ORC keel inspections

[ridgy]

Unless I've missed the discussion, this requirement to have keels inspected every 2 years seems a bit OTT:

JOG News | Junior Offshore Group

Apart from a very small number of worldwide cases caused by inappropriate modifications it's hardly an issue, especially for cat 3..? And recommending their sponsor to do it?

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

Anyone know if this is mandated by anyone else - or is it just a reaction to the MCA idiocy last Autumn?

 

[flaming]

Don't see the problem here. We only do Cat 4 stuff, but our keel checking regime is more stringent than every 2 years. What is being mandated by ORC seems on the low end of sensible to me.

Their sponsor is offering a very good price to JOG members, having the service advertised to the members is surely part of the sponsorship, and I'm sure appreciated by members who will need someone reliable to do the checks at a pretty reasonable cost.

Anyone know if this is mandated by anyone else - or is it just a reaction to the MCA idiocy last Autumn?

That's the updated Offshore Regs. Will be mandatory for everyone entering a cat 3 or higher race.

 

[lw395]

That's going to be £250 for a visual 'coat of looking at' with a piece of paper issued.
In addition to the cost of holding the boat in the slings while the inspection takes place. Another couple of hundred, assuming the yard is able to provide this service.
And what if the visual once over is inconclusive?

 

[langstonelayabout]

That's going to be £250 for a visual 'coat of looking at' with a piece of paper issued.
In addition to the cost of holding the boat in the slings while the inspection takes place. Another couple of hundred, assuming the yard is able to provide this service.
And what if the visual once over is inconclusive?

The visual once over? What criteria do they have that a visual inspection can verify that would ensure that a keel is correctly fitted and safe to be used?

My cynical side suggests that this is someone saying that they have to do something but they don't know what.

My email of protest to the MCGA at last autumn's MGN stupidity realised their response which included their statement that said 'they had purposely avoided use of a competent person, this is not defined and we have purposely avoided this phrase as it is does not add clarity to the reader. The Health and Safety Executive definition of a competent person refers to a competent person being, “…someone who has sufficient training and experience or knowledge…”, and as such it would be difficult to be satisfied that an owner was competent by lack of formal training'. So I guess this is just JOG giving the job to someone or a company that is 'specifically trained, experienced and/or qualified to' check keels.

Not inspiring, is it? (the bold text is copy/paste from the MCGA's response to me)

 

[lw395]

Do we believe that waggling the keel in the slings at the end of the season and checking keel bolt torque will actually prevent many failures?
Would it have made any difference to any of the high profile cases of the last few years?

In my experience of older boats, many of them have some visual blemish where the keel joins the hull.
How many of these will be advised to have further checks done?

Will other companies offer inspection? Will standards be identical if they do?
Not every boat is based between Lymington and Chi.

Seems like another barrier to any cruiser owner doing a little racing.

 

[flaming]

Seems like another barrier to any cruiser owner doing a little racing.

It's a requirement for Cat 3. Cat 3 is not really the sort of racing that a cruiser owner "just does a little bit of". It's overnight type racing. It does not apply to cat 4, near shore, racing. RTI, for example, is cat 4. As is the JOG inshore series.

This also is not a JOG thing. It's a special regs thing. So applies to any race that the organisers have as Cat 3. What JOG have done here is brought it to the attention of their owners. After all, how many owners spend the long winter nights reading the latest issue of the special regs....?

Ask yourself the following question. Would you go offshore on a boat that wasn't already doing the suggested checks as a minimum....? Would you go offshore on a boat that had hit the ground hard but hadn't been inspected by a qualified person?
We're an inshore only boat and we've always done more than that. Helps that the owner is more than qualified to perform such checks, but a surveyor has been involved on several occasions that I know about. (And not because of groundings btw... Just regular inspections.)
Any doubt whatsoever has resulted in the keel being removed and the bolts and keel bed/ matrix fully checked. We've cancelled races because the keel needed to be checked more thoroughly.
The idea that there are boats going offshore that are not doing this is actually quite scary.

 

[Stemar]

I'm not a racer - if my Snapdragon gets home before everyone else has got home and gone back to work, I've probably won on handicap, but I can't help thinking it's a good thing. A friend's boat was surveyed recently and damage was found to the keel. He was unaware of having ever grounded hard enough to do any damage, but he's looking at a possible £10k bill. A casual once over while cleaning the bottom would have found nothing.

 

[langstonelayabout]

It's a requirement for Cat 3. Cat 3 is not really the sort of racing that a cruiser owner "just does a little bit of". It's overnight type racing. It does not apply to cat 4, near shore, racing. RTI, for example, is cat 4. As is the JOG inshore series.

This also is not a JOG thing. It's a special regs thing. So applies to any race that the organisers have as Cat 3. What JOG have done here is brought it to the attention of their owners. After all, how many owners spend the long winter nights reading the latest issue of the special regs....?

Ask yourself the following question. Would you go offshore on a boat that wasn't already doing the suggested checks as a minimum....? Would you go offshore on a boat that had hit the ground hard but hadn't been inspected by a qualified person?
We're an inshore only boat and we've always done more than that. Helps that the owner is more than qualified to perform such checks, but a surveyor has been involved on several occasions that I know about. (And not because of groundings btw... Just regular inspections.)
Any doubt whatsoever has resulted in the keel being removed and the bolts and keel bed/ matrix fully checked. We've cancelled races because the keel needed to be checked more thoroughly.
The idea that there are boats going offshore that are not doing this is actually quite scary.

I’m pretty sure that it isn’t the fact that people are having to get their already seaworthy boats checked, it’s the fact that with all the expenses of boat ownership, it is something that they will have to spend ANOTHER £250 on, for no benefit to them.

Pretty much all races boats are in excellent condition. So spending that £250 is pretty much like having your car serviced, then MOTd and then paying another £250 for someone to use an unproven method to check something you have already checked. Waste of money.

Cruisers are different and this sort of thing is one of the items checked during a survey. If you aren’t competent to check this sort of thing yourselves then should you be maintaining your own boat at all?

 

[flaming]

I’m pretty sure that it isn’t the fact that people are having to get their already seaworthy boats checked, it’s the fact that with all the expenses of boat ownership, it is something that they will have to spend ANOTHER £250 on, for no benefit to them.

Sure "some" boat owners have the appropriate knowledge to ascertain that their keel is still in good nick from a visual inspection. But not all. I've seen boats lifted and the yard boys swinging the keel several inches either way with obvious cracks. The comment on one was "We've told the owner, and recommended he get a surveyor involved but he doesn't seem bothered..." Funnily enough about 6 months later that boat sprung a massive leak and spent several months having some fairly serious remedial work to the keel attachment. That was a production C/R... In between times it had done RORC races...
I think that's the exact type of case this is looking to address....

Pretty much all races boats are in excellent condition.

Well that is the early runner in "Naive post of the year"....
Spend any time around race boats and you quickly realise that quite a few owners have a funny relationship with spending money on things that don't make the boat go faster.

So spending that £250 is pretty much like having your car serviced, then MOTd and then paying another £250 for someone to use an unproven method to check something you have already checked. Waste of money.

No, this is in effect the MOT. From the point of view of a crew member, not an owner, this is some small amount of assurance that the boat I'm about to go offshore in probably isn't about to drop its keel.

Cruisers are different and this sort of thing is one of the items checked during a survey. If you aren’t competent to check this sort of thing yourselves then should you be maintaining your own boat at all?

Cruisers are different, and this does not apply.