Irish rover recalls Java Sea disaster

Waterside man Richie Fearon was just 28 when he was chosen to skipper the Cork in the epic 35,000 mile Clipper Round The World Yacht Race last year.

The Lough Swilly Yacht Club member sailed from the banks of the Humber in September. From there to La Rochelle, Rio de Janeiro and onwards to Cape Town, Richie and his crew were amongst the leaders of the round-the-world race.

And thus it continued on the route from South Africa to Australia considered by many sailors to be the most treacherous leg of all.

But having successfully negotiated the Southern Ocean and celebrated Christmas in Western Australia Richie and his charges ran into major difficulties on route to Singapore.

On January 13 disaster struck when the Cork struck a reef some 200 nautical miles North East of Jakarta off the small indonesian island of Gosong Mampango in the Java Sea.

All sixteen crew members were safely evacuated to two of the other competing yachts with Mr Fearon presiding over the rescue. But it was sadly the end of the line for the Cork.

Following assessments by marine salvage experts and insurance assessors it was deemed the yacht was not recoverable and it was decided to leave her foundering on the rocks.

Speaking on local radio last week Mr Fearon described the disaster as he experienced it. He also explained how inaccurate GPS information ultimately spelled the end of the Cork.

“The reef that we actually hit was a race mark on the sailing instructions, so we were to go around it,” he said. “The actual reef itself was noted on the paper chart and the electronic chart.

“When we were going around it, the closest we got to the South East corner of it was just over 0.6 of a nautical mile. We were well away and were still sailing away from it. Then once we were due east of it we started to come up in 10 degree increments,” he said.

“You use virtual marks and the next mark after was a virtual mark to keep us off other routes. So you are using the GPS and you really want to skirt over the top of it as tight as you can.

“This particular reef I went over - it was dark at night - and some good dark clouds came in at 58 knots of wind. So it’s just over 60 miles per hour wind. We were flying on the side. You had to bear away and keep the sails. It’s really about looking after the boat then at that stage,” said Mr Fearon.

Due to the darkness the Cork and her crew were entirely at the mercy of GPS readings at this stage but as Mr Fearon explained GPS charts for this area are notoriously unreliable and this is what caused the catastrophe.

“At night time you rely on GPS and that was our sole source of reliability and unfortunately it was a mile off. In hindsight if we had cut the reef tighter we would have missed it,” he said.

“We were giving it a wide berth. In that area it is known that some reefs were charted badly,” he added. “It was a mile out of place. It was merely because I was a mile off.”

The Londonderry man admitted that as skipper it was hurtful to have lost the boat.

“It’s something I don’t want to do again. Losing a boat. It did hurt. Putting aside the loss of the boat. I’m away from the crew. I’m away from what I set out to do - sail around the world,” he said.

But despite the disappointing ending Mr Fearon said he was pleased with the way he and his crew had overcome such tribulations.

“The actual rescue itself. I was on the boat. I did the rescue. I did everything - to be honest - very well. I actually am quite pleased with myself. I led that. I helped the guys off. Actually all the crew members thanked me individually afterwards,” he commented.

Mr Fearon said that an independent investigation into the incident was continuing and that a possible outcome to prevent this happening again would be to place a virtual mark five miles away from the reef and keep charts up to date.

“I love what I have achieved,” he added. “I don’t regret anything I did prior to it. I got 43 guys who didn’t know each other and brought them together. Brought them into one of the most competitive boats in the fleet as any of the other guys said.

“At the end everyone was saying - what’s Cork’s trick? What’s Cork’s secret? It’s team work and just bloody hard work.”