Cheeki Rafiki deaths: Yacht firm boss guilty

westernman said:
This makes it very very hard for UK charter companies to survive when all the competition is raking in money from paying punters who sail these boats back to Europe for them.

Have you seen how much it costs to ship a yacht from the Carribean? Compared to a making money on the transfer with a group of fare paying guests!

Either we end up with no charter companies in the UK, or they will all be operating under a foreign flag.
Neither is a good outcome.
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You are extrapolating from one incident to gloom and despondency.

Taking UK charter racing boats to the Caribbean is a marginal activity for UK charter operators and if it gets effectively stopped it would not be a disaster for the industry. It only exists because there is a loophole that opportunistic operators exploit.

The normal business of chartering in UK and N European waters which is the main business will still be there, growing or contracting according to demand. Think we have to accept that relatively small boats like this are unsuitable for racing or commercial use with paying customers across the Atlantic because they cannot meet the standards deemed necessary. The would seem no likelihood of standards being relaxed.

This does not mean of course that such boats or even smaller and by some standards even less suitable will not cross with private individuals on board just as they have done in the last 50 or so years in large numbers. That is the line between the responsibilities of commercial operators and private individuals.

You misunderstand the purpose of the RCD. It is based on ability to survive seas with a minimum wave height and it is unfortunate that the labels used for each category convey a different meaning from that which was intended. Words were chosen to illustrate where these wave conditions might occur, but as we all know 8m waves are common in some coastal waters and potentially far more dangerous than an 8m wave in the open ocean.

There is an argument for a Cat A + which might include a watertight bulkhead, but I guess if you asked 10 experienced ocean skippers or designers what the + would require you would get 12 different answers. Thousands of boats built under the current Cat A standards have successfully crossed oceans, but the number that have suffered serious structural problems is minimal. Certainly nowhere near the epidemic some of the doomsayers suggest.

I have a 33' Cat A boat and would be quite happy to cross the Atlantic in it. However it might not be a particular pleasant experience, and if I had a choice I would choose a different, almost certainly bigger boat. Mine like thousands of others is optimised for coastal work but has enormous margins of safety built in. It would be unreasonable to ask for higher specification for the typical buyer.

If charter operators want to operate in the rules to get that marginal business then perhaps production boats are not for them.
 
Tranona said:
You are extrapolating from one incident to gloom and despondency.

Taking UK charter racing boats to the Caribbean is a marginal activity for UK charter operators and if it gets effectively stopped it would not be a disaster for the industry. It only exists because there is a loophole that opportunistic operators exploit.

The normal business of chartering in UK and N European waters which is the main business will still be there, growing or contracting according to demand. Think we have to accept that relatively small boats like this are unsuitable for racing or commercial use with paying customers across the Atlantic because they cannot meet the standards deemed necessary. The would seem no likelihood of standards being relaxed.

This does not mean of course that such boats or even smaller and by some standards even less suitable will not cross with private individuals on board just as they have done in the last 50 or so years in large numbers. That is the line between the responsibilities of commercial operators and private individuals.

You misunderstand the purpose of the RCD. It is based on ability to survive seas with a minimum wave height and it is unfortunate that the labels used for each category convey a different meaning from that which was intended. Words were chosen to illustrate where these wave conditions might occur, but as we all know 8m waves are common in some coastal waters and potentially far more dangerous than an 8m wave in the open ocean.

There is an argument for a Cat A + which might include a watertight bulkhead, but I guess if you asked 10 experienced ocean skippers or designers what the + would require you would get 12 different answers. Thousands of boats built under the current Cat A standards have successfully crossed oceans, but the number that have suffered serious structural problems is minimal. Certainly nowhere near the epidemic some of the doomsayers suggest.

I have a 33' Cat A boat and would be quite happy to cross the Atlantic in it. However it might not be a particular pleasant experience, and if I had a choice I would choose a different, almost certainly bigger boat. Mine like thousands of others is optimised for coastal work but has enormous margins of safety built in. It would be unreasonable to ask for higher specification for the typical buyer.

