Loss of yacht Solution (USA) - holes in the cheese align.

[RunAgroundHard]

"Nothing moves water like an anxious man with a bucket !"

I think Yachting Monthly crash test boat proved the man and bucket to wholly useless.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

I think Yachting Monthly crash test boat proved the man and bucket to wholly useless.

I think it depends wholly on the boat. I have been in the situation, back when Noah was just starting up, and in a small plywood boat where the rise from the cabin sole to the edge of the cockpit wasn't very high, a man with a bucket certainly outpaced the bilge pump being operated by me! He was able to use a scooping action that shifted water quite efficiently. Fortunately, my father was in company with our boat (I was crewing for a friend) and we were towed to safety. Of course, that was in a boat with negligible engine or battery power, so a powered pump wasn't an option.

But in a boat with an appreciable lift from cabin sole to the outdoors, I can see that a bucket wouldn't do much.

 

[boomerangben]

I’ve seen a smallish fishing boat saved by a bucket until a coastguard pump turned up. Granted there were two on board and a fishing boat is perhaps easier to get water out of than a yacht. I suppose you do your best with what you have.

I too have pondered the USCG rescue swimmer technique. I am not sure how they expect an injured crew to jump in the water to add “salt water to the wounds” for a basket rescue, but maybe they can put the basket on deck too. Somewhere there’s horrendous footage of a casualty falling to their death from a (non USCG) basket rescue.

Yes a single strop is not the most comfortable means of winching, the hypo lift (double strop) is preferable and the UKCG now have what amounts to a giant nappy to transfer those with injuries that don’t require a stretcher, but cannot be stropped. Unfortunately for MR, the single strop remains the best and safest means of transfer of able bodied people. Or least was the case until I left.

 

[RunAgroundHard]

I think it depends wholly on the boat. ... But in a boat with an appreciable lift from cabin sole to the outdoors, I can see that a bucket wouldn't do much.

Indeed it does, but for the purposes off coastal cruising, in the usual yachts, the crash test proved it was useless. As you say, arms got tired rapidly lifting water any height, but also a lot spilled out lifting to height and it was very slow. These all contributed to a fairly pointless emergency response procedure. The time between slow and rapid sinking can be very short, where the man with the bucket may have been better served getting the liferaft or dinghy launched.

 

[pmagowan]

In a few of our jaunts a bucket was used in earnest and proved pretty poor. Getting the water from down below to the cockpit resulted in significant spillage and caused the crew members involved to become both sick and exhausted. The efficiency was very poor and the cost very high.
The bottom line, and I hope the takeaway from this, is that there is no good way to keep a sinking boat afloat other than to correct the reason it is sinking. Everyone should be thinking of how they detect a leak in their boat before the floorboards are awash and then how they isolate where it comes from and then how they stem the leak. If you detect a leak very quickly it is much easier to see where it is from as you will see the flow of water. Once the bilge is half full the water does not appear to flow but just rises. There is no point in bailing out if you have not found the source so this should be the priority. Don’t waste time on the pumps! Find it, fix it and then tidy up.

 

[Supertramp]

In a few of our jaunts a bucket was used in earnest and proved pretty poor. Getting the water from down below to the cockpit resulted in significant spillage and caused the crew members involved to become both sick and exhausted. The efficiency was very poor and the cost very high.
The bottom line, and I hope the takeaway from this, is that there is no good way to keep a sinking boat afloat other than to correct the reason it is sinking. Everyone should be thinking of how they detect a leak in their boat before the floorboards are awash and then how they isolate where it comes from and then how they stem the leak. If you detect a leak very quickly it is much easier to see where it is from as you will see the flow of water. Once the bilge is half full the water does not appear to flow but just rises. There is no point in bailing out if you have not found the source so this should be the priority. Don’t waste time on the pumps! Find it, fix it and then tidy up.

And don't leave it too late to decide the situation is out of control. The skipper of Solution acted decisively and in time to ensure all lives were saved. A credit to him.

 

[lusitano]

I think it depends wholly on the boat. I have been in the situation, back when Noah was just starting up, and in a small plywood boat where the rise from the cabin sole to the edge of the cockpit wasn't very high, a man with a bucket certainly outpaced the bilge pump being operated by me! He was able to use a scooping action that shifted water quite efficiently. Fortunately, my father was in company with our boat (I was crewing for a friend) and we were towed to safety. Of course, that was in a boat with negligible engine or battery power, so a powered pump wasn't an option.

