Cowes Week Limited
Other
Action Planned
Cowes Week Limited is discussing additional ambulance support, reviewing AED placement, reinforcing the necessity of having a sharp knife on board, and reviewing criteria for abandoning racing. The organisation will have independent radio operators to monitor safety communications and will address continuous spinnaker sheets in their safety booklet. (AI summary)
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Dear Ms Sumeray,
I am in receipt of your report after your inquest with regards to the fatality on board Legs 11 during Cowes week 2018, (Mr Wayne Andrew ROGERS) and I respond on behalf of Cowes Week Limited, the organisers of the event.
I confirm our acknowledgement of the recommendations outlined in the report and I can confirm that we are implementing the actions outlined as follows ;
1) With regards to the additional ambulance support proposal, this is something that we are discussing internally and on which I will revert to you on.
2) As above.
3) With regards to Automated External Defibrillators, this is under review. It is not practical to have AED’s on small rescue craft which are subject to being wet much of the time and we only have a limited number of bigger control vessels with dry cabins during the week. We will review the options of putting AED’s on some of those boats but our initial thoughts are that a delay in returning a casualty to shore are highly unlikely to make stopping off at a larger committee boat on the water practical . There are already several AED’s within 90 seconds of the Trinity Landing pontoon (the emergency drop off point for on water causalities) and we will look at making one available directly on the pontoon as well.
4) I can confirm that we have fully taken on board all of the recommendations in the investigative report with regards to monitoring and recording safety channels as well as the manpower requirements.
Cowes Week Ltd Regatta House, 18 Bath Road, Cowes, Isle of Wight PO31 7QN, UK Telephone - Office: +44(0)1983 248 002 Fax: +44(0)1983 295329 Email: Laurence.mead@lendycowesweek.co.uk Website: www.lendycowesweek.co.uk VAT Registration number: 918 1037 39
From this year’s regatta those people monitoring the radio for safety communications (all highly trained) will be independent of those radio operators dealing with race matters from competitors.
5) Some of the recommendations are outside our control in terms of delivery (as an example the fact that all boats should carry suitable knives) but despite that being the case we will be making the recommendations known to our competitors, both through our sailing instructions (where appropriate) and our safety booklet where appropriate. There are no accepted standards for how many knives should be carried, in what locations, on what size of boat, so we think it would be difficult for Cowes week to lead the way in trying to define that. Nonetheless the necessity to have a sharp knife on board, whilst being known to most sailors, is something that we will reinforce.
6) We are reviewing again the criteria for abandoning racing in the case of strong winds and / or an incident. We feel this worked well in 2018 but further work is being undertaken in this regard to ensure that any lessons learned are taken on board. In particular we are looking at alternative drop off points for casualties on the mainland, if that is nearer to an incident location or is an easier location to reach in certain wind conditions. This was not the case in this instance.
7) We are making known the issue that continuous spinnaker sheets may have played a part in this incident and this will be addressed in our safety booklet going forward.
I hope this clarifies our responses to last year’s tragic accident to your satisfaction
I am in receipt of your report after your inquest with regards to the fatality on board Legs 11 during Cowes week 2018, (Mr Wayne Andrew ROGERS) and I respond on behalf of Cowes Week Limited, the organisers of the event.
I confirm our acknowledgement of the recommendations outlined in the report and I can confirm that we are implementing the actions outlined as follows ;
1) With regards to the additional ambulance support proposal, this is something that we are discussing internally and on which I will revert to you on.
2) As above.
3) With regards to Automated External Defibrillators, this is under review. It is not practical to have AED’s on small rescue craft which are subject to being wet much of the time and we only have a limited number of bigger control vessels with dry cabins during the week. We will review the options of putting AED’s on some of those boats but our initial thoughts are that a delay in returning a casualty to shore are highly unlikely to make stopping off at a larger committee boat on the water practical . There are already several AED’s within 90 seconds of the Trinity Landing pontoon (the emergency drop off point for on water causalities) and we will look at making one available directly on the pontoon as well.
4) I can confirm that we have fully taken on board all of the recommendations in the investigative report with regards to monitoring and recording safety channels as well as the manpower requirements.
Cowes Week Ltd Regatta House, 18 Bath Road, Cowes, Isle of Wight PO31 7QN, UK Telephone - Office: +44(0)1983 248 002 Fax: +44(0)1983 295329 Email: Laurence.mead@lendycowesweek.co.uk Website: www.lendycowesweek.co.uk VAT Registration number: 918 1037 39
From this year’s regatta those people monitoring the radio for safety communications (all highly trained) will be independent of those radio operators dealing with race matters from competitors.
5) Some of the recommendations are outside our control in terms of delivery (as an example the fact that all boats should carry suitable knives) but despite that being the case we will be making the recommendations known to our competitors, both through our sailing instructions (where appropriate) and our safety booklet where appropriate. There are no accepted standards for how many knives should be carried, in what locations, on what size of boat, so we think it would be difficult for Cowes week to lead the way in trying to define that. Nonetheless the necessity to have a sharp knife on board, whilst being known to most sailors, is something that we will reinforce.
6) We are reviewing again the criteria for abandoning racing in the case of strong winds and / or an incident. We feel this worked well in 2018 but further work is being undertaken in this regard to ensure that any lessons learned are taken on board. In particular we are looking at alternative drop off points for casualties on the mainland, if that is nearer to an incident location or is an easier location to reach in certain wind conditions. This was not the case in this instance.
7) We are making known the issue that continuous spinnaker sheets may have played a part in this incident and this will be addressed in our safety booklet going forward.
I hope this clarifies our responses to last year’s tragic accident to your satisfaction