Questions to be asked again

Re: We know nothing...

I can see that racers have always been willing to compromise seamanlike design for speed and build down to the limit on scantlings for less weight but it now appears that many AWB for 'cruising' are built that way to keep costs down with the added bonus that manouvering in tightly packed marinas is easier.

Now that's fine, it makes big boat owning easier for most and forces down the price of non trendy more seamanlike second hand, slower boats with less accomodation.

I would, however, like to see people admit that their first boat, the 35 foot AWB, is a great boat for what it is designed for ie sitting in a marina and the occasional weekend and summer holiday, but no matter how much money you throw at it it was never designed as a serious offshore boat.

It will probably make it across the Atlantic and the keel probably won't fall off but probably isn't good enough for me!

There again, I question whether a sipnnaker is a seamanlike sail, so I expect the brick bats!
 
Re: We know nothing...

It seems to me that even a boat aimed at weekending and summer holidays for the family - maybe ESPECIALLY a boat aimed at summer holidays with the family, ought to have a keel that is bullet proof and strong enough to withstand impact with a container or rock (speaking from personal experience here!...).
 
Re: Fin keel failures

JimB - Thank you for your comments which adds a bit more clarity to the speculation. I've never designed boats but I do have enginering qualifications and have to say that whether the keel is bolted or otherwise wouldn't be the only factor affecting the rigidity of the joint. It would be wrong of anyone with a bolted keel to suddenly start worrying - I beleive there's more to it than that.

As someone who works in a safety industry I will be amazed if there is only one reason for this accident. There almost never is just one reason. While everyone's hunger for information on this is understandable, unfortunately, until the investigation concludes we won't really know what happened or what risks we should be aware of and try to mitigate in the future.
 
Re: We know nothing...

[ QUOTE ]
I would, however, like to see people admit that their first boat, the 35 foot AWB, is a great boat for what it is designed for ie sitting in a marina and the occasional weekend and summer holiday, but no matter how much money you throw at it it was never designed as a serious offshore boat.

It will probably make it across the Atlantic and the keel probably won't fall off but probably isn't good enough for me!


[/ QUOTE ]

What you and many others really want is everyone else to accept that only you and they made the 'right' choice and have 'suitable' boats for serious cruising. That really is a patronising load of bollox.

Now I like Contessa 32s, very pretty and sail well. However the son of a friend had his sink under him in Biscay.

I also think the Macwester 26 is a sturdy and capable boat, indeed I knew the owner of No1 and 4 or 5 others for many years. But would I take one offshore, not talking transatlantic here but say a 120 mile plus leg across the Western Channel into a prevailing SW wind? Short answer - NO, I'd go the long way round with short coastal hops and a shorter Channel crossing not into the wind, OR I'd wait weeks for a flat calm and motor.

There seems to be this assumption that old and traditional boats are somehow invincible. Well there are more than a few of them parked on the seabed to disprove that theory.

Generalising by manufacturer or generalising by type, by design purpose or age is very dangerous. By all means comment on a proven defect on a particular boat, but extrapolating that to cover all others is, like I said, pure bollox.
 
At the moment, everything is speculation. Why not wait until the facts have been established before we set too many hares running? At this time, surely out thoughts should be with the dead crew's family.

ps - you are not the only one here to have done the '79 Fastnet.
 
Re: We know nothing...

Agree but the point I'm trying to make is that boats are design compromise between seakindliness, speed, stability, comfort/accomodation and price to name but a few and people should understand the design limitations of their boat and not exceed them.

Racers are willing to take risks (my brother broke three masts in one season!) but I'm not.

Before anyone starts, 'm not saying that anyone was taking risks on Hoolgan 5 or that the design wasn't up to it, I'm talking generally.
 
Re: We know nothing...

Nobody discussed Contessa 32's (except you). The discussion was about different keel configurations and the fact that too many seem to have dropped off recently. It was also about the fact that structural strength of keels and rudders were one of the issues that came out of the Fastnet, and hte issue doesn't seem to have been addressed. Someone asked about encapsulated keels, which is why the strebgth differences discussion came up.

Extending that to endorsing a particular class of yacht is in your imagination. There are many types of yacht that have not suffered keel problems. Nobody is saying either that it is not possible to have fin keels with bolts that are not safe. There seems to be an issue with many ofthem at the present.

If your friend's yacht that sank in Biscay was due to keel failure, then please tell about it. If not, then it's for another thread.
 
Re: We know nothing...

Understood, my point was really just that you're as likely (more likely!) to hit a rock or other debris closer to land so even 'short range' yachts should be designed to take it.

