Loss of yacht - lessons to learn

[DownWest]

Just design & build the thing properly in the first place.

Fairly crass remark, eh? No big history of keels falling off 'like confetty', while quite a lot of these boats built. But I bow to your inside knowledge on the skills of the design team.

 

[jordanbasset]

From an internet search it is clear there are very few yachts which sink, even less which lead to a loss of life. Found this one from 2013 involving a yacht which may have got hit by something causing damage to the rudder, rather dramatic footage and fortunately no one was killed
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3ac_1358107957&comments=1
Even with what may be considered high end yachts, accidents happen, but it is also interesting to read the comments below the article where people are speculating on the cause etc

I cannot help thinking there is an over reaction by some to a very rare event about which we do not know the full details. Tens of thousands of these types of yachts have sailed the seas without catastrophic loss but of course you will never make something completely safe.

 

[DownWest]

From an internet search it is clear there are very few yachts who sink, even less which lead to a loss of life. Found this one fro 2013 involving a yacht which may have got hit by something causing damage to the rudder, rather dramatic footage and fortunately no one was killed
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3ac_1358107957&comments=1
Even with what may be considered high end yachts, accidents happen, but it is also interesting to read the comments below the article where people are speculating on the cause etc

I cannot help thinking there is an over reaction by some to a very rare event about which we do not know the full details. Tens of thousands of these types of yachts have sailed the seas without catastrophic loss but of course you will never make something completely safe.

This is also a bit like aviation accidents, quite rare, but dramatic (exotic?) enough to make the news. If four people had died in a crash on the M1, it would have been noted, but not much. The roads are dangerous places, so accidents are common and accepted. Not that I agree with that.

 

[Jim@sea]

Losing my keel isn't something I'd expect to happen, it's certainly not something I'd be specifically prepared for. If I saw water sloshing around in the cabin I'd immediately think "hoses" or "seacocks" - I wouldn't be thinking "I wonder if my keels dropped off".
.

You will now after this.

 

[Neil_Y]

So what I want is a boat where it is almost impossible for a keel to break loose. Its not too difficult to make keel fixings much stronger so that a grounding will not compromise the integrity of the hull. 2 rows of bolts 2" apart is probably enough to hold the keel in place but gives no margin for when things go wrong.

My old bavaria 390 had a nice design detail in the keel, there was a large step in the moulding so that the grounding force would be taken largely by this rather than the keel bolts and the resulting pivot action that pushes the very thin rear of the keel up into the boat. I saw a repair of internal rib damage on a Sweden 38 after a hard grounding, the keel had pushed up the rear ribs and these had separated from the internal moulding.

 

[Sailfree]

. I saw a repair of internal rib damage on a Sweden 38 after a hard grounding, the keel had pushed up the rear ribs and these had separated from the internal moulding.

Interesting - was it designed to do this rather than cause a keel bolt failure - be visible and repairable while not catastrophic?

Seems to me from these threads that all yacht designers are useless, learnt nothing from the 100's of boats they have designed nor the 1000s commissioned and a number of posters on here know better - funny its often those with the lower number of posts!!

 

[GrahamM376]

I think you are talking about the yacht Taos which was in the same general area and also suffering from strong winds.

It is worth reading their account for the section on what happened when they deployed their liferaft. It broke free and disappeared downwind before anyone was able to board.

We took a bit of a bashing last week with a F8 on the beam for 5 hours going north from Cape St Vincent. We were discussing the thought then that if something nasty happened, with the sea state and wind strength the raft would most likely blow away downwind.

 

[AndrewB]

We took a bit of a bashing last week with a F8 on the beam for 5 hours going north from Cape St Vincent. We were discussing the thought then that if something nasty happened, with the sea state and wind strength the raft would most likely blow away downwind.

Yes, I've heard of this happening a couple of times in the past. There are some who think that the liferaft will be the ultimate survival tool when conditions get too bad for the yacht. That is just wishful thinking. It is more likely to be useful if the yacht goes down in moderate conditions.

