TimBennet
Well-Known Member
The most controversial part of the STIX calculation, has always been having an absolute minimum size and displacement requirement for CAT A. There was huge disquiet in many areas including the press, owners and manufacturers, that setting a categoric minimum size and displacement would make it very unlikely that boats smaller than 32 feet could ever qualify as "ocean going'. Smaller boats would need to have very high displacements to qualify, such as the Vancouver 28. The whole 'Jester Challenge' movement has been born out of the exclusion of small and / or light boats from events that require a minimum STIX of 32 (the RCD requirement for CAT A). Expert after expert highlighted the safe and seaworthy passages made by light and small boats, but it was felt by the committee, that as a rule, larger and heavier boats are more seaworthy and that again, the litmus test was a boat like the Contessa 32 should represent the cross over point.
So let's take your surveyor's claims that the French had that minimum limit lowered: Well, how can this be? If the CAT A requirement had originally (before the French pressure) been even a smidgen higher it would have excluded the Contessa 32. That would hardly have been a sustainable argument after all the years the Contessa 32 has been promoted as epitomising the ultimate seaworthy design! So the committee who derived the STIX calculation (itself largely based on the RORC SSSN thinking), formulated a methodology that in effect said: "Oceangoing boats should be AT LEAST as seaworthy as the Contessa 32" and that has remained the standard to this day.
Anyone interested in yacht safety can easily follow the development of the STIX requirement and the thinking that has gone on since the Fastnet in 1979. It's lineage is laid out in all the books and papers. At no point is there some weird deviation from the line of thought that might be assigned to undue influence by the French. That's just petty jingoistic poppycock.
So if it's not stability and seaworthiness that the French nobbled, is it scantlings and construction? Well in the years prior to the RCD there were no minimum construction requirements. The large ship survey companies did have some codes if manufacturers chose to use them. Some of these were very conservative (Lloyds) and some less so (ABS). You could even have these 'houses' certify either your methodology or even supervise the whole construction process. But there was two fundamental problems: Firstly cost (most buyers didn't value the increased purchase price) and secondly, as most of the scantlings were empirically derived, the codes were slow to adapt to new technologies. For a while ABS tried to remain current and most ocean races required 'construction to ABS', but in the end ABS gave up doing 'plans approval' as not being 'worth the effort'.
So the RCD was almost forced to included scantling and constructions in its requirements. But what a headache - to be tasked with trying to do something that everyone else had given up on. It was a massive undertaking to develop one system that could ensure all boats, that were built for all purposes, of all materials, were sound, durable and affordable. Despite serving so many masters, the ISO standard has proved to be pretty workable but even so, the RCD does allow several methodologies to be used to prove structural integrity, and as a result, modern boats of all sorts are proving to be fit for purpose and affordable.
But as with any standards, could they be higher? Well, of course! Is there grounds for making them higher and does the boat buying public want to pay for higher standards? Well that is for the boating community to decide. As an example (as it's been mentioned so often recently) - the grounding requirement: At what speed should you be able to run aground without sustaining damage? Should that speed be for hitting a granite ledge or soft east coast mud? Should it be for a rigid cast iron keel or more deformable lead? With cars we accept that if we nudge another in a car park, we expect the bumpers to bounce back, but if we hit a wall at 15mph, it's possible the car could be written off. But we all expect to get out with the lowest amount of personal injury. Well the same should be for boats - it's unreasonable to expect the minimum requirement to be that you can plow into all and sundry and sustain no damage (If that's your personal need then you can sort out a solution for yourself).
We know next to nothing about the demise of Cheeki Rafeeki. A lot of the speculation has been at best ill informed. But whatever the causes, it's simply absurd to try and suggest that its fate shows some sinister failing in the way the RCD or their component ISO standards were formulated. The RCD and ISO 12215 in particular had a difficult and protracted birth (and some wish it had never made it out of Intensive Care), but it has achieved its aims of simplifying trade within the EU by establishing minimum standards. However when buying any boat, caveat emptor remains good advice. If your knowledge of boats extends no further than being able to recognise the letter 'A' on a little brass plate, then I would suggest your ocean going project is more at risk from your poor knowledge base, than by any rumour the French nobbled the requirements of the RCD.
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