Atlantis Photos

	Runaway Rib
	Atlantis rescued 3 people from Southampton Water who had been thrown from a high speed rib on the evening of Sunday 19th June 2005. The RIB went into a tight left hand turn at about 30 knots and instead of banking like a speedboat or motorcycle, it rolled outwards like a car, throwing all the occupants clear. They were all very lucky to have suffered no apparent injuries. The rib was left circling at full throttle endangering all vessels in the vicinity, and could have circled back and chopped up the people in the water (as happened at the Southampton Boat Show a few years ago. It took many attempts and forty minutes to bring it under control. First the harbourmaster's launch trailed ropes and fenders around it to snag the prop. Three times, it cut the rope, retained the fenders, but continued charging around in circles, dragging fenders.The full sized RNLI lifeboat from Calshot turned up and three times it pushed itself into the orbit of the runaway rib, to provoke a collision, so that it could be boarded. The first two times, this resulted in nasty crunchings as the RIB hit the large steel hull. On the third attempt this worked, the surprised RIB hesitated briefly, and a very brave RNLI man jumped into the cockpit and brought it under control.

Click Here for a 3min video clip atMedium resolution (10Mb)

I have put back the better resolution clip now the number of hits has reduced.

Here are some images taken whilst at the helm of Atlantis. Click on them to get a fullsize image (reduced in quality for web)

	Just like Jaws we will try another fender	Oh dear that didn't work	Now let the big boys try

	On the Attack	First Hit	Ready for the next

	Try	Try	& Try again

	Crunch !	Calshot hero has just jumped in.	Stopped at last

Here are some other relevant links concerning this and other 'runaway ribs'

Here are some of those who have already experienced sailing on Atlantis, mostly in sunny & warm weather!

2004

Click on the pictures to see more.
	February 14th	February 28th	March 6th	March 20th

	May 1st	June 19th	June 28/29th

2003

	StJohns November 2003

1st Row:	The Smith family October 2003
2nd Row:	Students from St Johns School CCF on a very hot July day.
3rd Row:	Stuart's Birthday Click here to see where you went
4th Row:	Students from St Johns school who had a marvellous time in June.
5th Row:	Stag Weekend.
	Best wishes to Dan (seen at the wheel in the left hand picture) who got married two weeks later in Budapest. He came all the way from Brussels to sail with his friends for a day in the rain! Click on the chart below to see in more detail where they went. The red line shows the track followed.

Runaway Rib