 

[alpha100]

Interesting - was it designed to do this rather than cause a eel bolt failure - be visible and repairable while not catastrophic?

Seems to me from these threads that all yacht designers are useless, learnt nothing from the 100's of boats they have designed nor the 1000s commissioned and a number of posters on here know better - funny its often those with the lower number of posts!!

It's perhaps a little unfair to say that people with a low post rate don't have a knowledge of sailing or a valid opinion. Certainly there are people with some strange ideas and attitudes on this site (as on most sites I imagine) but people are individuals with differing opinions and the fact that a person has 5000 posts doesn't necessarily mean that their opinion is correct, it just means they post a lot.

I haven't been a member for too long and have very few posts, but like many people, I checked this site every day for news of the C. R. and the guy's on the boat and hoped for the very best. I related to the crew because I remember the goodbye's to friends, the good wishes and the beers in the Copra & Lumber in Nelsons Dockyard, Antigua, the night before my second Transat, a 5000'ish mile delivery trip to Turkey. That was 30 years ago and I've sailed a few miles since then. We had no GPS (far too expensive for private boats in those days) no SSB and no EPIRBS or modern safety devices, we were on our own in a big ocean and we just sailed the boat and thankfully arrived safely. That was the way most people sailed in those days.

I didn't post whilst the search for the C.R. was in operation because whilst I felt a lot, I really had nothing to say, lots of other posters were echoing my sentiments and thoughts. So please don't be too hard on us infrequent posters, some of us have sailed a few miles, know a little about boats and love the adventure of the sea, we just don't post very often.

 

[Twister_Ken]

My two cents worth.

A modern GRP boat is inherently watertight. Thus if saltwater appears inside in any significant quantity there has been some sort of structural failure. Unless the boat is very complex there are a relatively few 'natural' possible causes - seacocks, ports, hatches. These should all be visible and accessible. If they seem sound then consider very urgently some form of unfixable hull breach - keel bolts, delamination, stern tube or saildrive problems, or collision damage.

Go into 'mayday' mode: distress signal, life jackets , warm clothing, grab bags, raft ready to go, everybody except maybe one 'investigator' in the cockpit. Only enough sail up for stabilty and directional control. Pumping from the cockpit, bucket chain from the cockpit except maybe one at foot of companion way. Then try to keep vessel afloat but with no more than one person below at anytime. Objective should be preservation of life not of vessel except in the sense that the vessel is the best life raft until it ceases to become so.

 

[Javelin]

This happened a few days ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqzMDsmjmzY

The result underwater was this http://sailinganarchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/photo-1.jpg

On topic I'd like to see a much longer life for epirb's and although the life raft didn't get used I think they should be fitted with a solar panel to keep a epirb running continously or phased going active every 30 minutes or so.
Maybe also make an AIS transponder for ocean crossings a given.

I'm working on the basis that ***t happens so given that its happened having the world knowing precisely where you are at any given time would help the process of being saved.

 

[lw395]

My two cents worth.

A modern GRP boat is inherently watertight. Thus if saltwater appears inside in any significant quantity there has been some sort of structural failure. Unless the boat is very complex there are a relatively few 'natural' possible causes - seacocks, ports, hatches. These should all be visible and accessible. If they seem sound then consider very urgently some form of unfixable hull breach - keel bolts, delamination, stern tube or saildrive problems, or collision damage.

Go into 'mayday' mode: distress signal, life jackets , warm clothing, grab bags, raft ready to go, everybody except maybe one 'investigator' in the cockpit. Only enough sail up for stabilty and directional control. Pumping from the cockpit, bucket chain from the cockpit except maybe one at foot of companion way. Then try to keep vessel afloat but with no more than one person below at anytime. Objective should be preservation of life not of vessel except in the sense that the vessel is the best life raft until it ceases to become so.

