Another Broken Lagoon

[geem]

Right about his boat - however expect similar comments would apply if he had, say a Bavaria Ocean 38 or Moody 38. If you read the whole book there is nothing he experienced that would phase any modern well sorted boat of similar size.

Except comfort. We have met several ocean sailors who have stated that there next boat will be heavier. It's counter intuitive if you weekend/ coastal sail but spending several weeks at sea comfort of a heavy boat is very desirable. The motion is so much easier to live with.

 

[westernman]

I used to have a single hander hobie cat FX-one.
The cross beams on that are substantial. The forward one has a very solid triangle underneath.
This is for a light weight "beach" catamaran.



Substantially more substantial than those bulkheads in the Lagoon.

What were they thinking of when they decided on the scantlings for that?

By the way the FX one is the wettest thing I have ever sailed. Including windsurfers, various dinghies. And that is without counting capsizes, falling off or flying around the forestay.

 

[Neeves]

I was pondering the thread.

If multihulls were death traps and Lagoons more so....

They, multis in general and specifically Lagoons, would be uninsurable.

Our cat has never had insurance refused, nor withdrawn. As I mentioned we are uninsured if we sail into a cyclone season - presumably our insurance company finds the risks too high - coverage where cyclones are not prevalent not an issue. However the restrictions placed on us are same as any monohull - suggesting insurers lump the risks of loss of a multihull similar to a monohull.

It maybe that Lagoons ARE uninsurable - I don't know.

Insurers are pretty hard headed.


I pondered a bit further.

Mention has been made of the loss of vessels as a result of Hurricanes, aka, cyclones, typhoons and any other circular storm and I have linked to storms in the Med and Scillies where losses were not insignficant. In many cases storms and any strong wind event (but not all) are well forecast. In the case of the Scillies and most circulate storms avoidance is possible. Some skippers chose to move out of the track of the storm in the Scillies. I have to assume that many of the yachts lost were insured and the insurer stumped up. And we wonder why our premiums increase......

There is a thought that if skippers demonstrated more caution and did not challenge forecast strong wind events our premiums might not increase, so much. Keeping a yacht in a hurricane prone location seems to be ...... I find it difficult to conjure up a polite word to use.

Interestingly insurers seem to have ignored developments (arguably improvements) in ground tackle and make no demands on what ground tackle is carried.

Strange world

OP - Sorry for the thread drift

Jonathan

 

[Chiara’s slave]

Lagoons are an affront to sailing in any case. Poor performance, monumentally ugly. It’s just a floating saloon. I doubt its worse built than loads of other plastic fantastics, but being a cat it needs to be better.

 

[Tranona]

Except comfort. We have met several ocean sailors who have stated that there next boat will be heavier. It's counter intuitive if you weekend/ coastal sail but spending several weeks at sea comfort of a heavy boat is very desirable. The motion is so much easier to live with.

Then out of the 3 boats I mentioned the Victoria would be at the bottom of the list with a displacement of 7077kgs compared with 7500kgs for the Bavaria and 8160kgs for the Moody.

Nothing like a few facts to spoil a good story!

 

[Neeves]

Lagoons are an affront to sailing in any case. Poor performance, monumentally ugly. It’s just a floating saloon. I doubt its worse built than loads of other plastic fantastics, but being a cat it needs to be better.

I cannot argue and have made my comments on the vessel.

But the range is incredibly successful, they are often the vessel of choice by charter parties, this is despite your comments, despite my comments AND when they are retired from the charter fleets - they appear to find a ready market - willing to spend quite large amounts of money.

Our mooring field, maybe 500 vessels, has few catamarans. There is one Prout, two Grainger designs (includes ours) a FP, 3 home built (origins/design unknown) and 6 Lagoons.

Jonathan

 

[WGWarburton]

I was pondering the thread.
If multihulls were death traps and Lagoons more so....
They, multis in general and specifically Lagoons, would be uninsurable. ... Insurers are pretty hard headed.

I pondered a bit further.
... I have to assume that many of the yachts lost were insured and the insurer stumped up. And we wonder why our premiums increase......
... Interestingly insurers seem to have ignored developments (arguably improvements) in ground tackle and make no demands on what ground tackle is carried.

Strange world
...

Insurers calculate premiums using actuarial maths, not logic; quite different areas of the field: the outcomes can appear to be illogical but they make money (well, except when they don't).

 

[Neeves]

Insurers calculate premiums using actuarial maths, not logic; quite different areas of the field: the outcomes can appear to be illogical but they make money (well, except when they don't).

