Missing yacht reward offered

[Deleted member 36384]

Drogue trailing off a quarter might have been an effective way to steer, or help steer the boat. There are videos on YouTube of boats (38') being steered, under sail, tacked and beating quite effectively with just a single drogue. In the final revision of the method the drogue was run from the end of a pole across the stern so that the lever was maximised, the normal width of the stern not being enough.

 

[Mad Pad]

Thanks for recounting the story.

I was mainly curious because I'd seen a jury-rigged rudder made from a spinny pole and boards, as I mentioned, and it just didn't work at all well even in flat water. So I wondered how yours had been constructed that it worked even for ocean sailing.

LPDSN,to be honest I can't remember that well but think we lashed a floor board to the end and then tied the spinnaker pole to the centre of the transom leaving enough inboard to act as a tiller.
Luckily it was quite calm and we didn't have far to go.

The yacht from memory was red and called Scarlett Fever!

 

[Seven Spades]

I do not understand why they were traveling without insurance. The insurance costs are a fraction of the boat value and you can always get insurance it is only a matter of the premium.

 

[Tranona]

I do not understand why they were traveling without insurance. The insurance costs are a fraction of the boat value and you can always get insurance it is only a matter of the premium.

That is a personal choice. Insurance for a (seemingly) inexperienced family ocean sailing in a high value new boat is likely to be extremely costly and not unusual for such people to take the risk. Probably spent more than they expected and decided that they would rather go than pay a substantial bit of their cruising budget on insurance.

 

[Seven Spades]

Why do you think that. How many boats go wth the ARC every year and how many are abandoned? My guess is that 1/1000 ARC boats are lost so I doubt the premium is more than 0.5% (1/200)of the boat value. If it is more than that then they need to shop around a bit harder.

 

[pvb]

I do not understand why they were traveling without insurance. The insurance costs are a fraction of the boat value and you can always get insurance it is only a matter of the premium.

Are we sure there was no insurance? I think the only mention I saw was that the insurance wouldn't cover the cost of an aerial search.

 

[WhiskeyTownRacer]

In the thread from the cruisers forum this was stated:
"Hi guys yes I'm in a terrible quandary!
The insurance won't cover it."

The post immediately prior contained:
"A terrible quandary. Clearly the boat is not insured. The owner has a wife & 2 kids & limited resources"

I took this to mean that he either wasn't covered or for some reason they refused to cover the liability (of the boat loss)
In the context of some earlier posts, I suppose it could be the search not being covered but that was not my first thought given those surrounding posts, #125/126

 

[Tranona]

Why do you think that. How many boats go wth the ARC every year and how many are abandoned? My guess is that 1/1000 ARC boats are lost so I doubt the premium is more than 0.5% (1/200)of the boat value. If it is more than that then they need to shop around a bit harder.

Suggest you get a quote. Ihe %age of value is a useless measure. All it does is express the premium as a % of value - it is not the measure that determines the risk and therefore the premium. That will be on an individual basis for the individual boat and is the insurer's assessment of the risk. Therefore by definition only a part of the premium will vary according to the value of the boat. Also the policy will be individually tailored and may well have very tight restrictions on the type of loss that is covered - for example if the observations by others are correct it may well exclude ariel searches.

So, even expensive insurance may not necessarily cover all risks nor commit to expensive actions to recover an abandoned yacht.

 

[RichardS]

Why do you think that. How many boats go wth the ARC every year and how many are abandoned? My guess is that 1/1000 ARC boats are lost so I doubt the premium is more than 0.5% (1/200)of the boat value. If it is more than that then they need to shop around a bit harder.

Those same statistics could be use as a rationale for a couple who are a bit broke not bothering to insure at all.

Richard

 

[Neil_Y]

I do not understand why they were traveling without insurance. The insurance costs are a fraction of the boat value and you can always get insurance it is only a matter of the premium.

We couldn't get insurance for a two up crossing at the time we went across, we originally planned on having crew but decided to go two up in the end. We had insurance at either end effectively coastal cruising but the crossing was not covered. The risk of total loss is tiny, but it does mean we would have stuck with the boat unless it was going under. Be interesting to read the small print on ocean crossing coverage, is steering failure considered total loss?

 

[tudorsailor]

Drogue trailing off a quarter might have been an effective way to steer, or help steer the boat. There are videos on YouTube of boats (38') being steered, under sail, tacked and beating quite effectively with just a single drogue. In the final revision of the method the drogue was run from the end of a pole across the stern so that the lever was maximised, the normal width of the stern not being enough.

