- Two sailors died after being hit by barriers during the regatta
- Another competitor had to be rescued off the south coast of New South Wales.
Details have emerged of a “terrifying” incident off Sydney on the Hobart yacht Porco Rosso, which had to recover a crew member swept more than a kilometer overboard on a deadly night of racing.
Two sailors were fatally struck by their respective boats' barriers overnight, as the race's death toll threatened to rise to three when an as-yet-unidentified crew member fell off Porco Rosso at around 3.15am.
The sailor was sent flying overboard when the 2013 handicap winner, formerly known as Victoire, passed Green Cape on the New South Wales coast in the strong winds that had been forecast.
“That's one of the scariest experiences you can ever have,” said David Jacobs, vice-commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, which administers the race.
'(And) it was at night, which makes it ten times scarier.
“Fortunately, there are systems and procedures developed to address that situation and recover the person.”
A crew member of the yacht Porco Rosso (pictured) went flying overboard at 3.15am on Friday and was left stranded more than a kilometer from the boat before being rescued.
The sailor was found thanks to an emergency beacon that helped locate him (pictured, the Porco Rosso leaving Sydney on Boxing Day)
The incident activated the crew member's emergency position indication radio beacon, a safety device that all sailors must carry in the race.
As a result, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority was automatically notified of the incident and contacted the Sydney and Hobart race committee.
AMSA also deployed an emergency aircraft to begin searching for the crew member.
“We believe they had been swept about 1.2 kilometers from the ship,” Jacobs said.
Four-time honors champion Master Lock Comanche, who had retired earlier in the race, was diverted to assist Porco Rosso in the search and rescue efforts.
The crew member was located, but Porco Rosso opted to withdraw around 4:45 a.m. rather than continue into Bass Strait, where strong to gale-force winds were blowing.
A sailor aboard Bowline (pictured) was one of two crew members killed by a barrier in the first 24 hours of the famous race.
“(The crew member) would rather not have had that experience, but they are healthy and fine,” Jacobs said.
Earlier in the evening, a sailor aboard the Flying Fish Arctos and another on Bowline were fatally struck by their respective ships' boom, the large horizontal post at the bottom of the mainsail.
The deaths were the first at the regatta since the tragic 1998 Hobart disaster, which claimed the lives of six people in violent storms and triggered massive reforms to the regatta's safety procedures.
'The nautical community is a very close-knit community. “There are about a thousand sailors in the water in this regatta, and to lose two like this is just devastating,” Jacobs said of the recent deaths.