Actuarial Maths - ?

Of course they make money - from you and I - our premiums go up.

Jonathan

 

[geem]

Then out of the 3 boats I mentioned the Victoria would be at the bottom of the list with a displacement of 7077kgs compared with 7500kgs for the Bavaria and 8160kgs for the Moody.

Nothing like a few facts to spoil a good story!

The Bavaria is longer over all and has a lower ballast ratio. It won't be as comfortable.
Higher centre of gravity and more volume is not where you need to be. Bavaria has 13' beam as opposed to 11'6" on the Victoria. The Victoria is also a foot shorter. They are very different boats.

 

[goeasy123]

What seems obvious to me is that there are a nmber of multihull designs that, in spite of being rated for offshore conditions, aren’t really suitable for ocean cruising. Equally, a far greater number of monohulls with offshore ratings are unsuitable too. Far greater because there are more monohull designs. About 99% of the buyers aren’t going to ocean cruise anyway, and the 1% who do, only 1% or less of them have trouble with their boats, regardless of type.

As I said before.... Part of the problem lies in the certification. All class A boats leave the factory meeting the standard for ocean cruising. But the classification says nothing about how long a boat has to maintain it's capability for. The evidence suggests Lagoons are less capable of maintaining their capability than other brands and types.

 

[geem]

As I said before.... Part of the problem lies in the certification. All class A boats leave the factory meeting the standard for ocean cruising. But the classification says nothing about how long a boat has to maintain it's capability for. The evidence suggests Lagoons are less capable of maintaining their capability than other brands and types.

The RCD was a lowering of standards when it was developed. Lloyds 100A1 is a recognised construction standard that I suspect the boats in question would not meet.

 

[Tranona]

The Bavaria is longer over all and has a lower ballast ratio. It won't be as comfortable.
Higher centre of gravity and more volume is not where you need to be. Bavaria has 13' beam as opposed to 11'6" on the Victoria. The Victoria is also a foot shorter. They are very different boats.

Exactly - that is why simplistic "heavy is good" only tells part of the story.

However they are not so different as you suggest. The Victoria has Disp/L ratio of 245 and "comfort ratio" of 28.3 compared with the Bavaria of 213 and 24.3 respectively. So, both medium displacement and moderate to high comfort ratio. (source sailboatdata). Suggest you ask Bavaria Ocean owners about the comfort of their boats. Out of interest the Moody figures are 257 and 28.39.

Perhaps shows that a narrow cramped aft cockpit boat is not the only way to go comfortable long distance cruising.

 

[westernman]

It might be interesting if some one makes a challenge that the RCD certification, in particular with respect to EN ISO 12215-6 had been fraudulently obtained.

I cannot believe that a thin plywood bulkhead like that with end grain sitting at the bottom of the boat where it gets wet would satisfy the scantlings for EN ISO 12215-6 for offshore use.

 

[geem]

Exactly - that is why simplistic "heavy is good" only tells part of the story.

However they are not so different as you suggest. The Victoria has Disp/L ratio of 245 and "comfort ratio" of 28.3 compared with the Bavaria of 213 and 24.3 respectively. So, both medium displacement and moderate to high comfort ratio. (source sailboatdata). Suggest you ask Bavaria Ocean owners about the comfort of their boats. Out of interest the Moody figures are 257 and 28.39.

Perhaps shows that a narrow cramped aft cockpit boat is not the only way to go comfortable long distance cruising.

I know the Moody 38 quite well. I think they are a poor choice for ocean cruising. Small centre cockpit boats rarely work well. The Moody has a very high cockpit. You sit on that boat rather than in it. We were along side a Moody 44 in Shelter Bay marina. Our cockpit seats were a foot lower than even the 44.
High hull volume boats are less comfortable than heavy lower volume hulls when the conditions get bouncy.
You need to take the comfort ratio with a pinch of salt. Even the guy who invented that formula does

 

[noelex]

Unfortunately, many standards increase the cost to consumers, but are so watered down that they end up achieving little.

When they are formulated, standards need to take into account the views of interest groups such as boat builders, but without good leadership these views can predominate and the public suffers. In some cases they can effectively lower the quality of goods. I think this has been the net effect of a couple of marine standards.

 

[capnsensible]

Lagoons are an affront to sailing in any case. Poor performance, monumentally ugly. It’s just a floating saloon. I doubt its worse built than loads of other plastic fantastics, but being a cat it needs to be better.

