This, weirdly, illustrates why rescue services (e.g. the Coastguard) will ask how many people the potential rescue might involve. Assuming the trouble is within the range of a smaller bird, they'll want to dispatch the smallest, most efficient helicopter for the lift, because the downwash of a big chopper's rotors does...well, this to the folks needing rescuing.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'fund, fun, goole, yahoo, myaspace, msn, hanoi' to 'hello, this is the, german, coastguard, ad, berlitz, sinking, thinking' - edited by Krupo

The small boat should have been looking. However, the Coastguard has no excuse since he did see them coming. It would have been so easy for the CG to avoid the collision and it wouldn't have slowed him down even a second. The fact that he had the arrogance to risk the lives of those in the other boat just so he could be right about it it disgusting. Secondly, if he was on the way to an emergency he's cost a lot of time by hitting the other boat. I think this is a case of forget who is technically right and wrong and look at the problems caused by the coast guard not responding.

As an experienced water user I'm used to people doing silly things. However, I avoid them when I can and grumble later. I don't try to kill them. The driver of the coast guard boat should be experienced enough to be able to rise above the other boat's silliness and do the right thing.

One last think, the coastguard was trying to shout at the other boat. Just how loud does he think he can shout!

Coastguard, not coastguared.

I'm not saying that they're not at fault, just be aware b/c the coastguard may end up ramming you!

From Wiki News:


February 14, 2005

A passenger ship, the Voyager enroute between Spain's Balearic Islands to the Italian island of Sardinia, radioed a distress call earlier today after getting into difficulties in heavy seas. A huge wave shattered a bridge window, damaging control systems inside.

The Bahamian-registered ship is carrying 776 passengers and crew, 480 of them Spanish. Some sustained minor injurues when the ship sailed into the storm at 8am UTC today.

French and Spanish tugs have been dispatched to assist the vessel, and the British gas tanker Gimi has diverted to offer help and is relaying radio signals from the stricken ship. Voyager "is in a difficult situation but is not drifting", according to the French coastguard, with only a single propeller still providing force.

The ship was sailing from Tunis to Barcelona when she encountered the storm. The crew have restored power to two of her four engines and she is now diverting to Tunis, and is expected to reach port on Tuesday.


Check this line out again:

A huge wave shattered a bridge window, damaging control systems inside. Wow! That must have looked impressive as the bow dived down into the trough.

Sc