Spot off ...WTF?

http://sailinganarchy.com/

Go to - spot off -

Good to know?

On Friday, March 28, 2014 11:55:06 PM UTC-4, POPS wrote:
http://sailinganarchy.com/



Go to - spot off -

Scroll down to spot off

Screen Shot 2014-03-28 at 11.20.28 AM
Alright, Class: Raise your hands if you would entrust your life and the lives of your crew to a SPOT tracker.

Those of you with your hands up: Grab a pair of scissors and give yourself a vasectomy.

There is good news for you, though - the widow of Aegean skipper Theo Mavromatis (or more likely, blood-sucking lawyers at her husband's insurance company) is fighting for your right to be stupid, too.

You'll likely remember the Hunter 37 Aegean as the cruising boat that allegedly crashed into one of the Coronado Islands off of San Diego during a 'fun race' down the coast. Long-running investigations determined the problem to be one of, let's say, software - the crew likely failed to zoom in far enough on a chart plotter to see the islands, and compounded their navigational error by not keeping a lookout as they motored through the night on autopilot. All hands perished after the wreck, and multiple lawsuits have been filed against Mavromatis' estate by families and insurance companies representing his crew - just as you'd see in any accident. But now, there's something new; Ms. Mavromatis and her three children are now plaintiffs against SPOT LLC and Amazon.com, and in a lawsuit filed last week, they contend that it was SPOT's failure to make sure emergency services got to the Aegean that was at least partially at fault for Mavromatis' loss.

The family is suing for wrongful death, negligence, and breach of warranty, seeking unspecified damages and burial costs, and probably seeks millions. Assuming (and hoping) that Mavromatis, an aerospace engineer, had decent insurance coverage for his boat and life, this all smells like an insurance company casting a net for deep pockets to help defray the millions they have already paid out in this case, and they may just succeed.

Why? Because, as you can see by the screen grab above and at SPOT's page her e, the company really is advertising "911/SOS Member Rescue Benefit" for just $17.95 per year. And according to the lawsuit and several investigators, the crew of Aegean pressed the SPOT rescue button at some point in the calamity, yet it took a day for anyone to come check on them. Is this some serious bull**** advertising that should absolutely be curtailed or even punished? Absolutely. Is it negligence, and did it contribute more to the death of the Aegean skipper than the fact that he ran into an island? Umm....no. Add to that the fact that SPOT requires you read and sign a dozen paragraphs on why SPOT is not really a rescue device before you sign up, and we don't think this one passes the smell test.

We're also pretty sure that Mavromatis, a longtime sailor and telecommunications/electronics consultant for Raytheon, knew the difference between a SPOT and an EPIRB, but then again, we'd be pretty sure a guy like that would know how to work a chart plotter. In the meantime, it's yet more litigation that will result in increased insurance premiums and more lawsuits down the road.

There's a thread on Aegean litigation here if you want to stay on top of it.

On Saturday, March 29, 2014 8:11:24 AM UTC-5, son_of_flubber wrote:

Do you have any actual proof that Spot was actuated in this incident? I checked my spot last month (tracking & OK functions) and it worked just fine.

Otherwise, you are just spreading rumors...

Kirk
66

On Saturday, March 29, 2014 2:51:13 PM UTC-4, kirk.stant wrote:
On Saturday, March 29, 2014 8:11:24 AM UTC-5, son_of_flubber wrote:



Do you have any actual proof that Spot was actuated in this incident?

I see that it is not obvious that I reposted the text of the originally linked article. It was buried deep in a blog off the original link. If you have problem with the content, take it up with the author of that blog. He was reporting the allegations made in the lawsuit.

On Saturday, March 29, 2014 11:51:13 AM UTC-7, kirk.stant wrote:
On Saturday, March 29, 2014 8:11:24 AM UTC-5, son_of_flubber wrote:



Do you have any actual proof that Spot was actuated in this incident? I checked my spot last month (tracking & OK functions) and it worked just fine..



Otherwise, you are just spreading rumors...



