00:00Just before midnight last night, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority received the first
00:07May Day call from a vessel, from a yacht, named Flying Fish Arctos, and it requested
00:15urgent assistance as one of the crew members had been struck in the back of the head by
00:19the boom.
00:20The boom is a part of the vessel that attaches the sail to the mast.
00:24It was moving violently through the night with challenging sea conditions, and a crew
00:29member suffered a significant head injury.
00:32Port Kembla Water Police was deployed to that vessel to assist them, and then overnight
00:37has escorted that vessel back into Jarvis Bay this morning.
00:41Unfortunately that male person is now deceased.
00:45The second incident occurred at 2.30 this morning from another vessel.
00:53The vessel was called Bowline and was positioned 30 nautical miles east-north-east of Batemans
00:58Bay.
00:59It had suffered a similar incident to the first vessel, where a crew member had again
01:03suffered a head injury caused by the moving boom from the sailing vessel.
01:08It again had struck that crew member in the head, and that vessel was requesting urgent
01:14assistance.
01:15The New South Wales Police Vessel Nemesis was in short range to that vessel and deployed
01:20immediately to that location.
01:23The crew did a pretty substantial job of doing CPR, trying to keep that crew member
01:28alive, but their efforts were unfortunately met with the death of that person in the early
01:34hours of this morning.
01:36It is a tragic accident, especially having two tragic accidents in one ocean-going race.
01:42We believe at this stage of the early investigation that those vessels may have been changing
01:46sails at the time, so they weren't actually sailing with the wind.
01:51That creates a different set of circumstances.
01:53The hull moves, the sails are moving, the booms are moving, it's a technical change
01:58of sail at sea.
01:59So that may have impacted or contributed to the deaths of those people today.
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