Lone sailor rescued 1½ miles from Eyemouth Harbour after lifeboat volunteer heard muffled cries for help
- Thread starter KompetentKrew
- Start date
KompetentKrew
Well-Known Member
Keith 66
Well-Known Member
Interesting, It is a Drascombe Dabber, i have one to restore, the buoyancy tanks appear to be large but have large lockers in the sides & under the afterdeck, rear tank has a door but if its missing there is no buouyancy there, on mine the only real buoyancy is blocks of foam. The early ones have a known issue of flooding through the top of the plate case which is low & the outboard well is another point where water can come in when swamped,
The Dabber appears to be a good stable boat but when swamped water level is effectively at deck (seating level) probably why they were fitted with large bilge pumps!
The Dabber appears to be a good stable boat but when swamped water level is effectively at deck (seating level) probably why they were fitted with large bilge pumps!
Wandering Star
Well-Known Member
Lucky Guy!
Juan Twothree
Well-Known Member
I got called to one which had gone totally inverted. We got it back upright, but water was coming in through the top of the centreboard case as fast as we were pumping it out. We had to beach it in the end.
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ProDave
Well-Known Member
The article said he has capsized the boat. Are they easy to do that? A boat that can capsize but then not be righted without water flooding in appears to be a poor design?
Keith 66
Well-Known Member
Early dabbers had the centreboard arm flush with the top of the plate case so there was a slot about 2 1/2" deep at the front of the case, later ones had this filled in with the arm higher, this in an effort to lessen water ingress.
Minerva
Well-Known Member
I would [evidently naively] have thought that sort of downright dangerous design wouldn’t have been allowed exist into production with going through RCD.
Any day boat / dinghy / un-ballasted boat is liable to capsize and should be a known & likely risk. It’s then swamped water level being above that of a keel box / source of water ingression preventing a self rescue should therefore be an unacceptable design feature.
ProDave
Well-Known Member
My thoughts entirely. This type of boat is often talked about as a large dinghy. It should behave like a dinghy and be as safe as a dinghy and capable of sustaining a capsize and self righting without sinking.
I am surprised this has not been talked about before, a lot of people hold Drascombes in high regard so are we to conclude capsizes are rare but when they do happen not self recoverable?
penfold
Well-Known Member
Rubber flaps would do, not much can be done about the O/B well though.
Minerva
Well-Known Member
More buoyancy and/or a full height i.e above swamped water level between the OB well and the main cockpit would be the first design points to consider I would imagine
Mark-1
Well-Known Member
I'm sure Webb Chiles was swamped more than once so it can't apply to many of the range.
B27
Well-Known Member
I would say the 'design' is one thing and the state of an individual boat is quite a different thing.
How old was this boat?
Was it as it left the factory?
There are hundreds of thousands of boats around the world which are unballasted or lightly ballasted and will be difficult to bail out if swamped and righted.
At least this one didn't sink like a stone.
From Wikipedia:
Notable voyages
David Pyle sailed his wooden Drascombe Lugger Hermes from England to Australia during 1969 and 1970.[12] This was possibly the longest journey ever undertaken in a small open sailing boat (though, later, in 1991, a complete circumnavigation was completed by Anthony Steward in an open 19' boat[13]). Hermes was a standard production model with the exception of a raised foredeck and a few other minor modifications. The boat was built at Kelly and Hall's boatyard at Newton Ferrers by John and Douglas Elliott.[14]In 1973, Geoff Stewart crossed the Atlantic in a Longboat.[15]
Between 1978 and 1984, Webb Chiles sailed round most of the world in his Luggers Chidiock Tichborne I and Chidiock Tichborne II.[16][17] Starting in California in Chidiock I, he crossed the Pacific, then the Indian Ocean, before heading into the Red Sea. Near Vanuatu during the Pacific crossing, the boat capsized during bad weather, then drifted for two weeks while he was unable to bail his flooded boat. After becoming damaged, Chidiock I was seized by the Saudi Arabian authorities when Chiles was arrested on suspicion of being a spy. Chiles had a new Lugger, Chiddiock II, shipped to him in Egypt. This he sailed south to cross his previous track and then through the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea out into the Atlantic to La Palma in the Canary Islands. Leaving the boat briefly to visit Tenerife, he returned to find that she had capsized at her mooring in a storm. Finding that he had lost a lot of gear, Chiles decided to end his attempt at circumnavigating in an open boat.