Like in Scandinavia, where bumping rocks is commonplace.

Like you, I don't mean Hooligan.
 
Re: We know nothing...

[ QUOTE ]
Nobody discussed Contessa 32's (except you). The discussion was about different keel configurations and the fact that too many seem to have dropped off recently. It was also about the fact that structural strength of keels and rudders were one of the issues that came out of the Fastnet, and hte issue doesn't seem to have been addressed. Someone asked about encapsulated keels, which is why the strebgth differences discussion came up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well I think you will find that no keels fell off in the '79 Fastnet. There were rudder problems yes, IIRC connected to carbon fibre ruddershafts failing.

[ QUOTE ]
Extending that to endorsing a particular class of yacht is in your imagination. There are many types of yacht that have not suffered keel problems. Nobody is saying either that it is not possible to have fin keels with bolts that are not safe. There seems to be an issue with many ofthem at the present.


[/ QUOTE ]

My comments were made in the context of many previous posts on similar subjects and the very early signs of the written equivalent of nod nod wink wink experts coming out of the woodwork.
 
Re: We know nothing...

No, Robin, I'm not saying that only I have the perfect boat ( I know very well I don't!) or that only I should be able to say what is or is not suitable for any given voyage.

What I am saying is that one should recognise that all boats are a compromise and have their limitations.

I fully accept that I may be over cautious and I would hesitate to go offshore in my Macwester. I wouldn't go creek crawling in an Oyster 55 either.

It's all horses for courses, there really is no such thing as the perfect boat for all uses so we live with compromises.

I'm talking design and use here, not about the sad loss of life from Hooligan 5.
 
Re: We know nothing...

Better to respond to posts after they're made not before.

As for keels in the Fastnet, maybe I'm remembering incorrectly, but didn't Drum lose it, or was that another occasion?
 
Re: We know nothing...

That was another occassion. I do remember watching the finish of the Whitbread Drum was in. It was blowing a hooley westerly up the solent and they (or was it Condor?) were flying a massive spinnaker across the line. Just when we were wondering how they were going to drop it they shot it with a flare and it shredded in seconds.

Good or bad seamanship?
 
Re: Fin keel failures

I don't think it's a particularly good idea to talk of fin keels, and then make out that the way Bavaria does it is the excepted norm.

There is nothing wrong with fin keels. The number that actually drop off the bottom of boats while at sea are a tiny fraction of the number of boats out there, and in most of those instances I'd wager than the keel took some form of shock at some point before parting company.

Yes I know what you're saying, that if you hit a rock or run aground in your long keeler then you're keel is going to be far less at risk than someones fin keel. But, hitting rocks and running aground isn't very seamanlike and even in places such as the Swedish Archepelago it's possible with a little concentration not to hit anything you don't want to.

It seems that the only examples of keels dropping of yachts that you have are the Bavarias in the med, the '79 Fastnet and this MaxFun 35. Bavarias, granted, are poorly made and the thickness of the laminate holding the keel in place is would not make me sleep easily if I owned one. The others though, the yachts in the '79 fastnet and this MaxFun are built as racers which means they're built to the limits of what is considered safe. Now with the Fastnet they discovered that they'd gone beyond the limits in some occasions, that coupled with a storm meant that some weaknesses were made all to obvious. But even then, how many boats lost their keels and sank in that race?

The Maxfun though seems to have done an awful lot of sailing in it's past, before the keel fell off in weather conditions that wern't all that bad. I don't think it's quite right to condemn fin keels untill it's known that the boat didn't hit anything and that it was the design that was at fault.
 
Re: Fin keel failures

If I were looking for a boat to cross oceans I'd be looking at a long keeler for sea keeping and directional stability.

If I were looking for a boat to keep in a marina I'd be looking at fin keelers for their manouverability.

If I wanted to race I'd want the latest lightweight big dinghy flyer.

I want a boat for pottering around and keeping on a half tide mooring so I've got a bilge keeler.

Horses for courses.
 
Re: Fin keel failures

It's personal preference. Personally if I were going long distance cruising then I too would go for a long keeler for exactly the same reasons you gave. However, that doesn't mean that fin keelers are unseaworthy and incapable of making long offshore passages safely.
 
Re: We know nothing...

[ QUOTE ]
Better to respond to posts after they're made not before.

As for keels in the Fastnet, maybe I'm remembering incorrectly, but didn't Drum lose it, or was that another occasion?