Kirk

66

Kirk, I understand the concern about rumors, but actually posting that article was a nice service for folks. Lots of good stuff to ponder behind this accident. Links were in that article and its trivial to find the pretty thorough report on this accident by US Sailing here... http://offshore.ussailing.org/AssetF...aspx?vid=19623

And yes it is absolutely accepted that the Spot SOS messages was sent, and more importantly was received (there is no way to know with Spot somebody tried to do anything unless a Globalstar satellite happen to receive the message).

As with many aircraft accident reports, reading that US Sailing report is a combination of sadness and frustration. Competing in an off-shore ocean race, no EPIRB, no life raft, a suspected failure to have (or failure of) a deck watch. Yes I know the family were/are upset with he report but there just is a lot wrong with the equipment level and action of this crew.

And there *is* also a lot wrong with how Globalstar/SPOT positions their devices and the SOS service. It frustrates me how Globalstar/SPOT seems to deliberately obfuscate the simplex nature of the service. e.g. I've seen users read the current v3 manual and be convinced the message LED going off means "message received". there is no excuse for that sort of marketing fluff when peoples' lives are potentially at risk. And the whole SOS service is overhyped.

Spot, and now InReach, are fantastic innovative tracking devices. Just wonderful innovation and likely better than an impact activated ELT for lots of reasons. But when the stuff really hits the fan I'd still want a EPIRB in a marine situation or a PLB (actually not an impact activated ELT) in a glider. Actually I want both an InReach and a PLB. The InReach tracking and 2 way messaging are fantastic. And when you really screw up and need a real rescue then the PLB helps SAR get to you. The 406MHz EPIRB/PLB/ELT get you straight to the NOAA/USAF/Coast Guard SAR coordination folks and at the other extreme the 121.5Mhz beacons they all still contain provide SAR teams with a local homing signal.

So I'd hope the sailing community learns by the mistakes made here, but on the other hand I'd hope the litigation at least chilled some of the marketing hype, from Spot and others in this space. And for the gliding community with all these SPOT and InReach trackers I hope all the pilots and crews and family of pilots etc. are lookign out for the pilots. Everybody understands the product capabilities, what different messages exactly mean, who/how to escalate concern to, etc. (which county is the glider in, what's that county sheriff's phone number... etc.) if you've not had that detailed discussion, and better yet left written instructions, now may be a good time to do that.


Darryl

On Saturday, March 29, 2014 5:59:08 PM UTC-4, darrylr wrote:

Darryl

Darryl, thanks for clarifying that SPOT/IN_REACH are not equivalent to PLB in terms of reliability and in terms of who handles the emergency response (and how well and reliably they handle it).

The SPOT/IN_REACH marketing materials pander to the end-users' wishful thinking that these devices are equivalent in functionality.

On Saturday, March 29, 2014 4:48:17 PM UTC-7, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Saturday, March 29, 2014 5:59:08 PM UTC-4, darrylr wrote:



Darryl



Darryl, thanks for clarifying that SPOT/IN_REACH are not equivalent to PLB in terms of reliability and in terms of who handles the emergency response (and how well and reliably they handle it).



The SPOT/IN_REACH marketing materials pander to the end-users' wishful thinking that these devices are equivalent in functionality.

InReach is different from SPOT in several important ways. SPOT is simplex only, so has no idea if a satellite is even in sight, all it can do is just fires off messages and hopes it gets through, it repeats doing that to try to get messages out. And it can't do bidirectional messaging as there is no duplex link to the device. And for soaring use the big thing is InReach has altitude. With the capabilities of InReach, SPOT should effectively be of no interest in the soaring community.

The early operation of the SPOT "911"/"SOS" type services seemed pretty scary and literally GEOS seemed to be calling the local 911 service in some (many?) cases. They seemed to get their act together a bit better over time. The government, industry and others seemed to pretty worried about all this, and there was supposed to be work to improve things though minimum product specs and rescue coordination/procedures through NSARC (National Search And Rescue Committee). I've just not sure where all that currently is at.