If charter operators want to operate in the rules to get that marginal business then perhaps production boats are not for them.
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You express things very well. +1
 
Elessar said:
Andy bridge, this yachtmaster, had taken keels on and off boats with me. And repaired boats with grounding damage with me.
He put masts on boats with me.
He also fixed hydraulic stabilisers with me, at sea in a blow.
He serviced engines at sea with me - in a mobo when we were up to hours and days from land.
This yachtmaster knew not only how to sail boats, but he knew how they worked.
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So why was the lift raft still in a locker of the upturned boat?
 
Seven Spades said:
So why was the lift raft still in a locker of the upturned boat?
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...because, given the sea state, removing the locker lid and leaving the LR in situ was the most accessible it could be made without it being carried away. Seems a good plan to me.
 
I will never agree with that.

Water ingress will be through one of three places, a though hull, the stern gland or the keel. How structural failure did not occur to that skipper I will never know. It is obvious that water ingress from a keel is the result of structural failure and an inversion is a highly likely event and having the lift raft in a locker is clearly not a good plan.

Alex Thomson had his life raft ready the whole time he was waiting for Mike Golding to rescue him.
 
Seven Spades said:
I will never agree with that.

Water ingress will be through one of three places, a though hull, the stern gland or the keel. How structural failure did not occur to that skipper I will never know. It is obvious that water ingress from a keel is the result of structural failure and an inversion is a highly likely event and having the lift raft in a locker is clearly not a good plan.

Alex Thomson had his life raft ready the whole time he was waiting for Mike Golding to rescue him.
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Very easy to say with the benefit of hindsight that he should have known that the keel was about to fall off. Knowing what we know now, the prospect of the keel falling off a production boat seems much more real. Assuming that you don't expect the keel to drop off with subsequent rapid inversion, the liferaft was stowed in a reasonable place.

The Alex Thomson incident isn't really comparable. The head of his tilting keel had snapped off and the keel was swinging around under the boat like an uncontrolled pendulum, but it hadn't fallen off, and the boat hadn't turned turtle.
 
Mark-1 said:
...because, given the sea state, removing the locker lid and leaving the LR in situ was the most accessible it could be made without it being carried away. Seems a good plan to me.
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I don't think that the life raft would be carried away. In the foot of the cockpit well it would probably sit hard against a side with the heal, not slide about, they are heavy. I have taken an 8 man valise from under the helmsman seat in fog and it is a heavy bit of equipment. I reckon that it would have been reasonable to assume that if the water level became unmanageable the skipper would have thought that there would easily be enough time to remove and launch the life raft. It is also reasonable to think that a catastrophic keel failure would be considered a very low probability risk. The yacht set out on the voyage with the assumption that it was fit for purpose, no one believed that the yacht needed to be nursed across the Atlantic because of compromised integrity. Even the reported heavy landing off a wave would not be cause to worry about the keel ripping off. After all heavy landings happen and yachts are designed for that. Of course, now we know better for this type of construction.
 
I'm not convinced it would have been more accessible from the cockpit floor than the locker in the event of a sudden inversion. The lid was off.
 
Mark-1 said:
I'm not convinced it would have been more accessible from the cockpit floor than the locker in the event of a sudden inversion. The lid was off.
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Maybe, maybe not, one thing for sure is that all contingency plans will not likely survive such a catastrophic failure in the weather conditions. The storage space for the liferaft is shown in the picture. Maybe the helm seat was still on when the yacht inverted and like the windows, post inversion, it was forced off by the action of the sea. We will simply never know what was the best course of action: -