Bootmenders, really. A friend of mine owns one. I delivered the boat from St. Charles toLanzarote. Lovely, comfortable and safe. He is now tootling around the West Indies whilst armchairers on here gob off....

I delivered a Fontaine Pajot Athena a few years ago from St. Lucia to Croatia. As you do. No problems even in 50 knot winds near the Azores.

Last Atlantic trip by multihull, I helped my good friend and his wife, pro crew, deliver a Lagoon 74 from Antigua to Barcelona. BBQ freshly caught tuna on the large aft deck ina near following gale was aweesom

Mostly I susp4ct, are opinion holders rather than those like Geem who walk the talk.

 

[WGWarburton]

Actuarial Maths - ?

Yes: What do actuaries actually do? | Institute and Faculty of Actuaries Blog

Risk analysis, statistics, data analysis.

Of course they make money - from you and I - our premiums go up.

Or, their losses go down in the sector of the market that you and your boat occupy and a lower premium is available because their better understanding of the risks to your profile means you are not carrying the risk presented by others.

Hence (for example) lower premiums for inshore vs offshore result in more competitive premiums if you are only coastal but higher if you venture offshore. If those groups are lumped together then the offshore sailor will see lower premiums (in a competitive market) than they would if separated out.
Insurers slice and dice the market according to the data they have access to. More data, more options. If you are in a low-risk group then you should be able to find someone targeting that group with competitive premiums. Hence discounts for owners associations etc, as those will be associated with more careful owners. If the insurer doesn't chase this then they will lose those customers (which may not matter, if their business model is making money of high premiums from high risk customers).
All this is driven by actuarial mathematics (see above), not logic. Sometimes the results are counterintuitive, even illogical, but that doesn't necessarily make them wrong.

 

[BurnitBlue]

Wow, when I joined this thread some time ago I was totally unaware of the structral problems that caused cats to break. I sailed one for 5years and not one structral problem did the boat have. Not a tiny one in five years of quite hard use. It was not until yesterday when iI viewed the video made by the tattood guy about his creaking bulkheads. Then another video by a Parley group that the full extent of posters complaint was revealed.

I had a deep think about my prout catamaran. I am pretty sure that the grp geometry out of the mould was the reason she was so rigid. The mast was positioned on the cockpit/saloon bulkhead. Aft of the cockpit was a deck space with no broken access to the sea. The bridge deck had a vee nacelle so a person would stand in one hull, step to the bridge deck the down into the nacell, then up onto the bridge deck then up over the hull down into the other hull.

This somewhat jagged "floor" gave the bulkheads a good grip from port to starboard. The nacelle itself which ran from the stern to close to the bow privided good fore and aft rigidity. The beam was also moderate.

Edit for a third attempt. I lost internet connection while posting. What I wanted to say was to apologise for drifting the thread occasionally while misunderstanding what people were really complaing about. Sorry. 5 years of trouble free sailing a cat did not prepare me for those videos.

 

[geem]

Wow, when I joined this thread some time ago I was totally unaware of the structral problems that caused cats to break. I sailed one for 5years and not one structral problem did the boat have. Not a tiny one in five years of quite hard use. It was not until yesterday when iI viewed the video made by the tattood guy about his creaking bulkheads. Then another video by a Parley group that the full extent of posters complaint was revealed.

I had a deep think about my prout catamaran. I am pretty sure that the grp geometry out of the mould was the reason she was so rigid. The mast was positioned on the cockpit/saloon bulkhead. Aft of the cockpit was a deck space with no broken access to the sea. The bridge deck had a vee nacelle so a person would stand in one hull, step to the bridge deck the down into the nacell, then up onto the bridge deck then up over the hull down into the other hull.

This somewhat jagged "floor" gave the bulkheads a good grip from port to starboard. The nacelle itself which ran from the stern to close to the bow privided good fore and aft rigidity. The beam was also moderate.

But they still flexed like crazy. They were plain glass construction in the hull and balsa cored decks. The hulls were not rigid. If Prout had built the hulls from core they would have been far, far stiffer. Ours had a continual problem of leaking front windows because of the hull flex. I had to add a longitudinal stringer in the heads due to the hull pumping.
I liked the Prout but not the low bridge deck clearance or the solid bridge deck. They were early on in the evolution of catamarans. On the whole, Prout did a good job but they were far from perfect

 

[Stingo]

I wonder how much flack I'm about to endure by admitting that I have my eye on an ancient Lagoon 440?