Originally Posted by darrylr

On Saturday, March 29, 2014 11:51:13 AM UTC-7, kirk.stant wrote:
On Saturday, March 29, 2014 8:11:24 AM UTC-5, son_of_flubber wrote:



Do you have any actual proof that Spot was actuated in this incident? I checked my spot last month (tracking & OK functions) and it worked just fine..



Otherwise, you are just spreading rumors...



Kirk

66

Kirk, I understand the concern about rumors, but actually posting that article was a nice service for folks. Lots of good stuff to ponder behind this accident. Links were in that article and its trivial to find the pretty thorough report on this accident by US Sailing here... http://offshore.ussailing.org/AssetF...aspx?vid=19623

And yes it is absolutely accepted that the Spot SOS messages was sent, and more importantly was received (there is no way to know with Spot somebody tried to do anything unless a Globalstar satellite happen to receive the message).

As with many aircraft accident reports, reading that US Sailing report is a combination of sadness and frustration. Competing in an off-shore ocean race, no EPIRB, no life raft, a suspected failure to have (or failure of) a deck watch. Yes I know the family were/are upset with he report but there just is a lot wrong with the equipment level and action of this crew.

And there *is* also a lot wrong with how Globalstar/SPOT positions their devices and the SOS service. It frustrates me how Globalstar/SPOT seems to deliberately obfuscate the simplex nature of the service. e.g. I've seen users read the current v3 manual and be convinced the message LED going off means "message received". there is no excuse for that sort of marketing fluff when peoples' lives are potentially at risk. And the whole SOS service is overhyped.

Spot, and now InReach, are fantastic innovative tracking devices. Just wonderful innovation and likely better than an impact activated ELT for lots of reasons. But when the stuff really hits the fan I'd still want a EPIRB in a marine situation or a PLB (actually not an impact activated ELT) in a glider. Actually I want both an InReach and a PLB. The InReach tracking and 2 way messaging are fantastic. And when you really screw up and need a real rescue then the PLB helps SAR get to you. The 406MHz EPIRB/PLB/ELT get you straight to the NOAA/USAF/Coast Guard SAR coordination folks and at the other extreme the 121.5Mhz beacons they all still contain provide SAR teams with a local homing signal.

So I'd hope the sailing community learns by the mistakes made here, but on the other hand I'd hope the litigation at least chilled some of the marketing hype, from Spot and others in this space. And for the gliding community with all these SPOT and InReach trackers I hope all the pilots and crews and family of pilots etc. are lookign out for the pilots. Everybody understands the product capabilities, what different messages exactly mean, who/how to escalate concern to, etc. (which county is the glider in, what's that county sheriff's phone number... etc.) if you've not had that detailed discussion, and better yet left written instructions, now may be a good time to do that.


Darryl

Thanks for that... I was starting to worry I did something wrong....

This year the Newport to Ensenada race is requiring that all entrants have either an EPIR or PLB on board. Neither Spot nor InReach are acceptable alternatives.
My understanding, 2nd or 3rd hand, is that the crew of Aegean may have been drinking. That may explain why they were unable to successfully extract themselves from the vessel after it ran aground, and perhaps why there was apparently no watch on deck that night.
It may also explain a more fundamental error: the course line set in the autopilot intersected the North Coronados Island. The correct usage of the autopilot would have been to set a waypoint seaward of the outer island.
Mike Koerner


















































































































































































































--

POPS

On Saturday, March 29, 2014 11:06:29 PM UTC-7, Mike Koerner wrote:

My understanding, 2nd or 3rd hand, is that the crew of Aegean may have been drinking. That may explain why they were unable to successfully extract themselves from the vessel after it ran aground, and perhaps why there was apparently no watch on deck that night.

Why go that negative speculation route when you have a report to read that covers this and multiple press reports easily findable online all that will show the coroner found no alcohol in the first four bodies found. One of those bodies did test positive for Marijuana (seemingly a low dose since it seems to have been dismissed as an issue). The skipper/owner's body was not found early enough to do an alcohol test. So no, certainly the "crew" was not drinking. And show me one yacht crew where the skipper is going to be drinking while the crew is not...?