Liferaft Stowage by Rival Sailor, on Flickr
 
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BlowingOldBoots said:
I don't think that the life raft would be carried away. In the foot of the cockpit well it would probably sit hard against a side with the heal, not slide about, they are heavy. I have taken an 8 man valise from under the helmsman seat in fog and it is a heavy bit of equipment. I reckon that it would have been reasonable to assume that if the water level became unmanageable the skipper would have thought that there would easily be enough time to remove and launch the life raft. It is also reasonable to think that a catastrophic keel failure would be considered a very low probability risk. The yacht set out on the voyage with the assumption that it was fit for purpose, no one believed that the yacht needed to be nursed across the Atlantic because of compromised integrity. Even the reported heavy landing off a wave would not be cause to worry about the keel ripping off. After all heavy landings happen and yachts are designed for that. Of course, now we know better for this type of construction.
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So you'd rather put it somewhere it would get in your way rather than leave it somewhere you believed it to be ready, accessible and out of the way? You too are sailing with hindsight here.
 
Elessar said:
So you'd rather put it somewhere it would get in your way rather than leave it somewhere you believed it to be ready, accessible and out of the way? You too are sailing with hindsight here.
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No, I am not saying that, just offering a point of view based on experience when sailing a Sigma 41 across Biscay in fog. I took the liferaft out of the helm seat storage area and placed it into the cockpit. While it was in the way, it was manageable. My situation is different from CR, obviously.

You should note that I am not criticising the skipper, nor am I suggesting that he should have or should not have done something. In fact, in the quoted post, I make a point of justifying why the life raft would have been left in it's location.

I guess you would have the life raft out in these conditions, ready to launch, with all the crew in the cockpit, if you believed that catastrophic keel failure was imminent; who wouldn't.
 
Frogmogman said:
Very easy to say with the benefit of hindsight that he should have known that the keel was about to fall off. Knowing what we know now, the prospect of the keel falling off a production boat seems much more real. Assuming that you don't expect the keel to drop off with subsequent rapid inversion, the liferaft was stowed in a reasonable place.

The Alex Thomson incident isn't really comparable. The head of his tilting keel had snapped off and the keel was swinging around under the boat like an uncontrolled pendulum, but it hadn't fallen off, and the boat hadn't turned turtle.
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I don't agree with that at all. It is very easy for you to say that " with the benefit of hindsight that he should have..." but it is one of the first things that would have come to my mind. Before this tragedy, a keels fell off a boat south of the Isle of White, Hooligan V and Rambler in the Fastnet. These events happened before CR. Keels on boats are the scariest part of any boat because a sudden inversion is terrifying.

Maybe you don't think about these things as I do but I doubt I am alone, hindsight has nothing to do with it.
 
Elessar said:
So you'd rather put it somewhere it would get in your way rather than leave it somewhere you believed it to be ready, accessible and out of the way? You too are sailing with hindsight here.
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I very much resent that suggestion. I would have had the foresight to have prepared to lose the keel it is the OBVIOUS source of sea water.
 
Seven Spades said:
I don't agree with that at all. It is very easy for you to say that " with the benefit of hindsight that he should have..." but it is one of the first things that would have come to my mind. Before this tragedy, a keels fell off a boat south of the Isle of White, Hooligan V and Rambler in the Fastnet. These events happened before CR. Keels on boats are the scariest part of any boat because a sudden inversion is terrifying.

Maybe you don't think about these things as I do but I doubt I am alone, hindsight has nothing to do with it.
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Again, neither of these examples had keels comparable to that on a large scale production yacht such as the First 40.7.

Rambler had a canting keel, of which there have been many documented failures, Hooligan V had a narrow chord fabricated keel which had been incorrectly built by the welder and had then also had an extra 150kg of lead added to the bulb. You could have been fully aware of both of these failures and not have expected the keel to fall off a First 40.7.
 
Oh I am not arguing that the failures are related at all. I am painting out that keel failures when they occur are catastrophic and not unknown. Any leakage cause water in the bilge not stopped by closing all sea cocks should have immediatly raised the question of keel failure. This is not with the benefit of hindsight, it is the first thing that should have occurred to the skipper.
 
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