In the middle of nowhere...

A thousand miles from the Australian coast in the southern ocean is indeed the middle of nowhere. As the search continues for some sign of Malaysian Flight 370, the location is familiar to me because we mounted a search and rescue operation in that exact spot when promoting and producing a solo yacht race around the world.

Much of the race took place in the southern ocean which is known to be the most remote location on earth. The  boats were literally thousands of miles from land. Communication there is difficult even today. Satellite coverage is spotty. And the search and rescue efforts today face the same problems we did then.

Locations are out of helicopter range. Low-altitude flying conditions are dangerous much of the time and, with 30-foot seas in 60-knot winds, identifying an 80-foot, or in our case a 60-foot, piece of equipment is difficult at best.

It was early evening when our communications center received a signal from both emergency beacons that were required for each boat to carry. It was our leading competitor, who had already encountered some severe weather problems but was still making her way toward Sydney. We could not establish voice communication via satellite messaging or marine radio and that was very disconcerting.

It's times like this when partnerships are invaluable. Just like the current effort, the Royal Australian Navy and Air Force joined in to help. The beacons on board the yacht were transmitting its location, so the next morning, an Australian Royal Air Force Hercules aircraft left Adelaide at 4am to make a search.

It took 4 hours for the plane to reach the area where the signal was transmitting, 920 miles southwest of Australia's southern coast. Sound familiar? They began to fly a grid pattern over the area in hopes of spotting the boat. Another 4 hours had past when a member of Isabelle Autissier's shore crew aboard the plane saw the boat with Isabelle on the deck wildly waving at them.Tell me the boat doesn't look like a wave.

Her boat had been completely dis-masted with nothing visible on the deck. There was a gaping six-foot hole in the roof of the cabin. She had been hit by a rogue wave, rolling the boat in a complete 360-revolution. She was fortunately below deck when it happened. Otherwise she would have surely been swept overboard. An emergency kit including a small walkie-talkie type radio was dropped from the plane and they were able to communicate the rescue plan to her.

We were in constant contact with the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center for that part of the world, based in Canberra, and they informed us that the Navy frigate HMAS Darwin had been dispatched to the site from Western Australia but it would still take approximately two days to reach Isabelle.

Nothing seems easy in that part of the world's oceans but the Darwin arrived on schedule.  They dispatched a Seahawk (GO HAWKS!) helicopter from the Darwin to her location and, on the hand-held radio, instructed Isabelle in the necessary procedures. They took a civilian linguist (her being French and all), a television pool cameraman and a medical officer to cover any contingencies and record the operation. With a strong harness and a trained rescuer on the winch, they plucked her off the damaged boat to safety with little problem.

We were in Adelaide at the Air Force base to meet her when she arrived in two more days' time. Emotions were high when we reunited. And the world media was waiting. This incident took about a week and we knew very quickly exactly were the boat was. It was only a day after the distress signal that we found out Isabelle was safe. Think about the families of Malaysia Flight 370 who have had no word for two weeks and about the searchers who are only going on a sketchy satellite image with a location that could have moved hundreds of miles since it was identified.

Hope is dimming now on all fronts. I am an optimist who is wishing for a happy resolution to this current situation but there are very strong doubts in my mind. After all, it is the middle of nowhere. Fingers crossed.

Territory Folks Should Stick Together

In the wake of yesterday's horrible news helicopter crash here in Seattle, the Rogers and Hammerstein lyrics from Oklahoma come to mind. "The Farmer and the Cowman should be friends." Journalists and public relations professionals don't always see eye to eye. But during my career, I've gotten to know reporters who understand both sides of the situation and photo-journalist Bill Strothman, who sadly died in yesterday's accident, was one of them.

I can't say we were friends but we always recognized each other when we were working a story. Our careers spanned about the same amount of time and he and I stood around together on countless occasions waiting for the news to happen. Mostly we would chat about what was going on in town but, because I started out as a correspondent and teach media relations at the University of Washington, I was always anxious to get Bill's take on the world around us.

Bill had a wonderful sense of the news and was a model of the ethics that make good reporting work.  He knew where not to go with his camera and he knew when the time was right. An affable, comfortable person, he never pushed when we were together.  He'd listen and, even when he had no reporter with him, he knew to ask the questions that would fill in the blanks.

One of my mentors told me that the best public relations comes from being a good reporter. I try to always take the media's side when finding the news in a story. Bill Strothman was the kind of person who helped me see through the clutter on a daily basis.

I'm glad I knew him and my heart goes out to his family and his colleagues at KOMO News. The tragic loss of Bill and the pilot Gary Pfitzner is being felt by the entire community. For me, all of us in the communications business are trying to tell stories in a way that people can understand and relate to them. Whether it's reporting or promoting, we should have the same goal in mind. Effective communications is what we want. No matter which side of the fence we're on. Like the song says. "Territory folks should stick together." That's important now more than ever. For certain, I know we've lost a gracious advocate in Bill Strothman and we'll miss him.