Here is the Yachting World test of the various methods of steering without a rudder
http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/sailing-skills/jury-steering-30065

TudorSailor

 

[Bathdave]

The story has been picked up by the media now and is comprehensively reported in the Times today

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/atlantic-storm-sinks-familys-dream-thf98bqct

They have sourced most of the content from the family blog

My heart goes out to them

What's still not clear to me (having read the owners postings on the Cruisers Forum) is whether the boat was uninsured or whether insurer has refused to pick up the tab

 

[Deleted member 36384]

Here is the Yachting World test of the various methods of steering without a rudder
http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/sailing-skills/jury-steering-30065

TudorSailor

Thanks for that Tudor Sailor. The video I watched when I first looked at this was accessed via Attainable Adventure Cruising's webpage. However, here is the original video for completeness: -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vupIl68mCYg

A drogue would still take considerable coordinated effort by a crew.

 

[NormanB]

The story has been picked up by the media now and is comprehensively reported in the Times today

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/atlantic-storm-sinks-familys-dream-thf98bqct

They have sourced most of the content from the family blog

My heart goes out to them

What's still not clear to me (having read the owners postings on the Cruisers Forum) is whether the boat was uninsured or whether insurer has refused to pick up the tab

I have read the family blog and the cruisers forum and it is clear there is no insurance cover for the vessel.

 

[Malo37]

The fact that they are offering a large reward would seem to confirm that had no insurance.
The whole incident raises the question of suitability of a lightweight modern yacht for ocean crossing.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

The fact that they are offering a large reward would seem to confirm that had no insurance.
The whole incident raises the question of suitability of a lightweight modern yacht for ocean crossing.

I would disagree about the lightweight modern yacht thing, I think it just raises the point that shit happens and you have be able to deal with it. They could not and did not have a worked out strategy for losing a rudder. If one decides not to have insurance, or cant get it, I would have thought that the thinking would be around managing risk a bit better than they displayed i.e. the skipper now owns 100% of the risk. Any amount of reading about stuff that happens at sea keeps raising the same old points - make sure your contingencies are tried and tested.

 

[Malo37]

I would disagree about the lightweight modern yacht thing, I think it just raises the point that shit happens and you have be able to deal with it. They could not and did not have a worked out strategy for losing a rudder. If one decides not to have insurance, or cant get it, I would have thought that the thinking would be around managing risk a bit better than they displayed i.e. the skipper now owns 100% of the risk. Any amount of reading about stuff that happens at sea keeps raising the same old points - make sure your contingencies are tried and tested.

Totally agree. However I personally would not take my family across the Atlantic in a lightweight Hanse or any other boat of similar build quality.

 

[Tranona]

Totally agree. However I personally would not take my family across the Atlantic in a lightweight Hanse or any other boat of similar build quality.

But many do very successfully, including a recent example of a young couple buying a new Hanse from the UK dealer, preparing it properly and sailing it home to Australia.

Much of ocean sailing is in relatively benign conditions, and sensible people plan their voyages to avoid extreme weather

Suggest you look at the ARC entries to get an idea of what sorts of boats people actually choose. You may well find these are very different from the type of boat you say you would choose. The small number of boats that get into trouble on ocean passages are not exclusively the type that you would not choose.

 

[pvb]

Totally agree. However I personally would not take my family across the Atlantic in a lightweight Hanse or any other boat of similar build quality.

The Cruisers Forum thread seems to have unearthed a few examples of Hanse rudders disintegrating. Apparently they were made by a Polish sub-contractor who are no longer used by Hanse.

My Bavaria has a Jefa rudder, and I was reassured to see on the Jefa website that they bond one half of the rudder to the metal frame before adding the other half, and that the two halves overlap at the leading edge for added security. There are lots of photos of the process on the website - http://jefa.com/blade/blade.htm

 

[Tranona]

The Cruisers Forum thread seems to have unearthed a few examples of Hanse rudders disintegrating. Apparently they were made by a Polish sub-contractor who are no longer used by Hanse.

Rudder problems are not unique to Hanse (or any other mass produced boat) as the reference earlier on this thread to a similar problem with a Moody and more particularly to the Southerly 38 (one of the most expensive and heaviest boats of its size) on the recent thread from oscarpop show.

The basic method of construction is almost universal and is not new. I have seen rubbish examples from all points of the price/quality spectrum - worst actually being from a dedicated bluewater boat from a very well known builder at the time where mild steel spacers had been used to keep the two halves apart while the foam was injected. You can imagine what happened when the joint cracked and water got in!