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Snippets get taken as fact. Your comment about keels falling off in the 1979 Fastnet is already inserted in another reply as fact. The 1979 Fastnet brought up a number of points, mostly about stability and especially about stability upside down when some boats were very stable inverted. There were lots of other points, like storm weather tactics, harnesses, harness attachment points, liferaft design (ballast pockets), liferaft construction, crew experience and so on. No keels fell off but a few very high tech (for those days) rudders/shafts did break. After the Fastnet the AVS figures were born, an attempt to put mathematics to stability. However the report afterwards also stated that it was WAVES not wind that capsize boats and given the right breaking wave ALL boats will capsize, irrespective of boat size, design or windspeed.

I well remember Drum (Simon Le Bon's boat) losing her keel. It was subsequently concluded that the area between the keel and the hull, an aluminium spacer box for want of a better description, had been poorly welded and failed.

However I will add a little story about Drum that I was aware of and questioned at the time. Shortly before the keel failure, Drum ran aground in Hamble river. At the time we were mid Channel headed for the big booze locker in our Elizabethan 30, it was blowing SW6 and a tad lumpy. Some clubmates, all yachtowner skippers were also headed to Cherbourg in a friend's powerboat, a Broom 43 I think. However it was too rough for the powerboat (or their teeth fillings) so they turned back and went up to the Solent whereupon they came across Drum, firmly aground. Drum asked them for assistance with a tow off the shallows and passed a very heavy warp over to use. My friends back then were very used to towing with the club workboat in order to get boats afloat or in under the lift-out crane through very sticky mud. They tried a steady direct pull on Drum with no effect. Drum then asked that they tried a pull from 90 degs off the bows to swivel Drum around, my friends were not happy about it but eventually did as asked. I forget the length of Drum (70ft?) but that gave a lever arm of say 30 -35ft. The warp (20mm plus nylon I believe) broke. Now if you take the breaking strain of 20mm nylon and add to that a 35ft leverage factor that is an awful amount of turning force applied to the keel stuck firmly in the mud. The Keel fell off very soon (weeks) after that incident and who knows there may have been other groundings as well. I and several others mentioned this incident at the time but were nodded at patronisingly whilst the welder of the keel box took the blame, such is life.
 
Re: Fin keel failures

I wouldn't dream of condemning fin keels, or even imply that Bavaria's fixings in those Match's were the norm - even for Bavaria. Nor was I trying to guess about what made Maxfun's drop off.

But there seem to be rather a lot of these cases - apart from the round the world yachtsmen, in the last year or so we've had at least the Bavarias (apart from the one in Croatia, wasn't there one a few months ago reported to have motored a long distance before it realised it keel had dropped off - was that confirmed?), Moquini lost her keel of SA with six dead, a yacht abandoned when the keel came loose on the ARC, and now MaxFun.

We don't really know what happened in any of these cases, but there does seem to be an issue that needs addressing. Maybe it's just racing yachts. But most people who buy yachts may not have the expertise to be able to assess whether their boat or its keel has been well designed and adequately built or not.
 
Re: We know nothing...

Point taken about Drum - it was the Fastnet Race she lost her keel, but in the 85' Fastnet, not the '79!

About stability, they did conclude that a not very big breaking wave would invert just about any yacht irrespective of stability, but as you know the point was more about how long it would remain inverted once capsized.
 
Re: We know nothing...

[ QUOTE ]
No, Robin, I'm not saying that only I have the perfect boat ( I know very well I don't!) or that only I should be able to say what is or is not suitable for any given voyage.


[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't mean to sound as pompous as it came out or to get at you or Simon per se. My point was that there is a general 'marketing' campaign for want of a better description that is employed implied or subliminally applied before or after any incident or in any opinion given to people about choice of boats.

The fact is that designs have moved on from the days of long keels (I mean proper long keels, not long fins), just as design moved on from the Mary Rose, which IIRC also capsized, in the Solent too! Many of the designers of (relatively modern) long keelers have long since moved on to Fin and Skeg or Fin and spade rudders. Twisters, Holman and Pye went to Hustlers, UFOs, Red Admral and the like. David Sadler (Co 26 and Co32) went to Sadler 32 and so on, and David Sadler circumnavigated in a Contest 43 I think. The sages were amuttering about it then.
 
Re: We know nothing...

[ QUOTE ]
About stability, they did conclude that a not very big breaking wave would invert just about any yacht irrespective of stability, but the point of the report was more about how long it would remain inverted once capsized.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes and to my mind the inverted stabilty is the real villain not the peceived need for an ultra high AVS which many confuse with being an indication of a 'stiff' boat.
 
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