The Rescue Coordination Centre in Northern Norway on Thursday was forced to coordinated the dramatic rescue of 14 mariners who ran into trouble during a storm in the Barents Sea this week.
According to reports, the Norwegian longliner “Kamaro” suffered engine failure earlier this week near Bear Island in the Barents Sea, forcing the Norwegian Coast Guard to dispatch a cutter to tow the vessel to Norway’s mainland. After two days under tow and a storm with up to 14 meter waves bearing down on them, the towing gear was damaged, setting the Kamaro adrift with all 14 crew members on board.
The Norwegian Coast Guard launched a helicopter to airlift the men to safety.
11 of the 14 were airlifted off the vessel, but conditions deteriorated and the helicopter was forced to abandon the operation.
From there rescuers decided that the safest course of action was for the remaining three to hop into survival suits and jump overboard, where they were eventually able to hoisted to safety by another helicopter.
All 14 crewmembers were then safely taken to Hammerfest.
Photos via Norwegian Coast Guard
Jump overboard from a boat that's afloat? jumping overboard is a last resort.doesn't make much sense to me.
One of the helicopter winch cables got entangled in the boat’s rigging and broke. To avoid this happening to the last winch, they had to jump overboard :)
That (jump) is done to pick up people without the cable becoming entangled in the boom off the mast of the F/V.
I am a helicopter rescueswimmer and for us this is, as you say Farrel – a last resort. If the master of the vessel want to abandon his ship it might be safer to make the crew jump the ship one at the time in a controled fashion to be picked up from the water by a waiting rescueswimmer, rather than wait until the ship sinks and you end up with 14 people in the water at the same time wich is a very difficult situation to handle. There are diffrent risks and advantages to be considred in the missionbrief for such an evacuation, and both winching from ship and water has it´s pros and cons but in this case it seemed sensible regarding what Geir says.
Hats off for the Norwegian rescue helicopters!
Also, it takes a lot of guts to jump off the boat in those conditions..