Displaying items by tag: Wolfgang Schmidt

7th March 2011

Boat Owner 'Aware of Poor Wiring' Before Drowning Tragedy

Problems with electrical wiring had been alerted to a retired mariner who drowned along with two friends after abandoning their boat due to a fire, an inquest into the tragedy has heard.

Wolfgang Schmidt (70), Richard Harmon (69) and Wolfgang Schröder (62) all died from drowning near Adrigole Harbour in Bantry Bay on 16 August 2010 after a fire broke out on Schmidt's boat during an angling trip.

The Irish Times reports that shipwright John Murphy told the inquest that he undertook repairs to the engines and fuel tank of the small cruiser in May 2010.

He said he expressed concerns about the state of the boat's wiring to Schmidt, who told him he planned to sell the boat later in the year and would return to him to tidy the wiring before then.

The inquest heard that the wiring was connected directly to the battery without an isolation switch or fuse board, which had compounded the problem when fire broke out and made the vessel unrecoverable.

Lone survivor Ed Dziato (47) told how they had twice tried to put out the fire with a powder extinguisher but both times the flames shot back up. They were unable to reach the lifejackets stored forward of the wheelhouse, which was quickly engulfed by flames.

In all three cases the coroner returned verdicts of accidental death due to drowning.

The Irish Times has more on the story HERE.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0302/1224291145079.html

Problems with electrical wiring had been alerted to a retired mariner who drowned along with two friends after abandoning their boat due to a fire, an inquest into the tragedy has heard.

The Irish Times reports that shipwright John Murphy told the inquest that he undertook repairs to the engines and fuel tank of the small cruiser in May 2010.

He said he expressed concerns about the state of the boat's wiring to Schmidt, who told him he planned to sell the boat later in the year and would return to him to tidy the wiring before then.

In all three cases the coroner returned verdicts of accidental death due to drowning.

The Irish Times has more on the story HERE.

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Competitions

The most significant events for the Half Ton Class has been the annual Half Ton Cup which was sailed under the IOR rules until 1993. More recently this has been replaced with the Half Ton Classics Cup. The venue of the event moved from continent to continent with over-representation on French or British ports. In later years the event is held biennially. Initially, it was proposed to hold events in Ireland, Britain and France by rotation. However, it was the Belgians who took the ball and ran with it. The Class is now managed from Belgium.