We tend to think of grp boats as watertight, but when exposed to big seas and weather, there can be substancial quantities of water getting in from several sources, portlights, stanchion bases, mast gaiters, down the mast itself, patent shaft seals can weep when things get thrown around. Add in four wet people moving around and the odd lump of green spray down the companionway, suddenly a boat which was dry as a bonio in F4 in the Solent looks like a swamp.

How much water is enough to worry about?

 

[Gentlemanracer]

Not posted here before but I'm moved that catastrophic failure seems to have become an accepted risk. I'm hoping that's not so, of course. Can anyone advise if manufacturers are obliged to comply with any impact tests, for example? That seems an obvious place to start. After that, an obligation to pass life-related test/ inspection for charter craft (I.e. craft subject to high duty cycles and indifferent care obligations) seems right. The idea of encapsulated dye is a masterstroke in my view and some form of data-logging a parameter won't be difficult. Because if the vast number of craft and users, I'd find impossible to accept any form of "that'd be too costly" as a reason for not chasing this down to something much better than we are demonstrably accepting today. Better cant be difficult, or expensive, can it?

 

[lw395]

This happened a few days ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqzMDsmjmzY

The result underwater was this http://sailinganarchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/photo-1.jpg

On topic I'd like to see a much longer life for epirb's ......

The EPIRB did not go off at all. Or at least not in any useful way, it probably transmitted upside down in the water for 3 days.

PLB's have the battery life dictated by the size they are. People only carry them because they are pocket sized.

I was going to write something sarky about if you want the rest of the world to rescue you easily, maybe go sailing on an inland lake.
Then I remembered year before last, there was a death due to entrapment under a boat after a capsize on one such lake.
Safety boats on scene in minutes, alas not quick enough.

 

[JumbleDuck]

I... the fact that a person has 5000 posts doesn't necessarily mean that their opinion is correct, it just means they post a lot.

I endorse this message, though I may be wrong.

 

[Sailfree]

Alpha100

There is a difference between posts like yours that contribute your own extensive knowledge and those that live in a time warp and believe all AWB's should not leave their marinas as they are unsafe!

 

[GAJ]

The most pressing reason for liferaft use is generally fire on board, not extreme conditions, in that scenario it makes sense for rapid release from a position likely to be unchallenged by the initial outburst of fire and fumes.

You know I've never actually heard of anyone taking to a liferaft for that reason.

Well you have now, Me. I and the owner had to abandon a Dufour off Palma Mallorca some years ago after a catastrophic fire developed in the engine compartment. I was trapped in the cabin and inhaled noxious smoke which was not pleasant I can assure you. We did not have a liferaft but kept the dinghy inflated on deck for emergency use. I climbed out of the forehatch and made it into the dinghy which had been launched by the owner. The boat was burnt to the waterline in less than 15 minutes or so. It was so hot the aluminium boom actually melted just before the gas bottles exploded. Clear blue skies lots of shipping around and excellent visibility and no one came to our aid, but that's another story.

After that you may think that I would keep my liferaft on the rail with a quick release mechanism, I used to when pottering coastwise in UK waters and the Med but no longer do. If you read Total Loss, Heavy Weather Sailing, Fatal Storm and the like and you will see accounts of yachts being knocked down etc. and righting only to find that on occasions the raft had either self inflated or has been swept away. IMHO when offshore passage making anything stowed on deck should be considered sacrificial and you should be prepared to lose it in severe conditions. I have compromised in that the raft is stored in a cockpit locker with a four part tackle ready attached to make lifting and deploying as quick as possible.
In addition no emergency gear is kept inside the cabin, all abandon ship tackle is in the cockpit locker and is immediately available for use should fire stop entry to the cabin.

I do have more fire extinguishers than you can shake a stick at now though!

 

[alant]

I don't think anyone knows how long before the disaster the leak was identified (or do we?) before the boat inverted. Doug of Stormforce mentioned he was in touch with crew, presumably by satphone, and the crew reported the water ingress. That was the last the owner heard from the crew.

