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Triton Poker Run ends at West Marine Dec. 5 in Ft. Lauderdale.
A10 Lights, camera, action Crew highlight lifestyle in film festival competition. A12
TRITON SURVEY
Will you go home for the holidays? Yes, but not until after – 4.5% No, working – 51.5% Yes, the boat is home – 1.5%
December 2012
Yes, off the boat and with family – 42.4% – Story, C1
Firefighters rely on yacht crew for vital details By Dorie Cox Crew endure heat and smoke during fire simulation training in their STCW courses. But the reality of being onboard in tight quarters, with limited exits as temperatures climb above 1,000 degrees challenges even professional land-based firefighters. “I tell my guys that engine room and below deck fires can be some of the most dangerous types of fires they’ll fight today,” said Battalion Chief Joe Murton of Broward Sheriff Fire and Rescue in South Florida. As the number of yachts grows, so will fire incidents and firefighters who will battle them when a yacht is at the dock. In response, there are many people who want to better prepare with training and communication between crew and emergency responders. Capt. Stephen Fleming agreed and participated in a training session with West Palm Beach Fire Rescue in November. Fleming opened S/Y Paraiso, a 108-foot Alloy Yacht, to the squad to learn how fighting megayacht fires is different from structure fires. Fleming and several other captains
See FIRE, page A16
Unplugged onboard Can you get to shore if the power goes down?
B1
Monaco vs. FLIBS Find out which crew who’ve been to both prefer. A18
Delivery adventure, part 2 Tackling dead ship, flooding and more bilge alarms. B12
Yachts handle Superstorm Sandy just fine By Lucy Chabot Reed Sometimes, you end up where you don’t really want to be. For Capt. Martyn Walker of the 258foot M/Y Pegasus V, that was New York City at the end of October. Actually, he was the one who talked the boss into visiting the city for a few weeks after their summer in the Med and before heading south. He’d spent last Christmas in Ft. Lauderdale and admits to being a little bored. He was anything but as “a few weeks” turned into a few more weeks, and by then Hurricane Sandy was on the radar and crossing his path. Best just to sit tight and see where she heads. When it was clear Sandy was heading for New York, Capt. Walker cast off from the dock to find some room. He knew his heavy yacht could handle the wind; he’d made it through Hurricane Wilma in Ft. Lauderdale just fine. So Monday morning, he set off to find someplace to handle the water. The floating dock he had been tied to couldn’t handle much more than 9 or 10 feet of surge. Forecasters were predicting 11. He headed up river, but the U.S. Coast Guard kept chasing him away from the spots he chose. Too much traffic in this one; tugs and barges parked in that one. He needed space, so he kept going north. “When I drag, I want room,” he said, still in NYC in mid November. “It wasn’t if I was going to drag, but when.”
A rising tide completely covers the dock at Dennis Connor’s North Cove on PHOTO/ROBERTSIMKO@THEBROADSHEET2012 lower Manhattan, but only its . Finally, he found a spot 10 miles up the Hudson with no one else around, a designated anchorage near Riverdale, just north of the George Washington Bridge. Winds had picked up so the Coast Guard didn’t chase him away. He set his anchors and about 750 feet of chain and held in the muddy bottom in about 12m of water. Then he waited it out, through 45-50 knot winds before noon, 55-60 knots after noon, and 85 knots by 9 p.m. “We dragged when the tide came in,” Capt. Walker said. “It felt like 10 knots. I’ve been in Alaska where the current
runs 10 knots in some of the passes. I don’t know how fast it was. It could have been 4 knots, but it felt like 10 to me.” The tide changed four times over the course of the storm and his anchorage. He kept the engines running the whole time, and ended up re-anchoring in the height of the storm. By midnight, the worst had passed; they had made it through safely. Tens of thousands of smaller boats didn’t. BoatU.S. declared 65,000 recreational boats destroyed, saying
See SANDY, page A14
Money is not the biggest cost when hiring crew This month’s From the Bridge captains lunch took a different turn than we expected. Previously, a captain suggested we ask “What does it cost to hire someone?” He was talking about crew agency fees, background checks, uniforms. Hard costs, dollar figures. But the From the Bridge assembled captains Lucy Chabot Reed talked about everything but. “There is a the real dollar cost but the
other cost is our time,” one captain said. “That’s worth something. For all the things I do, one of the most important is collecting capable people to join the team. “You can’t teach some stuff,” this captain said. “It’s the things they learned when they were 6, saying please and thank you. We want nice people to work with us. If they bring those skills, we can teach them the other stuff. I mean, how hard is it to be a deckhand?” As always, individual comments are not attributed to any one person in particular so as to encourage frank
and open discussion. The captains are identified in a photograph on page 15. The captains agreed that they hire less for skills and experience, and more for those soft skills that help make a crew member a good fit into an existing team. “I hire for attitude,” another captain said. “I can teach them what I want them to know.” “I’m hiring now for maturity and responsibility, and a mix of older and younger,” said a third. “I want it to be
See BRIDGE, page A15