alant
Well-Known Member
You know that how?
Cheeki Rafiki yacht operator cleared over sailor deaths
- Thread starter iain789
- Start date
You know that how?
BelleSerene
Well-Known Member
The Navy diver who examined the boat noted it and it's in the MAIB report. He also too photos: https://goo.gl/images/be7aTQ
The wooden beam between the seats had been removed, presumably by the crew in preparation to deploy the raft. The supposition is that they hadn't deployed it out into the cockpit as that would have created a huge space-taking hazard.
Mark-1
Well-Known Member
It was very widely reported, it was mention in the MAIB report and discussed in excruciating detail on this forum and elsewhere.
So a better question might be how do you *not* know it?
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Might not be obvious to a layman, but the previous coding survey did actually find a problem that was repaired, perhaps the following survey would have found a similar problem.
Mark-1
Well-Known Member
Maybe, but the crew had a good look at it both inside and out in clear water. There are photos of them doing the inspection on a previous occasion. Given they were about to cross an ocean on the boat they had more incentive to have a very close look than a surveyor.
Given that, I tend to think that anything out of the ordinary a surveyor would spot would have been spotted then.
I don't recall if the missed survey required the boat to be lifted out and stood on its keel. I have some vague recollection it might not have been an out of the water structural survey, maybe someone can remind us.
Clearly, if the survey that was missed required the boat to be lifted out and stood on it's keel that would have been far more likely to identify any suspicious flexing even if there were no other signs. Either way the keel *was* checked before they left.
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flaming
Well-Known Member
Leaving aside that Alex Thompson has never lost a keel (I suspect you're thinking of Mike Golding who limped the last 500 miles of the Vendee after his fell off) The difference between all of those boats and a 40.7 should be obvious. They were all one off race boats with very high aspect ratio keels. A 40.7 is a middle of the road cruiser racer. With the exception of the Bavaria Match debacle, which was proven to be a design/build issue, I cannot think of another middle of the road cruiser racer that suffered a sudden keel failure before Cheeky Rafiki.
You may well be a worrier, but prior to this incident there was no history of keel failures in similar boats that would have been in the skipper's mind, or Doug's for that matter.
Add in the fact that the damage is effectively hidden by the 40.7's construction and I think you do the skipper, who after all is not here to talk for himself, a severe disservice in implicitly criticising him for not assuming his keel was about to fall off.
Of course keel failure would now be high on anyone's list of suspects if a cruiser racer starts developing an untraceable leak, but my point is that at the time the skipper would have had no particular reason to suspect it.
Simond S
Member
How about if we considered the internship as a gap year learning RYA qualifications.
Fr J Hackett
Well-Known Member
I am loath to get involved in this again but there are limited sources of significant water ingress in a boat, sea cocks, stern gear, puncture or keel bolts. It has to be assumed that the sea cocks and stern gear were checked which leaves two sources both potentially catastrophic, given the construction of the boat the actual ingress may not be obvious ie the water was entering between the hull and the floor but the potential for loss of the boat should surely have been obvious and the keel must have been the prime suspect. I am guessing that the crew did not have the chance and time to do much after there last contact and the keel came of with instantaneous inversion.
What could they have done? Taken some of the loading off the keel by dropping sail and starting the engine, if that reduced the water ingress or even if it didn't the time should surely have come for the mayday and direct contact with Falmouth. It is worrying that at that stage of events they chose to go through Mr Innes and not make contact with Falmouth directly.
What could they have done? Taken some of the loading off the keel by dropping sail and starting the engine, if that reduced the water ingress or even if it didn't the time should surely have come for the mayday and direct contact with Falmouth. It is worrying that at that stage of events they chose to go through Mr Innes and not make contact with Falmouth directly.
lpdsn
Well-Known Member
What a layman thinks is irrelevant. It's whether an experienced owner or professional skipper would've spotted it and they didn't. The equivalent damage to the Sigma I mentioned earlier was obvious to even inexperienced crew.
Yes, one of the surveys found damage, but it may have existed for some time and yes it was repaired although there is an implication in the report that the repair was incomplete. It would be very naive, I think, to assume a survey means a guarantee of detecting the damage and that a boatyard's invoice means a guarantee of it being properly repaired.
Perhaps isn't good enough.
Mark-1
Well-Known Member
Interesting question. I'm straying into the realms of counterfactuals here, but the right thing to have done with benefit of hindsight would have been to get into the liferaft and let the boat sail on without them. If they'd done that they'd probably have been picked up and survived.
That's quite a departure from anything most of us would be willing to do. Some might say a departure from sanity.
If they'd put out a Mayday and stayed in the boat they might have had a better chance, but the liferaft+EPIRB would be easier to find than four heads in the water with PLBs.
Not a happy situation when your best course of action looks clinically insane.
lpdsn
Well-Known Member
savageseadog
Well-Known Member
What if Stormforce paid the interns minimum wage and clawed it back by charging for the course and charter?
