vessel and to transporting the wet crew land safely,” it said.
“Just hours after the incident surf from a hurricane 1000 miles Southwest of San Diego started to build making it impossible for our crew to get in the cave.”
Smashed to pieces
That meant the boat was left in the cave for “several days” as it was repeatedly smashed against its face, destroying the boat and leaving nothing but a field of debris for the recovery crew to collect, including two diesel engines.
“The cave made a 90-degree turn at the entrance making it impossible to simply pull the large parts out of the cave,” TowBoat US San Diego said.
“We rigged and anchor and chain in a crevasse in the cave and attached a pulley to pull at 90 degrees.
“Our dive team rigged flotation and we successfully removed the larger pieces,” it said.
“Our last large item to remove was a ball of debris tangled with anchor chain, fishing gear, a sea anchor and one of the outdrives, all twisted into a large part of the tuna tower.
“The six-foot-deep (180cm) pool at the end of the cave corralled items and rolled in into a four-foot-round heavy ball.
“Our divers skillfully rigged straps and flotation to the debris and using our pulley system, removed the final piece.”
The heavy pieces were then towed in the water to a nearby launching ramp. All up, the recovery crew spent six days collecting the pieces of boat.
Towboat US San Diego said a rule of thumb was to set a boat’s autopilot to fall short at least 3.0 nautical miles out to sea so that the boat must be hand-steered into the harbour.
It also encouraged skippers to install a watch alarm.
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