But in a boat with an appreciable lift from cabin sole to the outdoors, I can see that a bucket wouldn't do much.

Of course it does, It also depends on the man, and the bucket.
I don,t know where the quote came from but I expect it came from a time when boats were mainly commercial or military, crews were in double and even treble figures, and pumps were primitive and inefficient affairs

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Of course it does, It also depends on the man, and the bucket.
I don,t know where the quote came from but I expect it came from a time when boats were mainly commercial or military, crews were in double and even treble figures, and pumps were primitive and inefficient affairs

In my case, the man in question was motivated by not wanting to drown a friend's son (me!)

 

[fredrussell]

Of course it does, It also depends on the man, and the bucket.
I don,t know where the quote came from but I expect it came from a time when boats were mainly commercial or military, crews were in double and even treble figures, and pumps were primitive and inefficient affairs

Indeed, I also suspect it was only ever meant to be a joke!

 

[LittleSister]

A few musings from the comfort of my armchair, about how I (or someone else) might approach similar challenges. (These are not in any way intended as a criticism of the skipper - I wasn't there, and I wasn't him, thank goodness.)


- Like others I am surprised that he made no attempt to replace the fuel filter. He said "In a calm harbor with no rolling I could replace the fuel filter and get the engine back on line in twenty minutes. In a choppy sea, getting the engine restarted would be an almost impossible challenge." It's not clear why it would be an 'almost impossible challenge'. Having previously done challenging jobs hanging upside down into the engine and other compartments in rolling seas, very unpleasant though it was, I'm pretty sure I'd have given it a go. Hoving to would have almost certainly made the motion (which he described as the difference between being able to do it in a harbour and not being able to do so in their then circumstances) much more manageable, but he doesn't mention the possibility.

- This was a boat maintained at vast expense, and yet it seemingly did not have a simple system for switching over to a spare filter. It was also a very big boat so it is difficult to imagine there would not be space for such a system, or even its sole primary filter, to be in a reasonably accessible location. (Something I want to do in my own boat but struggling with very limited space.)

- He was unable to manoeuvre the boat once it was flooded because it was so 'sluggish', and couldn't get up to windward to tack nor make enough way to windward once he'd gybed, preventing him being able to pick up the long floating rope attached to the pump the helicopter had dropped, despite going at it for over an hour. Earlier, before the flooding, he had reduced sail, bringing down the double-reefed main and leaving a single small staysail to, he said, reduce heeling and because he felt there was 'too much pressure on the rig'. Adding another sail to overcome the increased weight and friction could perhaps have made all the difference. Note that he'd said about reducing sail that the wind had been rising "to a steady 26 knots, with gusts to 30". That's just Force 5, so it seems unsurprising that a small staysail was unable to properly propel the flooded boat to windward through the 'large waves' he mentioned, and unlikely that the pressure on the rig was at a dangerous level. I can well imagine, though, that given the rescue scenario they were now in, one could easily get absorbed by the challenge of picking up the rope to retrieve the pump, and not being able to take a step back to look at the broader picture.

- He was right to mention the possibility of concussion. I was once on another forumite's boat, and fell hitting the back of my head hard on the edge of the nav table. It really hurt and I initially suspected I must have cracked my skull, but once I'd overcome the initial shock I attempted to stand up. The skipper, though, who would have been professionally very familiar with dealing with injured people, wisely insisted I stayed sitting on the floor for a bit, and he talked with me, presumably assessing how 'with it' I was. As it happens, fortunately I didn't suffer anything worse than a painful bruise and a gash to the back of my head that was soon expertly dressed, but I'm now much more conscious of the risk of concussion (and the need for big and various bandages), especially when sailing.

 

[rotrax]

Some years ago a delivery skipper abandoned an almost new Island Packet SP Cruiser for the same reason-blocked filters. Looking at his report and subsequently the wind/sea state conditions IMHO he could have hoisted half the jib and gone downwind. The non running engine could have been sorted later.

As a USCG accredited commercial skipper he was more qualified than me, but obviously not prepared to carry out basic survival seamanship.

He called the helicopter.