Calling for help

If you have an EPIRB or 406 personal locator beacon, visit www.beacons.org.nz to check your contact details are up to date.

with the battery’s positive terminal in contact with the engine crankcase, creating a short circuit.

If you short out four, 100amp hour batteries, the energy released will set just about anything on fire. The electrical cables had rapidly overheated and the PVC insulation burned furiously; at various points, the cables were bundled and the fire had spread to all the cables between the engine and the batteries. Ultimately all cables were burnt out from end to end. The heavy duty cables linking the house batteries were also destroyed.

Diesel, unlike petrol, does not ignite easily and diesel leaks rarely cause a fire, however an electrical fire can spread to woodwork and other combustible materials, including hot diesel fuel.

I was vaguely aware of the hazard of burning PVC insulation as it had been blamed for contributing to the loss of HMS Sheffield after she was hit by a missile during the Falklands War. Nevertheless the reality was sobering, and the smoke from burning PVC is horrendously toxic.

Fatu Hiva was delightful but offered no repair facilities. Fortunately another yacht in the anchorage had some heavy duty cables and terminals left over from a re-wiring project and parted with these for a small consideration. A couple of days’ work had our electrics repaired, except for the alternator with the broken bracket. With the engine running again, albeit looking distinctly secondhand, we resumed our cruise through the Marqueses, the Tuamotus and on to Tahiti.

Probably the greatest advantage we had over Sunny Deck’s crew, as recounted in last month’s Boating NZ, was that our fire started in daytime and all the crew were awake. Daylight makes it easier to assess the scope of what you are dealing with and it possibly meant we discovered the fire earlier – but I suspect we averted disaster by an extremely narrow margin; if we had delayed another minute before using the fire extinguishers we would have likely have had to abandon ship.

In a crisis your decisions are likely to be instinctive rather than based on lengthy weighing up of the pros and cons. Many sailors will instinctively want to save their ship if at all possible, even at some personal risk, and life rafts are not always the best choice; in bad weather lives have been lost from liferafts while the abandoned yacht has remained afloat – the 1979 Fastnet Race is a classic example. Furthermore, a stay in a liferaft on a turbulent ocean is unlikely to be a bundle of laughs as Sunny Deck’s story illustrates, particularly if you are in a remote area where rescue may take a long time, if it ever comes.

The extinguishers we used were the cheap type you can purchase from your local chandlery for $30 or so. Nevertheless they were extremely effective when used in the confined space of a yacht’s interior and the dry powder is safe to use on electrical fires and burning fuel. Although the 1kg size has limited capacity, you can use it one-handed while you use your other hand to brace yourself in a seaway or to hold a hatch open. But two were not really enough, and I would carry three, or one 1kg and one 2kg as a minimum.

The other big success story was the fire-retardant acoustic insulation which lined our engine space. I had cursed the cost of this stuff when I installed it but, although scorched in places, it did not burn even where it was in direct contact with the blazing PVC. Those extra dollars may have saved our lives. B