Missing text in Nina search | The Australian
Missing Sailboat Nina's Last Text: 'Sails Shredded'
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| 'In this undated photo provided by Maritime New Zealand, the yacht Nina is tied at dock at a unidentified location.' Maritime New Zealand |
Nina searchers praised - south-pacific - world | Stuff.co.nz
Refusal by a major satellite phone company to co-operate in the search for the yacht Nina for 19 days negatively affected the search, a report says.
Lost text stalled search for missing US yacht - The West Australian
The report into the search for the vintage American yacht Nina, which disappeared in the Tasman Sea in June 2013 with six Americans and one Briton aboard, said the entire dynamic of the rescue operation would have changed had the message been delivered earlier.
The message in question was a text sent on a satellite phone by crew member Evi Nemeth to meteorologist Bob McDavitt on June 4 revealing the wooden-hulled vessel was adrift without sails after being caught in a severe storm. [Iridium reports the message was not properly addressed, and hence not delivered, and only found after a system search. See response below.]
"Thanks storm sails shredded last night, now bare poles, going 4kt 310deg will update course info @ 6pm," it said.The text never reached McDavitt and the families of those aboard the yacht did not raise the alarm with the Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ) for another 10 days, on June 14.
Even then, rescuers believed it was possible the Australia-bound yacht was merely running late due to rough weather as Iridium did not pass on the text revealing it was in trouble, despite a June 15 request from RCCNZ for all relevant data regarding the Nina, the review said.
As concerns about the yacht mounted, the operation moved into "distress phase" on June 27, meaning aerial searches were stepped up amid grave fears for the lives of the Nina's crew.
But the review, written by former Australian maritime rescue chief David Baird, said Iridium still did not pass on the message until July 3, after the RCCNZ asked US authorities for help in dealing with the Virginia-based company.
Sail-World.com : Revealing report on Search for American yacht Nina released
US based Satellite telephone company Iridium Communications failed to give New Zealand rescuers details of a dramatic final message from a missing yacht Nina until the US State Department intervened, a detailed review of the search effort has revealed.
This story is factually incorrect. The text they claim was late was not addressed to anyone, so was "thrown away". We dug into our system and provided them the contents of it after they requested it, and we received appropriate legal approvals - we take privacy seriously for our customers and don't release texts without the customer's approval or something like a subpoena. Of course, the loss of this boat and it's passengers is tragic, but Iridium tried to help every way we could. They are also surprised that we don't give precise locations - they weren't sending GPS locations through our network (seems like they were relying on SPOT), so we had to geolocated them by roughly where our spot beam was on the ground, which is inprecise at best.
The "independent" report about the Nina is misleading or just wrong. The Iridium network worked correctly. The passengers sent the text described with no valid address, so our system threw it away. Only after they contacted us and asked us if we could help did we search, find and provide the text message described. Yes, we needed to get approvals to do so - we take our customer's privacy seriously and only give out information from their devices by court order or other official and legal request. They also seem to be implying there are problems with our position locations, but they were not sending GPS positions through Iridium - they seemed to be relying on SPOT for that. When requested, we gave them our best guess based on the position the satellite beam was over the earth when the message was sent, but they are not precise - and the rescue agencies know that. Not sure what we could have done differently - these are tragic circumstances, but Iridium provided help as we always try to do.