BelleSerene
Well-Known Member
Really? 'The right thing to have done' only makes sense on the basis of the facts available at the time. Otherwise you just mean the thing that ended up being lucky, and you're justifying all sorts of scatty behaviour in life.
At what point would you have got your crew into the life raft and detached the yacht, rather than lowering sail to reduce keel stresses and staying in the yacht with the life raft attached and everyone in the cockpit? How would you justify that as giving you all the best chances in the balance of probabilities?
flaming
Well-Known Member
Yes, once they suspected the keel.
I think it is clear that they did not suspect the keel was about to fall off. Keels of production C/Rs did not have a history of falling off before this event. To expect the skipper to reach the correct conclusion with the evidence available to him whilst sailing upwind in 30kts of wind is not reasonable.
Remember Doug's emails to him advising him what to check only mention the keelbolts at the end of his list. This is someone who knew the history of the boat, and all it said was.
http://www.sailing.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/MAIBInvReport_8_2015.pdf
Not "you must check" but that just says "cursory check" to me. It is clear that Doug also did not link a progressive leak with possible loss of the keel.
As we know now, there almost certainly wouldn't have been any cracking, as cracking around the keelbolts was not the failure method, but failure of the bolts themselves. So what happened? The skipper looks at the bolts, they look fine, no cracking. It gets discounted and the search continues. I would expect they thought they were looking for a puncture somewhere inaccessible, possibly under the tray.
To me the people who are criticising the actions taken, or more specifically not taken that could mitigate a possible keel failure, are using a hindsight that the crew didn't have.
Mark-1
Well-Known Member
Indeed, I called it a counterfactual with the benefit of hindsight and described it as a clinically insane option.
If you're asking me what I'd do without the benefit of knowing how it was going to turn out I'd stay in the boat with the liferaft as accessible as possible on the basis that in the middle of nowhere a potentially knackered boat is far easier for four people to survive on than a liferaft. (...and easier to locate.)
But that's not a counterfactual, that's 'what happened'.
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D
Deleted member 36384
Guest
I doubt that, maybe amongst forum readers, the south coast racing scene, and other natural overlaps but not as widespread as you suggest. In fact, I think that the MCA have failed to make the sea any safer as a result of this incident. For example, the MCA is the authority behind the certificates of competency and the syllabus, not the RYA. The RYA's syllabus is approved by the MCA to be compliant with the required standard. You and I could devise a competency scheme and have it approved by the MCA. Appropriate actions from the MCA as a result of their investigation could be to implement new elements of the syllabus around yacht design and emergency response, it would not be difficult. Also, the RCD is in place to protect EU citizens so that boats are made to a standard, including maintenance and inspection, as well as HSE, and the RCD is incorporated into the CE marking scheme. You and I should be confident that a CE product is safe to use. The boat of course is safe to use, there is no doubt about that, but we have a situation now where damage after a grounding is near impossible to detect. and there is no real consensus on inspection and repair (could be wrong on that). I think that the findings of the investigation should influence a revision of the RCD so that designs allow for effective inspection and repair.
My own experience, sailing a Sigma 41 from Falmouth across the Bay of Biscay, when fog came down, I got the life raft out from under the helmsman's seat, sat on the cockpit floor with it's painter tied off. I was the skipper, 22 at the time. Such preparations and mindset had been taught to me.
I think there is an imperative around this matter. A lot of yachts with this style of design, can be expected to last easily for many decades because of the robust nature of GRP, hence the probability of a keel failure might increase as time goes on. I doubt that the risk is reflected in second hand sales of these types of boats (might be) but you don't read about how people cant sell their narrow keel chord, bonded matrix yachts anymore.
The MCA could be doing more to make sailing safer.
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Kurrawong_Kid
Well-Known Member
Interesting query. If on a gap year I take a job I would be subject, and so would the employer, to the employment laws of the applicable nation. If I bum around on my , or my parents, savings then I am responsible for my own safety. I would submit that this might well be interpreted as taking a gap voyage to obtain an RYA qualification. The MCA report discusses at some length whether the voyage of CR was "commercial". If it was then the regulations should have been complied with. That's what the jury found he has been found guilty of failing to do.
AntarcticPilot
Well-Known Member
It's like saying that the Titanic would probably have survived if that last helm order hadn't been given. She would (almost certainly) have survived a head on collision- it was a side-swipe that breached too many compartments that sank her. She could survive the flooding of up to (I think) 5 compartments - but the side-swipe breached 6. But the shock of a head on collision would certainly have caused injuries and possibly deaths.
But who would have imagined that allowing the collision would save more lives than trying to avoid it?
lpdsn
Well-Known Member
I read it as Mark-1 illustrating the weaknesses in the position of the hindsight experts.
lpdsn
Well-Known Member
Interesting debate, but I'm not sure how relevant it is. I believe the skipper and mate were already qualified and were employed. The paying crew were customers but had been given their money back, I understand, in an attempt to define it as a non-commercial voyage. So I'm not sure there were any interns aboard.