Sailing Fans Reeling Over Yacht Race Death- 4 still Missing

[Pachamama]

22. Not sure - but they would follow the OYRA rules and US Coast Guard and US Sailing guidelines

I know these get updated annually and I know in recent years there were aome changes than from when I raced. I recall there being equipment requirements that were mandatory and then static safety lines were reccommended to be attached to the workstation at all times, but not mandatory. I know there were some changes to the equipment standards a year few years back. But without knowing the equipment, I cant say. I am not sure if the owner James Bradford was the skipper or if my friend Marc Kasanin was. But the Skipper is usually responsible for making sure their is the min OYRA compliance reequirements. i dont know if he ordered everybody to be clipped in or not. I have seen with the attachments of the static lines to the anchorage bolts that depending on the load that the clip at a certain angle can come free. I dont know what happened here. What I can say is they were all experienced sailors. Several of them had done the Sydney-Hobart Race recently and that is a hardcore route and race for ocean racing. I dont believe that this was a matter of them not taking proper safety precautions on board. I do believe, and this is my personal opinion, that when you do a race in which you are required to navigate around any kind of rocks and land, that you give enough room and account for it even if it was enough room if you had to do man-overboard recovery. This requires as you know to have a bit of maneuvering room, especially in rough waters. They didnt have this and this is why they then hit the rocks as they maneuvered for recovery.