In my view, they are great boats, but attract a certain sort of 'owner' or 'would-be owner'.
When Drascombes were in there prime, it was normal for many dinghies like Enterprises to be hopelessly awash after a capsize.
You either took it on yourself not to capsize, or made it your responsibility for your boat to be capable of being righted and bailed out.
Often, the centreboard case letting in water becomes something of a moot point when the whole thing is so low in the water that waves are coming over the side, and the mass of the mast aloft is swinging about and dipping the rails under.
A capsize can also put different stresses on the structure, buoyancy tanks can fail etc.
The idea that 'capsizing is all part of the game' is not universal in dinghy sailing or open-boat sailing, and was less so in the past.
Anyway, another reason why any quibbles about the RNLI being imperfect can be forgiven for a while.
dunedin
Well-Known Member
Lucky rescue. I may be mistaken, and too poor reception to research fully, but hasn't there been at least one (double?) fatality after a Drascombe (Coaster?) capsized?
Tranona
Well-Known Member
Designed long before the RCD was devised. It was first built in 1971! Even now it is is Cat D (inland waterways only!) which is pretty undemanding, although there will be buoyancy requirements in the standards. I would imagine there were changes required in 1997 to meet the RCD, but probably nothing dramatic.
Clearly this boat was being used outside the areas it was designed for. Good that we don't have laws to prevent people from doing this, unlike some countries.
B27
Well-Known Member
With buoyancy tanks going around the whole boat like that, it could be made to float reasonably while swamped.
It reminds me of doing safety boat duty at a well known Sailing Club on the Solent may years ago, there was a Solo dinghy in a similar state.
After capsizing and righting, the sides of the buoyancy tanks had separated from the bottom of the boat.
Just a bit of trapped air keeping it afloat.
We had no choice but to beach it, where it pretty much fell apart.
Properly constructed and maintained, a Solo will survive a capasize in rough water and keep racing.
As dinghy racers, we tend to go out in a group and have some safety support.
There are people going a mile or two offshore in boats that size fishing.
Very few come to any harm.
It reminds me of doing safety boat duty at a well known Sailing Club on the Solent may years ago, there was a Solo dinghy in a similar state.
After capsizing and righting, the sides of the buoyancy tanks had separated from the bottom of the boat.
Just a bit of trapped air keeping it afloat.
We had no choice but to beach it, where it pretty much fell apart.
Properly constructed and maintained, a Solo will survive a capasize in rough water and keep racing.
As dinghy racers, we tend to go out in a group and have some safety support.
There are people going a mile or two offshore in boats that size fishing.
Very few come to any harm.
ylop
Well-Known Member
A lugger if I remember rightly? One person - unless there are multiple cases. Lots of Drascombe's around and usually sailed without safety cover so not that surprising.
I don't think the RCD actually used the words inland waterways anywhere - it refers to the areas by wave height and wind conditions; the previous version referred to Cat D as "Sheltered Waters" but that label has been removed. It now says F4 winds and significant wave heights of 0.3m, with occasional 0.5m waves.
Interestingly there's some weird politics in the drascombe world between Drascombe(R) Boats and Honnor Marine who make the Devon range of virtually identical boats. I notice that the Devon Dabber is RCD Cat C but the Drascombe Dabber is Cat D. I'm not enough of a nerd to be able to tell the difference from that photo!
Hard to tell in the photo but I don't think the significant wave height is >30cm in the picture so probably "in spec".
wombat88
Well-Known Member
We had an old longboat. We always carried a selection of stuff to stuff down the centreboard and had plenty of buoyancy in the lockers. Having said that I could never imagine being able to right the old thing if she did go over, just too big, 21ft. Lovely boat though and tough.