# More grist for the mill (re: helicopters)



## bossi (19 Dec 2000)

Okay, so it‘s a pet peeve of mine (that the politicians are trying to skew the helicopter replacement project in favour of a smaller, less capable bucket of bolts).  These sailors should be thankful they were not relying upon Canada‘s obsolete search and rescue aircraft for their lives - here‘s another example of why sometimes it‘s preferable to purchase "Cadillac" helicopters, instead of settling for useless little toys:

December 19, 2000 
Risk pays off in Coast Guard rescue

By JACK DORSEY
© 2000, The Virginian-Pilot 

PORTSMOUTH -- Coast Guard air crews knew they had a slim chance of rescuing all 34 crew members from the sinking cruise ship SeaBreeze I and that it would only work if they acted quickly.

The ship was nearly on its side, being pounded steadily by 20-foot seas, taking a 40-footer every once in awhile.

So they took a chance and loaded as many crew members as possible -- 26 -- on the first helicopter, with a second picking up the remaining eight about 15 minutes later.

``That is not our standard procedure,‘‘ said Lt. Cmdr. Randall Watson, the pilot of one of two HH-60 helicopters that responded, along with two C-130 fixed-wing aircraft.

No one likes to overload an aircraft, but there was little else to do. 

``We decided to have the first helicopter absolutely get as many as they could on board,‘‘ Watson said of the 200-mile storm-tossed flight northeast of Cape Charles. Fifty-knot crosswinds out of the south greeted them on their way out. They faced stronger headwinds on the return flight.

``For obvious reasons, you don‘t know what is going to happen to the ship. It was listing heavily to starboard, and if we split up the survivors -- 17 in one aircraft, 17 in the other -- and the ship went over, well, in hindsight, we would have been saying maybe we could have gotten more.‘‘

The helicopter, with a crew of four, normally takes no more than eight additional passengers. The previous rescue record was 13. However, the beefy aircraft can take cargo loads of 9,400 pounds -- the equivalent of about 45 passengers -- and did not exceed that weight.

``So what we did was have the first aircraft get as many survivors as he could. I was just in a hover behind him. As soon as he got his cabin filled all the way up, to where he couldn‘t get any more in, I just came in behind him,‘‘ Watson said.

``I got the balance of the survivors. The captain was the last man up.‘‘

Watson and the three other Coast Guard crewmen in his aircraft finished their rescue within 15 minutes, then headed back to shore, buffeted by strong headwinds.

It was a chance that paid off, resulting in the rescue of everyone aboard the cruise ship, Watson said of the decision to load up the first helo.

Most of the crew members were Filipino, Indonesian and Greek. Because some were relatively small and light, they were able to be hoisted aboard the helicopters two at a time.

It also helped, said Watson, that they had practiced their abandon-ship drills before and were all familiar about what to do.

``I think their captain had briefed them pretty well,‘‘ Watson said.

Time was definitely important. It was a short time after all were rescued, officials aren‘t exactly sure when, that the 605-foot, 21,000-ton passenger ship sank in more than 4,300 feet of water.

A debris field of tables, chairs, life rafts and life boats was seen from the air on Monday, approximately 290 miles east of Cape Charles, the Coast Guard said. No oil pollution from the ship‘s fuel tanks was evident.

In all, the two helicopters spent nearly five hours each in the air, leaving their base at Elizabeth City, N.C., shortly after receiving a distress call from the ship at 11:30 a.m. and returning the survivors to Oceana Naval Air Station Sunday afternoon.

One crew member was later hospitalized with chest pains and the rest were treated by Navy and civilian medical personnel and released. They remain at an area motel awaiting interviews with officials from the Panama Maritime authority who represent the ship, Coast Guard officials said.

Watson and his crew have become seasoned rescuers this year. He was aboard another search-and-rescue effort in June and located one of four men from the fishing vessel Frisco, which was run over by a freighter during a foggy night 50 miles off the Virginia coast. On Oct. 7, he again was at the controls when five commercial fishermen were rescued from the scallop boat Carolina Breeze.

Aboard with him in the SeaBreeze rescue were Ensign Steve Bonn, co-pilot, a recent transfer from the Army where he was an instructor pilot who was on his first search and rescue mission; Petty Officer Bob Florisi, rescue swimmer; and Petty Officer Sam Pulliam, flight mechanic.

The Coast Guard‘s Marine Safety Office in Norfolk will assist with the investigation at the request of the Panamanian government.

Since the ship was in international waters, it is Panama‘s responsibility to investigate.

No cause for the sinking has been given. The Greek captain had radioed that he had lost one of his two engines and that the engine room was flooded with 10 to 15 feet of water.

The ship left Halifax earlier in the week, stopped in Boston for refueling and was headed on Sunday to Charleston, S.C., where it reportedly was being sold.

The SeaBreeze is owned by Cruise Ventures III, a subsidiary of DLJ Capital Funding in New York, Peter Craddick, a Cruise Ventures III spokesman in New York, told the Associated Press.

International Shipping Partners Inc. of Miami supplied the crew, Craddick said. 

The ship previously was owned by Cape Canaveral, Fla.-based Premier Cruises Ltd. until its primary lender, investment firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, seized four ships with a court order in September, Craddick said.


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## Drummy (19 Dec 2000)

Hello gentlemen. This is my first foray into this cyber-world of Military Madness. Isn‘t it funny(?) that you never see or hear of our politicians flitting around the country in our helicopters. Maybe this does prove that they are smarter than we take them for.


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