David Jacobs, vice commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, has told reporters that Smith was hit by the mainsheet (a rope that controls the mainsail of the yacht) of his boat, Bowline, and hit his head on the vessel’s winch. Quaden was struck by the yacht’s boom onboard Flying Fish Arctos. A boom is a horizontal pole designed to support the bottom of a yacht’s mainsail.