I'm guessing, the crew saw water sloshing around inside the cabin, were all, apart from the helm, on their hands and knees in the cabin pulling up the sole boards thing to identify the source of the water without realising the keel had already dropped off. The few seconds or minutes lost looking for the source of the water was the vital time which with benefit of hindsight should have been used to deploy the EPIRB and liferaft. But they didn't have the benefit of hindsight and the boat capsized leaving them no chance. Losing my keel isn't something I'd expect to happen, it's certainly not something I'd be specifically prepared for. If I saw water sloshing around in the cabin I'd immediately think "hoses" or "seacocks" - I wouldn't be thinking "I wonder if my keels dropped off".

My feeling is the boat probably capsized very shortly, maybe within a couple of minutes or seconds of Dougs radio comms with the crew and the crew had no chance to abandon the boat in an organised manner. The crew probably did everything correctly and exactly as I would have done given the situation, I wonder how mant false call outs to the SAR there would be each month if everyone fired off their EPIRB and launched their liferaft at the first sign of water above the sole? They had to inspect for the source of the leak and would never have expected to have lost the keel or for the boat to invert so rapidly.

That's my speculation.

On one delivery, with owner, the crew when on night watch (0200 hrs just off Gibraltar), shouted up that there was water sloshing above the floorboards. Eventually found, that the anchor locker drain was blocked & the full locker of water was forcing itself through the bulkhead into the forecabin.

 

[Ehecatl]

Orange Dye

at the time of manufacture all yachts with bolt on keels should have a small recess moulded into the hull which is covered when the keel is finally fitted. A block of hard compressed distress orange colour dye in a suitably protective,but salt water soluble covering should be sealed in the recess when the keel is fitted and the joint made watertight.
If you return to your boat in the marina and she's floating surrounded by orange water,... Your keel joint is wonky.
If she developes a leak at sea and the water in the bilge is orange...see above...and you know it's not the heads leaking (consider getting the liferaft squared away for launch)
in the worst case scenario and you lose the keel, the upturned hull at least for a while,will have a dye marker to assist air search.

very good idea!

 

[Tranona]

erm .. to be totally pedantic it depends how you define your population as the MAIB only concerns UK vessels or incidents in UK waters.

However, what is relevant to leisure users is the ability to easily deploy a liferaft when required, my view is that in my usual circumstances mine is best done from the pushpit, I used to keep it in a shallow cockpit locker but could foresee circumstances where the locker lid might get jammed shut (eg if mast or boom came down and jammed it) and as its usually only the 2 of us it makes sense for me.

I'd rather stay in the boat in extreme weather anyway , I seem to remember that was one of the lessons of the Fastnet .. so in my mind the most likely scenarios for fast abandonment are: 1)Fire 2)Collision in fog.

From observation the pattern of founderings is no different in other parts of the world. The numbers are extremely small and the causes very similar. in the UK (and Eire) we have the advantage that most of the incidents are subject to a public investigation, so more is known about the detail.

This shows, for example that collisions invariably result in the yacht being completely destroyed and no chance of the crew ever launching a liferaft, wherever it is mounted. There are, of course exceptions and one well known case where the collision occurred in fog in calm conditions and the yacht took some time to sink, so there was plenty of time to deploy the liferaft successfully. However, that is an exception to the normal pattern.

The decision you take about where your liferaft is mounted is indeed the one that is most favoured and is commonly recommended, but all I am saying is that it is not necessarily supported by the empirical evidence and is only one of the possible solutions. Much of the decision making on extreme safety strategy and equipment is not based on reason or evidence but on a subjective assessment of the possible scenarios. A common theme in survivors' stories is that events were nothing like they imagined and survival is as much about how they reacted to circumstances rather than the plans they made in advance.

Thankfully most of us will never have to test our preparations as it is easy to avoid the need. Have a sound boat, avoid bad weather, and keep clear of other vessels and unlikely to have problems. If you ignore one of those the chances of an emergency rise, if you are unfortunate to encounter two - defective boat and bad weather as in the current case then the odds are even worse as history shows.