Fail safe - fail dangerous

rob2 said:
....One of the things I found strange recently is that RIBS used for RYA training courses don't have a secondary engine. ....

Rob.
Click to expand...
Very few vehicles have secondary engines.
How many RIBs get into serious trouble due to engine failure?
Not many.
When was the last fatality from this cause?
A RIB engine should be highly reliable.
A small outboard can never be 100% or even 99.9% trusted, particularly if it suffers typical tender engine use and storage.
 
What a shame that we are limited to a standard set of flares! I was reminded of sitting in Ramsgate marina when they fired the maroons for the lifeboat. The tea in the mug I was holding shot upward, returning to the cup a couple of seconds later. Now that gets some attention!

Quite right that most moored boats are likely to have switched off the VHF, but the harbourmaster's launch or a marina office can usually rustle up a boat to help you out. Just like self rescue, it helps to try rto keep thinking laterally, although that's the first thing to go in a panic. That's the main reason for training and practice in all things nautical, it makes the unusual seem normal to the fevered mind.

Rob.

Rob.
 
No-one seems to have worked out that the kill cord switch DID fail safe. The arrangement is designed to prevent the vessel either carrying on without the helm on board leaving him/her swimming for his/her life or turning around and clobbering him/her in the water. Even in it's "failed" state it did the job intended.

The "safety" issue of whether rubber dinghies can be rowed is a different issue and not one relevant to the kill cord arrangement on the outboard.

As skipper, it is your responsibility to decide what measures you should use to safeguard the users of the dinghy and if that means no life jackets, oars, radio or mobile phone, then don't complain if the engine fails and you find yourself in a difficult situation. It's no fault of the kill cord button.
 
Topcat47 said:
The "safety" issue of whether rubber dinghies can be rowed is a different issue and not one relevant to the kill cord arrangement on the outboard.
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That's true - but thinking of PBO principles, this thread further turns my mind against inflatables. Convenient when they're good, but an unnecessary headache when they aren't.

That won't be a popular point of view when even the smallest yachts today have outboards for their tenders...but what's more preposterous in a tiny dinghy (which at one time could only have been human-powered) than that nowadays, its use is largely reliant upon the functioning & fueling of an engine? What's practical about owning a boat like that?

I s'pose it's the same answer as with almost everything I don't like - inflatable 'stowability' suits marina berthing, which dominates decision-making whatever the downsides.

Score one for davits and hard tenders which row easily. :encouragement:
 
dancrane said:
Score one for davits and hard tenders which row easily. :encouragement:
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Small yachts in your sepia-tinted golden age never had davits. All that weight hanging over the stern would ruin the trim (and still does, when people fit them on yachts that aren't big enough).

If there was room, people lashed their hard dinghies on the cabin top. I think modern deck layouts may be less conducive to this than in the past, and certainly designers don't make any allowances whereas they formerly would have done. The Pardeys carried a GRP dinghy (albeit a small one) on deck on their 24' Seraffin, and the lovely 1930s wooden yacht across the pontoon from Ariam has chocks and lashing eyes on the cabin top for her clinker lugsail dinghy.

If there wasn't room for that, the smallest yachts towed the dinghy everywhere, and occasionally lost it in bad weather.

Pete
 
Kill cords- our current outboard is the first one we've had with the 'benefit' of a kill cord. From a safety point of view, I consider it to be of marginal use, as falling out of the dinghy is unlikely. However, it is of use as a security measure, as it renders the engine unusable to the average scroat likely to think it amusing to help himself to the dinghy for a joyride.

Inflateable v hard dinghy. As liveaboards, we use the dinghy most of the time as we tend to anchor rather than using the quay. Despite this, we find the inflatable to be the best answer, as it rows well enough if you use the right technique, is light enough to carry up a beach and stows away when deflated for long passages. A hard dinghy would require more weight (and cost)aft for davits, yet more weight with the dinghy itself hanging there for the distinctly marginal advantage of it being easier to row.
 
Kinda reminds me of this.. :)

Seagoon:
Bloodnok and I floundered in the cruel sea.

FX:
[Lapping waves]

Bloodnok:
Fortunately we found a passing lifeboat and dragged ourselves aboard.

Seagoon:
We had no oars, but luckily we found two outboard motors and we rowed with them.

Bloodnok:
Brilliant.

Seagoon:
For thirty days we drifted to and fro, then hunger came upon us.

Bloodnok:
Aeioughhhhh, if I don't eat soon I'll die of hunger, and if I die I won't eat soon. Wait a moment, [sniffs] ohohohh, can I smell cooking or do my ears deceive me?

Seagoon:
He was right, something was cooking. There in the other end of the lifeboat was... A gas stove! Could this be the end of our search?

Bloodnok:
I'll knock on the oven door.

FX:
[Knocking on metal]

Moriarty:
[Faintly] Just a minute please, I'm in ze bath...
 