It starts with the land...

My ancestors were farmers as far as I can trace them. Even back in the 1600’s, they were tilling the land in Ireland. As they worked their way across America, they kept at it. Farms and grains and livestock were in their blood.  My grandfather started out that way, but he broke the chain when he became a banker. My dad took over the farm until he was drafted in the Army and became a career officer. I consider myself fortunate to have known my grandparents. And my great-grandfather was still alive when I was a young child. His was the first funeral I ever attended.  I still have his rocking chair, which according to my grandmother was an 1870’s vintage. No matter where dad was stationed while I was growing up, he would send me off to the farm in the summers. I wouldn’t trade those times for anything. My grandparents were tough and hardy souls. I’m a better person for knowing them. The Irish are good at a lot of things but their roots are in the soil.  I feel their spirits when I’m in Ireland. The connection is strong. Lamb for dinner and a shot of Jameson are waiting for me tonight. May the most you wish for be the least you get.  Happy St. Patrick’s Day, wherever you're from.

The Web we weave...

This week marks the 25^th birthday of the World Wide Web (the Web). Let’s draw the line right now. The web is NOT the internet. It’s ON the internet and allows us to view all those zillions of websites that we access every day. Not long after the web came into existence, we were promoting and producing a solo yacht race around the world from Charleston, South Carolina. The BOC Challenge, or Around Alone as it came to be known, was a 27,000 mile race around the world, one person, one boat, alone. We had competitors for all over the world, a feeder race from England to get the European competitors over to America and a host committee in Charleston that would make any global event producer proud.

 

As you might imagine with one person on a sailboat thousands of miles from land, communications for the race was crucial.  When the event started in the 1980’s, ham radio operators were its only lifeline and the reliability of those air waves was dubious at times. When we got to Charleston in the 90’s, we had satellite tracking in its very early stages but it was a ground-breaking and life-saving addition to the race at the time. Cellphones were getting smaller but coverage was spotty and a battery might last for a couple of hours without a recharge. The system was getting better but still limited.

One of the promises we made to sponsors of the event was daily position reports and news releases. And then, it was not as easy as it might sound today. Laptops had dial-up connections that took hours and email was still a thing of the future.  We were faxing position reports and releases to over one hundred worldwide media each morning and it literally took hours to get the word out.

As we were grappling with the system to make it as efficient as possible, I received a call from a professor at the College of Charleston.  He knew about the race and said he had an idea for our communications effort that he wanted to share with us. We set a time to meet and arrived to a cavernous lab room full of computers, wires and boxes of electronics. One of our sponsors was IBM and the fifteen-pound “Thinkpads” they gave us were pretty futuristic but still they would crash when we put about as much information on them as is on the 500 MB inch-long flash drive that’s in my bottom desk drawer today because it’s so small.

The professor told us that he heard from a local newspaper reporter that we were going to issue daily position reports.  He said he had a better way to distribute them than via fax. “We call it the "spider web" and it’s linking computers and colleges all over the world almost instantaneously,” he remarked, “And some businesses and media are beginning to join in on this experiment as well.” He went on to demonstrate it to us by posting one of our news releases and sending it to Italy, the home of one of our competitors. Within a few minutes, we got a phone call back telling us they had received the message at the other end and could easily distribute it from there.

Little did we know that this was the beta test and we were the guinea pigs for the World Wide Web and we were astounded to have this new-found capability. It literally became a life-saving tool when we printed screen-drop positions for boats in trouble that we could send immediately to authorities anywhere in the world. It was an amazing aid to rescue efforts on more than one occasion. And we knew it was working because, if we missed a scheduled reporting time, dozens of calls came in from around the world asking what the problem was.

Thanks to the College of Charleston, we were the first global event to use the web to communicate on a daily basis.  Our media coverage increased 20-fold from the past and our race was safer and better managed as a result of this capability. Over 5,000 feature articles were written about Around Alone and we logged 500 hours of world network television time devoted to it.  Even Time, Sports Illustrated and People magazines sung our praises.

By the next event four years later, we had live satellite tracking on much improved laptops. Like radar, you could actually watch the boats move in the middle of the Indian Ocean on your laptop screen in real time. Cell communication was hitting its stride and we were getting over 150,000 unique visitors to our website on a daily basis. We partnered with a company called Quokka Sports, owned by some America’s Cup sailors who were prepping for live coverage of the America’s Cup.  We got their beta test with a great crew of reporters and photographers who followed us around the world posting information several times a day. Never before could a global sports event be followed so closely by so many. As communicators, we were very fortunate to be involved in the infancy of this world-changing creation known as the Web.

Happy Birthday, World Wide Web. We love you.