Update on Inception crew
Further to our previous website article update which mentioned that, as a precaution the six Inception crew (Jeff Dusting, Ken Dusting, Doug Abbott, Chris Morris, Glenn Armistead and Greg Cameron) were admitted to Warrnambool Base Hospital on Saturday morning for routine observation.
None of the crew members suffered serious injuries but were recovering from their exposure to the extremely cold conditions.
After being discharged, later Saturday afternoon, it was great to see some of the Inception crew at the Port Fairy Yacht Club with other competitors.
The ORCV has received many messages from the yachting fraternity congratulating everyone involved in the successful rescue of the Inception crew and commiserations to Jeff on the loss of his boat, Inception.
In times of crisis, leadership is imperative and we wanted to share some comments we have received from the Inception crew, other competitors, our Incident Response Team, and Search & Rescue authorities:
- Jeff Dusting's leadership was outstanding. He was very calm, decisive and a constant source of motivation;
- The way in which Grant Dunoon (Skipper of Trybooking.com) and his crew Peter Fetch, Ross Fisher and Kim Walker, manoeuvred Trybooking.com in those seas was exceptional. They started the search using the Personal Locator Beacon positions provided by AMSA to radio operator, Peter Clancy, at Ocean Racing Melbourne. Peter provided these position updates to Trybooking.com via HF radio, who then began a grid search of the area and located the crew using their knowledge of the estimated drift and hence the likely postions of the crew in the prevaling conditions. The Trybooking.com crew managed to hear the whistles of the Inception crew and first saw them using their spotlight;
- Peter Clancy (Ocean Racing Melbourne) and Ray Shaw (Race Director) did a fantastic job coordinating the search and rescue.