I'm sure each skipper uses the tender that suits his purpose best...I had a big Avon Redshank and I thought it rowed well, though I can believe modern lightweights are poorer.

But when I have a yacht & tender, I'll aim at keeping it simple. I'll want a tender for mooring-to-shore; oars are simpler than an engine, so my tender ought mainly to be rowable.

It seems slightly barmy to need a VHF in the dinghy because of the real chance that the outboard motor mightn't get you to & from the shore, and because you're virtually reliant on that motor because the inflatable rows so badly in any kind of breeze.

I read that the Walker Bay 8 only weighs just over 30kgs. Not unmanageable, plus it'll never puncture, and it sails! I wonder if davits are available in a sepia-anodised finish?
 
Some inflatables row ok. My Avon Rover with inflatable floor and keel with full sized wooden oars and Avon's (love 'em or hate' em) rubber rowlocks work well for us. Have never had to do it in anger but reckon I could row into a fresh breeze.

As regards relying on engines, it always goes very much against the grain but with a bit of forethought and probably over caution I think I can count the number of times I would be in a problem if the engine failed on the fingers of one hand. In fact, thinking about it probably only once when motoring back to the boat in an offshore breeze in Colonsay and even then we had friends on another boat standing by to get the call over VHF that we had arrived safely.

Even so, always carry the VHF as said before - the aim when choosing our anchorage is to be alone if possible. Depending on where we are I am not sure 6w would be able to reach anyone anyway. Also always carry a grapnel anchor and 30m line. It was drummed into us at Plas Menai years ago that most accidents happen in dinghys.
 
dancrane said:
But when I have a yacht & tender, I'll aim at keeping it simple. I'll want a tender for mooring-to-shore; oars are simpler than an engine, so my tender ought mainly to be rowable.
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At one point I was expecting to be keeping a yacht on a mooring. My plan was to have an inflatable stowed away in a locker for use when off cruising, but a rigid dinghy (the club in question has a compound) for routinely getting out to the mooring. The rigid tender would be rowed, because the distance wasn't huge and it's far simpler than carting an outboard around, but the inflatable would have a small engine kept on the boat. This seems like the best arrangement to me - there's no need to try to make a single tender do both jobs.

Pete
 
Dylan

when you get your new red button, would it be worth making a neat PVC tape overcoat for it, or even spray aluminium paint, to prevent the sun getting to the plastic ?

There again, it may have received knock in a car or storage at some stage.


temporarily you might drill out a hole, stuff in a coathanger with some araldite, as a get you outboarding fix ?
 
prv said:
The rigid tender would be rowed...but the inflatable would have a small engine kept on the boat...seems like the best arrangement to me - no need to make a single tender do both jobs.
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Sound thinking. Although...I'm inclined to believe modern design and materials might provide a really lightweight hard tender which could serve easily and ably in both uses.

Good to have a robust tender, safe left on a mooring without attracting thieves, i.e. with no engine attached. And if the design were really light, it could be hauled aboard with no more bother than an inflatable - less really, since the tedium of deflation, inflation, punctures and engines could be obviated by the hard tender's ease of use under oars.

I wonder how much difference there is in weight between a Walker Bay 8 with oars, and an 8ft Avon Redcrest with a 2hp outboard on its bracket? I reckon they're about the same.
 
dancrane said:
Sound thinking. Although...I'm inclined to believe modern design and materials might provide a really lightweight hard tender which could serve easily and ably in both uses.
Click to expand...

Nope, because it can't be packed into the locker like the inflatable.

Pete
 
Hmm, that's very plain to see...but if we may assume modern materials offer extraordinary rigidity, perhaps a hard tender might have a removable transom and removable thwarts...

...allowing the quickly-disassembled boat to 'cup' over the forward end of the coachroof? No grave risk of it being washed overboard, no real change to the yacht's aerodynamics, no need to squish an inflatable into much-needed locker space below, no need for repair kits, pumps or outboards and dedicated fuel, or for VHFs on trips to the shore. Just a thought.
 
The whole issue of fitting kill cords is cynically handled on a simply cost consideration by boat and engine manufacturers, nothing to do with any real interest in operator safety.

Engine manufacturers recommend them; why not standard ?

e.g. a particular brand of American boat;

ALL their petrol powered boats have them.

Their diesel powered boats don't , even though the basic versions of the same boat with a petrol engine do have a kill cord !

There's no excuse. Pure cynicism.
 
Do professional fishermen use kill-cords on their open boats? I've never noticed such a thing in use, but if anyone could prove their worth it must be all-weather commercial mariners.

If on the other hand they're a damned nuisance and inadequately constructed for hardy outdoor use, it's difficult to think they're anything but a cynical veil of safety, much less effective than always maintaining alert respect for the basic necessity to stay in the boat.
 
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